by Zoe Chant
This cat looked like your basic orange tabby of alley-cat heritage, and it had its ears down in a way that suggested Muscles was going to be picking claws out of his teeth any minute now.
"May I hold him?" Loretta asked.
Muscles gritted his teeth as the cat made an experimental effort at getting away, and clapped his left hand over its back. "Not out here."
"I won't let him get away. I get along pretty well with cats."
Muscles seemed to be thinking this over. The cat made another effort to slip away, this time through the gap between arm and body. He clamped his arm down hastily, so now the cat was dangling head-down. It didn't look comfortable for either of them.
"You let him get away, you're the one who gets to explain to the boss."
"I swear to you, I'm good with kids and pets. I grew up around a lot of both."
She took the cat gently but firmly. He made an experimental escape attempt, but Loretta tucked him close to her body. She could see him think about it and then decide to settle down. When she stroked a hand down his soft back, a low purr began to rumble.
"Oh, he's very friendly," she said, pleased. "Most cats don't take to strangers like this. What did you do to make him so upset?"
"What did I do?" Muscles sounded offended.
"I assume you must have done something. He seems to like me just fine. Cats don't like to be grabbed or squeezed or chased—"
"It's not my job to have cats like me," Muscles said. "It's my job to keep the damn thing from getting out every time the door's left open."
"Your job is taking care of the cat?"
He muttered, under his breath, something that sounded like "Sure seems like it."
Loretta carefully freed a hand from the cat and held it out. "In any case, I'm sorry for leaving the door open and making your job harder. I'm Loretta, by the way."
He stared at her hand, then at her.
Loretta offered a smile. And, after a moment, he clasped her hand in his hard, callused one. "Maddox," he said.
"That's much better than Muscles," Loretta said before her brain kicked in with the override, too late, as usual. "I mean. Can I take the cat back inside for you? You can, uh, show me where he's supposed to be. And maybe tell me where Darius is?"
"Can't give out that information."
"Well," she said, as they both started for the house, "can you tell me the cat's name, at least?"
With a pained look, Maddox said, "Toblerone."
"Darius's cat is named Toblerone?"
Maddox gave an expressive shrug.
"Darius. The Darius I met earlier. Has a cat named Toblerone."
"Don't look at me," Maddox said. "I didn't name him."
The door was, indeed, standing halfway open; it must not have latched behind her. Maddox closed the door behind them, and nodded to the cat in Loretta's arms. "You can put him down now. The damn thing—uh, the cat has the run of the house."
Loretta set the cat on the floor. He twined around her leg, tail held straight up with a quizzical crook at the end, and showed no inclination to go anywhere.
"Kitchen's this way," Maddox said.
She couldn't really get out of it now, and anyway, she didn't really mind having a guide, even a large, scary one. And she was hungry. That slice of breakfast cake felt like it had been a long time ago.
"If you can't tell me where Darius is," she wheedled as they walked down the vast, gilded halls, their footsteps echoing, with the cat trailing behind them, "can you at least tell me when he'll be back?"
"No."
"Or if he's still on the property?"
"No."
"What do you do for him? No, wait, let me guess. Security guard?"
After a moment, he said, "Yeah. And other things."
"Are you a dragon too?"
Maddox made a choking sound.
"I'm sorry," she said quickly. "Is it rude to ask?"
"No, it's more that people aren't supposed to know about dragons. Especially regular humans." He glanced at her. "Which I assume you are?"
"As opposed to a dragon?" She couldn't help laughing. "Do I look like a dragon?"
"Most of them look like ordinary people." Maddox reconsidered his words. "Some of them look like ordinary people."
"Darius doesn't." He was like no one she'd ever met before. Even if she hadn't seen him transform, she would have known there was something about him—something that compelled her, down to her very soul.
And other parts in her southern reaches.
Where was he, anyway?
And why did she care so much?
They reached a hallway that she suddenly recognized. This was where Darius had brought her into the mansion. Instead of turning to go to the secret door, they went the other way, and stepped into the warm bustle of a fairly ordinary-looking industrial kitchen. Loretta had spent some time as a waitress and a brief time as a line cook, so she recognized the look of the place, even if everything was much newer and shinier than in the truck stops and diners where she'd worked. It smelled deliciously of cinnamon and sugar.
The only person in the kitchen at the moment was a tall, plump woman with a wild blonde frizz contained (mostly) under a hair net. She was making croissants, twisting dough with brisk, expert flicks of her fingers.
"Maddox," she said without looking up, "what have I told you about coming into my kitchen uninvited?"
"Got a guest who needs food."
"So have them call down and talk to Cindy. I'm busy!"
"I don't want to cause trouble for anyone," Loretta put in. "I can wait upstairs."
The cook looked up and her annoyed expression gave way to a sudden smile. "Oh, you're the one that Malva wanted some clothes for! I gotta say, they look better on you than on me."
"Oh, gosh, these are yours?" Loretta looked down at the skirt. "They're really gorgeous. I'm sure they look beautiful on you. I've never worn anything this nice."
"Sit down and I'll grab you something once I get these set aside to rise. Maddox, if you let that cat in here, I will skin you."
"Cat's not around. I think." Maddox sidled doorward. "I'll just go check ..."
"Wait—!" Loretta spun around, hoping to follow, but he'd already vanished down the hall. She was left standing awkwardly in the doorway.
She was just looking around for somewhere to sit when the cook slid a tray of plastic-covered croissants into one of the big steel-doored refrigerators and turned around, wiping her hands on her apron. "There, that'll be awhile. Do you like fresh, hot cinnamon rolls?"
"Are there people who don't?" Loretta asked, amazed.
"You'd be surprised. Just give me a minute to put a glaze on them."
"Can I help?" Loretta asked. "I've worked in a few kitchens."
"Have you? Well, if you want, you can get us a couple of plates out of that cabinet there."
The plates looked too nice to use; they were beautiful bone-white china. The cook scooped two enormous cinnamon rolls, dripping with a fresh glaze, onto the two plates. She took one and handed Loretta a small silver fork. "C'mon this way. We can eat in here. I'm Elvie, by the way."
"I'm Loretta." She followed Elvie out of the kitchen into an adjacent break room. This was less ridiculously over the top than the rest of the house, if not precisely normal; it was the only employee break room Loretta had ever seen with a crystal water decanter, a silver coffee samovar, and a long window looking out on a completely different rose garden than the one she'd been in earlier—which she recognized mainly by the color scheme of the roses. The other had been peach and yellow; this one was red and white. Looking around, Loretta realized that the color scheme of the room was designed to complement the roses outside the window, with bright red touches in a mostly-white room. There were pretty little upside-down coffee cups with roses on them, and a red edging on the tablecloth. (A cloth tablecloth in a break room!)
"Coffee?" Elvie asked.
"Yes, please, but you don't have to. I can get it myself."
&
nbsp; "It's all right. You're a guest." Elvie smiled at her. "And we don't have guests very often here."
"This is an awful lot of space to rattle around in, if no one ever stays here. It's like a hotel with no guests." Belatedly she realized that Elvie might think she was being rude. "I mean, it's a really beautiful place. It's just, it's so ..."
"Huge?" Elvie said. "Absurd also comes to mind. Do you take cream or sugar, by the way?"
"Both, if you got it. I like it sweet. It's the hazelnut creamer from Walmart I like best." She then tried not to wince at herself. Way to sound like a rube, Loretta.
But Elvie just smiled at her. "We don't have that, but I can prepare something similar with hazelnut flavoring. Give me a minute."
"Don't put yourself to any trouble, just tell me where it is—"
"Oh, honey, please. You wouldn't believe how good it is to have someone to fuss over besides that cranky drag—er, boss of mine."
"I know he's a dragon," Loretta said. She was almost getting used to it by now. She dug her fork into the flaky, chewy cinnamon roll. "This is amazing," she mumbled through a mouthful.
Elvie slid a cup of coffee across the table to her. "How long have you known about dragons?"
"Um ... since this morning?"
Elvie's eyebrows went up. "You're taking it well."
"Cinnamon rolls help with that." She'd already polished off half of it. "Are there other dragons here? I asked Maddox if he was one and I don't think he is, but I'm not sure."
"Oh, honey, you really shouldn't ask that. They'll tell you if they want you to know. And after you've been around them enough, you start to be able to tell."
"How can you tell? Are you—wait, no, sorry, nevermind."
Elvie smiled and forked off a bite of her cinnamon roll. "It's fine. No, I'm not. But I come from a family who have served the dragon clans for generations. Most of us do. Not all, though. Maddox is—well, to be honest, I don't know precisely where Darius picked up Maddox, but he's very loyal, and he's a good man."
"What's it like?" Loretta asked. "Working for dragons."
"Ah ... I like it, though I suppose it wouldn't be for everyone. The pay and the perks are excellent, as you might imagine. My parents were groundskeepers for the Corcor—for one of the other dragon clans. I trained at culinary school and worked in a restaurant, but I eventually came back to the family business. Darius had an opening for a cook and I applied. It's not that different from being a private cook anywhere else, except the ambiance is very nice, as you can see."
"And ... Darius?" Her heart pattered a little. "What's it like, working for Darius?"
"He's a good boss," Elvie said, and then added, "You look surprised by that."
"Well, I—" She'd wanted to hear something good. She just hadn't actually thought she would. And yet, in some tiny corner of her soul ... "I guess he just seems so cold and distant?"
"He is, in some ways. But I think he has reasons to be. And, I will admit, he does sometimes call me by my predecessor's name. I know he thinks of me as the 'new' cook, though I've been here ten years. I can't blame him, though. She worked for him for forty-five years."
Loretta blinked. "How old is he?"
"I'm not sure. I've never wanted to ask. Certainly older than he looks."
Loretta decided that she was going to have a lot of questions for Darius when she saw him next. "But ... what's he like, really? As a person."
"He doesn't get that close to his employees, so I couldn't really tell you. But I'd leave in a hot minute if he was a terrible boss. He pays us very well, gives us plenty of time off, and when my mother was sick a few years ago, he paid for the best health care for her. He doesn't skimp on the things that we need."
Loretta thought of the falling-apart building she'd been living in. "I guess I wasn't expecting that," she admitted. "I thought he just didn't care about anything except money."
"Oh no. He cares about a lot of things, more deeply than he wants to admit. I think that's why he's so withdrawn." Elvie's eyes were troubled. "I always got the feeling that something hurt him very badly in the past, and he's locked away his emotions because of it. Recently ..." She trailed off and reached for her cup of coffee.
"Recently?" Loretta prompted, her fork hovering in midair above the remaining bite of cinnamon roll.
"Oh ... I'm talking out of turn, maybe. But it seems like he's been opening up a little. He was always very distant with his children—"
Loretta had just put the last bite in her mouth; now she choked. "He has children?" she said when she could stop coughing.
"Two grown ones," Elvie said. Loretta was still staring at her, trying to reconcile that idea with the Darius she'd met. "I told you he's older than he looks. But the point is, I've been with the household for ten years, and I've watched him starting to come out of his shell a little bit with his kids in the last couple of years. He's almost like a different person with them now. I can tell he's trying hard to be a devoted grandparent, even if he doesn't understand how."
"He has grandkids?" Loretta asked weakly. "No, wait ... older than he looks, I know ..."
Elvie offered her a sympathetic smile. "Just one, and she's only a baby."
"What about ..." Loretta realized she was twisting her hand in the cloth napkin Elvie had brought her along with the coffee, and made herself stop. "What about his children's mother?"
"Mothers, plural, and they aren't together anymore. That's really all I know."
Loretta nodded, trying not to let her heart sink. That was the kind of man she'd thought Darius was, after all. Even if he felt anything for her—not that she wanted him to! she tried to tell herself—he was a love 'em and leave 'em kind. Two kids by two different mothers—okay, it wasn't the worst track record in the world, but it didn't point to someone who was looking to settle down.
And anyway, it wasn't any of her business.
Or so she tried to make herself believe.
Chapter Seven: Darius
Darius landed on the lawn of the mansion on his hind legs, with Skye clutched against his chest, and then shifted back with care not to drop her. Skye seemed to have taken the flight well, especially considering that it was probably her first dragonflight. She was looking around with wide dark eyes.
"Yes, yes, all very fascinating. You should be shifting yourself, you know, and spreading your own little wings ..."
Darius hesitated. He had been assuming, all this time, that his granddaughter was going to be a dragon. Of course she was going to be a dragon. Ben had dragon blood, and Tessa, though human, had been the Heart of the Hoard for the Corcorans. But ... what if she wasn't?
If she wasn't ... then he supposed he'd get to find out if he was really willing to put his money where his mouth was on all that regret about his children's childhood.
Would he be able to love Skye just the same if she wasn't a dragon?
Darius frowned down at Skye, who stared up at him with those wide brown eyes—Tessa's eyes, though he thought he could see Ben there as well. The little rosebud mouth opened and said, "Ba?"
"Yes. Ba. Exactly. Let's go see how much havoc our guest has wreaked in our absence, shall we?"
"Ba!"
He carried her into the mansion and made a beeline for the Daffodil Room. There, he found the door open and no sign of Loretta, though the room smelled invitingly of soaps and shampoos, and there was a rumpled, used towel in the bathroom, as well as his jacket.
His mate had showered here. He could imagine, all too well, the glistening, inviting smoothness of her bare skin in the shower. And now she was not here. She was elsewhere in the mansion.
Naked?
His imagination was more than willing to serve up that image, as well. Loretta in the rose garden, clad only in her red hair ...
However, first he had to find her and deploy a weaponized baby to lower her defenses. He marched out and headed toward his office, but encountered Maddox in the hall before he got there. Maddox looked at the baby, and at him, but had
the sense not to ask.
"Maddox," Darius said, trying to ignore his secret weapon who seemed to be trying to climb his shoulder and hang off his ear, "where is the guest who was in the Daffodil Room?"
"Kitchen," Maddox said. "With Elvie."
Darius blinked. "Why is she there?"
"Dunno. You never said she wasn't supposed to be."
"Well, no, I suppose ..." He shook his head. "Yes. I'll be in the kitchen, then."
"Hey, boss?"
Darius looked back.
Maddox gave Darius one of his quick, rare grins. "I like her a lot better than the other ones."
Darius suppressed a flinch at the reminder of his exes. "She's not like the other ones," he said quietly. "She's my mate, Maddox."
Both of Maddox's low-slung eyebrows went up. "Oh. Well. That clears up a few things."
"And Rodan Sharpe tried to take her from me." The impact of it hadn't quite hit him until now. "Maddox, we will be having a council of war. This is an insult that will not go unavenged."
"Right now?" Maddox asked, looking at the baby.
"No," Darius said with all the dignity he could muster. "Right now, I will be in the kitchen."
***
Knowing how Pam—no wait, that was the previous cook, how Elvie could be about other people in her kitchen, Darius was braced for chaos and complaints. Instead he found the two women having coffee in the employees' wing, seeming happy and content.
And probably, he thought, talking about him, but he was willing to take it if it meant Loretta was happy here.
He wanted her to be happy. He wanted her to stay forever. Surely she would want to? She couldn't possibly want to go live somewhere else after being impressed by the beauty and opulence of his lair. He could just stand here forever, looking at her red hair in the sun coming through the window, at the way she smiled as Elvie said something that made her laugh. He wanted to make her laugh like that ...
"Bababa!" his secret weapon said, and Loretta jumped and spilled half a cup of coffee on the white tablecloth.
"Oh—oh, gosh, Elvie, I'm so sorry." Loretta jumped up, grabbing for a napkin.
