Chapter Five
A nd Julie had a lot more chances to feel the dragon CEO’s hot gaze.
After Ruby tossed her rainbow hair and giggled over her multicolor, glittery nails on camera in front of their salon, human bookings poured in.
Everyone was curious to try out the salon that had once catered to a dragon.
Julie had ample opportunity to do her job, which was not only refreshing but mentally invigorating.
Her not-mom hired a part-time receptionist to give her breaks and invested in a computer system.
And every few weeks, like a comet on an unpredictable orbit, Sard crashed through the doors with another color-obsessed female dragon.
Julie put down the phone from calling in yet another stylist to deal with the emergency. “Mr. Carnelian, we greatly appreciate your business?—”
“It’s Sard,” he growled.
“—but if you booked in advance then we could have everything ready to begin when your client arrived.”
“Females don’t book services.”
“Ruby does,” Julie replied coolly while the part-time receptionist watched their interaction with terror. “She has a regular booking.”
“Ruby has a booking?” The young female Sard had brought today perked up. “I want a booking.”
“I’ll be happy to put you on the schedule just like Ruby,” Julie said archly.
The stylists collected Sard’s client, momentarily breaking the tension. Her part-timer carried supplies for the stylists, leaving Julie and Sard alone at the front of the busy salon.
Sard’s eyes narrowed. “You’re too…too…”
“Helpful?” Julie asked, jamming a fist on her hip. “Considerate? Efficient?”
“Colorful!”
Julie touched her hair. She’d gotten new magenta lowlights, hidden beneath her dark hair, and was surprised he could even see them.
Now that the salon was raking in money, she could afford to treat herself.
She was even thinking about moving out of her shared house, the one she’d lived in since college, and into her first solo apartment.
She’d started buying her slips and shirts at name-brand clothing boutiques instead of making do.
Sard was the first person to notice, even if he was weirdly angry about it.
“What’s wrong with my color?” she asked him, her heart thumping.
“It’s irresistible.”
“Irresistible?”
“To dragons. And your type is the worst.” He gestured at her hair. “You keep it hidden like you’ve accidentally revealed a secret. It makes a dragon male wonder what other colors are hidden beneath.”
She heated. “Well, everything else about me is on full display so nobody will get the wrong idea.”
“Exactly.”
She blinked. “That’s the opposite of what you just said.”
“You have the ideal body. Large yet soft for holding in a male’s arms, strong and healthy for carrying vigorous dragonlets.
Your hair is thick and long, ideal to wind around your husband’s fist as he claims you.
And your lips part in surprise, inviting a male to…
” He broke off suddenly, shaking himself, and stepped back while looking away, gesturing in her direction.
“Everything about you is irresistible to dragons.”
She heated to a million degrees. Waves of surprise and arousal flushed through her. But all she managed was “Oh.”
He grumpily sniffed the pot of herbal tea she’d made. “You’re too intelligent not to know your own value. Do not bait me again.”
But she didn’t really think she was irresistible to anyone.
She’d dated briefly in college, but it had been a hassle and not that much fun.
No one had ever seemed to “get” her. Definitely no human was as fascinating and magnetic as Sard Carnelian.
Her body thumped, coming alive under his smoldering gaze.
If a male like him found her irresistible, then maybe what he saidwas true.
But then Sard started avoiding the hair salon. He called to book appointments because he didn’t trust his men with the task. She looked forward to the calls even though she tried not to. Her part-timer always handed her the phone immediately, in a panic, if it was him.
“Yes, we can schedule a new client one week from today,” she told Sard in mid-December. “Oh, wait. Actually, it’s Christmas.”
“So?”
“We’re closed. Would you like to do it the day before or after?”
“Christmas? You don’t work Christmas? All my dragons are working then.”
“I feel sorry for them,” she said blithely, her customer service voice even and unruffled. “Their boss has no Christmas spirit.”
“What do I care about Christmas alcohols?”
She snorted. “Spirit in the singular, not alcoholic spirits, and it’s not surprising you have no idea what I’m talking about. Nevertheless, we’re closed, so would you prefer?—”
“Hold on.” There was a furious yet muffled conversation on the other end while Julie sipped her seasonal peppermint blend. Then Sard burst back onto the line, huffing with feeling. “How is closing for a day ‘spiritual’?”
“I’ll put you down for the day after.” She typed it in. “And you wouldn’t know since you’re lacking in it.”
“I lack nothing!”
“I suspect your employees would tell you differently.”
“No dragon should want to spend time with his family. Not when he could be spending his time increasing our company value!”
“Bah, humbug,” she replied cheerfully, and hung up on his sputtering.
He called her three more times that week to insist that he wasn’t lacking in the Christmas spirit because he, Sard Carnelian, lacked nothing, and it made her laugh every time.
But, she found out later that he’d given his employees a day off after all.
He’d done it unexpectedly and without calling to brag.
When she heard that, she felt a tingling in her lips and a tightness in her chest. Like, their conversations were more than just sparks or amusement or blowing off steam. They were actually changing each other.
Sard came into the salon more frequently again during the spring, after her not-mom had expanded into the building next door and they were still partly under construction.
With all the new dragon business, the salon had exploded, overflowing with dye, glitter, and the constant ringing of the newly installed multiple phone lines.
Their conversations, and how he continued to stare at her and engage only with her, made her feel more peppy and confident.
“You continue to defy me,” he growled one day out of nowhere.
“Do I?” She smirked at him, quickly schooled her expression to process an incoming client, then laughed at him pacing in the waiting area. “I can’t imagine why you’d say that.”
“You’re looking that way again.”
She hummed Oops, I Did it Again while checking out another client, then stood and faced him so he could see her full outfit today, because she was pretty proud of this particular ensemble. “Mind your own business.”
“Your appearance is my business,” he informed her. “You’re distracting my dragons.”
“How? My clothes?” She patted her formfitting halter top, dark purple blazer, and soft, purple flared pants. She flipped her matching purple lowlights. “My hair?”
“All of you. My men can’t take their eyes off you.”
His closest bodyguard, Syenite, stood with his back to them at the glass doors. He was peering out onto the street. Syenite always wore subtly glowing sunglasses, even at night. He was dating their client Eva, and sometimes the two came in together when Syenite wasn’t working for Sard.
Chatting beside him was another employee of Sard’s, Peridot, whose back was also to Julie. “You know my girlfriend Karmel?”
“I introduced her to you,” Syenite murmured.
“Right, well, my girlfriend Karmel said that your girlfriend Eva said that dragons don’t understand humans. Then my girlfriend Karmel said…”
Mm-hmm, clearly Sard’s dragons couldn’t take their eyes off her, sure. She tuned out of the extremely one-track conversation and refocused on Sard. “That’s their problem.”
“And mine,” he snapped. “Because I also can’t…”
Heat flushed through her. Her throat went dry.
The salon disappeared, and it was suddenly just the two of them, a hulking dragon CEO with silver piercings and her in her snappy new outfit that she’d worn just because she knew it would drive him mad.
Her lips parted.
Sard focused on her, his nostrils flaring as though he could scent her throbbing arousal.
Then the door rattled, a client coming in, and broke their connection.
Sard shook himself and stormed away in a terrible mood. “Syenite! Peridot! Get out there and search for enemies.”
His bodyguards scattered.
Sard stormed out after them. He stopped outside the salon, his broad back framed in the window. The new neon sign cast an orange glow on his fine houndstooth suit.
Her heart thumped and thumped as she thought about what he’d almost said…
Spring turned into summer. No matter how she baited him, every conversation ended with Sard breaking away and then staring back at her with glowing red eyes.
Longing thumped in her body, an unfamiliar power pulsing to its own rhythm.
They spoke all the time but somehow never talked about anything important.
Like how she was never able to tell him she was going out of town for a week, her first long vacation since the salon’s popularity had exploded.
By chance, she got called in on the first morning of her vacation to fix one last thing.
So, with her car stuffed full of supplies and parked illegally out front, she was finishing up that final task when Sard walked in.
Everything about him was different.
For one thing, he only smashed the new doors in a little.
The bell barely jangled in its new cradle.
He glared in her direction rather than meeting her eye, and he settled himself in the oversized tangerine armchair that they’d brought with them into the newly remodeled waiting room.
He thumbed through magazines, which he’d never done before, and then, at last, he went over and stared at the herbal tea.
“He’s not got a client on the schedule today,” Julie’s part-timer whispered to her, as shocked as Julie about his strange behavior. “One of us has to ask if we can help him…”
“I’ll do it.” Julie stood, smoothed her long skirt, and marched over to him, raising her voice. “We don’t have you on the schedule today, Mr. Carnelian.”
“Sard,” he said absently, and poured himself a cup of tea.
“Mr. Sard…” She watched him drink the peppermint tea, her mouth falling open. “Uh, are you okay?”
“No.” He made a face. “It’s bad.”
“What is?”
“The tea.” He frowned and took another drink. “Weak, yet strangely aggressive. Nothing like your superior coffee.”
“Then why are you drinking it?”
“I thought I should try it once. I associate the smell with you.”
Her heart squeezed. He was acting completely out of character. “You took time out of your busy CEO schedule just to try my tea?”
“I am at loose ends today.” He drained the cup and coughed. “As I am no longer CEO, my replacement will be coming in my stead.”
Oh, no. She shifted her weight back onto her heels. “What happened?”
He stared into the empty cup. “It’s a very long story.”
“I’m about to have a lot of free time to listen. If you wanted to talk, I mean.” Her face burned at her boldness. Look at her! She shocked herself.
“Oh?” He looked at her with interest, and for the first time, a blaze of fire shone in his red gemstone eyes once more. “You want to talk with me?”
“I’m going on a road trip.”
“What is a ‘road trip’?”
“You sit in a car together for hours. While your butt goes numb, you listen to music, eat snacks, and chat about life. At least, that’s what I used to do when my mom was still alive.”
“That sounds like hell,” he said bluntly.
Embarrassment flushed her. “Oh, uh?—”
“But if it’s with you, I can think of no other way I’d rather spend my last…my time.”
Heat flooded her. His eyes gleamed red and focused on her like twin lasers, and she felt hot. “Then is that a yes?”
He hesitated, then clenched his fists. “Take me away from this place.”