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CHAPTER THREE
“This might sound a little strange if I’m wrong, but would you happen to be Hunter Drake, brother of Lachlan and Ranulf?”
Hunter was finding it difficult to concentrate on anything except the totally enthralling beauty of his mate. And breathing in the heady perfume of Lily of the Valley, Zoey’s mating scent, had caused his cock to harden and his balls to contract.
Because this was his mate . His one true mate. The woman Hunter knew he would cherish, love, and worship for the rest of their long lives together.
She was perfection.
Her long, straight hair was the myriad colors of a living flame.
Her eyes were the color of the purest emeralds in Hunter’s hoard, and they were surrounded by thick, dark lashes.
Her face was creamy and smooth, with a small, uptilted nose and full red lips.
Her neck was long and slender. Her hands, small and delicate.
And the perfection of her figure was clearly outlined in the colorful clothing she was wearing.
As far as he was concerned, Zoey was exquisite.
As Hunter had known, if she ever appeared, his one true mate would be.
The astuteness of her question revealed she was also highly intelligent to have so quickly made the connection between himself and his brothers.
Hunter was unhappy at the thought of even starting to practice any sort of deceit where she was concerned.
Although her connection to Wallis brought into question whether or not she was the one being deceitful.
The fact that she had been in the Highlands when Ben McGregor fell to his death was also worrying. It also posed several questions.
Such as, had she been involved in stealing the journal from Belle?
More importantly, could she have been complicit in Ben’s death?
The conversation Hunter had overheard between her and Edgar Wallis didn’t sound as if she had, but Hunter would need to be absolutely sure before he dared to completely trust her.
“Is that who you want me to be?” Hunter now deflected.
She smiled, revealing straight white teeth between those delectable cherry-red lips. “Ooh, you’re good,” she admired before sobering. “You also managed to not answer my question.”
Because Hunter was somewhat at a loss to know how Zoey had so quickly made the connection between himself and his brothers, whom he now realized she must have met at some time before she left Scotland a week ago.
Neither of his brothers had mentioned the meeting, but then, to them, she would just have been one of the group of young people in the Highlands to celebrate Hogmanay with the McGregor family. Lachlan and Ranulf would not have known that Zoey was his true mate.
Still, Zoey’s astuteness in making that connection was admirable.
Yes, the brothers were all tall and muscular, but otherwise, their coloring was vastly different.
Hunter also liked to think, with his hair cut in a modern style and his biker clothing, that he had at least attempted to look as if he was part of the twenty-first century.
Zoey’s question said he hadn’t succeeded as far as she was concerned.
Was that because she saw something in him others didn’t?
Did she recognize him as being her future?
It was a little hard for Hunter to think at all when her heady scent had now permeated all his senses.
“Because if you are their brother Hunter,” she continued lightly before he replied, “then your appearance here in Cornwall, specifically at my uncle’s house, is far too much of a coincidence to actually be one.”
She was right. It was.
But no less so than her own presence here in the home of Edgar Wallis, the man she called uncle, and whom Hunter knew to be involved in the theft of the journal from Belle followed by Ben McGregor’s death.
Much as Hunter disliked the idea, he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that Zoey might somehow be connected to both those events.
Although her earlier conversation with Wallis and the reason Hunter had decided to make his presence known didn’t sound as if Zoey had been part of the theft or murder.
Hunter would need to be sure of that before he could reveal his true self to her.
“Would you—” He broke off what he had been about to say when the same butler, who had answered the door earlier and admitted him to the house, now came into the room with a tray laden with a pot of coffee, cups, and plate of biscuits.
The man placed the tray down on the coffee table in front of the couch. “Your uncle has asked not to be disturbed again this morning but said he will see you at luncheon,” the butler informed Zoey.
Hunter already knew from having watched the house the past two days, and listened to conversations within it, that Wallis was a man who tended to be rude or condescending to the people who worked for him. Either that or he ignored them completely as being beneath his notice.
But Zoey was his niece, and she had driven all the way from London to see him. She was also obviously still traumatized by the untimely death of Ben in the Scottish Highlands. Only to now be informed her uncle was not to be disturbed.
Unfeeling bastard!
But also, Hunter hoped, confirmation that Zoey wasn’t in cahoots with her uncle.
“Don’t ever play poker,” Zoey told him once the butler had left the sitting room and closed the door behind him. “Because you really don’t have the face for it.” She chuckled.
Hunter scowled. “Your uncle sounds like a selfish bastard.”
“He is,” she confirmed without hesitation as she sat down on the couch to pour the coffee into two cups.
“But he was my father’s best friend, and no matter how inconvenient it was to him, he did choose to accept guardianship of me after my parents died twelve years ago.
” She shrugged. “So, he must have some kindness inside him. Very deep inside him,” she added wryly when Hunter eyed her skeptically.
“Or my father wouldn’t have liked him enough to have named him as my guardian. ”
“So he isn’t your uncle by blood?” It would explain why Hunter hadn’t known of Zoey’s connection to the other man until today.
She eyed him quizzically. “That’s a strange way of putting it.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. Please sit down and help yourself to milk and sugar,” she invited after handing him one of the cups of coffee.
She tried not to outwardly wince when the chair he sat in gave a protesting creak at both his weight and size.
“Wow, your blood comment made me think of something.” She sat forward on the couch.
“You and your brothers aren’t vampires , are you? ”
Hunter drew back. “Vampires…?”
She nodded eagerly. “You’re all so big and muscular, and there’s something…different, about all of you. It would also explain your comment about blood.”
What the hell did she mean, there was something different about them?
Could other people see this strangeness, or was it only Zoey? And did she see it because she was his mate?
“You all seem slightly…otherworldly,” Zoey said in answer to his unasked question. “So large and muscular, and yet there’s an aura that says you’re even bigger than you appear. Larger and more powerful than anything I’ve ever known or seen before,” she added curiously.
Well, she wasn’t wrong. But it was the first time Hunter had heard the dragons the three brothers carried inside them being described in quite that way. It was the first time anyone had said they could sense the power they kept tightly leashed so that they could fit into the human world.
Perhaps his dragon was closer to the surface, and so detectable, now that he was in the presence of and breathing in his mate’s distinctive scent?
Mine , his dragon confirmed.
Zoey gave a self-conscious laugh at Hunter’s continued silence.
“Just ignore me. Of course there’s no such thing as vampires.
Put it down to my artistic temperament.” She grimaced.
“Speaking of which, I would love to paint the three of you. Or just you,” she amended after Hunter was unable to completely suppress the growl that escaped from deep inside him.
An irrepressible growl of jealousy merely at the thought of Zoey painting or being alone with his brothers. Not that he thought either of his brothers would ever treat Zoey as anything other than Hunter’s mate. It was more the thought of any male who wasn’t Hunter being near her.
“You’re an artist?” He didn’t take his eyes off her as he swallowed down the unsweetened black coffee before placing the empty cup back on the tray.
She nodded. “It’s what I’m studying at university. I’m also currently applying to galleries to see if they’ll take some of my paintings,” she explained. “I’m pretty sure a painting of you and your brothers would help in that endeavor.”
Hunter believed that financial backing from her wealthy “uncle” would achieve the same effect. Except, as Hunter knew from his observations over the past few days, Edgar Wallis was only interested in what he wanted.
Besides, all three of the Drake brothers would need to agree to being painted, whether that painting was of all of them or just him. An agreement Hunter doubted his brothers would give.
It had become more difficult to avoid having photographs taken of them in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, when those photographs could be taken on increasingly smaller devices and then displayed instantly to the world on social media.
But as much as they were able, the Drake brothers preferred there not to be any photographic evidence of their existence, either as men or dragons.
A painting was so much more than a photograph, which could be erased if necessary. Besides which, Hunter knew he would never be able to bring himself to destroy anything that Zoey had created.
“I did not confirm, nor did I deny, that I have two brothers called Lachlan and Ranulf,” he reminded.
“Oh, I think your lengthy silence on the subject did that for you.” She sat back on the couch, coffee cup in hand, as she stared across at him with those beautiful, deep green eyes. “So, what are you doing in Cornwall?”