Page 7

M y laptop buzzes and dies, the bottom of it red hot. It’s done this before, but not in a long time. Back home, I have an expensive cooling pad with fans that keep the processor humming along under the onslaught of fifty open tabs.

“My applications,” I hiss, carrying my faithful old friend to the table by the front door so it can cool down. Since I woke up a couple of hours ago, I’ve done everything I can to take my mind off my situation. Compartmentalizing, they call it.

Unhealthy, the guidance counselor at my middle school called it.

Anyway, whatever they call it, I was doing it, sitting in the marshmallowy soft bed and using the perfect pillow as a lap desk as I filled out applications to work at the campus cafeteria, the elementary school after school program and summer camps, as a checker at the grocery store, and as a sales associate at Kane Garden Center.

But if I get hired, I have to use my real name, fill out tax forms... Can the Genovese family find me that way? Do they have an “inside man” on the police force? If they do, why did Mom tell me to go to the local police? How would she know who I can trust when she was married to a mobster for years without catching on?

I groan and start getting ready to leave. I figure if this place is like most hotels, I have to leave by eleven.

And then I’ll walk to town. Two miles or whatever.

I need a car. I have a car. I have a car and a mini-mansion in Bayside, and a closet full of designer clothes...

I take a deep breath as a wave of pettiness washes over me. I don’t like all those things as much as I like freedom, honesty, and not being involved in a family that runs drugs or smuggles weapons, right? I like having a choice in who I love and when I get involved with someone. I don’t need a car. Millions of people live without a car.

Out of the half-sobbing breaths comes a calm smile. A smirk. I had my name legally changed to Argento a few years ago, but I still have my old college ID. Still have my old driver’s license, and it’s not expired. I’ll apply for jobs with my old identification cards. Find the post office and get a P.O. box. Get my computer to work again and go back to looking up apartments for rent.

I’m a survivor. A tough Jersey girl who knows how to be a princess or a pauper. I can do this. I can—

Wham! Wham, wham, wham. Someone pounds on the door of my hotel room and reminds me I have other skills, too.

I can almost pee my pants and drop to my knees in a fraction of a second. “Shit, what do I do, what do I do?” I mouth to myself, crouching down low.

It could be a bad guy.

It could be the hotel manager.

Maybe I was supposed to check in someplace and not just use the funny little keypad by the door.

Mobster or maid service?

Maybe if I just stay quiet, they’ll go away.

“Angela, even if you don’t open up, I’m still going to come in.” The voice is masculine and has a faint lilt to it. It sounds vaguely impatient, even a little exasperated.

I think mobsters would just sound mean.

What do you know? You never saw Ronnie raise his voice in three years!

“I’m a friend of Milo’s! And a friend of a friend of your dad!” the voice shouts.

With shaking knees, I slowly get up and grab the pretty brass fruit bowl off the table, dumping it out and sending apples and pears rolling across the carpet. “Why are you here?” I ask through the door.

“I’m here to help!”

Well, that’s fucking vague.

I keep the door’s security chain on and pull the door open just a smidgen.

The man outside the door makes Vincenzo Genovese look like a prepubescent teenager.

I don’t mean he’s handsome and polished. He’s handsome and dangerous, and if there were vampires in the real world, he would be one of them, with his long black hair and his stubbled jaw, and the intense eyes with dark shadows around them. When he smiles, his look softens, but I swear there are tiny fangs.

The mob has vampires?

Angela, get a grip, it’s a sunny day in May! Vampires wouldn’t be out—even in a calf-length black leather jacket that screams Bad Boy.

“Angela? Would you come outside so we can talk?” he asks softly. “I’m Graham, and I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Why are you here?” I blurt. I’ll have manners later.

“I got a call from a friend of a friend that you were in town and your family is worried sick.”

My lips seal, and my mind races. How did they know where I was? And if Mom is worried sick, why did she send that email? She could be worried sick and want me to stay safe, but then why send this guy?

Unless... “Are you my protection?”

Graham blinks, and his hand briefly rests on the flat silver disk dangling in the center of his chest. “Am I your what ?”

“My bodyguard?” I whisper. “Did my parents send you?”

“Yes.” He nods, eyebrows arching high on his elegant forehead. I’ve never seen someone look so refined and so ready to bust skulls at the same time, but this guy pulls it off.

“Come in, then,” I hiss and pull the chain back, letting the stranger inside. I don’t put down the fruit bowl, my weapon of choice. Not yet.

“Look, Angela, the situation is just a misunderstanding. Your parents—”

“I don’t know how Mom traced my reply to her email, but I’m glad she and Ronnie sent you.” I wave him to silence and start packing. “She said to contact the local police, but who is on Genovese’s payroll, huh? I don’t know. She didn’t even know my father was in the—was mixed up in anything,” I explain over my shoulder.

“That’s right. He has friends all over the place.”

Graham pauses, but doesn’t add anything further to his sentence, so I keep going. “I’m sorry, this must put you in danger, too. What’s the plan? Do we have to leave Pine Ridge?”

“Not yet.” He cocks his head. “Your mother told you I was coming?”

“Well, no, but if you’re friends with Milo and Libby, I figured you were local. Knowing my Mom, she probably got one of Ronnie’s friends to trace the IP address or something, then contacted local security companies.”

“I worked security in Creek Valley, California. But this situation is different.”

“I’m sure it is. The main thing is that Genovese and his people can’t find me and can’t know that Mom knows where I am. If anything happens to my mother...” I trail off, putting my hand on my chest.

“I thought you and the Genovese boy were engaged?” my bodyguard asks, confusion switching from his face to his voice.

Even confused, his voice has that beautiful touch of an accent, but it’s got a soft, deep quality about it. Like far-away thunder, which has always been a sound that helped me sleep.

“Engaged? I guess. I just didn’t know about it. That’s why I ran. I don’t want to be forced to marry someone I don’t even like. I mean, he’s handsome, but he has other lovers. I’m not the sharing type.” I finish stuffing my things into my bag.

“No. I can understand that. But... But sometimes you have to preserve the family line. Or business,” Graham protests.

I don’t know what his game is, but I’m not playing. “Would you honestly want to spend your entire life with someone who didn’t love you? Just to... I don’t know, produce an heir or make two little kingdoms into one big one?”

“Duty,” he mutters.

“I’m not talking about protecting my people from war, I’m talking about my stepdad dealing with a dude with a big ego and even bigger trust issues. I’m not a pawn. This is not chess. Don’t you already know all this?” I snap, collecting up the apples off the floor.

Graham bends and scoops up pears and bananas. “They don’t tell the grunts much.” He smiles, a twisted little grin that speaks volumes.

“Well, to me, you’re the hero, not a grunt.” We put the last of the fruit into the brass bowl that I’ve finally relinquished, fingers brushing. “I’ll try not to cause any trouble and make this easy for you. You’re a friend of Milo and Libby’s. You’re local?”

“For a month.”

“Oh, right—until Mom gets in touch and tells me... something.” I put my head in my hands for a moment, then shudder and stretch. “I thought I should try to blend in. I have my old license, so I could look for a job under my old name. I don’t know if I could even find someone who pays under the table... I normally wouldn’t do that, you know, but for this one circumstance...” I trail off, not sure if I’m saying too much, too little, if I should ask to see some kind of badge, or what.

“Do you like flowers?”

“I like tomatoes better, but yeah.”

“I’ve got a truck outside. We’ll talk on the way.”

“Hey, Kane Landscaping! I was going to apply to the garden center today,” I say with a smile. That’s too much of a coincidence. There are a lot of coincidences. Too many. I have a feeling I should connect the dots better, but I don’t seem to be able to. Maybe it’s stress or fear, or just a crappy dinner of motel room snacks and popcorn, but things feel a little slippery here in Pine Ridge. “My brain isn’t working as well as it should,” I mumble. “Something about this place—or maybe the stress of running away and putting my life on hold has really messed with my mind.”

“It’s the stress.”

“Wait, why do you have one of the Kane trucks?” I ask, holding onto the door frame as Graham exits my room.

“Because I’m Graham Kane, and I’m the manager.”

“You’re the manager and my bodyguard?”

“You’d be surprised at how well I can protect.”

Without warning, he scoops me up in one arm and slams the door with the other. “Strong.” He crosses the parking lot in the time it takes me to blink. “Fast.”

I find myself sitting in his truck and blinking to clear my head as he climbs in next to me and beams. “Full of tricks. Come on, I’m taking you to my place. You can stay there or come to work with me at the garden center.”

“I’ll decide once my head stops spinning,” I groan, closing my eyes and lying back against the seat.

***

C OLD FEET, MY TAILS and scales! Angela Argento is no bratty little girl running away from her lover in a fit of pique. She’s not a scared bride who isn’t sure about saying yes. She’s a strong, articulate person who looks like she might break down and sob at any moment, and maybe I would do the same if I were “sold” into marriage.

I’m a lot of things, but I’m not going to force an innocent woman into domestic slavery—more like sex trafficking—under the guise of an arranged marriage. “I guess your groom-to-be took it pretty hard when you walked out on him?”

“Huh? Oh, no. We only met this week. I thought my parents were just trying to nudge me into having a social life. He didn’t want to marry me, either. He has a girlfriend. And a mistress.”

“Yikes.”

“I didn’t even know any of this was going on. I thought they were just trying to fix me up, but no. Or, well, yes. Fix me up in the permanent way.” She rubs her temples, her dark hair falling out of a messy ponytail.

She’s so cute.

For a human.

And short and curvy, the kind of woman you can sink your teeth and talons into—if she were a shifter, like me.

“It’s crazy that they thought they could just pair us up because he’s a mafia ‘prince’ and I guess I’m what they call a ‘princess.’ Or the closest thing my stepdad’s family has to one, anyway. Like, who does that?” She flings up her hands, but the double cab pickup is wide, and she doesn’t smack into me. “That’s like saying just because you put a man and woman together, they’re going to fall in love. We’re not animals. I don’t even know if animals vibe like that...”

“Yeah, I don’t know.” I squirm in my seat, her words and Ian’s lectures closing in on me like a net.

Was I doing the same thing? Waiting for my dragon “princess” to magically waltz in and set up shop as a wife and mother? For what reason? I’ve always said it was to stop our race from dying out. Sure, that’s noble.

But Vanessa and Ian proved it didn’t have to be that way. “Some people are stupid,” I mutter. Am I in that club? For years, I’ve thought my brother was the foolish one.

“You know what’s funny? I know my stepdad was mixed up in this, and it’s bad, but I still love him. I don’t think he wanted to do this. I think he was kind of forced into it. I guess... I guess those Genovese guys are bad news.”

Considering that Genovese knows someone who can contact a literal demon? “You’re right.”

“Where are we going?”

“My brother and his wife are visiting our family in Scotland, but their house has an amazing security system. That’s where I’m staying while I’m in town. It has a whole guest suite you can use.”

“Won’t that put your brother’s family at risk?”

“No. Because they’re not going to find you,” I say firmly.

“You sound really confident. Too confident.”

“It’s the tricks up my sleeve,” I remind her. I’m tempted to flash scales for a second, but I decide not to. I’m going to be busy playing the prodigal son this afternoon and calling in favors.

“Elaborate?” Angela requests, but I’m not fooled. She’s going to jump out of the truck and run if she doesn’t like my answer.

My smirk sneaks back. I like that about her.

“Well, you met Claire, and Milo and Libby?” I offer, thinking fast.

“Yes, and Genesis and his wife—Melody? Melinda? You know, the pretty nurse with long red hair?”

I’m frozen on mute for a second. Genesis? Genesis the gargoyle? I can’t very well ask her, but how many Genesises are there in a town of this size—or even in the world? “Genesis got married? How about that?”

“You sound surprised—and like maybe you’re stalling.”

“No, no, just surprised.” I really am. Genesis is one grumpy old piece of flesh and stone, and from what I knew of him, he didn’t just want to marry a gargoyle, he found human women quite repulsive. She could be something other than human, but Angela’s description makes me think maybe he caved. Or maybe he decided love supersedes race and kind. “Love is a strange thing,” I hum, turning off on Ponderosa and heading toward the lush development of McMansions that my brother calls home.

“You were asking who I knew?” she prompts.

“Oh, right. You’ve met a handful of the locals. This is a very civic-minded town. There’s a neighborhood watch that’ll double the patrols in our area once I let them know it’s needed. The police have time to devote to helping locals, and I know for a fact that at least one of them is not in Genovese’s pocket. And uh... Uh, some folks are a wee bit superstitious. I think we’ll have the house blessed.” By the pastor and the coven. Doesn’t hurt to put up two layers of protection.

“That’s it? A civilian patrol, a friendly local cop, and a blessing?” Angela bites her lip.

Something singes my insides. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her not to bite that full bottom lip that creates a delectable, rounded heart, naturally pink in an oasis of buttery caramel . Let me bite it for you, little runaway wren, flying fast. The big dragon wants to catch you...

Graham, stop that. No, you don’t. You can listen to Ian and Vanessa, listen to Angela—and still hold out for what you want. Love—with one of your own kind.

We turn into Pleasant Pines and weave around expensive-looking houses with their fenced yards and swimming pools until we find Ian’s house. “That’s not entirely it.” I hop out of the truck and walk into the shadows of the three-car garage. In the dark, she can’t see me shift, calling on Halfling strength. My clawed hands slip under the silver fender and clasp the body of the truck. I tug, gritting my teeth, eyes watching Angela’s expression change from worried to stunned as I pull the truck into the garage. “There’s also me. Strong. Fast. Tricky. Satisfied?”

I shift back as Angela nods and pushes open the door, her mouth in a soft circle of shock.

“Did... Did... How did you just do that?” she asks, gesturing to the truck. “You pulled a truck. A big truck!”

“Yep.”

“Wow. You’re hired. Are my parents paying you enough?” Her voice shakes as she swallows a couple of times.

Her parents aren’t paying me anything. I’m going to lose my job in California.

She walks past me, heading for the door in the garage that leads into the house, and her scent hits me so hard that my insides ache. Her hip brushes my leg as she scoots into the darkness, and I can feel the flames that aren’t supposed to exist in my human form licking my gut.

“I’m getting paid plenty,” I croak.