“Yes.” That wasdefinitelya squeak, damn it. “She’s very nice.” Oh my God, would someone take me outside and shoot me?
His expression remained stern. “I’m aware of that.” He glanced at her, seeming to forget my existence. “Let’s go, Mia.”
She gave me a grin that let me know she was fully aware of her brother’s effect on me. “Catch you later, Ollie,” she said, and they left.
I stared forlornly after the man of my dreams, studying his magnificently wide shoulders and narrow hips and wondering where the Golden Ratio fitted into human anatomy. His body was so perfect, it had to be involved somehow.
“Hey.” Jack nudged my arm. “Earth to Ollie.”
“Yeah?” But I was still watching Mia’s brother, dazed from thoughts of all that dark, brooding, muscular power holding me down.
“What’s wrong—oh, forGod’ssake. Don’t tell me you’re drooling over Archer Talbot.” Jack sounded exasperated.
“I’m not drooling. And why shouldn’t I?”
“The Talbots are trouble.”
“Yeah?” I turned to him, evenmoreintrigued by that statement.
“I don’t know any details, but Dad’s always told me there’s trouble in that family,” Jack confessed. “Who’ve you been talking to, and what have you found out while I’ve been pumping Nate Mortimer?”
I deserved a medal for not following that one up. “I was talking to Mia Talbot.”
Jack’s shoulders slumped, and a sigh escaped him. A sigh I couldn’t remember having heard before this meeting but which I had grown swiftly sick of over the last few hours, ever since he decided he was head-elect of the family and that I wasn’t taking things seriously enough. “Of course you were. Shortcut to getting into her brother’s pants.”
I treated that with the contempt it deserved by ignoring it. “I’m sure you know all about the trouble between the Mortimers and Fortescues.”
He leaned in closer. “The what? Tell me.”
I didn’t have much detail, but I made it sound as intriguing and important as I could to prove I wasrepresenting our family equally as well as he was. I wasn’t here just to hook up. Well, notonlyto hook up.
Jack told me what Nate Mortimer and his partner, Alex Teague, had been talking to him about. They were sounding out the younger generation about families mixing more freely.
“Stupid,” Jack condemned. “It’s asking for trouble.”
“Is it?” I was surprised by his dismissiveness. “Don’t you think this current situation is ridiculous? We’ve come to a meeting of every family in the country, yet we only know three of them. Why do we do that?”
“Because it’sourterritory, and I’m not having another dragon close to my treasure.”
Reminded, I cupped my left hand around the silver cuff on my right wrist. It was still there, safe, untouched by strange dragons.
“I’ve always said you’re unnaturally laid-back for a dragon, Ollie,” Jack told me. “You don’t have the instincts the rest of us do.”
He’d said it often over the years, but I’d always taken it as teasing. Now, though, it sounded as if he meant it and that I was somehow inferior to every other dragon. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the judgement, but it hurt to hear it from Jack. I was so unsettled that I didn’t even pick up on his use of the d-word.
“Look, there’s Dad. I’m going to find out what Mortimer had to say at the meeting. You’d better not come; he might not be allowed to share it widely.”
Jack had sworn nothing would change between us when he married Lisa, and though we didn’t see as much of one another, everything else had stayed almost the same. But it looked like our friendship wasn’t going to survive his status. A wave of misery hit me. Jack and I had done almost everything together since we were young kids. We’d giggled together over our first porn, had our first hangovers together, applied for our first jobs together. Despite the fact he was only into women, he’d been my wingman when I first went to a gay club. Right up until I’d realised clubs were my natural habitat and I didn’t need a wingman to get laid.
I trudged over to the buffet table that had been put out at some point when Mia and I had been gossiping. Maybe I’d go for a spa treatment after lunch. Jack wouldn’t notice I’d gone, and he obviously didn’t think I was doing anything of use here.
Having loaded a plate with sandwiches bursting with tuna and sweetcorn mayonnaise, I poured a glass of fruit juice. I was left with the problem that there was nowhere to sit down and eat. I was having to juggle a glass in one hand and a plate in the other, which left me with no hand free to eat with.
I edged over to a quiet corner filled with briefcases, laptop cases and handbags, where no one would disturb me. Putting my glass on the carpet, I hewed off a mouthful of delicious, soft white bread stuffed with tuna mayo. Unhealthy, and I’d hate myself for this later, but right now, it was what I needed to feel better. I put the sandwich down to pick up the glass for a drink and swore to myself because this was going to be a constant juggling act. Who in the hell put out food but no tables and chairs? Some sort of torture devised by Abimelech Mortimer, no doubt.
As I lifted the sandwich to my mouth again, a large glob of tuna and sweetcorn mayo slid from between the slices of bread, and gravity had its inevitable effect. I froze in horror, watching it disappear into the very large and very open handbag at my feet.Shit.
Jack and his father wouldkillme. I glanced swiftly around. If no one had seen, I could walk away and pretend I hadn’t noticed it happen. But my hunted gaze locked with a pair of quizzical grey eyes. Archer bloody Talbot was watching me. He raised an eyebrow before turning away.
