“I did,” he said, his gaze intense. “Once.”
A shiver ran down her spine, making her feel unsettled.
“That wasn’t real,” she said, but her heart hammered all the same. “It was just pretend.”
As Luke took a step toward her, Emmeline’s breathing hitched. She inhaled the scent of his cologne. He smelled like winter: cypress and spruce and a biting chill.
“Pretend,” he repeated, voice low. “Are you sure about that?”
The warmth of his body invaded her senses, and she clenched her jaw, feeling slightly weak in the knees. He still looked self-assured, but there was something else in his voice, as if the question was genuine.
But as soon as the flicker of emotion was there, it was gone. Emmeline must have imagined it. Luke was heartless, she reminded herself.
“Yes,” Emmeline snapped. “Do what you want; I couldn’t care less.”
As she turned on her heels and stalked away, Emmeline was more determined than ever to secure the investment.
Seeing her company succeed was one thing—but beating Luke would be its own prize.
There was no way she could lose to Luke Hayward.
Chapter 4
Emmeline spent all of Sunday recovering from Ginny’s party.
She was meant to be doing things like laundry and meal prep and a seven-step skincare routine—which she absolutely did do—but she was a multitasker at heart, so she was also mulling over ideas for the Tales & Tails coffee shop expansion.
The ideas stayed in her mind the next day, on Monday, when she was back to work. Currently, she was at Inferno’s roasting plant, overseeing the day-to-day business of her company. The plant was where the green coffee beans arrived processed from the farm and were stored until it was time to roast, which was when her dragons came in.
Taking a sip of her karak chai, Emmeline walked out of her office on the second floor, which held the other offices and storage rooms. There were balconies looking down to the main floor, which was beneath a retractable roof of window panels, allowing natural light to flow in from above.
The main floor was where the roasting happened, andwhere her dragons were now. Emmeline had three dragons who worked on roasting; each roast took about twenty minutes, before being cooled, then they were packaged and sent out for deliveries.
Going down the steps, Emmeline went to check on the dragons, though she was stopped along the way by an employee.
“Can you sign off on this delivery slip?” A clipboard was presented to her, and Emmeline quickly dashed along her signature.
She made it a few steps before she was stopped by another employee. “Is the Starshine Valley Diner the franchise, or is that the Starshine Diner?”
“The Starshine Diner is the franchise,” Emmeline replied. “The Starshine Valley Diner is singular.” While she supplied coffee to cafes, she also supplied to diners and a variety of restaurants and bistros. She was slowly but surely trying to take over the coffee supply of the entire valley.
Emmeline finally made it down to the roasting floor, where her dragon, Torch immediately perked up at the sight of her. Torch walked over—the building was far too small to fly in for a full-sized dragon—and nuzzled against Emmeline’s side.
“Hiya, girl,” Emmeline cooed, patting Torch’s cheek.
Together, they walked back to the main area, where the other two dragons were. Each were basalta dragons; the breed was the largest and as such had the strongest fire.
Emmeline had started the business straight out of university when she was twenty-two, and in the beginning years, she used to borrow her father’s dragon because Torchwas still a baby. At the time, one dragon was enough, but as the business grew, so did her needs.
“Hi, Midnight,” Emmeline said, leaving Torch’s side to go to her eldest dragon, Midnight, who used to belong to Emmeline’s grandmother. When she passed away, Emmeline took Midnight in, since the dragon was only in her sixties, with some good years left before retirement.
Dragons lived for about a hundred years and were very active in their first quarter-century, when they were classified as “young.” Young dragons actually grew depressed if their riders neglected them. Then in middle age, from around age twenty-five to seventy-five, they became less needy, and in elder age, they grew tired of domestication entirely.
That was when dragons took their last flight and lived up high in the mountains for the last quarter of their life. Elder dragons who lost their riders usually retired early, which is what Midnight could have done, if Emmeline hadn’t had use for her.
“How are you doing, old girl?” Emmeline asked Midnight, stroking her black-scaled neck. Midnight leaned into Emmeline’s touch. After a few moments, Emmeline went to her third dragon, Char, who was her father’s dragon and middle-aged.
Char blew a ring of smoke her way, and she wrinkled her nose as it passed over her. “Hey, old boy,” she said, going over to pet the dragon, who nudged his nose against her chest.
