“I’ll have to add this to the list,” she said quietly. “What to do when Mr. Blackburn is unhappy? Placate him with reassuring spreadsheets, stories of his enemies’ poor decisions, or show him a baby playing with a heart-attack’s worth of expensive jewelry. I have to admit, I wouldn’t have guessed that last one. But it’s good to discover a new way of cheering you up.”
“You don’t need to manage me.” Flirtation was all very well, but he needed to be clear on this point.
“I’m not.” She took the change in tone in stride, relaxing into him. “But you were in a bad mood, and I wanted to make it better. I know how I’d do it at work. But we’re not at work. You’re not my boss anymore. I need some way of helping you that isn’t showing you all your investments in a spreadsheet.”
He almost choked. “Excuse me?”
“Another thing you never noticed? I’m so terribly pleased to have been of service,” she murmured blandly. She registered his confusion, and the corners of her lips tucked into a private smile. “Even before I knew you were a dragon, I figured out that looking at spreadsheets of how your investments were doing cheered you up. Or graphs. Oh!” She threw her head back and laughed, then fixed him with a devilish smile. “Or stories of how badly things were going for your competitors. Let’s try one of those.”
This woman,he thought, dumbfounded, as she leaned in close as though about to share a delicious secret.
“Did you hear,” she purred, in a voice that sent fire rushing through his veins, “that old Montfort tried to stake a claim in this town, and ended up blown head-over-heels into the sea? His dragon looked like a puppet with its strings cut.”
He laughed—and to his surprise, the tension in his skull was entirely gone. “You’re incredible.”
“It’s kind of you to notice.”
What could he say to that? He’d always known his mate was the most important woman in the world. But although they’d worked so closely together, he’d never really known her until now.
And the more he got to know the real Maya, the more he fell in love with her.
“You’ve always known exactly what to do,” he told her ruefully. “How long have you been manipulating me like this?”
She grinned at him. “Only since the first time you came back from family business with a face like a thundercloud and I had coincidentally scheduled a meeting with the CFO. And then after your next trip away, when you came back looking like the end of the world was nigh, and I told you that—what was it? Something about the Fairlies…”
The Fairlies were another dragon clan. Did she know that? “I remember. Tucker Fairlie and Robert Bonlieu’s failed island festival. Hundreds of ticket-holders airlifted off a tropical island because it sank.” That was the public story, at least.
“A sinking island. It sounded like something out of Gulliver’s Travels. And when I told you what happened, you almostsmiled.” She shook her head.
Almost smiled? He remembered the iron control with which he used to hold himself in Maya’s presence. How had she seen anything of him past that, let alone enough to want him?
And he remembered the island, as well. “That was a better story than you knew. Bonlieu is Robert’s mother’s name. The man has enough aliases to fill a phone book. He reinvents himself every few years, new name, new hair color, new idiotic schemes, but the most important thing about him is that he was born a—”
“Monfort,” Maya interrupted.
“You knew that? His grandfather cast him out of the clan years ago.”
“Of course I knew. The Montforts were the bane of my life and the ace up my sleeve. If you stumbled over any of them unawares, I would spend the rest of my week placating weeping restaurant owners, designers … a poor swan boat sailor whose boat you sank…” She giggled at his stricken expression. “And any story about things going badly for them were like Christmas for you. I paidveryclose attention to anything thatanyMontfortgot up to, either to avoid them like hell or add them to my storybook.”
“You’re terrifying.”
“Thank you.” She was glowing. “I was good at it, wasn’t I?”
“But you don’t know the whole story.”
“Oh?”
They were speaking in lowered voices. Tomás was still atop his hoard, refusing to acknowledge the way his eyelids kept thudding closed, insistent that he was still a fully functional member of the waking world and not sleepy at all.
Corin softened his voice to a lilting croon. “The festival wasn’t held on an island. It was on the back of an ancient shifter.”
Maya gaped at him. “It wasn’t—no. It was an island! A … sinking … island.”
“Which appeared on no maps, and hasn’t been heard of since?”
“I thought it must have been one of those artificial islands, like they have in Dubai. And they did something to damage poorly constructed foundations. Too much bass, or something.”
“There were no foundations to damage. The island was an ancient, giant sea turtle.” Corin reveled in the wonder in Maya’s eyes. “You said Tomás has a story before bedtime, didn’t you? Here’s a good one. Dragon shifters tell stories about the ancient sea turtle, and the treasure he keeps hidden beneath his shell. Tucker and Robert must have thought the partygoers would keep him occupied while they hunted out the treasure. Like a plague of mosquitos distracting him from a pickpocket. Instead, the old shifter took the obvious step of simply removing himself from the situation.”
