Paloma had won that deal. And she had never regretted it, despite the fact that it took much longer than planned to build the luxurious resort, the island infrastructure needing extensive upgrades to ensure it was even doable. And despite realizing that her longing for this little clump of rock in the ocean grew beyond what was reasonable. She refused to align her attachment to the dream, as she called it.
Then the night of the fire happened, and the vision had returned. Emerald eyes, red hair, blood. And lust. Overwhelming, all-consuming lust that she could neither explain nor overcome. Nor did she want to. That night had been spectacular. Unbelievable. One that she would not regret, no matter how desperate she was to avoid Deryn Crowhart.
No, it would not happen again. And she would never again be with someone like Deryn Crowhart—the charming rogue who left behind nothing but devastation.
She had had women like her twice. Nobody could ever say Paloma Allende was not consistent. She knew herself too well,and she knew her type. Charm, self-confidence, strong arms, and long fingers… And a crooked smile that could ruin a life.
Her first wife surely did. Especially with her death. Becoming a widow at thirty had never been Paloma’s plan, but then, nobody plans to lose the one person they thought they’d grow old with. She and Kristina fit in ways she’d never before come close to with anyone. In bed, in business, in quiet long evenings at home where they didn’t have to pretend or say a word. Paloma had been happy, and she had allowed herself to become comfortable in that feeling. To expect it. To crave it. To trust it…
Life—and an aneurysm—showed her swiftly that she couldn’t do any of that.
Except that Paloma did trust again. Foolishly. Roxanne had been the repetition of a lesson Paloma should’ve learned from the get-go. But Roxanne had been a different story altogether…
So she didn’t think twice about the vision, going about her life, her days, her months on the island until she came face-to-face with it in sharp relief. The real woman was very much alive, unlike the one from her dreams—that had been brutally clear. Emerald eyes and red hair and blood. So much blood and too much of it was her own.
And one summer night, as the sounds of the town around her soothed her to sleep, before she even knew who the Crowharts were, Paloma had had a dream. One where hands built and felt useful. Where need drove, and the desire to save, to shield, was all-consuming. She didn’t understand it, and as someone who sought answers, she looked in the only place that made any sense for her: the town hall archives. The same archives that held the secrets of the Fowler family and their desire for the Atelier. The archives that made Paloma wonder how they were allowed to simply lie dormant in file cabinets under the red lights of the exit signs.
Still, none of those were her secrets, so she indulged her curiosity as much as she wanted and enough to whisper a few cryptic messages to Rhiannon Crowhart. It was clear that the middle Crowhart had not heeded her warnings back then. Not that it mattered. Not to Paloma and not that much in general, even if she was fond of the Crowhart family.
Town gossip aside, the moment Paloma had stumbled over the old plans, the mid-nineteenth-century drawings, she knew exactly what she had been looking at and for.
She had almost given up finding the answers to her dream at that point, but she kept poking around based on pure instinct. The archives felt like a treasure trove, waiting to be discovered. And then, she opened a cardboard box that fell apart like sand in her fingers and was caught. Like a butterfly in amber, she could not move away from those plans.
There had been barely any notes. No name of the architect. No name of the commissioner. A drawing with clear dimensions, angles, rudimentary blueprints. A set of initials,IM. And purpose. A Home for Women.
As obsessions went, Paloma felt she could’ve scored easier ones.
The Crowhart was a test of endurance. One needed endurance to withstand Deryn. But the Home… The building was a fascinating mystery. One of oaken beams and skylights. She felt a burning need to build it. A need just as hot, just as scorching as she had felt that night for Deryn. And while she knew well enough to stay away from the devil-may-care weather vane, too charming and too gorgeous for her own and Paloma’s good, the Home… The Home became the fulcrum of her campaign. The reason she ran to begin with. The other justifications were murky and blurry in her mind. She knew she could do it, and that was impetus enough. But something else pushed her, and it had all begun with the Home. Someone hadplanned it once. “IM” put enough money to have it drawn, the art was careful and expensive. And so too seemed the intention behind it. Careful. Expensive. That meant it mattered. Over a hundred years later, it mattered to Paloma as well.
To say that the visions scared her, that they alarmed her and shook her very pragmatic core, would be somewhat true. She was a woman of the real, first and foremost. The nebulous beliefs did not align with her understanding of the world. However… There was almost always a however…
Paloma thought back to the evenings in the New York penthouse, where luxury and distant parents were her norm. Until one day, her abuelita moved in. Paloma still couldn’t explain how it happened, but there she was when Paloma needed her the most. Her father’s mother. A former museum curator and someone who dedicated her entire life to preserving their Cuban heritage. She cherished what had been passed to her by her own parents and painstakingly expanded the knowledge of and their connection to Cuba.
She taught Paloma how to cook. Not that Paloma had the time or inclination to practice these days, but the taste of her abuelita’s food, the warmth of the spices, and the smell of the arroz con pollo a la Chorrera were core memories for her.
And when Paloma would have trouble sleeping, she’d crawl into her grandmother’s bed to listen to stories about brujas. Tales of the island that held many mysteries and the women who kept them.
In a roundabout way, her abuelita’s bedtime stories prepared her for the magic of Dragons. They left Paloma open-minded enough not to shut down the local legends entirely. To indulge them, just a bit… And, well, once you came face-to-face with the biggest of those local legends that came to life in the blaze of the all-consuming fire? Paloma chose to fall back on her grandmother’s wisdom and take it all in stride. Myths, tales…
Dragons was, after all, the place for it. Some of its current inhabitants embodied them… Paloma shook her head as the wind played with the ends of her hair. That was a thought she didn’t want to encourage or entertain, not when she could still feel and smell and taste… No, that was for later. For those dark nights when she forced herself not to think of Deryn.
As for the rest of it? The island, the visions, the legend and lore? Maybe because Paloma was so in tune with childhood memories that held acceptance, she did not dismiss the purpose she believed she had gleaned in her visions.
Thoughts of bedtime stories and her grandmother’s cooking made her miss her family. The feeling was like a stab under her rib, sudden and swift. Painful to this day. They’d been gone for twenty-five years, and yet the missing, the acute twist of the knife of their absence never left her. An open wound even now seeping blood. Her chest nearly caved in, and she picked up a pebble, hurling it into the incoming wave.
Paloma blinked away the tears. She needed a voice that was removed from the intrigue and firmly in her corner. After all, despite Nox’s kindness and Victoria’s advice, she trusted them only to a point. They had a vested interest. Right now, it was in her. But would it still be tomorrow? And she needed one person in the entire world whose interest was in her and her alone.
“I need you so much right now, Abuelita.”
“Ahem…” A scratchy, low voice next to her almost made her jump. Another second and she’d have swung her heels at the person who dared sneak up on her.
But when she turned, she realized that in absolutely no universe could this particular individual sneak up on anyone. A six-foot-seven giant with shaggy hair and a full beard wearing… Was it a turkey hat with jingling bells?
What in the world?
“Miss Allende, I saw you passing by the Brew and thought you seemed pensive. I grabbed a pumpkin spice latte, and here I am.”
Strangely enough, despite the shocking presumptuousness and gall of this enormous human golden retriever, his unthreatening presence and what looked to be sincerity in his eyes settled her more than coffee.
