Dragon Warrior (Midnight Bay) (42 page)

But upon getting the collar open and not finding the chain that should be hanging around her neck, Maddy scrambled to her feet. “Oh, no, I can’t find it!” She contorted her arms and unzipped the back of her dress, pulling it down off her shoulders. “The chain must have broken,” she muttered, sliding her arms out of the sleeves so she could pull her slip away from her bra.

A car drove down Main Street, and its windows suddenly lowered, and several teenagers—male and female—stuck their heads out, their whistles and catcalls lost in the sound of the car’s honking horn.

“Madeline, you are undressing in the town square,” William growled, slipping out of his jacket and tossing it over her shoulders.

“I don’t care!” she cried when she didn’t find the chain inside her bra. She shoved her slip down over her hips along with her gown, stepped out of them, and got down on her knees to start searching through the material. “I have to find it, William.” She stopped only long enough to lift pleading eyes to his. “I broke three grinders and spent weeks making it for you.” She held up her hand to show him the bandages on her fingers. “I know I told you that I cut my fingers pruning my rose bushes, but I really cut them making your gift.”

She started searching again.

William took hold of her shoulders and lifted Maddy to her feet, tucked her arms into the sleeves of his jacket, then raised his finger to cover her lips when she started to protest. “Hush, lass. Is this what you’re looking for?” he asked soothingly, reaching into his pants pocket. He held his hand up between them and opened his fingers to let a thin chain drop out, his dragon claw dangling from it.

“How did you get it?” she asked with a gasp.

“When Mac shook my hand before he disappeared, he pressed it into my palm.”

“But it was around my neck then, so how did Mac get hold of it?”

William arched a brow. “Only one of two ways that I know of; the first being that he reached down your dress and dug it out of your bosom.”

“He did not!”

William flipped his hand to toss the chain into his palm. “Then I guess he must have gotten it by magic.”

“But why?” Maddy whispered, lifting her gaze to his, a lump rising in her throat. “I . . . I was supposed to give it to you, William. It was my wedding present to you.”

He looked down at what was left of his old dragon claw. “You’re returning my gift?” he asked, not looking at her.

“No. No!” she cried, clutching his hand that was holding the claw. “I’m
never
giving it back. I only intended to show you what I did with it, so you would understand how I see you.” She let go of him and held out her hand, palm up. “I intend to wear it forever and ever, William, as . . .” She felt her cheeks heat up and looked down at her gift to him through suddenly blurry eyes. “As a token of your love,” she finished on a whisper.

He lifted her chin with his finger. “Ye spent the last few weeks filing my claw into the shape of a heart,” he asked softly, “to show me how you see me?”

All she could do was nod.

“And now you’re wondering why Mac ruined your surprise by taking it from you and giving it back to me?”

Maddy threw herself at William and wrapped her arms around him so tightly she made him grunt. “I don’t care if you don’t ever say you love me,” she said, nearly sobbing. “And I don’t need some stupid old token to remind me, either. Mac’s wrong, William; you do have a heart, and it belongs to
me
.” She leaned back to glare up at him. “You were only a bogeyman, you big sap,” she said softly, breaking into a smile. “And not a very good one, seeing how you couldn’t even scare me away. Real monsters
enjoy
scaring the bejeezus out of people, and I happen to know that you didn’t enjoy one minute of your life as a dragon.”

“I enjoyed flying.”

She went back to glaring at him. “Oh, William, just let me love you, will you?” she whispered, dropping her forehead to his chest.

He nudged her upright in order to slip the chain over her head, and then leaned her away in order to settle his heart-shaped claw between her breasts. “Mac gave it to me so that I could give it to you again,” he said, running his fingers through her hair to hold her as she looked at him. “
After
he made one small alteration to it. You may have shaped the claw into a heart, but you forgot to include the symbol of a strong arm.”

“But that’s the symbol on
your
medal. Why would I need it on mine?”

“Because men need a strong arm sometimes, too, and I believe Mac wished to point out to both of us that you are mine.”

“I’m a strong arm?”

“You rescued me, didn’t you? And gave me back my heart so I can love you.”

Maddy sighed, even as she smiled. “You never lost your heart, William.”

He sighed right back at her, but he didn’t smile. “Did I just acquire a wife who intends to spend the next fifty years contradicting her husband?”

She reached up to toy with the heart-shaped claw hanging around her neck. “And if you did, just what is my big, bad bogeyman husband going to do about it?”

Still holding her face in his hands, he finally smiled, and it was tender and sweet and held only a hint of mischief. “I imagine that just before I dig out my knife and cut off yet another one of those offending bras ye insist on wearing, I will likely tell you that I love you a thousand times
more
than a hundred times a day, in many more ways than I can count.”

Maddy’s heart started thumping so hard it actually hurt.

He brushed his thumbs across her cheeks. “Please don’t cry, Madeline. I promise I’m not just saying the words, I’m meaning them. I love you more than life itself, wife, and am giving you my heart to hold in your strong arms forever and ever, as I vow to hold yours in mine.”

He had to prop her up in order to kiss her then, as she’d gone quite weak in the knees, and Maddy didn’t think she’d ever breathe properly again.

The romantic sap.

Who knew that when a scary-looking, buck-naked caveman had walked out of the library and kissed her in front of half the town in the pouring rain, they’d be standing in the very same spot as husband and wife not three months later?

When he finally let her come up for air, Maddy slowly looked around to make sure they didn’t have an audience. Then she smiled at his expectant look as she placed her hands on his chest, surreptitiously moved her foot just beside his as she leaned against him, and shoved him into the small grove of young junipers not three feet away.

His yelp of surprise was lost in her laughter as she straddled his hips and held his hands down on either side of his head.

“William,” she said very, very softly.

“Yes, Madeline?”

“Boo.”

Turn the page
for a special look at

MYSTICAL WARRIOR
,

the final book in
the Midnight Bay trilogy
by
New York Times
bestselling author

Janet Chapman

Coming soon from Pocket Books

“G
oddamn it, Gregor, I am
serious
. You have one week to find Fiona a new place to live,” Trace growled into his cell phone as he stood in the middle of his neatly organized, cobweb-free barn. “Because if you don’t, I swear the next time she goes into town I will torch my own damn house to get her out of here.”

“What’s the matter, Huntsman, do ye not like having fresh eggs for breakfast?”

“Eggs? You think this is about the chickens? Or the goat? Or the goddamned horse the size of an elephant? It’s about your sister cleaning and rearranging every square inch of my barn. She organized my
tools
, Gregor. And she found an old scythe and leveled every damned last weed all the way to the street!”

“Aye,” Kenzie said on a sigh. “Women do have a tendency to nest.”

“Nest?” Trace repeated through gritted teeth. He walked over to look out the side window, only to scowl again when he saw Fiona—wearing
his
tool belt around the waist of her long coat—nailing a board she’d obviously found during her cleaning spree to one of the rotten paddock posts. “Damn it, Gregor, if she keeps fixing up this place they’re going to raise my taxes.”

The horse and goat were in the paddock; the horse nuzzling Fiona’s shoulder, and the goat, its neck stretched through the fence, trying to reach the leather pouch on her tool belt. Her dog, Misneach, was standing in a small water trough that Trace had never seen before, and the pup kept driving his head under the water, only to surface with a rock in his mouth, which he would then drop in the water again.

Trace’s mood darkened even more when he caught himself noticing how the low-hanging November sun made Fiona’s hair look like spun gold—especially the tendrils framing her flawless face—and how graceful and efficiently she moved. And he sure as hell didn’t like that he
liked
coming home to a house that wasn’t empty, with the smell of wood smoke and the aroma of fresh baked bread assaulting him the moment he stepped out of his truck.

Thank God he kept his door locked; if she ever saw his living quarters, she’d probably have a field day—or more likely a month of field days—cleaning the kitchen and organizing his sock drawer.

“Don’t ye see,” Kenzie said, turning serious. “Fiona’s nesting must mean she’s grown comfortable with you. That’s amazing progress in only two weeks, considering Killkenny got nothing but grief from her.”

“When he was a
dragon
and she was a
hawk
,” Trace growled. “But whenever William or any other man stops by, she still vanishes and doesn’t reappear until they’re gone. And,” he continued when Kenzie tried to say something, “she can’t be comfortable with me, as we haven’t spoken two entire sentences to each other since I agreed to let her keep that puppy. Which,” he went on hotly, glaring at the chickens scattered throughout the yard, “has turned into twelve hens, a goat, and a horse. And when I stopped in just now to pick up some tools, I found two skunks curled up in some rags in a box on my workbench.”

“They’re orphans,” Kenzie said, the amusement back in his voice. “Fiona called this morning and asked me to go over there to check them out, and they told me they hadn’t seen their mama for many, many days.”

“They told you they’re orphans,” Trace repeated, deadpan, remembering this was the man he had seen transform into a panther.

“Aye,” Kenzie said. “And they gave me their word they won’t spray anyone not directly threatening them.”

Trace closed his eyes on a silent groan.

Great. Wonderful. How friggin’ fantastic
nice
of them.

“Ye needn’t worry; they’ll be taking their winter sleep soon, and Fiona offered to let them stay in the barn only until spring.”

Trace snapped his eyes open. “Can
she
talk to animals?”

Kenzie chuckled at his alarm. “Nay, but she does have a certain . . . empathy for creatures. Ye might remember she was a red-tailed hawk for several centuries.”

What he remembered was that he was dealing with a clan of
magic makers
.

One of whom could turn him into a toad.

Trace scowled out the window again when he saw Fiona wrestling another board into place, two nails held between her pursed lips and a fine sheen of perspiration making her hair cling to her flushed cheeks. “One week,” he snapped, not caring if Matt turned him into a goddamned slug. “You get your sister and her zoo off my property by next Tuesday, or I swear this place is going up like a rocket on the Fourth of July.”

A loud sigh came over the phone. “Can ye not give this arrangement more of a chance? It means a lot to me, Trace,” Kenzie said, his voice growing thick. “When I brought the mare to her, I saw a hint of the woman Fiona was becoming before that bastard assaulted her. Just give me enough time to explain to her that she can’t take over your home, and I’ll persuade her to turn her energies toward pleasing
herself
instead of you.”

Trace suddenly stiffened, not knowing which shocked him more: that Fiona was working her pretty little ass off making sure he liked her, or that
he
hadn’t realized what she was doing. The eggs and fresh baked bread he kept finding on his doorstep, the boughs she had tucked along the house before he could do it himself, the barn swept clean of every damn last cobweb, his tools organized, her living in virtual darkness every evening—she’d been building brownie points against his ever getting angry at her.

How in hell had he missed that?

For chrissakes, he was
trained
to read people.

Which is why, when he had seen it was taking every ounce of courage she possessed just to ask him if she could keep Misneach, he’d folded like a house of cards. And going against his own better judgment, he’d conned her into helping him bank the house, hoping she would see that he wasn’t anyone to be afraid of.

Only he’d nearly blown it when she’d dropped that pail of nails.

Christ, he’d wanted ten minutes alone with the bastard that had caused the terror he’d heard in her screams.