Hollywood Dragon: BBW Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance (3 page)

BOOK: Hollywood Dragon: BBW Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance
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Jan’s senses sharpened: every sound crystalized, every color intensified. Though Mick wore jeans and Dennis battered cargo pants, JP was elegantly dressed in slacks of slate gray, and an expensive tailored shirt under a light summer blazer. Jan swallowed in a suddenly dry throat, shifting her gaze up to meet his steady black gaze, cool as a volcanic lake, its depth impossible to guess.

I’m drowning
, she thought hazily as her nerves shocked hot then cold. Dimly she heard Shelley saying, “Everybody, please meet my friend Jan Janssen.” Then she turned to Jan, and pointed to each man. “Mr. Volkov, JP, you know Mick of course, and the new guy is Dennis—in case you missed Mick’s bellow.”

Jan wrenched her gaze away from JP, thankful when Mrs. Volkov looked in to say, “If you’ll all come to dining room, everything is ready.”

The two big men shot to their feet, and there was a bottleneck as Mick attempted to gallantly squire Shelley and Dennis maneuvered with his cane. Jan stepped back, nearly colliding with JP. Her hand bumped against the smooth shirt between the open flaps of his coat, her knuckles grazing the hard line of abs below his ribs. Heat shot through her, and she snatched her hand away, pressing it against her side as she fought a flush.

Gratefully she followed Dennis’s broad back as she gulped air to cool her face.

Phew.
What just happened?
Jan thought. Oh, she knew what had happened, but not why. She’d gone all adolescent insta-crush. Even worse, on a guy who apparently owned half the town. A guy so far out of her league that her role as sidekick in Shelley’s romcom seemed to have shifted to comedic relief.

 

Chapter Four

 

 

Nobody had told JP that Jan Janssen was beautiful.

His own voice, fatuous with the arrogance of age twenty-one echoed manically in his ears,
Blondes are a cliché, and I never date clichés.

Of
course
the universe had not finished laughing at him. He stared, the block of ice that had divided him from the world for the last year smashing so suddenly that his nerves felt unsheathed, the air too thin to breathe. Yet he could not look away from her soft, graceful curves arcing down to the generous hips that the Old Masters, so wise, had never tired of painting, the delectable whole dominated by wide blue eyes.

When she fell against him for a brief moment, the sun went nova, emptying his skull like an eggshell as his lungs struggled for breath. He couldn’t move a muscle until she snatched her hand away and turned her back.

It looked like Dennis was going to be gallant and pull out the end chair for her, but he frowned down at his cane, and JP stepped around him and did it first.

Dennis cast a rueful glance at him over Jan’s curly blonde head and mouthed the words,
Sneaky bastard!

JP was going to retort in kind, but Jan cast a quick, shy smile up at him, her cheeks pink, sending another bolt of heat up his spine. “Thanks,” she said in a low voice like pure, molten gold.

JP, veteran of countless high-powered boardroom victories and negotiations with difficult mega-star musicians and singers, couldn’t find a word to say as he took the seat adjacent to hers. His mind had gone completely blank. The mere sound of her voice stirred JP in points south that had been utterly dead for far too long. Totally inappropriate in his old friend’s homely kitchen!

JP marshaled his wits as Baba Marisia passed around the serving dishes, a heavy ceramic edged with colorful Russian folk motifs. He was intensely aware of Jan at the other table openly admiring those dishes.

The company sat quiet as the grandparents said grace in Russian, words that JP did not understand but he had been hearing at this table since he was small. Then they picked up their forks and began to eat.

The pork simmered in paprika and garlic, wrapped in grape leaves, tender buttered potatoes, and spicy purple cabbage—a dish familiar since childhood—helped steady him. Mick got up to pour out a crisp white wine as he explained that the wine came from a winery run by a local’s cousin—without, of course, mentioning that that cousin was a wolfhound shifter, whose success with wine was due to his super-powered nose.

“This pork dish is just as good as I remembered,” Dennis said in his genial, loud voice. “I’ll eat anything at least once, but it’s funny how much I miss home cooking while in the field.”

“You boys always liked the simple foods,” Mrs. Volkov said. “Hot, and plenty of it.”

“Guilty as charged,” Dennis replied, laughing heartily, and JP sensed tension underlying the apparent hilarity. It was the tension of the hunt. “While trying to eat tawi with a banana-leaf spoon in West Papua, I could not help thinking of that beef and dumpling dish you used to serve us. What pigs we were! I distinctly remember putting away three platefuls one time.”

“Ah, but you were growing boys,” Baba Marisia exclaimed.

JP loved her as if she had been his own grandmother. This house had been his safe haven when things were strained at home, and it had been part of the comfort that the house and the Volkovs had never changed so much as a chair. They themselves had seemed changeless, until Ivan had began suffering mini-strokes. Now he could see how much they had aged.

His heightened awareness included Mick and Dennis, who he knew were  waiting for the signal to leave for a briefing. He would not ruin the dinner by look or word, even if an outsider had not been there, for that would disrespect all the effort Baba Marisia had put into preparing the meal.

His eyes promptly moved to the soft curls falling on Jan’s shoulders, the entrancing curve of her neck before it vanished into the collar of her shirt. But then his imagination arrowed promptly to the delectable curves beneath that shirt, and heat shivered through him.

With the iron discipline instilled in him since boyhood, he shuttered that thought away and concentrated on the chatter. Dennis had launched into a description of his journey to West Papua to live with the Dani and Walak tribes.

When Mrs. Volkov brought out the well-remembered dessert she called chak-chak—deep-fried sticks of eggy dough covered with a hardened honey sauce, and served with strong tea—Dennis stopped in the middle of a sentence, and said, “But I’ve been gabbing non-stop. Come on. Everybody else take a turn. What’s the strangest food ever put before you?”

“That must be said what we found at home, during German war,” said Mick’s grandfather, Dyed Ivan.

“Oh, yes.” Baba Marisia nodded slowly. “During bad Stalin days, we were so very poor, and food so scarce. We ate some very strange things. Very strange.”

Mick said, “I have to say the biggest surprise for me was French food. I’d been expecting frog legs and snails. I guess I could’ve had them, but what I got were the best wine sauces I’ve ever tasted. Pastry, too.” He kissed his fingertips and opened his hand. “Shelley?”

“I’m going to have to pass,” Shelley said. “I’ve never been outside of Los Angeles, and I pretty much stick to foods I like. But the weirdest foods I ever
saw
were some of the combinations students came up with at the cafeteria my first year at UCLA. French fries in ice cream, anybody?”

That got a general expression of disgust, and Mick turned to Jan, smiling. “How about you, Jan?”

“I also have to pass,” she said. Her voice really was pure gold, a molten, glowing river. JP shut his eyes, fighting another surge of fiery heat as she uttered a soft laugh. “The only traveling I’ve done is choir tours, on which they took us to chain franchises. Oh, and there was the short-lived opera company that was supposed to perform across the country, but they ran out of money. Cut us loose in Chicago to get home any way we could. I lived on peanut butter and crackers for the duration of the billion-hour bus trip home.”

Shelley turned around in her chair. “I’d forgotten that! No wonder we never had any peanut butter in the apartment.”

“Can’t stand the sight of it.” Jan shook her head, her curls falling like corn silk around her face, and JP’s fingers tingled with the desire to touch.

The others laughed easily, then Dennis said, “JP?”

He had curled his fists under the table, and forcibly relaxed them as he said, “Pass. You know I like everything.”

“Whereas I eat everything,” Dennis said, and went off retailing another of his adventures.

JP didn’t hear a word. Jan’s beautiful voice kept ringing in his head. And under cover of the general chatter, he bent toward her. “Opera?” he asked.

How could she be more amazing?

* * *

How can I be more boring?
Jan thought, groaning inwardly, and braced for the snarky comment about opera.

But when she dared a peek at him, his expression was anything but snarky. No way. No possible way this incredibly handsome, smoking hot man
liked opera?
His amazing black eyes had widened, his lips—she tried not to stare at the sexy curve of his lips—parted.

Though everybody else was now talking about sports, JP’s attention was solely on Jan. And he was waiting for an answer.

“Yes.” She swallowed a boulder the size of Texas. “Opera. I can sing anything, of course, and have for short soundtrack gigs. But I’m a trained soprano.”

First rule of dating
, the senior resident had told Jan and Shelley their first year in college dorms—neither of them having been very successful at dating.
When you meet a hot guy, don’t drool.

“What type of soprano roles do you sing?”

He knew subcategories of opera vocals?
I can’t remember Rule Two
, her inner voice wailed as she stuttered, “Lyric, certain
spinto
roles.”

The others at the table laughed at something Mick said, but JP leaned toward her, lowering his voice.
No drooling
, she thought in panic as her entire body lit up from within. He asked, “Which operas have you sung?”

Her mind blanked so hard she couldn’t remember the tune to “Three Blind Mice.”
Get a grip
, she told herself as he waited for an answer. Of course he would be married, or have a harem of girlfriends, or was gay, or any and all combinations of the three.

But then she caught herself up.
I’m the chubby sidekick, the comedy relief
, she reminded herself sternly.
He’s being polite. As soon as these good-looking guys leave the room, out will come the jokes about the fat lady singing
.

Because there was no possible way that JP LaFleur could have any interest in
her
.

The thought steadied her enough to gulp a breath and speak. She told him the names of operas, and to her amazement saw recognition in the tiny nods he made now and then.

“Probably everyone has seen, or been dragged to,
La Bohème
,” he said, “but my favorite Puccini is
Madama Butterly
, seconded closely by
Turandot
.”

He liked her favorite opera? “’Un Bel Di’ is in my repertoire,” she said, not adding that though she sang it well, no one in weight-conscious LA wanted a roly-poly Butterfly on stage. So she’d never performed it outside of college.

“One of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written,” he said, his soft voice sheeting through her with toe-curling heat. “I think the best performance I ever saw was in Prague—”

“JP?” Dennis called down the table. “What year was it your dad took us to see the World Cup soccer tournament?”

Jan could have sworn it was impatience that tightened JP’s expression before he answered in his calm, polite voice. The look was gone so fast she wasn’t sure she’d really seen it, but as he turned back to her, the thought occurred that he not only had perfect manners, he had perfect self control.

Definitely being nice to the fat girl
, she scolded herself.
So keep it cool.

* * *

 

JP was ready to talk to her all night. Listen to her amazing voice. Watch the subtle changes of expression in her face—shy, wary, elusive glimpses of humor in the dimples beside her entrancing lips that flashed quickly, then vanished, as if she laughed inside.

What could she be thinking?

They were on their third round of “Have you seen?” when a sharp rap on his ankle brought his attention up, and Mick sent him a look.

Yes. Business, and it was late.

“We’d better see Dennis back,” Mick said, rising. “He shouldn’t be up so long on that leg.”

JP sighed inwardly, rose, and pushed his chair back. “This has been the best meal I’ve tasted in weeks. Thank you! I apologize for leaving so soon, but once we get Dennis back, I promised to see to some council tasks tonight.” He smiled at Jan as he uttered polite farewells to the others.

Baba Marisia said, “Carry my greetings to your mother.”

Dennis said, “Baba Marisia, Dyed Ivan, it’s been wonderful. Shelley and Jan, good to meet you. Later!”

Mick walked to the door. “I’ll drive Dennis back to his place, and use the opportunity to fill him in on his co-best man duties.”

A little more polite noise, and JP stepped into the open air. He breathed deeply, trying to get his head back in the game.

Without much luck. As soon as they reached the street, he turned on Mick. “You didn’t tell me Jan sings opera.”

“Sure I did. Or maybe I forgot.” Mick shrugged, hands out. “You know I hate opera.”

Dennis groaned. “We’re not going to have to sit through opera, are we?”

Mick turned a scowl on him. “Shelley wants Jan to sing.” His bear growl roughened his voice. “This will be Shelley’s only wedding—and my last—so what she wants she will have.”

Dennis lifted one hand in surrender. “Kidding, kidding! I will sit there and I will smile at your opera if it kills me.” His joking tone eased. “I really like Shelley. You finally done good, Mick.”

JP sensed Mick’s bear subsiding, as Dennis turned his way. “Okay, you mentioned possible action. What gives?”

JP promised himself he would see Jan again the next morning, and forced his mind to duty. He said with an apologetic glance at Mick, “I wouldn’t bring it up at all, except that the situation has worsened over the past week.”

Mick grunted. “What’s going on?”

“Six months ago, my mother reported that someone had been at the town hall asking for the old maps of the town.”

Dennis shrugged. “But isn’t that business as usual?
We
had to get one, as I recall, for some high school history project. Remember we talked Mr. Hale into letting us make a film story about the old Mission days?”

Mick laughed. “I remember that. We pretty much turned it into one long gun battle.”

BOOK: Hollywood Dragon: BBW Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance
5.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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