Hollywood Dragon: BBW Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance (5 page)

Mystery solved. She’d gone out to look at the fireflies, exactly the way Mick and Shelley had on their previous visit. He laughed in relief, but then his smile vanished.

If she hadn’t gone to meet whatever that dark presence had been, then she was unaware of it, but it had been watching her just the same.

Chapter Six

Jan jolted awake as
Ride of the Valkyries
thundered its brass in her ear. Where was she?

Oh! Sanluce—wedding—JP LaFleur—fireflies.

Golden feather.

She fumbled her phone to her ear. “Hello?”

Shelley’s cheery voice spoke. “Hey. Ready for breakfast? As soon as we’re done Mick wants to take us over to the LaFleurs’ to check out the garden. Do you want to come?”

Jan rubbed her eyes. “Sure. This isn’t our sound check, is it?”

“No, that’ll be day after tomorrow. The musicians will be here by then. And the guys will be done with their bachelor bash.”

“Bachelor bash! And what will we be doing during said bash? Something fun, I hope?”

Shelley’s voice flattened into wariness. “Mrs. LaFleur has kindly invited us to an afternoon tea. To introduce me to the local Important People. Mick warned me that JP’s mom, who is the current mayor, can be, um . . . Um. You’re invited, of course,” Shelley added.

Jan’s heart had given a hard thud at ‘Mrs. LaFleur.’
Of course
someone as hot as JP would have been snapped up by now. Then she scoffed at her relief when ‘JP’s mom’ followed. “Sure I will. If it’s a fancy party the eats are sure to be good, and as for Important People, how many evil queens, angry goddesses, and fussy duchesses have I sung on stage? I can channel any or all of them.”

“Awesome. We’ll be by in half an hour to pick you up.”

Half an hour! Typical Shelley. Well, at least it was only for breakfast, Jan thought as she launched out of bed. She wasn’t going to bother with full makeup for breakfast, and her new haircut had cut the time it took to deal with hair from an hour to ten minutes. She could easily do half an hour.

She forgot all about the shower when her gaze fell on the feather. Sure enough, it had pretty much lost its glow. Or maybe she’d imagined the glow. It lay there, reminding her of a gull feather, but no gull had grown a feather this long and broad. It had to belong to a much larger bird.

She touched it, then ran it through her fingers. For a split second a faint golden sparkle glimmered on her fingers, quickly gone.

She was going to set the feather down, and then remembered housekeeping. So she carefully wrapped the feather in tissue and slid it into an inner pocket of her purse, then dashed into the bathroom.

An hour later she, Shelley, and Mick sat down at a rough table in a pretty little place surrounded by aromatic cedars and overshadowed by sturdy California black oak. The bow windows were paned in diamonds, giving the small restaurant a timeless look. They sat outside, as the late summer heat had not yet begun to build.

As Mick and Shelley conversed in low voices, Jan busied herself with the menu, but her eyes didn’t see the words. It was funny, how tucked away this place was. Left alone, she never would have found it. Why would the main street of the town be so boring, while places like this were hidden away on cul-de-sacs?

The server appeared, a young man who reminded Jan strongly of an overgrown puppy, all soft brown eyes and eager movements. She realized she hadn’t actually read the menu, but since she liked every breakfast food she randomly pointed to something, and the guy—he couldn’t have been over eighteen—practically wagged his tail.

Shelley and Mick both ordered eggs benedict, then laughed that the way couples did when they were totally wrapped up in each other, and every mildly amusing thing (or even stuff that wasn’t funny) was killingly hilarious. At first Jan thought it was cute, but midway through a conversation about weather and so forth, she sensed private signals between them—the self-consciousness, the holding back before a third party. They were striving to be polite, and it was that striving that began to make Jan wish she’d stayed back at the motel. The fact that they tried so hard not to let her feel like a third wheel pretty much assigned her the role.

Mental note
, she thought.
Tomorrow, third wheel be flat
.

The food arrived, to her relief, and silence fell as they dug in. She discovered that she had ordered Spanish omelet with a side of delicious, crispy country potatoes mixed with caramelized onions, sweet peppers, and sausage.

As soon as he’d cleaned his plate, Mick said with a quick look Shelley’s way, “I’ve got to do some errands, but I can walk. You take the car. We’ll meet over at LaFleurs’ later. You remember how to get there—straight down that street, follow the curve, turn in at the oak lane. Can’t miss it.”

“Sure,” Shelley said in a hearty voice that sounded forced to Jan’s ears.

Mick smiled Jan’s way, flipped up a hand, and walked to the cashier with the check, leaving Jan and Shelley to finish their coffee.

As soon as Jan saw his blond hair and blue shirt flicker through the diamond panes and vanish up the street, she leaned forward. “I don’t want to sound all middle school, but I’m fine on my own. You two don’t have to drag me around. Really.”

Shelley’s gaze averted, then snapped back. “Not at all!”

“Shel. You’re a great friend, but a terrible liar. You two were practically sending out signal flags, Private Stuff to Discuss.”

Shelley reddened. “It’s not you. It’s . . . town stuff. Mick was unloading a little last night. JP is on the town council, and the guys talk.”

Enlightenment hit Jan. “Small town politics?”

Shelley shrugged. “Yup.”

“Okay, that makes sense. My grandmother used to live in Seal Beach, and one thing I learned early was the smaller the town, the worse the infighting. Entire feuds could break out at town council meetings over whether parking slots should be painted straight or slanted. Granny used to say that the town council election politicking was ten times worse than any presidential election because
everything
was personal.”

Shelley grinned. “I get the feeling it might be a little like that here.” Jan laughed, and as they had finished their coffee, Shelley said, “Let’s go.”

Jan’s curiosity about JP LaFleur’s home space had revved up to max by the time Shelley drove down a winding, shady road with tall California black oaks to either side.

The road opened into a wide, curved sweep called a carriage-drive, framed by fragrant fruit trees and a lot of other expensive landscaping, with a line of cedars behind. Shelley parked carefully next to a classic Porsche 911 T, black on black. Jan took one look and thought, classic and fast, a car designed to be driven by an elegant man in the mood for all kinds of sin.

And it probably belongs to Mrs. LaFleur
. She laughed at herself as they got out.

The house was Spanish style, white with a red tile roof that deeply overhung the windows, and archways leading into what seemed to be tiled patios, with trellised vines screening portions. Its size was impossible to gauge, but Jan had a feeling it was ginormous. Weird, to find a beautiful place like this in California’s most boring town.

The front door opened, and a tall, brown-skinned, glamour-thin woman of about sixty stepped out onto a tiled terrace, her black hair perfectly coifed. “Okay, duchess, here we are,” Shelley breathed without moving her lips.

Once again Jan smothered a laugh, turning it into her politest smile as the woman advanced, right hand out. “Shelley, it is lovely to have you back among us again. And this must be your friend.”

Shelley performed the introductions as Jan held out her hand. Mrs. LaFleur’s grip was the politician’s handshake, barely there and gone again as she uttered words of welcome.

“I must apologize. I’ve been called to an emergency town council meeting, but I have just enough time to take you through the rose garden to the dell,” she said.

And she led the way around the side of the house into a rose garden bisected by a curving footpath lined with white stones. Jan stared, avidly curious. The house was definitely enormous, and she counted four private patios, two of them gated off, before the path turned downward into an gently bowl-shaped area screened by honeysuckle hedges and roses in trellises.

“Wow,” Shelley exclaimed.

Jan stared down into a state of the art shell partially obscured by carefully trained trumpet vines and tall trees. The dell (
Do they call it the shell in the dell?
Jan looked at Mrs. LeFleur’s prim, poised profile, and answered herself,
Probably not)
sloped down toward the shell’s stage. The lawn was beautifully manicured, a deep, velvety green. The air carried the heady scent of roses.

“Wow,” Shelley said again.

Mrs. LaFleur’s smile widened. “It will look much nicer by your wedding day, I promise. The garden staff will create a bower of flowers for you, but in this heat it must be done at the last  . . .” She let the sentence hang as she turned her head.

Jan’s breath caught. Somehow she felt his presence before she turned, or maybe it was just hope. Her body flashed with sunlight when she saw him walking down the pathway. He was once again dressed in an expensive blazer, a fine shirt buttoned all the way to the throat, and knife-edge creased slacks.

His gaze met Jan’s
,
causing heat to kindle deep in her core. “Good morning, Shelley. Jan.” At the sound of his voice, the heat flared bright.

“Hey, JP,” Shelley said easily, and Jan managed to croak out a strangled “Good morning.”

Jan turned her attention to the stage as she fought to get a grip. How could the mere sound of a guy’s voice get her wet?

Mrs. LaFleur said, “It seems the meeting is starting a little earlier than I thought, but my son will serve as host. It was nice seeing you again, Shelley, and meeting you, Jan. I look forward to our tea.”

“Hi, JP,” Shelley said, in the same tone she would have greeted one of her giant, exuberant sports-mad brothers. “So you don’t have to go to this meeting?”

“My part is done, freeing me to play host,” he said.

Jan shivered, and tried not to cross her legs.

“Awesome,” Shelley exclaimed, totally oblivious. And then, disaster! “Hey, Jan. Want to try out the stage? It’s supposed to have great sound.” To Jan’s excruciating embarrassment, Shelley went on enthusiastically, “JP, Mick told you that Jan is going to sing, right? She’s got an incredible voice.”

JP
had an incredible voice. He wasn’t a trained singer, but he could have been, Jan thought as he spoke, his tones warm with amusement, “I’m the one who found the quartet that will accompany her. They’ll be here before the wedding rehearsal, at four.”

“Hear that, Jan?” Shelley exclaimed. “Go on, try it out. You said you wanted to check the sound.”

The subject had now passed into that awkward place where saying 'No' would drag it out even longer. And Jan needed to get distance from that voice, that presence. So she walked up onto the stage, her ears catching the whisper of her sandals on the floor.

Oh, the acoustics were perfect.

Shelley’s voice carried on the rose-scented summer air as she went on, “Jan’s going to sing my favorite song. Not that I know much about music. But there was this one January when we were at UCLA. We were roommates, you know. I was sick with a fever, and she was humming this thing, and I kept asking her to sing it over and over. I swear it made my fever come down whenever she sang it . . .”

* * *

Shelley went on about her illness and her friend’s wonderful voice as JP watched Jan walk slowly to the stage as if she crossed a field full of live grenades. Reluctance? Embarrassment? Irritation?

If only she would turn around! But she seemed determined to ignore him as she looked up and to the sides, her back to him, so all he saw was the perfect curve of her shoulders bisected by the thin straps of her gauzy top that fell softly to her beautifully rounded hips. He liked Shelley because she was in so many ways a female edition of Mick. No interest in style, interesting in outdoors more than the arts.

But Jan was stylish from the hair curling around her expressive face to her pretty toes in the strappy shoes. Her clothes enhanced her female curves, making him want to run his hands under those filmy drapes. He knew she would feel like silk.

Shelley was still talking, and JP tried to listen, though every cell of his body willed Jan to turn, to meet him eye to eye.

He watched Jan square her shoulders and draw a deep breath. Unconsciously he held his breath as well, and then she hummed, so softly he had to strain to hear her. But gradually she increased the volume on that one note, gently filling the shell with exquisite sound. Sweet fire sparked inside him, bright with promise.

Then she stopped.

“Go on, Jan, sing something,” Shelley said.

The blond curls shook. “I haven’t practiced for two days. Haven’t even warmed up. And this place is too perfect. It’ll reflect back every raw note.”

And that is my cue if ever I heard one
, JP thought, and strove to keep his voice casual. “We have a music room that you can use.”

Jan turned at last, and he braced himself for the impact of her dense blue gaze. God, she was beautiful. “I would not want to impose,” she said, her golden voice resonant with sincerity. She
was
embarrassed!