Hollywood Dragon: BBW Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance (6 page)

“There is no imposition,” he said, trying to project sincerity instead of his rising desire. “There’s a grand piano just sitting there. I don’t have time to play, and no one else uses it. That room is at the back end of the house, not to mention soundproofed, so you couldn’t possibly disturb anyone.”

JP saw Jan’s lips move—
grand piano
—and he said to Shelley, “Let me show you,” suspecting that she would sweep her friend along.

Sure enough. “Jan! It’s perfect,” Shelley enthused. “Come on!”

JP led the way out of the dell, gesturing across the lawn to the line of eucalyptus half a mile distant. “As the crow flies, Mick’s family lives straight that way. Boring ancient politics are responsible for the road going around three sides of a square to get here, but as boys, we ran back and forth across the field beyond the eucalyptus, which line the edge of our property. If you want to practice,” he said to Jan, “you are welcome to come across any time you wish. Truly, you will have perfect freedom to come and go.”

As he began to lead them toward the side garden, Shelley stopped, pulled out her phone, and sighed. “Go, on, I’ll follow. It’s Mom—again.”

JP said, “This was my grandmother’s Shakespearean herb garden.”

Jan walked slowly, looking intently at the flowering plants, and sniffing appreciatively. “Oh, what heavenly scents. I wonder if England smells like this?”

“Only in Shakespearean gardens,” he said, and she looked up and laughed, her face flushing delightfully.

“I guess that was a stupid remark,” she said ruefully, as in the background Shelley muttered, “Yes, Mom. No, Mom! Yes . . .”

“If it’s stupid then we’re both a couple of dummies,” he said. “As I thought the same thing until I actually got to England.”

“What did it smell like?” she asked.

He braced himself to meet her wide blue gaze, but he could not fight the heat crackling down his spine. And lower. “It was London, actually. Cigarettes and diesel fuel. My first visit, as a teen, with my father. The countryside smelled pretty much like here in winter, like wet grass . . .”

He heard himself blathering, but she listened with an intense air. He remembered her little story about the choir, and it occurred to him that she might wish to travel. It was all he could do not to blurt,
I’ll take you there—

And then her pretty feet in those sexy, strappy sandals turned on one of the flagstones, pitchforking her straight into his arms.

A pair of delightfully soft breasts thumped against his ribs, and heat seared him. For an endless, mind-blowing moment they stood there, pressed together, his arms locking around her to steady her.

And she melted against him.

His breath hitched. His brain stuttered. His dick, already half-hard, stiffened.
Down
, he thought furiously as she made a little noise and stirred in his arms, pressing against his length as if she had been made for him.

“I’m so sorry.” Her voice was muffled by his chest, and he realized he had locked his arms around her.

He instantly let her go, appalled at his total lack of self-control.

She sprang back, flushed rosy, obviously embarrassed, and altogether adorable with her hair tousled around her and the fluffy fabric of her top slipping over one round shoulder, revealing the upper swell of one of those enchanting breasts.

She said to the ground, “I didn’t mean to ram into you so rudely.”

He put his hands behind his back and gripped them against the nearly overwhelming wish to press a kiss to that exact spot at her slipping neckline—and travel lower—and then his mouth spoke before his brain could catch up, “You are welcome to ram into me any time.”

Way to sound like a total sleazeball, JP!
He moved away quickly—as if to leave his awful
faux pas
behind. He grimaced, covering the last few yards of the herb garden, as in the background, he heard Shelley saying, “Okay, see you soon, Mom.”

Striving for normalcy, he lifted his voice. “This is the back of the house. No one comes this way,” he said to Jan.
I will not stare at her neckline
. “This was my grandmother’s lair until she died. The grand piano was hers. I keep it tuned in hopes I can get back into serious practice.”
You’re blathering again
.

He shut up and lifted the latch to the French doors. He heard Jan’s soft breathing as he led the way inside the foyer, to the left, and into the music room.

He gestured to invite them into the cool, quiet room with the piano in pride of place. Opposite stood the glass-door curio cases containing instruments, some quite old, played by various members of the family over the past two centuries. JP watched Jan looking around from treasure to treasure, her lips parted.

Next to her, Shelley shifted from foot to foot, her expression polite as Jan moved slowly to the piano and then tentatively pressed a G major, F major, A major, her eyes half shut. The light from the window caught in strands of her hair, glinting like candlelight, and glowed in the tips of her lashes. They were blond, he noticed. The urge to step closer to her, to lock his arms around her again and bury his face in that cloud of shining hair, to explore that entrancing dip in her blouse, took all his strength to resist.

Shelley’s cell vibrated, breaking the spell. “It’s Mick,” she said, looking uncertain.

The reminder of the outward problems steadied JP. “Go ahead,” he said.

“Excuse me. I’ll just take a sec.”

She let herself out, the murmur of her voice muffled by the sound-baffled door. Leaving JP alone with Jan.

She backed away from the piano to the wall, arms tight across her chest. Topping the snarl of conflicting emotions roiling in him now was the importance of making sure she felt safe in his house.

So he dropped onto the piano bench and idly ran his hands up and down the keys in elementary scales as he watched obliquely. Sure enough, Jan’s tight posture relaxed. “You really don’t play it?” she asked, her voice high, unsteady. “I mean, now.”

“Not this week,” he said. “Too busy. As for the rest of the time, the best I can do is occasionally noodling around. It helps me think,” he said, and felt a jet of victory when her arms loosened their grip on her elbows and she took a step away from the wall.

Encouraged by this sign of her lessening tension, he played a few chords, saying, “It’s interesting, what people do to cut their minds free. Fooling around on the piano is one of mine. My mother tends roses. My father plays chess. Dennis’s dad field strips his weapons.” As her brows shot up, he laughed. “Dennis’s dad is a Master Gunnery Sergeant in the Marines.”

“Oh! Well, that makes sense.”

“He makes an art of it. Even when blindfolded. That used to impress us as boys.” He paused, waiting for her to offer her own escape, but it seemed she was not ready for sharing yet. So he forced himself to talk on. “I’ve never understood people who watch TV to let their minds free, not even noticing the noise. If I hear voices I have to listen to them.”

“Me too,” she said, sounding more natural. “Pitch. Timbre. Mood. On the bus I . . .” She stopped.

“On the bus you?” he prompted.

Her cheeks flushed, and she looked away, tense again. “Nothing. It’s stupid.”

“I don’t find anything you say stupid,” he murmured.

“Oh, on the bus I listen. To tones. Sometimes people sound like instruments.” Then her chin lifted, her gaze turning his way in question, and her tone changed as she took a step toward the piano. “You noodle Stravinsky?”

He looked down, appalled to discover that he had begun the “Danse Infernale” in the
Firebird Suite
. Shit! Deep down his dragon stirred yet again.

With a lifetime of practice he locked that side of him away, and concentrated on recovering his self-control. “Did both of you study opera? I thought Mick said Shelley studied theater.”

“She did theater while I focused on voice,” she said. “Shelley and I roomed together, and overlapped in a lot of General Ed classes our first couple years. But later, while she was doing stunts and bit parts for her friends in the film department, I was mainlining classical music.” She nodded at the piano, and in a tentative voice, said, “If this is too nosy, you don’t have to answer, but you studied classical piano?”

“I did,” he said, eliding softly to a well-known piece by Brahms that had nothing to do with firebirds, dragons, or any kind of shifter. “Thought I was the world’s next great composer—until I got to Juilliard and discovered that I was incapable of anything original. Pause to imagine my crushed genius.”

She uttered a chuckle that struck him like the sparkle of diamonds, as she took another step toward him. “I composed soundtracks for Mick, and Dennis before he went into documentaries, until they were successful enough to hire professionals.”

“Shelley said you are an A&R scout?” she asked.

“Yes. Part time. I scout for Mick as well as several producers, and a couple of classical record labels. Even the L.A. Philharmonic. When I bought my place in Hollywood I told the real estate agent to find me something equidistant from the major theaters. Going to every classical performance I can has never become just work. Have I seen you on stage?”

All the light went out of her face. He could have kicked himself—too late he remembered what Mick had said about her losing a gig.

Shelley reappeared, and he lost the chance to make it up to her.

“Sorry, guys,” Shelley said, and turned JP’s way. “Um, I think Mick might be looking for you.”

Never had there been worse timing. But duty had ruled his life with iron bars for far too long for it to be anything but business as usual.

“Excuse me,” he said, and turned to Jan. “I hope we can talk music again. Meanwhile, please. Consider this room yours for the week.”

He walked out, disgusted with himself for his blunders, like he was a kid again.
I’ve been alone too long
, he thought, knowing it for the truth.

No, only half the truth.

He had fought long and hard to accept the fact that duty to the community must come first, leaving him to follow his musical career during free time. All worthy, and artistic, uses of his time, leaving others to find the happiness he knew he would never have.

Economically and politically he was next thing to a king of a very small kingdom. Intellectually he was master of two careers and a formidable opponent to any who threatened his family, his clave, or his town.

But emotionally?

I have been so insulated I did not know how isolated I was.

He grimaced and pulled out his phone.

Mick said, “Jeep, I’m pretty sure these guys not only know about shifters, they have at least one among them.”

“I know that,” JP said, and briefly described his flight of the evening before, leaving out Jan and the fireflies.

“There is worse,” Mick said with a low, bearish growl. “They set a couple hyenas on Josh Walker when he went to demand their ID. If I hadn’t happened to be right behind his patrol car, they might have killed him.”

“Did you do some damage?”

“Yes.” Mick’s voice was rough with satisfaction. “Broke several bones apiece before they yelped in retreat. And they hauled ass out of there so fast they left part of their metal detector. Chief Albert’s got it.”

“Excellent,” JP said. “Though I suppose we can expect them to step up their game. So I’d better get more of us out on watch, especially at night.”

Chapter Seven

When JP left, Jan felt as if the light had gone out of the world.

“Let’s see if I can find the way back through all these gardens,” Shelley said cheerfully, and started out at her usual Valkyrie pace.

Jan scurried after her, glad to follow because maybe now she could do a mental reality check. She was the sidekick to Shelley’s romance. But as they passed back through the Shakespeare garden, her eyes zoomed to the spot where she had crashed into JP. She looked away again, her skin sensitive, nerves supercharged at the memory.

Every sense was alive. Her heels ticked on the flagstones, and she scowled down at them. She was an idiot to only bring the spike-heeled Manolos—she would have been better off with her scruffy waitress sandals. At least in those she wouldn’t be fumbling all over like a drunken sailor.

But oh, the brain-frying hotness of his arms locked around her. That long, hard body! Her nipples tightened again, and she gulped air, and forced herself to stage breathing. She would
not
think about how her breasts had felt squeezed against his ribs, or the swell of his muscular arms around her, or the press of his cock against the hollow spot between her thighs—and how she had pressed her hips into him.

Yow. Her hands flexed when she remembered how
very
close she had come to putting her hand down there to feel him.

It.

Stop thinking about his dick!

And there went the blush again, ten times worse than before. She wondered if smoke was boiling out of her ears, as Shelley’s phone rang again.

Thank God
, Jan thought as Shelley exclaimed in exasperation, “Mom, of
course
your phone is running out of batteries, because
you keep calling!
No, the map app isn’t broken. As soon as you hang up, go back to the map and press
Resume
. I promise it will zoom right to where you are. Okay. Okay . . .”

As Shelley finished dealing with her mother, Jan managed to pull herself together and get her stage face on.  And just in time.

When they reached the parking lot again, JP was waiting for them.

Shelley said, “My clan is about half an hour out, as far as I can tell. Where’s Mick?”

“Running an errand,” JP said.

“Oh.” Shelley looked up and away. Her tone was the same one Jan had first heard when Shelley made a joke about pelts.

And yes, again that morning, over breakfast. This isn’t the third wheel thing. Town politics? Really?
Jan thought.

But Shelley looked as uncomfortable as Jan felt, as she said, “We’ll go back to the Volkovs’, so I can get my family settled at the motel.”

“We’ll meet at the barbecue place,” JP promised, and to Jan, “I’ll see you tonight?”

“Sure,” Jan said, trying to sound like she hadn’t just been fantasizing about his cock.

There went the damn blush again—but at least he was walking back to the house, and Shelley was busy unlocking the door of her car.

Jan got inside, and Shelley gave her a puzzled glance. “Are you okay?”

Jan said, waving her hand in front of her face, “It’s just the heat.”

“Air conditioning in ten seconds,” Shelley said cheerfully, and Jan didn’t say what kind of heat she meant.

The Willis clan showed up in a caravan—Dad, Mom, grandma, four brothers, the wives of the married brothers, and a swarm of kids. The rest of the day was spent in a cacophony of loud masculine voices, punctuated by the shrill sounds of Shelley’s nieces and nephews. The motel that Jan had had to herself was now full to bursting.

By the time everyone got situated, it was time to get ready for dinner, which was at a barbeque place, once again tucked somewhere inside the town among all the warehouses and machine and tractor shops.

Mick showed up with Dennis in tow, meeting them in the parking lot. Jan felt like a mouse among the elephants, as she always did when she met the Willises. Mick and Dennis were, if anything, even bigger.

She liked Shelley’s family, who were always friendly, but she couldn’t help the heart-sinking feeling when they walked into the restaurant, with its gigantic TVs on every wall showing different sports events. The Willises whooped with pleasure—this was their kind of place—and promptly began talking louder.

Two long tables had been reserved for them. Jan headed for the spot farthest from the booming TV. She was about to sit when she felt her chair smoothly pulled out for her. That was not a Willis thing. Startled, she glanced up, and hear flared again when her eyes met JP’s.

He smiled down at her, and she felt her responding smile scorching her right down to her painted toes in their expensive sandals as he took the chair adjacent to hers.

* * *

He had meant to stay only long enough to say hello to the Willises and then get back to the long list of things to do but when he drove up and saw Jan’s bright head lost among the towering Willises, and the way her shoulders hitched tightly when they entered the god-awful noise of the barbeque place, he jettisoned his plans.

He was determined to somehow make it up to Jan for his awful blunders.

He pulled out Jan’s chair for her, and the smile she gave him nearly buckled his knees.

He dropped into the next chair. “Not into the sports scene?” he asked, and gesturing to the big TV behind her.
Inane much?
he thought, wincing inwardly. He could hand out commands rapid-fire to any number of professional people, but with Jan he was somehow reduced to high school awkwardness.

But she gave him one of those sweet smiles as if he’d said the most brilliant thing ever heard. “About as much as they’re into opera.” And chuckled, low in her throat.

His dick tightened. “I can’t tell you how many times I heard ‘Did your parents make you do it?’ when I told people I studied piano, growing up. In my turn I can’t understand how few people hear the greatness of classical music.”

“Oh, yes,” she breathed, and then in a lighter voice—as if she were afraid to be too serious, too intense—“Do you like other kinds of music?”

“Everything,” he said.

“Even rap?” She grinned a challenge.

“Especially rap. The best of them remind me of the Viking skalds. Can’t you just see rap artists declaiming in some castle before the long table of big bearded guys with their weapons on the table?”

Her lips parted. “True. So much of it is about violence, and honor, and loyalty, as well as love lost and found. Just like those old epic poems.”

“How about you?” he asked. “Any kind of music you don’t like?”

“Death metal is pretty hard on the ears,” she admitted. “And polka is pretty obnoxious unless you’re actually on stage doing the actual dance.”

“Okay, I have to admit I would probably not be first in line for a polka concert,” he said, and a sense of buoyancy filled him at the quiet, running-stream sound of her chuckle.

As the food was ordered, delivered, and eaten all around them they dove deep into a discussion of music. It was so good to talk music again that he felt heady, almost delirious as their words tumbled over each other’s, she apparently as eager as he was to exclaim, compare tastes, and debate good and bad composers or pieces.

The noise around them steadily increased, which drew them closer together, until he could smell the fresh scent of her tea tree shampoo, and see tiny reflections of one of the distant TVs in her pupils, pinpoints of color. There was absolutely no sense of time passing—he would have sworn it was five minutes—when the sound of a wailing child drowned everything else, and here was Shelley.

“The kids are getting cranky. It’s pretty late.”

Jan’s face lengthened in dismay. Then smoothed into politeness as she got to her feet. “I’m ready anytime you are,” she said courteously. But he saw the reluctance in the glance she cast back at him.

“Thank you,” he said. He wanted to add more—
I could talk to you forever
heading the list—but a second child added its wail to the first, and Shelley sighed. “We better leave before they kick us out.”

JP confined himself to, “See you tomorrow.”

And got Jan’s answering smile. “Hope so!”

* * *

Jan walked out behind Shelley wishing she and JP could have gone somewhere quiet and kept talking. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a chance to talk music. Or been around a guy whose mere glance could heat her up so deeply. The combination nearly made her dizzy.

They reached the motel. Through her closed door Jan heard the muffled noise of the Willises watching TV, so took her ear buds and iPod to listen to soothing music while she took a bath.

When she came out, the place was quiet again. It was almost midnight. And once again she was not tired enough to sleep.

Restless, her mind ranged over the entire conversation, lingering on little details: the lock of fine black hair that had fallen on his forehead. The swell of his forearm and bicep hinted at by his jacket sleeve when he leaned over to hear her better, and how was it that she found those hints of the body beneath the expensive fabric ten times sexier than those shirtless kilted men at Shelley’s bridal shower?

She thought about JP’s sunny music room. Would she feel his presence there if he was absent himself? She knew she was going first thing in the morning.

She turned out the lights, lay down . . . and her eyes stayed open.

She got up and moved to the window. The motel had turned off the exterior lights so she could see pale shapes in the blue-white moonlight. She adjusted the blinds a fraction, so she could look out to see if there were any fireflies.

She glimpsed movement in the darkness. Alarm spiked through her as the huge shadow pacing by not fifteen yards away resolved into the biggest dog she had ever seen—more like a wolf.

It paused, sniffed the air, then its head began to turn. She ducked back instinctively, then remembered that the room around her was totally dark, and there were the slitted blinds. It couldn’t possibly see her.

The muzzle lifted, and her heart stuttered when red eyes glimmered briefly, the way dogs’ eyes sometimes did at night. The animal didn’t growl, or look like it was ready to attack.

Instead it paced around the corner. Curious, Jan moved to the adjacent window and cracked the blinds just enough so she could peer out.

The wolf-dog had walked away from the parking area to the empty lot. It was barely visible against the background. Its edges blurred. She blinked, and next thing she knew, the silhouette was not a canine shape, but that of a man. Two legs, human shoulders.

The man approached an even bigger masculine silhouette. They stood close together, and one gestured outward. Then they parted. Within five steps one blurred into a dog, and the other shortened and broadened into a—

Bear?

What?

She looked down at herself, barely visible in the dark. She pinched her thigh hard. Still awake. When she looked out again, the two were gone.

She flung herself on the bed and lay there stiffly as her heartbeat thundered.

She struggled mentally, feeling that it was her duty as an adult to talk herself out of believing what she had seen. There had to be some mundane explanation, because modern life scoffed at anything out of the ordinary. What it didn’t see it didn’t believe, but she had always believed in  . . . go ahead and call it the paranormal, even if only in the privacy of her own head.

Because she thought the world far more interesting if it was full of Japanese spirits like the
y
ōka
i.
And the fae. And shapeshifters. And djinn and even demons, as long as there were vigilant angels to guard against them. Opera was full of the supernatural world, as music had been from ancient times.

You could not touch or taste music, and yet it had the power to open the heart and mind, which was a magic of its own. In spite of the fact that so far her life had been pretty much that of the luckless sidekick, Jan had still hoped that one day she would step past a corner, or gaze into a fog bank, and there would be the veil between the everyday and the possible, ready for her to grasp and rip asunder.

It seemed tonight she had.

* * *

She finally fell asleep, and woke to the yell of a little kid that sounded like it was directly outside her window. She blinked at the strips of early morning sunlight painting thin stripes on the bed through the slats in the blinds. It was going to be a very hot day—and there was that formal tea late in the afternoon.

But this morning, she had JP’s music room.

She took a fast shower, ran a comb through her damp hair, put on one of her floaty Art Nouveau tunic-dresses and her new sandals. She wouldn’t let herself hope to see him, when he had made such a big deal about her having the place to herself.

But a girl can hope
.

She pulled her music out of her suitcase, grabbed her motel key, and slipped out the door. Looking around for any signs of mysterious dogs or bears—had that really been a
bear?
—she crossed the asphalt parking area into the barren vacant lot, and then to the meadow beyond.