Dragon Fever: Limited Edition Holiday Romance Boxset

by Serena Meadows

  “Uh, can I come in?” she asked, diffident.

  “Yes, sure.” Ronan opened the door wider to permit her entry, still gaping like a fool.

  Clearly, she had showered. Her waist-length hair was no longer colorless, but a very beautiful pale gold, and fell in a curly wave down her shoulders. Clad in a blue tank top that accented both her eyes and her very slender waist, her snug jeans fit her almost like a second skin. Her big blue gazed up into his, her clean scent wafting into his nose.

  “Did you sleep all right?” she asked.

  Ronan finally closed the door. “Not really. That bed is a horror.”

  “I think they all are,” she said with a light laugh. “Remnants from the Great Depression.”

  “I don’t think I had company, though,” he said, smiling, spreading his arms wide. “Cockroaches didn’t have me for dinner.”

  “Don’t get too confident. I heard they carried off an old lady from downstairs.”

  Ronan folded his arms across his chest. “I really must see one of these creatures for myself.”

  “Eww, no.” Daryl made a face of disgust. “Creepiest things on this planet, I swear. The first time I saw one fly, I thought I’d have a stroke.”

  “Surely, you don’t hold flying against them?”

  “Oh, yeah, when they come flying toward my face, I scream and scream.”

  He laughed. “That I’d like to see.”

  “I bet you would. Now, are you ready to shop till you drop?”

  “I have a policy of never shopping on an empty stomach. Where’s a good place for breakfast?”

  “There’s a nice diner near the train station,” she replied with a grin.

  “Lead the way.”

  Crossing the lobby, Ronan observed a different man behind the desk, one with thick black hair and a full beard curling nearly to his chest. He stared at them with suspicious eyes behind heavy rimmed spectacles and snapped, “You know the rules, Daryl; no hookers.”

  “He’s hardly a hooker, Manny,” she shot back. “He’s my friend and rents here, too.”

  “Yeah, right. I find out different, you’re in trouble.”

  Daryl made a small fist with her second finger pointing upward and jabbed it toward the clerk. He yelled something else, but by that time, Ronan and Daryl were out the door. “What does this mean?” he asked, making the same gesture.

  Laughing, Daryl grabbed his hand and pushed it down. “It means ‘fuck you,’ and it’s a terrible insult. You don’t want to do that unless you mean it.”

  “So, I don’t want to show that finger around, right?”

  “Exactly. People have been shot over it.”

  Ronan reached around and touched the butt of the gun in his jeans, glad he hadn’t left it behind for Manny to steal. “What will Manny do? Will he attack you?”

  “No. Not much he can do unless he wants to lose his job or go to jail for assault. He won’t do anything because he’s a coward.”

  Ronan gazed down at her with speculation. “Why did he think I was a hooker? I don’t look female, do I?”

  “Dude, you are the furthest thing from female,” Daryl said. “Men turn tricks, too.”

  “For women?”

  She shrugged. “Or for other men.”

  While that shouldn’t have shocked him, as he had learned about humans and their proclivities for same-sex relationships, he had never thought that might possibly be applied to him. He growled low in his throat, but fortunately, Daryl didn’t seem to hear it.

  In the daylight, there were far more people on the sidewalks walking than the night before. The steady stream of vehicles passed by, and Ronan looked for the hookers but didn’t see them. “The women from last night are gone?”

  “Yeah. They go home to their kids if they have any, sleep through the day, prowl the streets for their johns at night.”

  “Another unfamiliar word.” He rolled his eyes. “John?”

  “Customers.”

  Under the full sunlight, New York appeared just as nasty and unsavory as it did in the darkness. The stench was the same, the noise the same, the people the same. “Does anything change around here?” he asked as they walked.

  “Nope.” She grinned up at him, her loose hair bouncing around her shoulders and cascading down her back. “If a crime is committed, then it gets a little exciting.”

  “How often are crimes committed?”

  “About every thirty seconds.”

  Ronan shook his head. “This place is so strange.”

  “Got some culture shock going on there?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “Don’t worry.” Daryl patted his arm. “I went through it, too.”

  The diner she led him to offered a welcome reprieve from the horrid smells and sounds outside. He breathed in delicious odors of cooking food, and a smiling woman showed them to a table. “Anything to drink?” she asked.

  “Coffee,” Daryl replied, then glanced at Ronan. “For you, too?”

  He shrugged. “Why not?”

  The woman went away, and Ronan glanced around the place. Other diners ate at tables, talking quietly, and none gave the two of them a second glance. “This is quieter than the deli.”

  “Most people are already at work at this hour,” Daryl explained. “It’ll be packed at lunch and dinner, though. We missed most of the breakfast crowds.”

  “I don’t much like crowds.”

  The woman reappeared at their table and poured a hot black liquid into two cups. “Your server will take your order soon,” she said, smiling again, and left.

  Ronan picked up the cup and sniffed. It smelled good, but his first taste of the bitter stuff almost made him spit it out. Daryl laughed at his expression. “It takes getting used to,” she told him, sipping her own coffee. “It grows on you. And puts hair on your chest.”

  Ronan took another tentative sip, thinking it wasn’t that bad after all. “Somehow, I doubt either of us needs a hairy chest.”

  In reading the menu, he found he understood some of it, but not all. “What is this?” he asked. “Om-e-let.”

  “Omelet,” she replied. “It’s a combination of eggs, milk, and other ingredients like cheese, onions or peppers, then fried. They’re good to eat.”

  “What about pan-cake?”

  “Oh, yummy.” Daryl grinned. “One of my favs. It’s a dough that’s cooked in a pan and covered in maple syrup.”

  Once again, Ronan let Daryl order for him and found he liked her recommendations. The pancakes were as good as she said, combined with other foods like bacon, sausage, and hash browns. He ate everything and grinned when she commented that all the food he was buying her would make her fat.

  “And I’m gonna have a helluva time paying you back for all this.”

  “I don’t want to be paid back,” Ronan replied. “It’s something for something. You’re helping me find my way around, I’m buying your food.”

  “I’m still in deep with you for last night,” she said as he fished the cash from his pocket to pay the bill. “Oh, and don’t forget the tip.”

  “Tip?” He blinked.

  “Yeah, a little extra for the waitstaff. They don’t get paid very well and survive on tips. Believe me, I was a waitress once.”

  He added the extra, making their waitress smile as he handed it to her, then stood up. “Let’s shop till we drop.”

  “I am so ready to spend your money.”

  He cocked an eye at her as he opened the door. “I seem to recall that’s the way it is in most cultures. The male earns, the female spends.”

  “Oh, you are good,” Daryl said with an oily smile. “You are very good.”

  Chapter Five

  “You know,” Daryl said as they strolled toward the station, “you are as innocent as a little kid. Learning about the world.”

  Ronan grunted. “I haven’t been a kid for a very long time.”

  “You’re hardly older than I am.”

  He stuck his hands in his
pockets and half grinned. “I’m older than I look.”

  “So how old are you?”

  “Can’t tell you.”

  “Oh, come on,” she snapped, laughing. “You can tell me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Jeez, you’re like an old woman refusing to give her age.”

  Grinning, he replied, “Even if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Try me.”

  “Someday.” His green eyes glinted in amusement. “Maybe.”

  “Now that’s gonna bug the shit out of me.” Daryl walked beside him for a while, then asked, “If I guess right, will you say so?”

  “No.”

  “You really know how to make a person insane, don’t you?”

  “You’re making yourself insane, Daryl.”

  A rejoinder made it as far as her lips and no further. Up ahead of them, she recognized a pair of tattooed gang bangers and stopped walking. Ronan paused, gazing back at her with a half-smile, half-frown on his handsome features, the crowd of New Yorkers splitting apart to go around them as a boulder splits a stream.

  “Daryl?”

  She tore her eyes from the bangers. “Uh, maybe we should take the bus.”

  “Why?”

  Daryl half turned to walk back the way they had come, but it was too late. The guys with the tattoos crawling over their faces, their shaven skulls, and every exposed piece of flesh had seen her. With identical smirks, they glanced at one another and ambled against the wave heading for the subway toward herself and Ronan. “Shit,” she muttered.

  “What?”

  “Those guys. They’re Tank’s buddies.”

  Ronan watched them come, his expression neutral yet ready, and Daryl expected him to reach for the gun at his back. “They’re dangerous, Ronan,” she said, licking her lips nervously.

  His green eyes reflected the sunlight, making them impossible for her to read. “So am I.”

  “Wassup, momma?” asked Two-Bit agreeably. He grinned at her with gold teeth mixed amid the white, glancing between her and Ronan. “You outta rehab already? Man, dat takes some doin’ to get off the dope. How many days it been, girl?”

  “A week.”

  Daryl flicked her gaze between Two-Bit and Flame, a banger who had a reputation for setting his enemies on fire to kill them. Even as he stared at her with the flat, emotionless eyes of a snake, his flicked a lighter on and off, over and over. She shivered, looking away from those dead eyes.

  “Good fer you, girl,” Two-Bit exclaimed, eyeing Ronan sidelong. “Proud of ya. Who’s this big motherfucker?”

  “Ronan. Meet Two-Bit and Flame.”

  Ronan stared at Flame with the same deadly, flat eyes—no expression, no emotion. Daryl realized with horror that the incident with Tank the previous night was no dance with Lady Luck. Ronan was deadlier than Tank, Two-Bit, and Flame combined, and these two idiots were in serious danger.

  “Tank been wantin’ ya,” Two-Bit said at last, looking back at her while dismissing Ronan as inconsequential. “Seems he had an unfortunate accident, though.”

  “Accident?” In spite of herself, Daryl laughed. “Is that what he said?”

  “Yup. You mean to call ‘im a liar?”

  “He’s a liar,” she shot back. “Ronan snapped his arm when he pulled a gun.”

  Two-Bit looked Ronan up and down, unconcerned. “Dat so?”

  Flame flicked his lighter on and off, still staring at Daryl as though craving to see her on fire. The sound wore on her ragged nerves, but she dared not let it show on her face. Flame was crazier than a rabid rat, everyone knew it, and was reputed to have had his skin burned away by an abusive father.

  Ronan still hadn’t said a word but gazed at Flame as though he was the most dangerous of the two. Maybe he is.

  “You like playing with fire, boy?” Ronan asked at last, his voice deadly soft.

  Flame glanced at him, still flicking his lighter. “Yeah,” he hissed. “And I’ll burn you, asshole.”

  Ronan’s lips stretched into a humorless grin, much like a clown’s fake mask. But there was nothing resembling amusement in Ronan’s smile right then. “Not if I burn you first.”

  Two-Bit suddenly shifted his eyes beyond Daryl and Ronan. He seized Flame’s arm in a tight grip of alarm. “Cops.”

  Instantly, the two melted into the crowd heading for the subway. One second, they were standing in front of Daryl, the next, gone as though they had never been there. She shot a swift glance over her shoulder and grabbed Ronan’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  He came with her easily, not looking back at the two patrolmen who had strolled toward them. Daryl led him down the cement stairs, three flights, to the turnstiles. Stopped dead, she then begged him with her eyes to pay. “It’s two bucks each,” she whispered.

  Ronan, without a word or a change of expression, stuck four singles into the slot, and then they were through. She glanced back to see if the cops followed and saw no sign of them. Nor did she see either Two-Bit or Flame. Taking his hand in relief, she guided him to the platform to wait for their train.

  “That was bad,” she muttered, still quivering from the encounter.

  “How so?” he asked, and his eyes had returned to their more normal mixture of amusement and cynicism.

  “They could have killed us,” she told him, rubbing her bare arms, feeling chilled despite the warm stuffiness of the station. Her eyes never still; she searched the crowd waiting for the train, fearing she’d find Two-Bit and Flame stalking them. “If those cops hadn’t come along...”

  Ronan snorted. “Hardly.”

  “You really have no concept of how dangerous those guys, and Tank, can be, do you?” Daryl felt hysteria rising, realizing the position she had put Ronan in by befriending him. If I hadn’t taken that money, Tank wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about me. Maybe I should grab it and go, run before Tank catches up.

  Broken from her thoughts by Ronan’s green eyes boring into her as though seeing through her flesh to her soul, Daryl asked, baffled, “What?”

  Ronan merely shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Unwilling to argue with him, she made herself relax, even if she kept a wary eye out for menacing bangers. Their train pulled into the station on a piercing squeal of brakes, and the doors slid open. A wave of passengers disembarked while the wave that included Daryl and Ronan stepped aboard. She led him to a row of seats away from the worst of the crowd and sat down. Ronan sat beside her, gazing out the window as the train picked up speed. “This is rather ingenious,” he commented. “Conveyances below ground.”

  “Makes getting around the city easier,” Daryl replied. “Traffic on the streets is awful. But it’s that way in most big cities.”

  “Makes you crave quieter places,” he said with a faint smile.

  “Like Oregon.”

  Daryl leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling, wishing she dared trust him with her secret. He can help me. Together, we can get out of New York and go west. Tank will never look for me in Oregon. Then again, with the amount of cash she had taken, he would tear the world apart looking for her.

  Their stop arrived, and Daryl led him off the train to head back up to the street above them. Once again, she pondered leaving this ugly place, with or without Ronan, as they walked along the sidewalk with throngs of other people, the honking of car horns and the sound of engines receding into the background.

  “Down this way is a decent place to buy clothes,” she told Ronan. “And a drugstore where you can get shit like toothpaste, deodorant.”

  “And something to carry them in?” he asked.

  Daryl pointed across the street. “A luggage store. One-stop shopping.”

  In the quiet clothing shop, a pretty salesclerk helped Ronan buy jeans, shirts, socks, underwear, all the while checking out his chest and shoulders, even his tight ass. Daryl watched the proceedings from a distance, browsing the shelves and racks. She needed new clothes, too, but couldn’t ask Ronan to buy t
hem for her.

  His purchases in bags, Daryl took him along to the drugstore, and once again stood back to let him shop. He seems to have no end of cash in his pocket. She absently wondered how much he had, and why he didn’t put it into a bank, then use a card to buy things with. Much safer than getting his wad stolen.

  At last, with his belongings safely stowed into a leather suitcase, Ronan gestured toward a street café. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  “Not after that huge breakfast,” Daryl replied with a smile. “But I wouldn’t mind something to drink.”

  Seated at a table under a wide umbrella, Daryl ordered iced tea for both of them, then absently watched people walking past. She sipped her tea, and from the corner of her eye she saw Ronan take a drink from his.

  “This is good,” he commented, then drained half his glass. “I must admit New York has nice drinks.”

  “Do you drink alcohol?” she asked.

  “No, but I wouldn’t mind trying it.”

  “I like beer and wine.” Daryl watched the throngs pass them by, endlessly fascinated by the myriad of different people she saw. “But as a recovering addict, I need to stay away from it.”

  “Why?”

  She took another drink from her tea. “It would be too easy to get hooked on alcohol so soon after getting clean.”

  Ronan might have said something else, but three well-dressed and well-heeled matrons arrived at the café, chattering about rude clerks. One of them carried a little fluffball of a Pomeranian in her purse, its head and ears sticking out of the mouth. Bright round eyes like twin buttons gazed from its haven, and the tiny pink tongue curled upward at the end as it panted.

  As the woman passed by Ronan, the Pom instantly set to barking wildly, struggling frantically inside its confines. The startled owner tried to hush the thing, but it kept up its frenzied snarls and barks, shrill and obnoxious.

  Daryl noticed the wait staff at the café frowning at the little beast and the trio of women and grew irritated herself. “Good grief,” she muttered, scowling. “Can’t she shut that thing up?”

  “I doubt it,” Ronan replied, smiling slightly even as he watched the Pom continue its terrified, defensive antics. “It knows me.”