Theo smirked. “Trust me. My mama knows everything. Come on. You’re tired. Let’s get you to bed. Theo lifted her into his arms, cradling her as he carried her toward her bedroom. Maddie wasn’t sure how he knew where it was, but, then again, the place was tiny. It wasn’t that hard to figure out. He set her gently down on the bed and pulled a blanket over her, then leaned over and kissed her forehead gently. Without another word, he was gone.
Maddie was disappointed that Theo wasn’t staying longer, but she was too tired to put up much of a fight. And she hadn’t realized quite how tired she was until her head hit the pillow. She was out cold before the sound of Theo’s truck firing up could hit her ears, but her dreams were filled with Theo’s face.
Chapter Five
As the clock inched toward seven a.m., the dark light of night gave way to the gray hues of dawn. Theo tossed and turned in his bed, frustrated and unable to fall back to sleep. After he’d dropped Maddie off at her house, he’d come home and collapsed in exhaustion onto his own bed. But Maddie filled his dreams, and he awoke again at six, unable to quiet his churning mind.
He’d done the right thing by leaving her house last night. But damn it all if it hadn’t been one of the greatest feats of self-control he’d ever accomplished. He wanted nothing more than to make love to her over and over. In his younger years, he would have told himself that the idea of sleeping with a girl he barely knew was crazy. There was too much potential fallout. But now, Theo had lived enough to know when to trust the yearnings of his heart. And his heart was definitely yearning for Maddie. Was it possible he’d finally found someone who could handle his dragon heart?
Theo sighed and sat up in his bed, then stood and made his way to the kitchen. He absentmindedly started brewing a pot of coffee. Looks like he wasn’t going to be getting any more sleep today. Luckily for him, his dragon side enabled him to survive reasonably well on low amounts of sleep. He still hated feeling even a little bit groggy, though.
Theo looked out his kitchen window at the gray sky, which was slowly getting lighter. His dragon rumbled within him, itching to fly. Itching to mate with Maddie. Itching to go find Steve and teach him a lesson or two about messing with a dragon.
Theo rubbed his forehead and then grabbed a coffee mug with a sigh. So many itches he couldn’t scratch.
* * *
“Happy Birthday, Hazel!” shouted one of the party guests as he set a cake full of flickering candles down in front of Theo’s mother, Hazel. The cake was huge, which was a necessity since Hazel was friends with just about everyone in Persimmon Springs. Half the town was here today, packed into the tiny living room of the house Theo had grown up in. Theo smiled with pride as his mother blew out the candles on her cake, her face beaming. He was lucky to call such a great woman “mother.”
The party continued well into the evening. To Theo’s surprise, he didn’t feel tired at all. He was enjoying the good food and good company. Due to his busy coaching schedule at the high school, he hadn’t been able to keep up with his friends around town as much as he would have liked. This party was a good chance for him to relax and catch up with people. And yet, even in the middle of the crowd of partygoers, he couldn’t help feeling a bit lonely every time he thought of Maddie. He glanced toward the door every now and then, as though she might suddenly appear. But he wasn’t sure when he would see her again. He hadn’t thought to get her number, and when he called the bar this morning to see about picking up her car, the sleepy-sounding manager said she’d already come by to get it. Theo wasn’t sure how she’d managed to get there, but she clearly wasn’t using it as an excuse to see him. He frowned, and hoped she wasn’t mad at him for leaving so suddenly last night. Then he forced himself to turn his thoughts back to his mom’s party. There was no point in sitting around brooding all night during a celebration. He could worry about Maddie later.
The evening wore on and the crowd slowly dwindled down until only Theo, his mom, and his brothers remained. Zane and Drake stayed to help clean up the kitchen, then bid their mother farewell, since they both had to work in the morning. Theo decided to hang around and keep his mother company for a little bit longer. It was her birthday, after all. Besides, it had been a while since he’d had any one-on-one time with her. He settled into an armchair with a beer, and she settled across from him on the couch. She had switched to tea, and for a few moments as they sat in silence, Theo watched the steam from her teacup swirling upward.
“Good party, Ma?” he asked, finally breaking the silence.
“Excellent party,” she said. “Thank you boys for organizing.”
“Sure,” Theo said. “Although most of the credit for that goes to Zane. He took the lead on getting everything set up.”
“Well, I appreciate all of you for the effort you put in. It was lovely to see so many of my friends. And, I may be sixty-two now, but I still love celebrating my birthday. It still makes me feel like a little girl full of energy and life.”
Theo smiled. “Well, you may not be a little girl anymore, but you’re definitely still full of energy and life. I hope I have half as much energy at your age as you do now.”
Theo’s mother smiled in response, and then the pair fell silent again for a few minutes. The only sound as they enjoyed the quiet was the occasional slurp when one of them took a drink. Theo’s mother was the next one to break the silence.
“Who is she?” she asked.
Theo swung his head sharply to look at his mother, his eyebrow raised. “What do you mean, who is she?” he asked.
“You know. The girl. The one you’ve been pining away for all night.”
Theo let out a long sigh. If he didn’t know better, he would swear his mother had mindreading powers.
“You keep glancing at the door, like you’re expecting someone to show up. You’re still doing it, even though the party is officially over. I haven’t seen you this restless in years. Who is she?”
“It doesn’t matter, Ma,” Theo protested. “I met a girl, yeah. She’s beautiful and sweet and all—you’d like her, I think. But it’s unrealistic to think I have time for a relationship. The state championship is coming up, and besides, I don’t think she wants to stay in Persimmon Springs. She moved here for work, and she’s already complaining about how she’d rather be in New York.”
“So it’s Maddie,” Ma said.
Theo threw his hands up in exasperation, causing a little bit of his beer to slosh out onto his jeans.
“How do you know?” he said.
“I know everyone in this town,” Ma said. “And I know the only person who’s moved here recently is her. She’s a beautiful girl. But I’m surprised you hit it off with her, since she’s working for the Gazette.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t too keen on that aspect at first,” Theo said. “But she isn’t like Steve at all, or like the other assholes he’s hired to work there. She has some character. She was just desperate for work and didn’t know what she was getting into. I’m trying to convince her to quit the paper, but she’s worried about money and finding another job. It’s complicated. If she leaves the Gazette, she’ll probably have to move somewhere else. And I’m not moving, so it doesn’t make sense to start a serious relationship with her. And, like I said, I’m super busy with coaching. It doesn’t makes sense to have a girlfriend right now.”
Theo knew even as he spoke the words that all he was doing was making a laundry list of reasons not to follow his heart. He wanted to be with Maddie. He just wasn’t sure how to make it work in the real world.
“You’re not that busy with coaching,” Ma said. “After the state championship, things are going to slow down quite a bit for a while. Sounds like the perfect time to start a new relationship.”
Theo shrugged. “I still have stuff to work on. And besides, Maddie doesn’t know I’m a dragon. Trying to explain it to her would be a whole can of worms I don’t want to open.”
Ma looked at him sharply, and he could tell he was about to get a serious lecture.
“Theo, I love you dearly, you know that. But what are your long term goals for your life?”
“My long term goals? To be the best head coach Texas high school football has ever seen. I want to set a record for the most state championships won.”
“And then what?” Ma asked.
Theo frowned. “I dunno. Retire, I guess? It’ll probably take the whole length of my career to accomplish that goal.”
Ma sighed. “What I’m getting at, Theo, is that you’re acting like you have all the time in the world to find a girl and start a family. But you’re not getting any younger. You’ve set out these professional goals, but you haven’t really thought about your personal goals. And I’m worried that by the time you do, it will be too late.”
“It’s not that I haven’t thought about it,” Theo said, doing his best to keep his voice neutral. He could feel himself getting angry, and the last thing he wanted to do was ruin his mom’s birthday. “I’m trying. But it’s not so simple for a dragon. I can’t just date a girl and then randomly drop the bombshell that I’m a shifter. It doesn’t work that way.”
“That’s what your dad did to me,” Ma said, her eyes sparkling at the memory. Theo raised his eyes in surprise. He’d never heard Ma talk about how his dad had broken the news that he was a dragon shifter.
“What did he say? What did you say?” Theo asked.
“We’d been dating six months,” Ma said. “I had already decided that he was the man I wanted to marry. He seemed so…noble. One night after a dinner out, we went for a long walk. He all of a sudden looked over at me and said, ‘There’s something you need to know about me. I’m part dragon.’ I thought he was just playing around and didn’t believe him, so he shifted for me out in the middle of one of the fields.”
“And you didn’t run away?” Theo asked in amazement.
Ma laughed. “I didn’t run. But I did ask him roughly ten thousand questions about shifters and how that whole world worked. And then I slapped him for keeping secrets from me. Look, Theo, if you hold off on dating because you’re worried that telling a girl about your dragon side will be uncomfortable, you’re going to be waiting forever. There aren’t many female dragons around, so you’re eventually going to have to find a human mate or be alone. At the very least, you’ll have to find a female who is a different kind of shifter. But my advice to you, if your heart is telling you to go after Maddie, is to follow your heart. You’ll know when the time is right to explain your dragon side. And, if she’s the right girl, she’ll accept you for who you are.”
Theo took a long sip from his beer, contemplating what Ma was saying. He knew deep down that she was right. And he knew that, if Maddie was the right girl, she would accept him for the dragon he was. But, in some ways, it was easier to not tell her about his dragon side and just imagine that she would actually accept him if she knew. If he actually told her, he might have to face the cold, hard truth that she wasn’t his mate. If she didn’t accept him, he would know for sure. And he already felt so strongly for her. He couldn’t bear the thought of knowing she wasn’t his forever.
Theo stood and went to the kitchen, where he threw his empty beer bottle into the trash.
“I’ll think on it, Ma,” he said, coming back into the living room to give her a kiss on the cheek.
“Don’t think too long,” she replied, shaking her finger at him. “Eventually you have to take action.”
“I know. I promise, I’ll figure this out soon. But right now I’m exhausted, and I have a big week ahead. I’m gonna go home and get some sleep. Happy birthday, Ma,” Theo said, shrugging into his windbreaker.
“Thanks, son. I’ll see you at the championship game Friday. I can’t wait to see our boys win. Time for more history to be made!”
Theo smiled, then gave a little wave as he walked outside and hopped into his truck. He had a feeling this week was going to be one for the record books, in more ways than one.
Chapter Six
The next two days were a blur of practices, pep talks, and cautious optimism. Theo’s Warriors were doing well in practice, and he had a good feeling about the championship game. The state title was so close he could taste it. He just had to make sure that his team stayed calm and focused. He’d seen teams get too sure of themselves too soon, causing them to lose their focus and lose a championship. He did his best to find a balance between being encouraging and being the tough coach his boys needed.
Even as he prepped his team for the championship, Maddie was always in the back of his mind. He had forgotten to get her number at the bar the other night, but it had been easy enough to find. The internet had everything you needed to know, if you just searched long enough. He texted her, and they shared a few flirty texts back and forth. Nothing too serious, though. Theo was busy, and Maddie respected that. They both knew that things would quiet down after the championship game. Theo was already formulating a plan in his mind for how he would wine and dine her. He researched nice restaurants in Dallas, and made big plans to take her out and impress her. He wanted to show her that, although this might not be New York City, there were a few nice things to do. He found a show playing at the Dallas theater, and made reservations at a five star restaurant for a few days after the championship. Maybe, just maybe, when she saw that there was at least some culture out here, he could convince her to stay.
As practice wrapped up on Tuesday afternoon, Theo suddenly felt a sharp poke in his ribs. He looked over and saw Max standing next to him with a raised eyebrow.
“Ouch, Max. What the hell. You trying to give me a bruised rib or something?” Theo asked.
“No. I’m just wondering why your girlfriend is here when you said you weren’t going to distract yourself with her until after the championship,” Max said.
Theo looked over in the direction of Max’s pointed finger, and was surprised to see Maddie walking toward them at a brisk pace. She was halfway across the football field from where they were standing, but even at that distance Theo could see she was upset.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Theo retorted. “Not officially, at least. And I have no idea why she’s here, but it doesn’t look like it’s for a happy reason.”
Max raised his eyebrows even further. “I have a feeling she’s probably here to see you. Go talk to her. I’ll give the boys a closing pep talk.”
Theo nodded, grateful for Max and how he always seemed to know just how to step in and help out. As Max started yelling at the team to head in to the locker room, Theo made his way across the field toward Maddie. She was holding a newspaper in her hand, and, as he got closer, he could see that there were actually tearstains on her face.
“Maddie, what’s wrong?” he asked as soon as he was within earshot of her. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”
“I know,” she said, sniffing back more tears. “I’m sorry for just turning up like this. But I’m so upset and I don’t know who to talk to. Look at this!”
She shoved the newspaper against his chest, and he took it from her. Quickly scanning the Gazette’s front page headlines, he saw what was making her so upset. An article with her name in the byline was titled “Why the Warriors’ Best Season in Decades is Actually the Worst.” Theo scanned the article, and it didn’t take long for him to see that it was pretty much a scathing critique of his coaching abilities.
“Let me guess,” Theo said. “You didn’t actually write this?”
Maddie shook her head no. “I didn’t write it. I didn’t even write a first draft of this one. Steve wrote the entire thing, and then published it under my name without telling me. I tried to confront him about it, and he threatened to fire me if I wasn’t okay with it.”
Theo let out an exasperated sigh. “So let him fire you. Why are you putting up with this, Maddie?”
Maddie frowned and wiped at her eyes. “We’ve been through this, Theo. I don’t have a choice. I need a job. My only other option is to take a job in a completely different field from journalism. I hate
to give up on my dreams, but maybe it’s time to admit defeat. I can move back to the east coast and bartend in New York or something. At least I would be in a big city again.”
Theo felt his heart tightening at the thought of Maddie moving away. As he looked over at her, her face lovely but frustrated, he realized that his Ma was right. He had to make a move, and truly show her his feelings. Maddie was upset, and feeling like she didn’t fit in Persimmon Springs. If Theo didn’t do something to change that for her, she was going to leave.
“What about me?” Theo said, lowering his voice and looking directly into Maddie’s eyes. “You’re just going to up and leave me when we’ve barely started getting to know each other?”
Maddie met his intense gaze unflinchingly.
“I obviously feel something for you,” she said. “But it’s going to take more than a simple crush to keep me here. I don’t belong here, Theo. I’m a city girl. I like noise and crowds.”
“There’s plenty of noise and crowds at our football games,” Theo countered.
Maddie actually cracked a smile.
“Fair enough. But it’s not the same. I see the way people look at me, like I’m some weird creature who sticks out like a sore thumb. They know I’m not from here, and they don’t like the intrusion.”
“They’re just curious, Maddie. Sure, there are a few grumpy souls around who frown at anyone new. But, for the most part, people here are friendly and welcoming.”
“Maybe so,” Maddie said with a shrug. “But no matter how people feel about me, Steve obviously hates me. If I don’t have a good job here, I can’t stay. Simple as that.”
Theo frowned. This wasn’t going well. He felt like Maddie had already made up her mind to leave. He had to do something to change that, and quick.
“Come on,” Theo said, starting to walk across the field toward the parking lot where his truck was parked. Maddie looked surprised, and started scurrying after him.
Lone Star Dragon (Shifters in the Heart of Texas Book 1) Page 4