by Anna Lowe
“Have you tried hibiscus tea?” Cassandra asked. “Hibiscus with a touch of ginger and a spot of honey.”
Boone looked up in surprise. “I thought you were a bartender.”
She shrugged. “I mix all kinds of things. I haven’t been able to help myself, ever since I was small.”
“What, like potions?” Boone joked.
Silas came in at exactly that moment, and he froze upon hearing those words. Cassandra froze too. Maybe she really did have some witch characteristics. And, oops. If witches considered dragons mortal enemies, was the feeling mutual?
A moment later, Silas headed for the coffee machine, looking more lost in thought than angry. Cassandra mixed the tea, which Nina sipped tentatively. The next morning, Boone trotted over to the akule hale to fix the drink at first light.
“Did it work?” Cassandra asked.
He gave her a hearty thumbs-up. “Maybe not a miracle cure, but it helps a lot, so thanks.”
“See you,” Kai said, giving Tessa a long, lingering kiss before heading for his helicopter.
A dragon who flew a helicopter. It made her mind spin.
Soon, thoughts of escaping receded to the far corner of her mind, replaced by a wary curiosity to learn more about shifter life. When she called her boss at Tony’s Bar to beg for an extended break — for family issues, she’d fibbed — she’d ended up asking for a few extra days. There was so much to discover, to study, to learn.
Lunch, like breakfast, was a relaxed, come-and-go affair, but dinners were communal. Everyone came together as the sun set, and they made amiable conversation while Tessa whipped up dish after mouthwatering dish. She hadn’t been kidding about being a good chef. Nina bustled food and plates to the table as if serving was in her blood, and Cassandra couldn’t help but admire her style. If only the waitresses at Tony’s Bar hustled that way.
“Ah, Tessa. You’ve outdone yourself,” Kai would announce at the end of every meal.
It was at about that time that Cassandra would look around in wonder, reminding herself who — or what — they all were. Dragon, wolf, and bear shifters. Apparently, a pair of tiger shifters — Cruz and Jody — rounded out the gang at Koa Point, but they were away at a surf competition. She could barely keep track of it all.
But the details didn’t matter, because one thing came through loud and clear. This was a community in the truest sense of the word. A close-knit family of kindhearted, loving people who appreciated every gift fate sent their way. Boone was building a nursery for the twins he and Nina were expecting, and Hunter was helping, making sure those babies would have a safe, comfortable home. Tessa was experimenting with new recipes for Nina, and Kai had shouted out in glee when Cruz called with news of Jody’s first podium finish on the pro surf tour. The men goaded each other as only close friends could, each of them tough as nails until little Keiki wandered by, bringing out their quieter, softer sides — even Silas, who didn’t have a trace of soft anything.
The women, meanwhile, were welcoming and kind, and each member of that special sisterhood had a way of keeping the guys in line. Tessa did it with exasperated comments like, Seriously, Kai? and thought nothing of slapping away a wolf shifter’s hand if he tried to sneak a sample of what she was preparing. Nina did it more subtly, with a constant stream of goodwill. Dawn was a tough police officer, feminine yet unrelenting when circumstances called for it. She had just served Boone another speeding ticket, in fact.
“The law is the law,” Dawn chided sternly when teased about it.
“Yes, ma’am,” Boone replied with a grin. “I’ll do my best to repent.”
“Try harder,” Dawn sighed in reply.
The only female resident Cassandra hadn’t met was Jody, though she had no doubt the surfer would be as independent, sharp-minded, and tough as the others.
“Can I get anyone a drink?” Kai asked, stepping to the wet bar on the second night.
Cassandra watched him scoop ice with a glass — a rookie move that made her teeth grind — for all of ten seconds before dashing over.
“Can I help?”
Kai didn’t look too enthusiastic until he saw her deft movements. Then he backed away, murmuring, “Be my guest.”
“Nothing for me, thanks,” Nina called, patting her belly.
Cassandra shook her head and started on an alcohol-free drink.
“Pineapple ginger sparkler,” she explained. “I have the feeling you’ll like it.”
Nina loved it, as it turned out. Tessa loved her Bushwacker, and Boone joked about a Sex on the Beach, at which point Silas growled.
“Between the Sheets?”
The growl grew louder.
“Blue Hawaii would be great,” Boone hurried to correct, hiding a grin.
“What about you?” she asked Kai.
He grinned. “Backdraft.”
She raised an eyebrow. It figured a dragon would choose a flaming cocktail.
“Kai,” Tessa warned.
He laughed. “Sorry. Just kidding. But I wouldn’t mind a Lava Flow. You know how to make those?”
“Bet your ass, I do,” she murmured — too loudly, as it turned out, because everyone laughed.
Between the drinks and her familiar position behind a bar, Cassandra felt in her element for the very first time.
“What can I get you?” she asked Silas, suddenly self-conscious again. Had he been watching her the whole time?
But, no. His eyes were focused somewhere far, far away, and he gnawed on a thumbnail.
“Glenfiddich,” he said in a low, emotionless tone, as if it was imperative he never showed anyone the real him.
Cassandra reached for the whiskey bottle, waiting for someone to say something. Anything. To pep Silas up with something like, Don’t worry, we’ll figure out what to do about Drax. Or, Come on, Silas. Take the night off from worrying.
But no one seemed to notice — except little Keiki, who wound between his legs.
“Here you go,” she murmured, giving the ice cubes in his glass a swish as she handed it to him.
“Hey, Cassandra,” Boone called, yanking her attention away. “What’s the craziest thing anyone ever ordered in your bar?”
Funny how it made her ache to leave Silas sitting alone.
She forced a smile on and turned her attention back to the others. “Where do I start?”
Everyone laughed.
“Well, there was a guy who wanted our best cognac mixed with cola.”
Kai made a face. “Did you give it to him?”
“No way. Then there was this lady who wanted a martini with an olive on the side. I gave it to her, though I didn’t see the point.”
“What’s the wildest thing you ever overheard?” Tessa asked.
Oh, she had a lot of those. So she shared her best — and worst — stories, not just that evening, but over the next few days.
And gradually, with every bite of every meal, with every round of good-natured laughter, Cassandra started asking herself whether Eloise had been wrong. Were all shifters monsters or just some?
That was the question that led her to the library, where she started spending most afternoons. When Silas had first mentioned the library, she thought he meant the public institution in town.
“No, I mean the library,” he said on the third afternoon, pointing uphill. “In my house.”
Her eyes had grown wide, her steps shaky. Surely that meant the end. Silas’s patience had grown thin, and he was luring her to his place where he would attack or torture her, right?
Cassandra put on her toughest New York walk and followed, ready for anything — or so she thought. The slope grew steeper, and the path folded into a series of stone steps that aimed toward a cleft in the cliff. Then they rounded a corner and—
“That’s your house?” She halted in her tracks.
Up to that point, her focus had been on the winding flagstones that paralleled a cheerily gurgling creek. But the moment she spotted the house, her jaw dropped.
But it wasn’t. Cassandra couldn’t even count the number of walls or roofs, it was such a sprawling, curved, multistory place built entirely of…
“Bamboo?” she whispered when she finally got her feet in gear.
He nodded. “My uncle designed it.”
The comment niggled at a corner of her mind, telling her that detail was significant, somehow. But she couldn’t do anything more than stare.
There wasn’t a straight line in the building, for starters. It seemed to grow up and out of the cliff, climbing and spreading as it rose so that the upper stories were wider than the base. A magical, Disney Castle meets Jungle Book meets Sydney Opera House kind of place with open balconies and graceful, curving lines. There wasn’t a single pane of glass — the house was as open to the breeze as the meeting house — or anything like a door.
“This is amazing,” she breathed.
“It is something, isn’t it? Not to everyone’s taste, I suppose. My aunt hated it.”
“How can anyone hate this?” Cassandra said, running her hand over the smooth bamboo handrail of the sweeping staircase.
Silas paused at a huge, open balcony with breathtaking views, and Cassandra’s jaw dropped again. “Holy crap.” She slapped a hand over her mouth. “I mean, wow.”
Silas cocked his head at the view. “I suppose it is nice.”
“You suppose?”
He’d said it in a way that suggested he’d never had the time to pause and drink it all in.
“It is beautiful,” he admitted. “I remember my uncle Filimore saying he could see whales breaching from here. Not just one or two but a few every day.”
She scanned the ocean, though all she saw were whitecaps. “How long have you lived here?”
“Nearly three years.”
She stared. “And the whales come every year?”
He nodded. “For calving season, in the spring. Or so I’ve heard.”
“You’re kidding. You’ve never spent an hour just looking out? Fifteen minutes? Five?”
Silas looked at his feet and stuck his hands in his pockets, and suddenly, she could picture him at age eight or nine, being chastised for a minor offense.
She lightened her tone. One thing the man did not need was more stress, that was for sure. “Maybe we should swap places. You can take my apartment in Brooklyn, and I could house-sit for you here.”
Silas looked up with what started as a wry grin. But the moment their eyes met, he grew serious again, and his eyes began to glow. Not the angry red but the homey brick color she’d spied once or twice, and her heart thumped harder.
Maybe you should stay here with me, she imagined those eyes saying.
And hell, wouldn’t that be a Cinderella story. Dashing billionaire falls in love with New York bartender and lives happily ever after on exclusive Maui estate.
Cassandra hit the brakes before her imagination came up with an even more absurd idea. He was a dragon shifter, after all.
“So, the library?” she prompted, trying to get back on track.
“The library,” he said, clearing his throat.
He led her up another few turns of the staircase, passing an eagle’s nest of a living room, a cozy den with yet another balcony, and the world’s loftiest kitchen. None of which she paid half as much attention to as the outline of his firm ass.
Okay, okay, so he was part dragon. It wasn’t her fault she couldn’t overlook the man part. The refined, muscled, mysterious—
“Say again?” she stammered in response to whatever it was that Silas had just said.
A tiny smile played at the corners of his mouth as he motioned her forward. “This is the library. What do you think?”
Chapter Seven
“You’re welcome to read anything you like, any time,” Silas said.
Cassandra stepped into the room and turned in a breathless circle. She’d been expecting bookshelves, but the floor-to-cathedral-ceiling collection was beyond her wildest dreams. Shelves of ancient, leather-bound volumes rose on three of four sides of the trapezoidal room. The widest side opened to yet another balcony with a view over a wide swath of the estate. She turned to the shelves and ran her fingers over spines, some lettered in indecipherable script, others printed in neat block type with glittering gold trim.
Silas stood in the open doorway, arms crossed over his chest, and she wondered about dragons and treasures. Legend said that dragons loved to amass great riches. Did books fall into that category as well?
Silas wasn’t looking at the books, though. He was watching her. Frankly, she enjoyed watching him too, at least from the corner of her eye. Her dirty mind, meanwhile, spun with images like using the solid wood table for more than just reading books.
She cleared her throat and tipped one book, then another sideways.
“Shifting Through the Ages?” She squinted at the title. “Weres, Wolves, and Whims: A Glossary of Shifters Through Time. Are these all shifter books?”
“That section is.” He waved to a different shelf. “Over there are normal books, I guess you’d say. History, geography, that kind of thing. The parts humans know about, at least.”
Was that a tease in his voice? Cassandra eyed the shifter section again. She would definitely be checking those out soon.
She pulled a book out and reshelved it two spots down, tsking. “Modern Medicine, Ancient Traditions is out of alphabetical order. Mr. Llewellyn, I expected better.”
He put his hands up. “Don’t look too closely. You’ll find more.”
She did look closely — at him — as he went on.
“Believe me, there are a lot of out-of-place books in my life.”
He tapped a cardboard box with his heel — the one he’d brought from New York. More books? Still, his tone suggested books weren’t the only aspects of life he wished could be neater, tidier.
“You like things organized,” she said. A statement, not a question. “Under control.”
Her voice went a little husky on that last part as her mind galloped into forbidden territory again.
The glow in Silas’s eyes flared, and she had the distinct impression it wasn’t him peering out so much as his dragon. And somehow, instead of freaking her out, the notion made her nipples peak.
She turned quickly, hiding the flush in her cheeks. It had been ages since she’d flirted with a man, simply because no one interesting had come along. But Silas was beyond interesting. He was fascinating. Powerful, yet understated. Solitary, yet part of a tightly knit group. A simmering volcano, a force kept rigidly under control.
“Dragons of Wales: Noble & Common Lines?” She rifled through a few pages.
Silas gave an apologetic shrug. “Some shifters are a bit hung up on old ways.”
“Some shifters?”
He chuckled. “So I’ve heard.”
She pulled out a smaller book with red leather binding that carried the scent of centuries. “A Reason, A Season, A Lifetime.”
Silas nodded. “That’s a good one.”
“Mates, Myths, and Legends?”
“That must have been my great-grandmother’s. She loved that stuff.”
“And what do you love, Mr. Llewellyn?” She turned, surprising herself with her boldness.
He bit his lip, serious again. A long, thoughtful minute ticked by before he spoke. “Call me Silas.”
Her pulse skipped as if she’d just been called forward for a prize.
“Silas.” It came out a husky whisper, and Cassandra started to wonder if she had her own animal side.
His eyes traveled up and down her body, and his fists clenched at his sides.
“History,” he murmured. “Philosophy. Shakespeare.”
She snorted. He was testing her, just like she was testing him.
“I didn’t ask what you were taught to love. I asked what you love.”
His eyes sparkled, and s
he gave herself a bonus point. Was she the first to take the trouble to understand the real him?
He looked out over the vast Pacific. “What do I love? Koa Point. The people as much as the place.” He lifted a hand and absently drew a curve in the air. “I love flying at night. Pushing against the trade winds, then gliding home.”
Home. The word had a yearning, wistful quality that made her wonder what need this luxury estate failed to fulfill.
She closed her eyes and focused on the play of the breeze in her hair. What would flying be like? Could a person ride on the back of a dragon, or would that be beneath such a fabled beast?
When she opened her eyes, Silas was studying her. His lips moved as if to add one more item to his list, though no sound came out.
“And what do you love, Miss Nichols?” he whispered at last.
God, he was close. Close enough to kiss, if only she could work up the nerve.
“Call me Cassandra,” she breathed.
He hesitated then spoke so quietly, she barely heard.
“So what do you love, Cassandra?”
She kept her eyes on him. “Sunsets. Quiet city streets at night. Alto saxophones.”
His eyebrows jumped up. “Alto saxophones?”
She nodded. “I love the sound of an alto sax. And I love mixing drinks.”
Keiki strode in, rubbing against the doorframe and mewing for Silas to pick her up.
“Hey, little one,” he murmured, nestling her against his chest.
Cassandra reminded herself it wasn’t nice to be jealous of a kitten.
A muscle in Silas’s cheek twitched, and his voice dropped. “Mixing drinks or mixing potions?”
She’d been holding her breath, and she let it out slowly. So Silas knew about the witch part of her blood. He’d openly admitted that he and several of the others were private investigators, and it made sense for him to have investigated her. But, damn. She had only found out the witch thing a few weeks ago. Did Silas have some kind of secret network of spies?
Moments ago, he’d been warm, open, almost intimate. Now, his face was an impassive mask, impossible to read.
“Mixing drinks,” she said firmly. “I’m an expert in that.”