Lars grinned down at her. “Do you want coffee? There’s fruit and we can make eggs if you’re hungry.”
The kitchen was as big and modern as the rest of the house. French doors also opened to the veranda from this room. A large central island had a counter with four high stools. Lars waved her towards one. He opened the enormous stainless steel fridge. It was full of fresh food. Nicole stared in surprise.
“What is this place?” she asked quietly.
“It’s a safe house. It belongs to my family. This whole island is ours. We employ people on the mainland to look after the house and grounds. They were asked to buy food, to prepare for guests, and to leave. No one can get near San Michaela without being spotted.” Lars voice was matter of fact and calmed her nerves.
“How long will we have to stay here?” She meant, how long will we have to stay married?
He shrugged. He looked even broader in an open cotton jacket and shorts. Golden blond curls covered his thighs and calves. His chest was tattooed and smooth and rippled with heavy muscle. “We have to figure out what it is that the Russians want. And then we have to figure out how to get rid of them.”
“I have nothing,” she protested. “Felipe gave me nothing.”
“I believe you, but it’s hard to prove a negative.”
Lars didn’t seem troubled by the indefinite term of their imprisonment. Or maybe she just didn’t know how to read him.
“Matteo should be in school,” she said.
“Don’t worry for a week or two. He is a smart kid and he will soon catch up. In the meantime, this place is pretty much a paradise for a child. If you have no objection, I’ll take him swimming, and teach him the names of the plants and animals around here.”
“Natural history?” she asked laughing.
“He’s the right age to be learning such things,” Lars assured her earnestly. “It is an essential part of a child’s education.”
“I thought that was just a Swedish cliché.” Nicole sipped her coffee.
“Natural history is every child’s heritage,” Lars said emphatically. “Matteo should be keeping a journal, and writing down the names – the Latin names – of every animal and plant he meets. It’s vital that he know the correct names of living things.” His blue eyes were perfectly serious.
“The Latin names?” She found it hard to believe that even in Sweden children had much use for knowing the Latin names of plants. On the other hand, what harm could it do for Matteo to occupy himself learning about tropical plants and animals? Undoubtedly he would prefer to spend his unexpected holiday playing video games and surfing the Internet. But even if there were such things here on San Michaela, she had no intention of permitting that.
Lars nodded.
“He’s never been swimming in the ocean,” she said.
“Can he swim at all?” Lars asked.
“Some. He had lessons at school, but not very often.”
“What about you?”
Nicole blushed. “I had swimming lessons too. Long ago. I haven’t been swimming in eight years. But I went to Florida once. Does that count?”
“You’ll both have to be careful. But there’s no tide to speak of here. The water is very shallow for a long way out from the beach below the house. And then the sea floor drops away and the reef begins. That alters the currents and makes it tricky to swim or bring a boat in from that direction.”
“Convenient,” she said.
He missed her sarcasm. “Exactly. On the other side of the island the land just drops away and forms a sheer cliff that ends in rocks. It’s dangerous to swim there, not just because it is deep.” He turned to Matteo. “There are sharks and a strong undertow.”
“You swim only when you have permission,” Nicole told Matteo.
“Yes, Mom.” He smiled as beatifically as if disobedience would never cross his mind.
“The cliff and the currents also make it impossible for anyone to bring a boat up onto the island from that side. We came in by helicopter. The locals can bring boats across to San Michaela only because they know where the channel between the islands lies. And they use a specially made flat-bottomed boat. San Michaela’s defensible and we defend it.” He paused. “So do you mind if I take the boy down to the beach?”
“We’ll all go. I can learn about the local flora and fauna too.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
At least Nicole was less scared than she had been yesterday. Although she was still a quivering mass of nerves, witness her panic when she couldn’t find Matt. Yet fear was sensible. He didn’t really believe that the Russians would be able to trace her and the boy to San Michaela. This island was a secret, not generally known even to other dragons. Of course, having George and a handful of Maori dragons offshore on a yacht, and another couple of Maoris stationed over on the reef side of the island with Theo, was merely a realistic precaution.
He was going to pretend, for the boy’s sake, that this was just an ordinary honeymoon. Not that he intended to betray Annalise’s memory. Even if Nicole had not been assaulted, he would’ve kept his pecker in his pants. Pretending a commitment, was an unkind thing to do to any woman.
Yet ever since he had slipped a ring onto her hand, he had felt his sense of possession increase a thousandfold. Probably just part of being a dragon. His was an acquisitive race, prone to hoarding. His ancestors had hoarded women. Bujold the One-Eyed had had multiple wives and countless concubines. There was scarcely a European dragon lord who was not one of his descendants.
But it was no longer acceptable for a dragon to amass a harem. No one knew whether Felipe had actually married more than one young girl and transformed her into a dragoness. But Lars was not going to go down that road. He would, of course, make sure that Nicole was safe. When he had given her his name, he had promised her the protection of the House of Lindorm. Honor dictated that he keep his promise. She shouldn’t need protection from her protector.
Nicole drank the last of her coffee and stood up. “Do you think I could find such a thing as a swimsuit somewhere?”
“Sure. There’s a closet where we keep beachwear for guests. The room you’re in has a connecting door. If you want to be close to Matteo, you can move him in there or you can take that one for yourself.” Lars led the way out of the kitchen. “This house has twenty bedrooms, and you can certainly have your own.”
“I want him close, I dreamed all night of those men bursting into my bedroom.” Nicole shuddered.
“I think Matteo had a bad dream too,” he told her. “He got up and made me check all the windows because he thought he’d heard a noise. We had milk and crackers, and then he went back to bed.”
“You think he dreamed the noise?” she asked her hazel eyes shadowed.
“I thought perhaps he heard bats banging into the window screen collecting moths.” Lars shrugged. “I checked the cameras, and they hadn’t picked up anyone or anything.” He made a note to self to report Matteo’s nocturnal concerns to Theo and George. Even if it was nothing, just to be on the safe side, someone should investigate Matt’s report.
“Bats!” Nicole didn’t sound happy.
“If it wasn’t for the bats, we’d be overrun with mosquitoes.”
The closet had a set of shelves laden with brightly colored beach towels. A rod with jackets of various sizes. Below those was a bank of neatly labeled drawers.
“Help yourself,” He waved a hand.
Nicole opened the drawer marked ‘women’ and began to sort through the swimsuits. “There must be two hundred of them in here,” she said. The drawer was divided according to size, and sorted by color. She pulled out two or three of them over her arm, “I’ll try them on and see what fits.”
“Take a cover-up too. I’ll find one for Matteo as well. The sun is strong enough here that you could both get bad sunburns.” And just like that he was thinking about smoothing sunscreen into his wife’s supple skin. None of that, he admonished himself.
The adjoining bedroom w
as smaller than the one Nicole and Matteo had shared. Nicole decided to stay put, and give Matteo the smaller room. The two rooms shared a bath, but Nicole didn’t seem troubled by this.
“Get changed,” he said plunking down the tube of sunscreen. “Matteo and I will meet you on the beach.”
Nicole came out of the house wearing a bright red tank with a white star-burst that started under her magnificent bust and extended over one round hip. It was a modest swimsuit. The neckline was cut high, and the leg openings were low. She had tossed a diaphanous, long sleeved, white jacket over her suit. Perhaps she thought it concealed her since it came to mid-thigh. But in the bright sunlight, the protective cloth was perfectly transparent. She was protected from UV, not from his eyes.
He dragged his eyes away from their admiration of Nicole’s curves and back to where Matteo was digging a hole to China. The boy had found a spot where the aquamarine waves foamed in a white line on the beach. Nicole set her towel beside him, and went to investigate her son’s excavation.
“Look,” Matteo cried, “the water doesn’t come this far, but when I dig, my hole fills up with sea.”
“Cool,” Nicole said. “Do you want some help?”
“No. I’m going to see how far down I can go.” Matteo scooped out a shovelful of mingled sand and water. “Do you see how the water comes up and fills the hole and makes it small again?”
“I do. Have you been for a swim yet?”
Matteo shook his head. “Señor Lars said we had to wait for you.”
“When you’re finished with your hole, we’ll go then,” Nicole said. She walked back up the beach and sat down on the lounger next to Lars.
“He seems to have recovered from his disturbed night,” commented Lars.
“I think so. He’s a pretty placid kid. How long do you think we will have to stay here?”
“As long as it takes. But you must not concern yourself about the future. You’re part of the House of Lindorm now, we’ll make sure that you have some place to live and something to live on. You’re our responsibility now.” He could see that his words did not please her.
“I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but I’m used to standing on my own two feet. I don’t see that the House of Lindorm – whatever that is – is required to look after me as if I was a child.” Her pretty face was flushed and her voice was embarrassed.
“The House of Lindorm consists of our extended family. There are a lot of us. But the world of dragons is small one,” Lars explained. “Believe me, my life would not be worth living, if I had an ex-wife who was destitute. My family would be mortified. And angry with me. And given that you’re an orphan, everyone would be appalled if I didn’t offer you some new relatives. Besides, Matteo has grandparents and an uncle who will all want to meet him. It’s possible that he is the heir to the Duchy of Estremaura.”
“What?”
“Felipe Balcazar Mendez was the Duke of Estremaura’s eldest son. When Felipe died, the Duke and the rest of Dragonry believed that Felipe’s younger brother Ramon was the Duke’s new heir. But of course no one knew about you or Matteo. If it was a legal marriage, that makes Matteo Felipe’s heir and therefore the Duke’s.” Lars rolled his shoulders. “We haven’t told the Estremauras about you and Matteo yet. And we’re going to have to look everywhere in the world, in case the trick Felipe played on you was one he had used before.”
“Stan found him on the Internet,” Nicole said.
“Stan would be your stepfather?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll find him too.” There must have been something dangerous in his voice because she shrank back from him. He attempted to smile but her frightened expression didn’t alter.
“I haven’t had any luck,” she continued. “I’ve tried everything I could think of and every combination of names, but after he left Buenos Aires, Stan disappeared. If he went back to the States, he’s using a different name.”
“Duly noted,” Lars said. “If he’s still alive, we’ll find him. Do you know what website he found Felipe on?”
“It’s gone. It winked out about six months after I got to Santa Rosa. One day it was there, and the next it was like it had never been. I don’t know what happened. But it was gone and it never came back.”
“We’ve got experts,” Lars assured her. “If it was on the Internet once, we’ll find some trace of it.”
Matteo came racing up the beach. He had a small, pointed, black and white shell on his palm. “Look,” he shouted, “I found a shell with legs!”
Lars got to his feet, picked up the shiny green notebook he had brought down to the beach and accompanied Matteo to the rock pool where the boy had found his shell-with-legs.
“Señor,” Matteo said hesitantly, “Are you really married to my mother?”
“Certainly,” Lars assured him. What had prompted the boy’s question?
“Does that mean you’re my father?”
“Stepfather.”
“Oh. Are we going to live with you forever?” Matteo continued.
The boy’s dark eyes were anxious. Of course. He didn’t know what was going on. How could he? The adults around him didn’t know what was going on. And naturally he wanted to understand. Lars should’ve expected this line of questioning, but he had not. He wanted to relieve the boy’s mind, but he didn’t want to make him false promises.
“Would you like that?” Lars asked in lieu of making a commitment he couldn’t keep.
“I don’t know. Do you have any other children, Señor?”
“None at all.”
“What happened to your other wife?”
“How did you know I was married before?”
Matteo turned incredulous eyes to Lars’. “It said so on the paper you signed. And besides, the other Señor Lindorm, said so too.”
Lars supposed he should not be surprised to discover that Matteo had inherited a dragon’s ease of understanding many languages. His cousin Wilfred had been speaking to his wife in Swedish. “My first wife died.”
Matteo nodded. “How?” he asked with a child’s uncomplicated nosiness.
“She had something wrong with a blood vessel in her brain, it burst and killed her.”
“Could that happen to my mom?”
“No. It’s very rare. It won’t happen to your mother.” It was a lie because Lars couldn’t know that. But he didn’t think a seven-year-old needed to have his nose rubbed in his only parent’s mortality.
“Why are these other shells stuck to the rock?” As abruptly as he had begun to question Lars about their relationship, Matteo switched his focus back to the sea creatures in the rock pool.
“Those shells still have the mollusk that made them inside. They are Zebra Nerite, Puperita pupa . The ones with the legs have been borrowed by small crabs. In English, they’re called hermit crabs, but their real name is Coenobita clypeatus. That’s the one you should write down in your journal. But first you must draw some pictures so that you can remember what creature goes with which name.”
“What’s a mollusk?”
Lars told him.
“Is it called a Zebra nerite because it has stripes like a zebra?”
“Probably.”
Matteo dried his damp hands on his T-shirt. He opened the journal Lars had given him and began to draw a picture of the snail clinging to the rock, and another one of the hermit crab. His pink tongue protruded between his teeth as he concentrated. The sketches were inexpert but it was plain what both creatures were. “How do you spell Coenobita clypeatus?” he asked.
Lars spelled the letters slowly so the boy could print them beside his little sketches. He felt a lump in his throat. He could remember keeping just such a record, and adding to his finds on many an expedition with his father and brothers. How could Felipe have abandoned his wife and child and missed out on this lovable boy’s childhood? Because Lars didn’t for one moment suppose that Felipe could not have found his runaway bride had he wanted to. Nicole’s idea of an impre
gnable alias, had been about as effective as a baby playing peekaboo.
Matteo did not return to the subject of whether or not Lars would continue to be his stepfather. No one had thought about the effect of this impromptu marriage on the boy. Lars glanced up the beach. Nikki was reading a magazine. Or at least she was leafing through one. It was Swedish and several years old. But behind her giant sunglasses, she appeared to be fully occupied. It would be no hardship to stay married to her. And the boy was a powerful draw. He had always expected – longed – to be a father.
The sea rushed up under their feet, and dragged the sand away. Crouched as he was beside the pool, Lars struggled to keep his balance. Matteo fell over, but he held the green journal triumphantly over his head.
“Time to swim,” Lars said and they went back up the beach to Nicole.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Boris Chekhov walked warily down the cracked and flaking concrete steps of the derelict office complex. He automatically scanned the dank basement hallway at the foot of the staircase. His flashlight barely penetrated the gloom. He didn’t spot any cameras. Nevertheless, he was certain his progress was being monitored. To mask his anxiety, he kept his pace unhurried and his expression impassive. His instructions were to come alone and unarmed. He was alone. His bodyguards were several blocks away outside the subway station.
Odéen was uncannily omniscient. Punishment for even trivial disobedience was swift, severe and lethal. Boris had left his gun with Sergio and Alex. But even the knife in his boot would rate a death sentence. He had had decades of pretending nonchalance in stressful situations. Perhaps he could conceal his dread one last time. Not that the Boss had any objection to fear. Fear was Odéen’s weapon of choice. Odéen would expect his Dva to be quaking in his Italian boots at this unusual meeting.
Boris concentrated on projecting unconcern or even disdain. The dingy surroundings made his pretense more plausible. Dark gray paint had peeled from the metal doors and lay crumbling on the bare concrete floor. The locks had long since been scavenged by thieves. Even the fitted carpets had been stolen, leaving only stained concrete, trash and glue underfoot. A rat scuttled away at his approach. The place was a dump. Perfect for an ambush. Boris braced for attack.
Dragon's Possession_BBW / Dragon Shifter Romance Page 13