by Milly Taiden
“You got it, sweets.” Isa hopped up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “Are you a newbie here?”
He smirked. “Unfortunately, I am. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know a lot of other things. I just usually pay others to build the hotels for me, not do it myself.”
She snatched up his hand and rubbed her thumb over his smooth palm. “Yeah, I could tell you don’t like to get your hands dirty.”
He jerked his arm back. “Hey, I get my hands dirty,” he sounded exasperated. “I just usually wash them pretty quickly.” Isa laughed at how adorable he was. He grabbed her from the side, hugging her to him and poked her ribs. She squirmed and laughed. Chills ran through her from his touch. She couldn’t wait for the time no clothes were between them.
They approached the woman who’d hollered her name seconds ago. “Hey, Evelyn.” She gestured toward Beast. “This is—well, call him Beast.” She could only imagine what Evie thought about his studly name.
She reached out her hand to him. “Hi, Beast. I’m Evelyn. Call me Evie.”
He shook her hand. “Glad to meet you.”
A bit flustered and pink-cheeked, Evie turned to her. “Isa, I thought you could work on hanging, taping, and floating since you’re so good at that.”
“Perfect,” Isa replied. She loved working with drywall mud and the all the tools needed to make clean walls. It was a job that required patience and attention to details to get right. “Drywall on the truck still?”
“The guys carried in several sheets already. Plus a few boxes of nails. Whatever room they put them in is fine to start with. It all needs to be done,” Evie said.
A crash sounded along the side of the house, turning them around. Isa saw several men on the roof and the ladder lying on the dirt. Two guys on the ground ran over to put it back against the outer wall. Yeah, working that far off the earth wasn’t something she cared to do. All the shingle work, she gladly passed on to someone else.
“Sounds great,” she said to Evie and grabbed Beast’s hand, guiding him inside. “This will be fun. The only way to hurt yourself is smashing your fingers with the hammer.”
Beast snorted. “Yeah, sounds great,” he used her words with a hint of sarcasm. They walked past people doing various tasks from stuffing insulation between studs to sweeping up sawdust.
Stopping to look around to get a feel for the layout, Isa scanned the area. The concept looked to be very open with wider than normal doorways and no stairs. The veteran they were building for, or someone in that family, might have been confined to a wheelchair.
Pride and gratitude coursed through her knowing she could be helping someone who fought and sacrificed for the country. Whether or not she agreed with the politics of the war didn’t matter. This person willingly walked into death’s face so she, Isaline Primrose, could say anything she wanted, go anywhere she wanted, and live however she wanted.
Without these men and women who put themselves between American freedom and those who would gladly strip it away, the world would slowly be overtaken by greed, hate, and intolerance to the point that no one could save mankind from themselves.
Beast moved away from her, drawing her attention to a group of people laying flooring in one of the open areas. He asked one of the men a question and was directed to another guy in a red shirt. Isa recognized the red-shirted man as the construction head—the guy who had the blueprints and knew what was going on.
As Beast headed his way, she hurried to catch up with him. The grimace on Beast’s face told her this conversation wasn’t going to be a pleasant one. She wanted to ask Beast what the deal was but didn’t reach him in time.
When she joined the two men, both were looking at the exposed rafters and roof. Beast said, “With that distance, you need at least one brace between those two walls.”
The foreman shook his head. “According to the plans the engineers drew up, no support is needed.”
“I’m telling you,” Beast continued, “that span needs support. You get a heavy load of snow or any weight pressing down, and it will fall in no time.”
“The roof is angled enough to keep most snow accumulation off. I’m saying it’s safe,” the man said.
“You’re not listening—” Beast’s eyes began to show his dragon, and Isa put a hand on his arm to calm him.
“Hey,” she said, “can we talk over there for a minute?” She pulled on him when he didn’t move. Though she dragged him along, his and the foreman’s eyes remained locked in heated debate. Isa guided him into another room out of eye sight from the rest of the group.
“Beast, if you’re so worried about something happening, we can talk to Evie and have her take care of it.”
Footsteps came into the room. “Have Evie deal with what?” Evie asked, making her way in.
Beast ran fingers through his hair. “I don’t think the construction is as sounds as it should be.”
“Why not?” Evie asked, her brows pinched.
“If you do the math,” he said, “you’ll see that the distance between some of the crossbeams is too much for possible stress loads. It will collapse with any substantial weight.”
Evie asked, “You know this because...”
Beast hung his head. Isa wondered what he didn’t want to say in front of Evie. Whatever it was probably had to do with his age or dragon. A reason popped into Isa’s mind.
22
“Beast owns several hotels,” she said, “all of which he’s been involved with from the get go. Some built brand new while others he’s renovated, and he sees this kind of stuff all the time.” She flipped her hand in the air like it was no big deal.
Evie stared at her for a moment then nodded. “Okay, I’ll talk to the construction guys and get them to recheck their numbers.”
“Thank you, Evie,” Isa said, hooking her arm around her friend’s and walking her out of the room. “Beast just doesn’t want anyone getting hurt.”
“Sure. I’ll call them now.” Evelyn pulled her phone from her back pocket and walked toward the house’s entrance.
Isa let out a deep breath and hurried back into the room with Beast. “Is she going to call them now?” he asked.
“Yes, I think you worried her enough to take action.”
“Good. I don’t like what I see out there.” He lifted a piece of drywall. “Let’s start in here. I don’t want you anywhere near that side of the house.”
“Works for me,” she said. Though she thought he was being a bit overdramatic about the roof collapsing, her heart warmed knowing he cared about the safety of someone he’d never met. “Set the board with the ends on the studs, then we’ll hammer it into the wood.”
From a container on the floor, she grabbed a handful of short nails and dumped them in a pocket on her pouch. When Beast place the board against the wood, she hammered in the first fastener and followed up with a second nail several inches above and below.
“So,” she said, “how do you really know about the roof problem? Was my guess right?”
“Yes and no,” he waffled. “I have seen a lot of renovation work, but that wouldn’t have taught me what I know about stress dynamics and such.”
“What did teach you about such?” she asked playfully, handing him nails.
“In the late 1800s, I worked—”
“Wait, what?” she cut in. “How—”
“Isa,” he said, “remember, I’m two hundred years old.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh,” was all she could think to say to that. “Go on.”
“I worked with Wilbur and Orville Wright for a while—”
“Hold on,” she interrupted again. “Wright as in inventors of the airplane Wright?”
“They really didn’t invent the plane, but yes, the Wright brothers,” he replied.
“What do you mean? All the history books say they did, at Kitty Hill,” she said.
“Kitty Hawk,” he corrected. “And they invented the three-axis control which enabled the craft to be maneuvered in
the air. The wings and stuff had pretty much been worked out, though we did modify them to get them to work correctly.”
She gave him a knowing wink. “I bet you have special knowledge about wings, eh?”
Beast stopped hammering and sidled up behind her, his growing cock positioned in the crack of her ass. “You bet I do. Why do you think I volunteered to help them?”
She wiggled her ass against him. He groaned and pushed her against the studs. She giggled at her teasing, then bent at the waist and pushed him back. If anyone caught them, they’d get kicked out of there for all that indecency. They needed to cool it.
“You volunteered?” That surprised her. She was used to people wanting to be paid for any work they’d done. That was one reason she liked this habitat organization—everyone gave without any expectation of repayment except the happy faces on the owners when they stepped inside for the first time.
“Well, I did have an ulterior motive, sorta,” he replied. Nooooo! Her heart fell. So he wasn’t the generous person she’d hoped. “I’d gotten tired of having to shift every time I wanted to go somewhere at any distance. I figured humans felt the same. Not the shifting part, of course, but the desire to travel and see new things and learn about different cultures. When I heard that a couple brothers were close to coming up with a design, I sought them out.”
Maybe she was a bit hasty in her assumption. “What did you help with?”
“A lot of different things, really. The mathematical formulas they were using for lift were wrong as were the fine details needed for wing-warping. So I—”
“Wait. Wing warping?” she said.
“Yeah, that’s the term I used so they could get it easier. When a dragon, or a bird, wants to change direction, we angle the tips of the wing to make our bodies roll left or right. I demonstrated by twisting a long inner-tube box they had at their bicycle shop.”
“They had a bike shop?” Isa asked. “I didn’t know that.”
Beast snorted. “There’s a lot of things most people don’t know about the brothers.”
“Like what?” She hammered in more nails as Beast thought about her question.
“Did you know that neither received a diploma for graduating high school?” he said.
She almost dropped her hammer. “No way. How could they be smart enough to figure out how to fly?”
“Life experience and a shit ton of trial and error.” A sexy, sly smile slid across his face. “And of course, they had me, dragon extraordinaire.”
“You’re so not full of yourself at all,” she giggled.
She lifted her hammer and pointed to the drywall. He continued nailing with his story. “Let’s see. Orville was expelled from grade school once. He really didn’t care for school. He dropped out before his senior year.”
“What else?” she asked.
“Neither brother married, I don’t think.”
Isa gasped. “Were they gay?”
He chuckled at her expression. “You don’t have to whisper it. It’s no longer the 1800s and being gay is accepted for the most part,” Beast told her with that humor in his eyes.
She nodded. “I know it is! I got caught up in the story.”
“They were married to their work. I’d never been around two more dedicated people. They had a goal and they wouldn’t rest until they had achieved it.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine being that obsessed with something.” But she could see how easy it would be to become obsessed with one certain dragon. Hot, sexy dragon. “But how did working with planes and three-axis whatever teach you about math for stress on roofs?”
“With the boys, I learned the dynamics in the wind tunnel we built in their house.” That got her attention again. “But the math part came later with Einstein.”
Her brain stumbled again, and she stopped moving altogether. “You mean Albert Einstein? The smartest person that ever lived? E=mc2 and all that?”
He picked up another piece of drywall and set it butted against the first one. “That would be him.”
A squeal left her, and she wanted to shake the massive man. “Oh my god. What was he like?” she asked. How exciting of a life could one person have? For such a city person, he was turning out to be a lot more interesting than she could have ever imagined.
“He was certainly not like history portrayed him as,” he answered.
23
“No way.” Isaline ignored her work, turning to him fully. She had to hear this. “What was he really like?”
Beast laughed. “He was quite the Romeo, sleeping around, even when married.”
“Albert Einstein, the womanizer,” she snorted. “Who would’ve thought? I didn’t even know he was married.”
“Twice, actually. His first wife was Mileva Marić. She was a fellow student of Einstein’s. She was a math and science genius herself.”
“Figures. Brainy people stick together,” she replied.
“Hold on. They divorced,” he said.
“That’s a shame. Did they have any children?” Then she thought about what being the child of Albert Einstein would be like. “Were they all geniuses, too?”
His face turned sad, surprising her. “Their first child was a girl. I forgot her name, but she was born before they were married. It was kept a secret until about thirty years ago.”
“How did they keep her secret? Locked up or something?”
“I think she died of some illness as a baby. Scarlet fever or typhoid. Something. Al never talked about it.”
Isa snickered. “Al? What else about Al?”
“Well, even though he was a genius, he told me he didn’t start speaking as a child until he was around three years old. Some kind of autism, I think.”
Isa dropped her hammer. “Einstein had autism? What?”
Beast shrugged. “I’m not sure exactly what some doctor called the condition, but it wasn’t unheard of at the time. And he could make a violin sing to break your heart. I’d never heard such music until he picked it up one day and started playing.”
Amazing. She knew string instruments were some of the hardest to accomplish. It took years to master if one even did. “Go back to his wife. Why did they divorce?”
“What a mess his first marriage was. I don’t know why they married in the first place. The had two boys—”
“Both smart as whips?” she asked.
“Unfortunately, the brains didn’t carry down to the next generation. In fact, the second boy had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and stayed in an institution most of his adult life.”
“How horrible.” Isa’s heart hurt for both father and son. “That must’ve been hard for the family.”
“Al never talked about Eduard. I mailed several letters he wrote to his son, but I found out most of this from Millie—his wife’s nickname. Eduard died in his fifties in a psychiatric hospital.”
“I bet that put a lot of strain on the marriage.”
Beast shrugged again. “I stayed out of that part of his life. But I know he offered her as a divorce settlement all the money he’d get when he won the Nobel Prize—and that was before he won it.”
“What? How did he know he’d win it?”
Beast shook his head. “Don’t know. Maybe he could see into the future, too.”
“Did his second marriage work out?” she asked. “If so, maybe he could.” By the grimace on his face, she could tell Al wasn’t a psychic. “What’s that face for?”
“Uh, well, his second wife was his mother’s sister’s daughter.”
“Her what?” Quickly the family relations added up in her head and she understood his expression. “He married his first cousin? What the hell?”
Before he could reply, his phone rang in his back pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen. “Hey, babe, I need to take this. I’ll be right back.” He walked out of the room, leaving her speechless. What else did her dragon man know? And who else did he know?
Maybe Beast would fit into her life. He didn’t a
rgue when asked to help with the drywall. He hadn’t even smashed any fingers yet. He stayed out of Al’s personal life, which told her he respected other’s privacy and probably expected the same in return.
And then sharing his knowledge with two strangers wanting to make the world a better place for humans. Who would’ve figured the heart of this dragon would be as big as it was?
Could she see herself with Beast for the rest of her life? Abso-freaking-lutely! Especially if there was more of that intimacy they shared. That connection that seemed to be growing by the second between them. Was he the one? She really hoped so, because she was so close to going all in to the idea of long-term with Beast.
What would their children be like? That thought worried her. Would she give birth to dragons or two-legged babies? Either way, they’d be just like Beast. So perhaps that didn’t matter. She’d think about that when the time came.
Then there was always his money situation. But he’d proven to be humble and generous. Not flaunting his wealth or flashing expensive things to impress others. If he ever did any of that, she’d dump him like a hot potato. She had no tolerance for braggarts or bullies.
Forever with Beast seemed so easy. He made her laugh, wasn’t perfect, though he totally looked it, and the clincher—he loved meatlovers pizza with extra cheese and sauce.
Yeah. He’d asked her to be his mate, told her he could never see himself with anyone else, but she’d been sex drugged and hadn’t answered. Now that she was clear minded, she could tell him she would be his. Only his.
His absence had been longer than she expected. She wondered if something was wrong. Sticking her hammer in the pouch’s side loop, she went in search of him.
Throughout the house, more people had come to work. With it being winter, most wanted to do inside tasks. Only the roofers were the ones in the cold. She didn’t know how they all could stand being out there.
From around the corner, she heard Beast’s voice. The anger in it stopped her in her tracks.