The Dragon's Secret Queen

by Jasmine Wylder

  The grizzly was looking at her with a strange expression, a curious gaze. It seemed possible that she read something else in that look. It felt like… sympathy. Jo looked straight into the animal’s eyes. The bear moved no farther and Jo felt a shuddering breath escape her.

  It was probably only a few seconds that they stood like that, their eyes locked, but it felt like eternity.

  Look away, look away, Jo kept telling herself, but try as she might she could not look away. She felt something passing between her and the grizzly and it was as if they were trapped in time and space together, just them.

  Then, just as quickly as he’d come, the grizzly left. He thundered off into the forest and Jo watched the shaking trees quiver as the only sign of his retreat.

  “I’m alive,” she breathed. She looked down at herself then over at the huge paw prints left in the mud, the only sign that she hadn’t dreamed the creature.

  Jo opened her mouth and let out a shaky breath.

  Chapter Two

  Clayton Porter paced in his library. There was a fire in the grate and Clayton walked close to its light.

  It was quickly growing dark outside and Clayton was still thinking about the girl. His first instinct had been to come home and forget about her, sit into one of his oversized brown leather chairs and get lost in Proust, but he'd been unsuccessful in his attempt.

  His mind kept wandering back to her big blue eyes, the full curve of her face, the full curve of her body.

  She looked like she'd been through something. She looked cold, scared, and she'd been crying. The longer he'd been home the more he'd been thinking that he'd done the wrong thing in leaving her there… but the longer he was home the less likely it would be to find her. That was an excuse, of course, he could find her if he wanted to, but he wasn't at all sure if he did want to.

  “Are you ready for supper sir?” Lincoln said with the same placid look he always wore. Lincoln had been Clayton’s father’s man and Clayton had decided to keep him on in the twenty years since his father’s death.

  “Yes, I’ll be down in a moment,” Clayton turned away from the other man and looked into the fireplace. “Actually,” Clayton called out to Lincoln’s retreating figure, “I think I’ll be a little late for dinner tonight.”

  Lincoln turned to look at Clayton, “Very good, sir.”

  Clayton listened to the sound of Lincoln’s footsteps receding. Was he really going to put on his boots and tromp around looking for a girl?

  There was no use avoiding it, it would bother him all night otherwise. He would just have to figure it out when he found her.

  Taking a deep breath he walked away from the fire and out of his library into the main hall. Clayton’s parents had owned homes in Connecticut, London, Paris, a penthouse in Manhattan. They'd traveled extensively and lived just about everywhere, but since the death of his father and quick demise of his mother, Clayton had taken residence in the Montana mansion and stayed put.

  He didn't like traveling, he hadn't liked it then and he didn't like it now. He liked the trees of the forest, the mountains, and the lakes. He liked the plants that grew naturally in uncultivated soil. He liked the solitude.

  He'd taken over the family business once he'd graduated with his MBA from Harvard and managed to grow the family's assets by more than 500%. It was something that Clayton gave "staying out of it" a lot of credit too. He had the feeling that most people stuck their nose where it didn't belong.

  Clayton held conference calls and emailed but mostly he relied on cold hard numbers to do the talking for him. He made 99% of his decisions off of the numbers that populated on his computer every morning.

  He was headed down the broad wood steps when Lincoln walked into view at the bottom of the staircase. Clayton stopped.

  “Yes?” he stood with his foot overhanging the next step down. He could always tell by the look on Lincoln’s face that the man had some news for him.

  “There’s someone at the front door, sir.” There was something in the way Lincoln said it that told Clayton it wasn’t one of the local men he occasionally brought to the house to talk business with.

  “It’s a woman,” Lincoln said the word slowly as if Clayton might not grasp his meaning. “A rather distraught looking woman.”

  Clayton nodded his head. Suddenly every instinct he’d had to run away, to keep well away from this woman, came flooding back to him. Lincoln could certainly handle a woman without Clayton’s help. He stood staring at Lincoln, undecided on what to do.

  “Shall I deal with her, sir?” Lincoln seemed to be reading his mind. Clayton looked at the older man. He didn’t particularly like being thought of as someone who couldn’t handle his own affairs. He was quite capable, as he demonstrated every day, in running and growing a multi-billion dollar estate.

  “You can send her up to the library,” Clayton let his words grow crisp.

  He turned and went straight back up the stairs and into his library. The image of the woman passed through his mind again. What was he doing? He should have agreed—let Lincoln deal with her.

  “Sir,” Lincoln’s voice came from the door to the library. “This is Ms. Josephine Wentlandt.”

  Clayton turned to see the woman. Her blue eyes found his and Clayton had to look away. His gaze moved at first to the fire then moved back to the cool blue of her eyes.

  “What can I do for you Ms. Wentlandt?” Clayton tried to keep his voice as formal and impersonal as possible.

  The woman stood stuck to her spot. She looked around at the room then looked over Clayton. She seemed unreasonably calm and the open emotions he’d been able to see so clearly in her before were nowhere to be found now.

  Suddenly she smiled.

  “I’m afraid I got lost,” the woman practically blushed and Clayton turned his head to the side. He was trying to figure out just what was going on. He was certain that she was lying, that the smile, the bashfulness, were all a ruse… but why?

  “Did you?” Clayton didn’t think much about what he was saying as he was trying to decipher some enigmatic code that he, quite obviously, didn’t understand.

  “Yes,” the woman’s face turned to him sharply. She clearly hadn’t planned on his second guessing her.

  “Well, Lincoln can take you into town,” Clayton nodded at Lincoln.

  “It will only be a matter of minutes, I’ll just go around to get the car,” Lincoln gave a small nod to Clayton before turning his attentions to the woman.

  "No," all of the lighthearted pretenses left her voice. "I mean…I'm not feeling at all well."

  “Then hadn’t you better go into town to see a doctor?” Clayton moved closer. He was entranced by those eyes. In one moment he didn’t want to see them go in the next he wanted them out of his sight.

  “Nothing serious, nothing a little rest won’t cure.” She looked to the fire then at the room, “You have a lovely home.”

  “Thank you,” Clayton looked around at the room as if seeing it for the first time.

  “Would you mind terribly if I rested for a bit here?” she asked. Her eyes were large and Clayton, for a moment, could see the fear in them once again.

  “Of course,” he motioned to the seat across from him.

  “What would you like to do about dinner, sir?” Lincoln began to leave.

  “Can I persuade you to take dinner with me, Ms. Wentlandt?”

  “That would be much appreciated,” she smiled weakly as she sat into the large brown chair.

  Clayton looked at Lincoln, “Perhaps some tea and water for now.”

  Lincoln left the room and Clayton sat in the chair opposite the woman.

  “Thank you,” she lifted her large blue eyes to his, “and please call me Jo.”

  “Jo,” Clayton tried out the name and watched as the energy seemed to drain from the woman across from him. “If you don’t mind my saying so you look very tired. You should consider letting Lincoln take you into town after dinner.”

  “No, no,
” her eyes flickered away from his and he could see that her mind was somewhere else. “I was camping nearby…I got lost. I can go in search of my campsite tomorrow.”

  “Camping?”

  Jo nodded with a brief smile.

  “You must have been very scared, lost on your own in the wild?” Clayton pressed.

  “No, not really…” she tried to gain back some of the energy she had presented earlier but he saw that she was struggling to keep up the act.

  “What if you’d come across a wild animal? What if you’d come across a bear?” Clayton watched her very carefully. Jo’s entire countenance changed and she looked up at Clayton in a way that surprised him. He was almost sorry that he’d brought it up.

  “Are there many bears in these parts?” Jo was watching Clayton as carefully as he was watching her.

  “Of course,” Clayton tried to dismiss the notion. “I suppose you must be very hungry if you’ve been lost from your camp site for very long.”

  “I am,” Jo looked away from Clayton and into the fire.

  The two sat silently for a long minute, the sound of the fire crackling the only thing between them.

  “Do you mind my asking…but are you Clayton Porter?” Jo’s question was quick and sharp. Clayton felt like he was being struck with a hot poker.

  He stood, “Are you a journalist?”

  He knew she wasn’t but something about her made him suspicious. Something wasn’t right. She was hiding something and he didn’t trust her.

  Jo put a hand to her chest, “Me? No, of course not.”

  Clayton walked across the rows of old, leather-bound editions, and looked out the nine-foot window down onto the back of the house.

  “I just assumed, since you are in a house like this one, out in the middle of the forest…everyone knows who you are,” Jo’s voice bounced over the books and into Clayton’s ears.

  “Lincoln will bring you your tea in here, I’d better go see to dinner,” Clayton turned and walked past Jo, past the fire, and out of the library.

  Chapter Three

  Jo shivered as Clayton left the library. The fire in the grate certainly warmed things up but she’d caught a chill that didn’t want to leave her body so easily.

  Had she said something wrong? Had she been impertinent to assume his identity? No, he was a fool to think that everyone in Montana…the United States and probably the world…didn’t know who he was. He was one of the richest men on earth. His reclusive nature only added to the media speculation and questions about him.

  It had been Clayton Porter’s company that was going to unleash so much destruction on the beauty of these parts. She knew instinctively that if she brought up her concerns, the protest she’d been a part of, he would certainly kick her back out where she came from, or hand her over to his lackey’s.

  Was it possible…? Had he ordered them to kill Rick? Had he told them that they should do whatever it took?

  Jo shook her head, none of it really made any sense to her. Why would a man like Clayton, rich beyond belief, want to ruin the place he lived? Presumably, he lived in the middle of nowhere because he actually enjoyed it.

  “Some refreshment for you,” the butler walked in with some water, hot tea, and a warm wet towel.

  “Thank you so much,” Jo understood that she owed it to this man that she was even sitting in Clayton Porter’s house. He’d sensed her distress or maybe felt pity for her, but he’d gone to ask the owner of the house about letting her in and for that she was truly grateful.

  “Dinner will be in twenty minutes, you can freshen up in the room directly to the left of this one.” Lincoln turned and left Jo to her water and tea. Jo wanted to cry for the comfort of it all. She’d been so thirsty and cold.

  And what would happen when she left this house? She couldn’t stay here forever. Could she have Lincoln take her to the airport… to the police station?

  These men were powerful. They had resources that Jo couldn’t possibly know about. Had they paid the local police to look the other way?

  Jo felt a wave of panic threaten to engulf her. She stared at the fire and forced herself to breathe normally again.

  “Everything will be ok,” Jo lied to herself. She just had to get somewhere safe. Into the mountains, to another state, she could always hitchhike to Canada. She wasn’t sure what or where would be safe but she knew this wasn’t it.

  Jo washed her face and found that Lincoln had left a comb, clean towel, and extra toothbrush in the bathroom for her. She smiled when she saw the items then frowned deeply when she looked at herself in the mirror.

  She looked like a wild animal. Her hair shot out at odd angles and her face had splotches of mud and what she thought might be Rick's blood. She let the water grow hot then scrubbed at her skin. She used the hand soap and tried to wash the rest of her as best she could.

  Her skin felt sore and looked pink by the time she was done but she did feel a good deal better. Perhaps she would be able to borrow a jug of water and some blankets before she left.

  Exhaustion was pulling at the edges of her mind. She’d not let herself sleep and the adrenaline from the previous evening had now worn off. Her energy ebbed and bobbed like a buoy in the ocean, but hunger and her unquenchable thirst pulled at her just as much.

  Jo walked into the dining room and was surprised to find it a cozy little room. When she looked around Jo froze. There were two Edward Hopper paintings and a larger than life Winslow Homer seascape all lined up together on the dining room wall. Jo caught her breath as she looked at them.

  “Are these… are they real?” she asked stupidly.

  “Quite,” Clayton’s voice sounded disinterested and Jo didn’t wonder. He’d probably been looking at them for ages. There were probably even better paintings in the other rooms.

  Jo turned and sat down at the table. There was only one other place set so it wasn’t hard to pick a spot.

  “This is a nice little room,” Jo smiled, “I mean it’s cozy.”

  “There’s a more formal dining room, and then the large dining room, but I prefer this one… especially when it’s just me.” Clayton sounded as if he regretted the fact that it wasn’t just him.

  “I hope I’m not too much of an imposition,” she was beginning to feel a bit annoyed at his obvious distaste at having her there.

  She settled into the chair opposite his. The table was laden with various dishes and Clayton leaned forward and picked up a bowl of sweet potatoes, heaping some onto his plate then handing the dish to her.

  “So you live here by yourself?” Jo was having an internal fight over her curiosity, her distaste in his answers, and the awkward silence they now found themselves in.

  Clayton’s rich brown eyes looked at her. He had stubble growing in, which only increased the pronouncement of his jaw and the cutting line of his face. He was an incredibly handsome man, Jo had thought so the moment she’d set eyes on him. He had dark brown eyes and thick brown hair that Jo found an urge to put her fingers through.

  The moment she’d seen him she’d thought there was something… familiar about him. She’d felt as if she’d met him before, but that also seemed preposterous. She wondered if he’d come into town secretly, pretending to be a normal guy just getting a beer, it was possible—not probable perhaps, but possible.

  Jo heaped salad onto her plate then looked at the white fish with capers. Her stomach growled loudly and Jo looked up to see if Clayton had heard it too.

  Clayton’s eyes were on her and Jo laughed at the look on his face.

  “I’m sorry, I haven’t eaten in awhile, my stomach has no manners,” she looked at the dishes on the table, “and everything looks so good.”

  Clayton smiled back at her, “Don’t apologize for being hungry… and yes, I live here by myself—I mean, besides Lincoln.”

  “Don’t you get lonely all the way out here?” She remembered how much fun she’d had when the group of protestors had originally formed. They’d talked and laughed
, made meals together, been like a little family, until…

  “Perhaps, sometimes, but most of the time I appreciate the solitude.” His answer was surprisingly honest and Jo felt herself relax back into her chair.

  “To food and solitude,” she raised her wine glass. Clayton raised his as well and their glasses clanked with a brassy sound before they both drank.

  “Thank you for letting me stay to dinner,” Jo put her wine glass down in front of her plate.

  “Is there someone we can call for you?” Clayton put his napkin on his lap and looked up at Jo.

  “Call?” Jo thought of Rick, that was who she would call if she were really only lost in the woods.

  “From your campsite? Do you know the location of where you set up, I’m sure I can find a map.” Clayton was eyeing her with a peculiar look.

  “A map would be great, thank you. I’m sure I’ll find them without a problem.” Jo felt her stomach clench.

  Clayton nodded slowly and began to eat his food. There was silence once again at the table and Jo began to let her imagination run wild. She could take Clayton’s car in the night, leave a note and let him know where he could find it… a few towns over perhaps… Wyoming maybe…

  “I am by the way,” his voice came across the table interrupting her train of thought.

  “You are what?” She stopped with her fork in the air.

  "Clayton Porter. At least once a year I get a journalist or someone trying to get my story. Lincoln always weeds them out, though, so I needn't really have worried."

  Jo assumed that was as close as Clayton ever got to apologizing. Not really a smooth talker for all his business deals and prowess.

  “I assumed you were… who else would you be?” Jo took a bite of her fish and closed her eyes. The rich buttery texture mixed with the salty capers was unlike anything she had ever tasted, “This is amazing.”

  “Thank you,” Clayton smiled for the first time since she’d been there and it looked good on him.

  Jo smiled at Clayton as if he’d made it himself and not a fancy chef.

  “I made it,” Clayton said just as Jo put another forkful into her mouth.