“Not quite.” Suddenly Moira was shivering inside her elegant little black dress and cashmere blazer. She wasn’t cold, but she was afraid. Adrian was dangerous. More dangerous than she would have believed a year ago. First anxiety, now fear. It was more evidence that her decision was correct.
“We have a contract,” Adrian reminded her, his tone sharpening as he attempted to pierce her impassivity.
“Read it,” she advised with a smile as false as any of his. Two could play at being two-faced.
“My lawyer will,” he threatened.
She strengthened her psychic defenses. Better late than never. “You can waste your money, if you wish, Adrian, but your lawyer will inform you that pulling the plug is entirely my decision. I hold fifty-one percent of the stock in this gallery. One hundred percent of the Portland gallery. But, of course, if you want to make me an offer, I am obliged to listen. You do hold right of first refusal.”
“I’ll sue,” blustered Adrian. She was glad to see sweat dampen his high forehead. He was beginning to realize his game was over.
Moira assessed his aura once more. This was why she was so good at her chosen career. She could tell at a glance the genuine from the fake. The good from the bad. Except when it came to those born without consciences. Not even the Fae could help but be deceived by born liars.
She had been careful to select her business partner from the world of sensitives. Adrian was a psychic with a gift for perceiving the age and provenance of art. It had made him a mover and shaker in the art world. At least in the Pacific Northwest. How could she have gotten him so wrong?
Even now when it must be apparent that she had discovered what Adrian had been doing, he was projecting a facade of innocent honesty, deceptive in its apparent openness. But it was too late for him to fool her. She had examined the books, pulled the records of all transactions dealt with by her partner, confided in her accountant. The facts were against him.
Adrian was pushing forgeries through her gallery. Had been since day one. Using her good name to deceive a long list of high-powered clients. They were good forgeries, but Fairchild Galleries didn’t deal in fakes or reproductions. And when Adrian’s affluent marks caught on to the worthlessness of the expensive art he had authenticated and sold them, she wanted her name to be long separated from his.
This fiasco was the price of trust. Just a year ago she had been flattered to have the famous Adrian Whitlock offer to buy into her gallery. With his money she had financed the Portland gallery. The start of her empire. That too was on the market. Fairchild’s Galleries was no longer worthy of its reputation.
She should have known better. Her first clue should have been that an egotist like Adrian was perfectly content to let the gallery remain Fairchild’s, instead of wanting his name added. She would have gone for Fairchild and Whitlock like a shot. But he hadn’t even put it on the table.
Live and learn. If something seemed to be too good to be true, look harder.
Whitlock would not have been interested in her gallery if not for her spotless reputation for honesty, and her track record of picking the next great artist. He had bought both cheaply. She had a sinking feeling that if she went to the police with her suspicions – all right, her absolute conviction – that Adrian was running fakes through the gallery, she would wind up in jail or worse. It would turn out that he had set her up to take the fall.
Adrian’s persuasive voice sank in timbre. He assumed a sorrowful expression. He held her eyes with his guileless green ones. The ones she was now perfectly sure were tinted contacts. “Moira, you don’t want to do this. We’re making money hand over fist. Together we can go to the top. Become the finest art gallery in the Northwest. If you’re tired, you can take a vacation.”
That was the shame of it. They could have ascended to that pinnacle together. Moira looked around at the gallery she had poured so much energy and spirit into. It was a study in pale neutrals. Everything suggested affluence and effortless good taste, and encouraged buyers to imagine the art in their own designer spaces.
The oak floors had been bleached to the color of sand. Creamy leather covered the elegant benches. Ecru platforms were graced by sculptures made by Seattle’s most talented workers in clay, wood, and bronze. The seafoam walls were covered with salable paintings by artists she had personal discovered and launched.
Fairchild’s had a wait list a hundred names long of artists begging to be featured. The world could have been her oyster. Their oyster. But she had no intention of revealing her hard-won knowledge to Adrian. Let him think she was still his dupe. It was better he did not know that she had proof of his fraud.
Rage and regret burned in her heart like acid. But she suppressed those useless emotions. Kept her composure. She was Fae after all. “I have made my decision, Adrian. I’m selling. You have right of first refusal. I get to set the price. I’m getting out of the gallery business and going home.”
“But you live in Seattle.” He sounded genuinely bewildered.
Moira smiled. She hailed from a tiny island in the San Juans. West Haven was just a speck among the many islands of that strait. But it was home. She had no intention of telling this con artist anything about her refuge.
“I thought we had a future together,” he continued plaintively, infusing charm into every word. He smiled his most tantalizing smile. He was good.
But it was too late for charm. Several months too late. She had had hopes initially, but nothing had come of that first tentative buzz between them. It was as if after he seduced her into partnership, Adrian had lost interest in her. Probably he had. Men tended to when you were both short and round and smart. Or perhaps pretending interest had grown to be too much work. Same reason.
“Well, we don’t.” She was going home to West Haven. If she hooked up with anyone, it would be one of the trustworthy residents of West Haven. Provided a plump, antiquated fairy, spreading her wings for the first time, was to anyone’s taste.
Two weeks later she left Seattle with the money from her condo and the gallery securely invested in the Drake Income Fund and poised to grow. She drove her brand-new SUV onto the ferry to Friday Harbor. Look out, West Haven, Fairchild’s Art Supply is about to storm the town of Mystic Bay, population 2,874.
CHAPTER TWO
Seattle, April
Quinn~
“I don’t understand, Quinn,” Anthony Drake said icily. “You can’t just up and quit. What on earth will our clients think?”
“That you and Hugh and Edmund will continue to make them rich.” It was a joke to think that Drake Investments needed Quinn’s pedestrian input. He had no flair for the family business. Ten years of trying had established that beyond the shadow of a doubt.
“For God’s sake, boy, Drakes don’t go running off to live in artists’ colonies. We’re investors. We’re movers and shakers, not flakes. Your mother and I thought you had finally settled down.” Anthony’s polished aristocratic facade showed a few cracks.
Quinn winced at the low blow. “Nope. I can’t do it any longer, Dad. If I have to read another financial statement, my eyes are going to roll back in my head. If I have to investigate another bond issue, I am going to take to drink. I’m done.”
“You’ll be bored to tears on West Haven within a month,” Anthony Drake predicted. “It’s fine for a vacation, but after a few weeks of sailing, you’ll crave the stimulation of the city.”
“Think so, sir?” As much as he enjoyed sailing, he wasn’t going to West Haven to take a sloop out or engage in any of the traditional vacation pastimes of their extended family.
“I do.” Anthony snorted. Flames flickered around his nostrils. A sure sign that he had lost control of his temper and his talent. “Painting.” Another snort. More flames. “Drakes don’t make pictures. We buy them. Or anything else we want.”
“How much money is enough, Dad?” Quinn asked quietly. “You knew from the get-go that I only wanted to make myself a cushion so that I could devote myself to
my art.” Painting in the limited hours of the weekends and his annual vacation had never been enough, and now it felt like a straitjacket binding his creativity.
Between his trust fund and his savings Quinn had sufficient money to last him for the rest of his life – if he lived modestly. Modestly by Drake standards. Even if he never sold a single painting. Of course, he hoped to make a success of his new career. To make a name for himself in the art world. He was enough of a dragon to have that much ambition.
“I thought you would grow out of it. Grow up.” Anthony waved a hand around his sleek office. “Appreciate your heritage.”
Anthony’s sophisticated seventy-eighth floor aerie had been expensively decorated in shades of gray that ran the gamut from charcoal to the icy color of a Seattle winter sky. Here and there, chrome and glass gleamed. Blond wood trimmed the furniture and supported the vast slab of polished smoky glass that divided Walter from his visitors. Magnificent paintings graced the pale gray walls. None by Quinn.
Floor-to-ceiling windows, framed by silvery silk, looked out over the Pacific. On a clear day, you could see far beyond Harbor Island. It wasn’t a clear day, but the view was still spectacular. Just one of the many perks of being the CEO of Drake Investments, Inc.
It complemented Anthony’s custom-tailored appearance. His pinstriped suit and dark hair, just touched with frost, projected an air of competence, wealth and power. For that matter, so did Quinn’s. He might be taller and broader than his father, but he dressed just as well and just as conservatively. His dark hair was cut short enough to disguise the curl. His square jaw was as cleanly shaven as Anthony’s and only a shade wider.
No wonder Dad thought Quinn was his natural heir. Quinn had long realized that either of his cousins was a better bet than he was to step into his father’s shoes. Hugh and Edmund were as good as or better than their uncle at investing. Better than their fathers. But Anthony wanted to hand over the reins to his own son. Understandable, but misguided.
“I’m sorry, Dad. Drake Investments was only ever a stopgap. Painting is my true calling.”
His father curled his lip. “It’s just a mid-life crisis,” he said. “Does Cynthia know?” he added in desperation.
Mid-life crisis at thirty-five? Quinn didn’t think so. He had finally put his life back on track.
Quinn thought about the change that had come over his fiancée when he had told her he was quitting his job to paint full-time. He hadn’t bothered to tell her about the healthy savings account or the trust fund that would cushion his transition to artist. During the six months of their engagement, he had become more and more convinced that Drake Investments mattered more to her than he did.
If either of his cousins had been bachelors, Cynthia would have pursued them instead. But Hugh and Edmund were happily mated and married. His cousins, like most dragons who wanted children, had married young. Since dragons-born were all male, they had found and transformed their virgin mates into fertile dragonesses and set to work to continue the Drake lineage.
Quinn liked both Rachael and Emma, adored their kids, wished he had a mate and children. But he had let his own opportunity to marry a virgin slip past him long ago. These days females lost their virginity when they were teens, and he was well past the age where a girl of seventeen or eighteen or even younger had any attraction. So while he had every intention of someday marrying, he would never have children.
Not that he had confessed to Cynthia that the Drakes were dragon shifters. Since her virginity had been only a distant memory when he met her, he had reasoned that she did not need to know. Only virgins could be transformed into dragonesses. Only dragonesses could bear a dragon’s child. Until recently, Cynthia had insisted that she had no interest in children. Since theirs would be a sterile union, he had decided to keep his heritage a secret.
His parents had reluctantly accepted that their only child would be childless. Other than no grandchildren, they had entirely approved of Cynthia. The Fitzhughs traveled in the same circles as the Drakes. Cynthia was exactly the sort of svelte, blonde sophisticate that they thought added cachet to Quinn’s social presence.
Her complete lack of animation had seemed at first like poise and good breeding. Quinn wondered if it was just that he bored her to stiff silence. She exuded as much gracious dignity in bed as she did everywhere else. For several months, he had wondered if he could bear an ice princess for the rest of his life. Fortunately, that threat had evaporated with his change of career.
Quinn smiled ruefully. “She gave me back my ring, sir.” Threw it in his face, and was surprised when he caught it and put it in his pocket. Dragons were naturally acquisitive. And that ring had belonged to his great-great-grandmother. No marriage? No ring.
“Don’t you care?” snapped Dad.
Quinn shrugged. “Now that you mention it, sir, mostly I feel relieved. I was dreading having to tell Cynthia we’re dragons, and that we could never have a child – even if she changed her mind.”
Anthony’s patrician face tightened. “If you had done your duty when you were in college,” he began.
It was an old grievance. But Quinn had been unable to fall in love on command. “Water under the bridge, sir. Anyway, I could get lucky on West Haven.”
Anthony brightened at this diversion. West Haven had been the summer quarters of four generations of Drakes. The island was populated almost entirely by sensitives. Quinn’s predicament would not seem so odd to a woman born and bred on West Haven. He was amused as his father calculated the odds that his son might find a virgin bride.
“Maybe. But your place is here in Seattle, son, managing the Drake Bond Fund.”
Quinn shook his head. He wasn’t even in charge of the Bond Department, just another analyst. It was almost funny how his pragmatic father could be so delusional where he was concerned. “No, sir. I’ve arranged to rent out my condo, taken a cottage in the colony, and booked the ferry for next Wednesday.”
“You could stay at Shoreside,” Anthony objected.
The Drake summer cottage was a rambling, three-story Victorian mansion built just outside of the town of Mystic Bay. It had been designed to display his great-grandparent’s wealth and prestige. He could not stay there, where the entire clan gathered at will all summer. He needed a studio. Time, space, and quiet for his art.
“I will be happier at the colony,” Quinn said mildly.
“We were going to start building your lodge this summer,” Anthony complained. “That project will have to be mothballed.”
“Understood, sir.” The Drake land on West Haven had turned into a compound as Drakes built separate summer homes for their brides and family. No Cynthia. No lodge. However, he had a place in the Tidewater Artists’ Colony, which entitled him to free rent for six months. After that he was prepared to pay.
“I’m sorry about the contractors, Dad, but I knew going in that ending my engagement was a deal-breaker.”
Anthony looked sorrowful. “Your mother and I liked Cynthia. How can you be so cold-blooded about losing your ma-bride?”
Probably because Cynthia was not his fated mate – scrub that – destined bride. “We grew apart,” he said lamely.
“Do you have to leave now? What’s the rush? What about your mother?”
“You can tell her if you wish, sir. Or I’ll do it when we have lunch tomorrow. I want to have at least three pieces ready for the Tidewater Art Fair in July. I’ve left it late as it is.” The Art Show was the centerpiece of the Fourth of July celebrations in Mystic Bay, and members of the Artists’ Colony were permitted to submit up to five pieces to the Fair.
“You seem to have everything planned.”
Quinn gazed at his father in surprise. Naturally he had a plan. Long-range planning was part of the Drake talent and why theirs was a wealthy and powerful clan. And why the Drakes had made as much of a success of their investment firm as their ancestors had of piracy and pillage. Nowadays, dragons were supposed to be civilized. That would be the day.
Available on Amazon!
BELOVED BY THE BEAR
A SHIFTERS IN LOVE
FUN & FLIRTY ROMANCE
MYSTIC BAY SERIES BOOK 3
by
Isadora Montrose
Serena’s entire clan objects when she and bear shifter Anton declare their love. How can a bear shifter be the fated mate of a mermaid? Together former Marine Anton and BBW Serena must convince the doubters that they are made for each other.
Keep reading for the first 3 chapers.
CHAPTER ONE
Tidewater Inn,
Mystic Bay, West Haven, Oregon
Anton~
“Would you like a roast beef sandwich?” The hair-netted server behind the white-clad table smiled a gleaming professional smile.
Every hair on his body – and seeing as Anton was a bear, he possessed a veritable forest of hairs – stood to attention and saluted. Anton hoped he wasn’t drooling. Drool was so not cool. Hard to impress a woman when you were drooling. He swallowed hard. “Yes, please.” Hell, if she wanted to feed him ground scorpions, he would eat them from her fair hands.
He tried not to stare too hard at her nametag. Serena was emblazoned over the finest rack in the western hemisphere. He was tingling from head to toe. Just exactly as if he was coming down with some fatal disease. Or had met his one and only fated mate. What color was her hair? Not that it mattered.
Serena’s face was stiff and set. Maybe he was staring. Hard. Maybe she felt it too. She carved him three wisps of rare roast beef and deftly placed them on an oval of French bread spread with mustard. “Horseradish, sir?” she croaked.
“Yes, please.” Anton looked for a ring. Drew a full breath when he realized her fingers were bare. Just the palest pink ovals tipped her fingers. Of course she might have removed her wedding rings in the interests of hygiene.
She handed him a tiny plate and turned to the person behind him.
Cherished by the Cougar_A Shifters in Love Fun & Flirty Romance Page 17