Naked Dragon

by Annette Blair

  After she talked to a local grocery store buyer, McKenna went to Vivica’s employment agency. There, she passed lines of employers and employees waiting their turns and entered a door marked private. She cut through an open office with rows of desks surrounded by workers in open-ended cubicles.

  In a high glass office overlooking the scene, Vivica rose from an executive chair behind her antique desk. “McKenna! It’s been a while. I’m so happy you stopped by.”

  “Where else would I look for an employee? Works Like Magick provides the best. Everybody knows that.” McKenna took the chair Vivica indicated. “Besides, we’re related somewhere down the line, you and I.”

  Vivica had inherited the magick in the family, and she, McKenna, had not. She wouldn’t know what to do with magick, if she had any. Fact is, she didn’t know what Vivica did with hers, unless it accounted for the success of her famed employment agency.

  Vivica’s secretary brought chai tea for two.

  “So, McKenna, have you turned your house into a bed-and-breakfast yet? I haven’t seen any ads for it.”

  McKenna sighed. “Let’s just say, at this point, I might well name it the Rotting Victorian, Mice Are Us, or Termites Inn.”

  Vivica raised a brow. “Catchy, literally. You’ll have tourists fighting for . . . antibiotics and tetanus shots.”

  “Exactly. So what I’m looking for is a strong, honest, hardworking jack-of-all-trades who needs a place to live, three squares a day, poverty-level wages, and preferably isn’t running from the law.”

  Vivica nearly choked on her tea. “You know,” she said, setting down her mug. “Most job hunters expect good wages and benefits.”

  “Benefits.” McKenna perked up. “I raise beef. I can serve steak every day. That’s a perk.”

  “Literally, yes, but I meant—literally, hmm, who does that remind me of?”

  McKenna sat forward. “You make great matches, so if you can ferret out the best employee for me, I’d be grateful.”

  Vivica raised a brow. “Beware my psychic abilities, because I do make the best matches, even when an employer, or employee, doesn’t know what they need.”

  McKenna ignored the unease rippling through her. “So do you have some magick for a poor—and I mean that literally—cousin and potential bed-and-breakfast owner?”

  “You’re playing the cousin card? No fair. I’m a witch, not a miracle worker.”

  McKenna sipped her chai. “My mother’s family, our family, has owned that property for centuries. I can’t lose it, Viv. Turning the place into a B and B was my grandmother’s dream.”

  “That’s why you got your degree in hotel/motel/inn-keeping management.”

  “Yes, but I never thought I’d use it. I was so busy taking care of Gran, then Mom. Since Mom didn’t live long enough to make the dream come true, I’m the last apple on the family tree, the McKenna branch. Bad enough I nearly gave the freaking tree dry rot by being born a girl. I can’t let the thing topple, trunk, roots, and all.”

  “Weird how you’re descended from Ciarra herself, while her brother is my ancestor, but my family inherited her magick.”

  “Don’t feel bad. The universe made the right choice.”

  “Thanks. If it’s any consolation, I envy you getting Ciarra’s family name as your first name. Listen,” Vivica added, setting down her cup. “I wanted to invest in your B and B, but when I thought seriously about it, my psychic instincts kicked in big-time, and I believe strongly that I would interfere with your destiny if I did. I’m sorry, McKenna, but it’s against my deepest beliefs to screw with fate.”

  “We can’t have that.” Fate, schmate, damn it. McKenna sighed inwardly. At any rate, she didn’t need Vivica’s money. She needed a guardian flippin’ angel.

  “Kenna, I know you’re the last of the line in a way, but I have something to tell you, and it’s important.”

  “Shoot, I think.”

  “I sense that you have some connection or influence—more than a little—over the McKenna champion our ancestors have been waiting centuries for. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “So not.” McKenna sighed. “Pile on the pressure, why don’t you?”

  “Look, I’m going to find you the perfect worker. I promise. Because, girl, I don’t envy you your enemies.”

  “You mean Dirtbag?”

  Vivica covered her hand, the connection instilling courage. “Huntley is more ruthless than you think. He’ll do anything to get his hands on your land. It’s the best piece of real estate north of Boston. He’s nervous. He knows a B and B will thrive there, and once you thrive, you’ll never sell.”

  “The same way his condos would thrive. Vivica, I need paying guests. If I don’t fix the house so it will pass the building inspection and pay the mortgage my mother took out to pay Gran’s medical bills, Huntley will get my land for a song.”

  Vivica retrieved her hand and sat straighter. “You realize, don’t you, that your mother never mentioned her illness to you or a doctor so she wouldn’t leave you the kind of debt Gran left her?”

  McKenna’s throat closed. Their fingertips met for a second more.

  Vivica’s hand fell away as she straightened. “I’ll do whatever I can to help, McKenna. I mean it. Call on me anytime. What’s your time frame?”

  “I’m guessing the foreclosure paperwork’s done. I default at midnight on October twenty-fifth, grace period included. I’m betting Huntley will be ready to sign on the dotted line at twelve-oh-one a.m.” McKenna sighed. “Any chance you can nose around to see if the building inspector’s clean? Huntley plays poker with him.”

  Vivica made a note on her to-do list. “Elliott Huntley is out to claim Salem, acre by acre. Somebody’s got to stop him. Too bad our clan treasure’s a myth. I cut my teeth on the family legend.”

  “Me, too, but I gave up on fairy tales a long time ago. I’m just grateful to have you on my side. All I need right now is hard work, elbow grease, and a Works Like Magick handyman, accent on the magick.”

  Vivica sighed. “When I heard you had Steve Framingham as your contractor, I thought, ‘Take that, Huntley.’”

  “I know, but Steve no sooner took out my permit than he fell off a roof.”

  Vivica sat straighter. “A bit fortunate for Huntley, wouldn’t you say? Is Steve badly hurt?”

  “Only time will tell. He hates the wheelchair, of course, and he often feels useless, but he’ll stand by my building permit and oversee the job, if I can find a quick study with muscle.”

  Vivica balanced on the back legs of her chair and steepled her fingers. “A literal thinker,” she said, “a quick study with muscle.”

  Her chair popped forward as she homed in on a hunky male office worker wearing headphones and looking their way from the far end of the room. Vivica narrowed her eyes and turned to her computer. “Let me see if the man I’m thinking about is still looking for work.”

  McKenna watched the eye-candy office worker, but when their gazes locked, she turned away. “Given the fact that my offer sucks,” she said, “what’s wrong with the guy you think might be interested?”

  “Nothing. He’s a quick study in some ways, honest and hardworking, fast, strong, but English isn’t his first language, and he tends to be frustratingly literal. He hasn’t been here for long, but his paperwork’s in order.”

  McKenna’s heart raced, probably without cause. “When can I interview him?”

  “If he’s interested, I’ll send him out in the next few days. If not, I’ll let you know. To your benefit, he’s not from this . . . area, and his perception of money is skewed, so you might be able to pull it off.”

  Guilt reared its ugly head. “Don’t you have a responsibility to tell him how little I can afford to pay?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll tell him it’s not enough to pay for rent, food, or utilities, but you’re providing those.”

  “I like the way you think.”

  Vivica walked her out. “I’m glad you’re stubborn and d
etermined, McKenna.”

  “Thanks.”

  As she drove home, McKenna found herself humming “New World in the Morning,” one of her mother’s old favorites.

  Hope-filled or not, in her experience, one’s “new world” rarely arrived in the way one expected.

  SIX

  A few days later, Lizzie stood waiting on McKenn’s kitchen porch, spackle tool, once again, in hand. “I thought I heard your truck turning up the drive.”

  “Thanks for keeping up with the grunt work while I went paint shopping, though I thought you’d have gone home by now.”

  “I’m happy to help, and frankly, leaving Steve with his mother and the kids makes him feel useful. He thinks he’s taking care of his mom, and Nana thinks she’s taking care of him. Everybody’s happy. We talked on the phone a couple of times. In that wheelchair, he feels the need to prove himself, even if it’s only that he’s a good son and father.” Lizzie’s eyes filled, but she blinked away her tears and cleared her throat with determination. “Before I forget, Vivica called. She has a handyman prospect for you. Bastian Dragonelli. He’ll be here today or early tomorrow. She’s sorry it took so long.”

  McKenna resisted the urge to hug her friend. Sympathy would only bring on the waterworks, Lizzie had warned. “Long is right. I’m at seventy days and counting.”

  “Stop thinking work and think ‘man,’” Lizzie said. “I’m hoping this guy is, well, handy, cute, unmarried, and in the market for—”

  “A sturdy farm girl? Do you never stop matchmaking? Lizzie, look at me. I threw my scale through a second-floor window right before I put on barn boots to kick the crap out of my full-length mirror.”

  Lizzie’s eyes crinkled with her hidden smile. “Sounds like a cathartic experience.”

  McKenna posed, hands on hips. “What you see is what you get.”

  “I like what I see. You’re a knockout in your mom’s flowered old hippie dresses. Feminine and—”

  “I’m not going for feminine. These dresses have tent appeal. They cover the flaws.”

  “And they make you feel closer to your mother.”

  “She accepted me the way I am. Men, not so much.” McKenna offered Lizzie a Creamsicle and took one for herself.

  “What am I going to do with you?” Lizzie chided her with the kind of look she often gave her children. “McKenna, you have an hourglass figure and lush, full breasts, the kind that millionaire plastic surgeons create.”

  McKenna put on her apron. “No matchmaking! I want a hardworking grunt who doesn’t think with his zipper brain. Not that I’ll tempt him to.”

  “I’d kill to have long, sexy, red hair falling in waves to my shoulders like yours.”

  “Yep, can’t argue with perfection . . . above the neck.”

  Lizzie tilted her head and looked lower.

  “Okay, above the breasts, then.” McKenna checked her cleavage. “The girls are pretty amazing, aren’t they? As for my hair, I wear it in a ponytail, so what difference does length make?”

  “In a man or a woman?” Lizzie asked. “Haven’t you ever looked in a mirror? Men drool over curves like yours.”

  “Are you coming on to me? Because I’m not into—”

  Lizzie threw the putty knife at her.

  McKenna’s palm got slimed, and her old daisy wallpaper got splattered. “Listen to me, my kind friend,” she said, wiping her hand on a dish towel. “I’m a hermit with attitude. I eat whatever the hell I want, and I like it that way. I don’t need anyone.”

  “You need me.”

  “Okay, but I don’t need a man.”

  Lizzie touched her arm, so gentle, so caring, so . . . primed to interfere.

  “Spit it out, Framingham.”

  “Honey, you put up walls. Not to keep others out, I know, but to see who cares enough to tear your walls down, no matter how hard you beat him off.”

  “Up yours, LizBeth.”

  “Low blow. I hate my real name.”

  “I know you do. With the same intensity that I like my walls. Stop psychoanalyzing me and let’s spackle.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Shut. Up!” McKenna turned and walked away.

  Lizzie caught her arm. “Don’t you think we should patch the roof before we spackle the walls?”

  “Upstairs, in the land of drips and buckets, yes. Down here, no problem. In this house, we paint, spackle, and glaze whatever we can, so we don’t have to pay someone else to do it.”

  “Just once in your life,” Lizzie said, “I’d like to see you stop being practical, throw caution to the wind, and chase a rainbow.”

  “Fat chance.” McKenna caught movement outside. “I wonder if Vivica sent him?”

  “Who him?” Lizzie looked up from her work.

  “He who wanders in dumb circles through my woods. He should get directions from the stick insects following him. God save me from the kind of man who attracts women like the Pied primping Piper.” She hadn’t really been attracted to the guy in Vivica’s office, McKenna told herself. She’d been . . . curious.

  This wood wanderer, and Vivica’s hunky male office worker, could not be one and the same.

  Lizzie came to stand beside her. “Is he coming here? Are you sure you can afford a handyman?”

  McKenna shrugged. “Whoever Vivica sends will be strong and willing to work for room, board, and a hundred dollars a week.”

  Lizzie’s eyes widened. “McKenna, did you say you’re going to let him live here? With you? You, who trusts no one? Especially not hunks of the male persuasion.”

  “Desperate times and all that, but he’ll get the basement bedroom.”

  “Putting distance between you, hey? Like a floor and a wall? But enough about your cowardice. I thought you were planning to sleep in the basement?”

  “I’ll move down there when I open the B and B to keep the maximum number of good bedrooms available to paying guests.”

  “So, after you open, you’re thinking of fraternizing with your handyman in a very big way? Say yes.”

  “Cold day in August. After the place is finished, I won’t need a handyman.”

  “I beg to differ, but I’ll save that argument. At least the basement ceiling doesn’t leak.”

  “Nor does it have cracked windows.”

  “Or any windows. Anybody who takes you up on your job offer, I hate to point out, can’t be too smart.”

  “I want a hard worker in whom brawn will beat brains.”

  “You forgot staying power.”

  “Lizzie, you’re about to pop babies numbers three and four, and you’ve only been married five years. I thought you wanted to put a cork in staying power.”

  Lizzie’s gleam disappeared. “That was before Steve got hurt.” She rubbed her burgeoning belly. “These could be my last.” Her tears spilled over before she could stop them this time.

  McKenna gave in and hugged her. “Steve’s recovering, isn’t he?”

  “He won’t let me go to the doctor’s with him. And the insurance company is investigating as if he jumped off that damned roof for the fun of it. Unless they release his benefits, we’re gonna lose our house. Sound familiar?”

  “Oh, sweetie. I empathize. You know I do. If you weren’t preggers, I’d suggest we crack open a bottle of Mom’s preferred stock Cherry Manischewitz. Are you up to taking out your frustration on a wall?”

  “You’d let me do that?”

  “Well, I need to enlarge the kitchen.”

  “Which accounts for the sledgehammer by the door.” Lizzie’s watch alarm rang. “Oh, I gotta go. Steve’s mom has probably had enough of him and the kids all day. I should bring her the wine.”

  “Whitney and Wyatt do tend to tire their playmates.”

  Lizzie rolled her eyes. “Nana doesn’t seem to mind. For an arthritic seventy-year-old, the frisky girl keeps up.”

  Lizzie backed down the drive before McKenna spotted the blue plastic bat near the door. “Lizzie!” she called, running outside
and raising it in the air. “You forgot Wyatt’s bat!”

  But her friend’s old VW bus disappeared down the street.

  McKenna went inside and stood it beside the sledgehammer. As she did, the floor shook beneath her feet, the echo of her crashing world reverberating around her.

  She grabbed the sledgehammer and bat, and ran.

  Either the place was falling down around her, foundation first, or Godzilla had just broken into her basement.

  SEVEN

  McKenna threw open the basement door and accidentally kicked a stair basket of laundry off the top step, too concerned about the disaster sending smoke and soot up the stairs to care about her underwear floating down ahead of her.

  Halfway to the bottom, she stopped, stunned, and the sledgehammer slipped from her grasp to thunder and dent its way to the bottom, just missing her pained intruder’s head on its final bounce.

  In the middle of her basement sat the hunk from Vivica’s office, the Pied primping Piper himself. Except Bastian Dragonelli looked more like a leathery tan pirate than a handyman—no primping involved—even with his butt stuck in her coal chute.

  Shoulders thrown back, teeth bared, he stared at his raised hands as if they were on fire. Speaking of which, the bottom of her wooden stairs had been singed black, with no fire in sight, though the scent of smoke lingered in the coal-dusty air.

  Vivica wouldn’t send a lunatic handyman for her to interview, despite the evidence to the contrary.

  Her archaic coal chute, now detached from her foundation, remained connected to the bricks the chute took with it during Mr. Handyman’s Wild Ride. Also attached: an important section of drywall, the lack of which gave her basement bedroom an open-air view.

  As intense as the man’s inner struggle seemed at first, his hands and shoulders relaxed, as did every delineated muscle. A guileless half smile grew on his sculpted lips.

  Difficult to contemplate killing an Italian Stallion, or so he appeared—except for his eyes, as violet as a summer sunset—especially when he seared her with his gaze to the point that she expected smoke to rise from her pores.