'Til Dragons Do Us Part (Never Deal with Dragons) Read online

  ’Til Dragons Do Us Part

  By Lorenda Christensen

  Savannah Cavenaugh became a top art thief thanks to a secret ability—a dragonmorph, she can literally fly away from the scene of the crime. Next up: stealing a priceless painting out from under the snout of Lord Relobu, North America’s fearsome dragon ruler. True, she’s never had to work in the midst of Earth’s most polarizing nuptials before. Keeping her identity hidden will demand she get creative, to say the least.

  Cameron Shaw has one last chance to prove himself. As Lord Relobu’s interim security head, he’ll ensure the world’s first interspecies wedding happens without a hitch. That means keeping an extra close eye on the wedding planner’s pretty young assistant. She’s adorable, but something’s not quite right.

  Fumbling her way through bouquets and linens turns out to be the least of Savannah’s problems. Crushing on Relobu’s hottest human henchman was not part of the plan, and neither was revealing her—ahem—ferocious side. But when her archrival shows up to nab the very same painting she’s after, all bets are off...

  Don’t miss Never Deal with Dragons and Dancing with Dragons, available now!

  71,800 words

  Dear Reader,

  Happy October! I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I love October. Not only is it the month in which my daughter was born (ten years ago!!) but I love the weather, the scents and the activities of October. Everything about the month combines to something fun and transporting for me. Of course, I’m sure not everyone feels the same about this fall month, but I’m happy to say we have a great collection of fiction releases to help aid all of you with fun escapes.

  In the spirit of the somewhat paranormal mood of the month, I’ll start with paranormal and fantasy genres. R.L. Naquin returns with an installment in her quirky, fun, romantic urban fantasy Monster Haven series. With Aegises dying all over the world, the only safe place for Zoey is the protection of home—but hiding doesn’t come naturally for Zoey, and she’ll have to act fast to prevent a zombie apocalypse in Demons in My Driveway. And in Dana Marie Bell’s paranormal romance Of Shadows and Ash, when evil attacks from the shadows, dryad Ashton Ward will be the only one who can save his beloved witchdoctor from eternal darkness.

  Matt Sheehan brings back the ever-lovable Helmut and his sidekick in urban fantasy Helmut Goes Abroad. Another round of magic, fistfights and one-liners with the best, most handsome, and of course humble detective Helmut Haase and his apothetic sidekick Shamus O’Sheagan.

  Futurisic romance In the Void by Sheryl Nantus gives us romance set in space—and a brothel spaceship. Answering a distress call can spell the end of the Bonnie Belle and everyone aboard...

  A dragonshifter intent on executing a high-stakes art heist is forced to juggle a wedding, a family and a pesky attraction to her target’s head of security in paranormal romance ’Til Dragons Do Us Part by Lorenda Christensen. April Taylor’s alternate history fantasy Taste of Treason, the second in her Tudor Enigma series, also releases this month. Master Elemancer Luke Ballard has grown his magical powers since his last encounter with the dark sorcerers who will stop at nothing to destroy the English throne. But is he skilled enough to both protect his own and prevent tragedy from reaching the royal family?

  Moving on to contemporary romance releases in October, the last man that handywoman Georgia Lennox expects to break through her tough-as-nails, ugly-duckling exterior is John Montgomery the Third, the millionaire philanthropist she works for in Because I Can by Tamara Morgan.

  In military contemporary romance His Road Home by Anna Richland, a false engagement story gives injured Special Forces Sergeant Rey Cruz a surprise gift: love. Pitch Imperfect by Elise Alden is a contemporary romance in which the last thing celebrity singer Anjuli Carver wanted was to be dependent on her ex-fiancé to restore her dilapidated manor. Will he rebuild her crumbling walls or demolish her defenses with his sexy pursuit?

  Male/male romance Follow You Home by A.M. Arthur is the story of a broken soul who finds solace and safety in the company of a gentle janitor—as well as an unexpected chance at real love.

  Last this month, we’re pleased to welcome co-authors Eileen Griffin and Nikka Michaels with In the Raw, part one of a male/male romance duology about culinary students Ethan Martin and James Lassiter. When they find themselves competing for the same scholarship they also discover they’re competing for something more important—love. Look for part two, In the Fire, next month, in November 2014.

  Coming in November 2014: Carina Press and I both celebrate an anniversary. And we have books from a number of powerhouse authors including Josh Lanyon, Shannon Stacey, Lauren Dane and so many more!

  Here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  Dedication

  To Grandmother

  Acknowledgments

  As always, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes during the writing and publishing of a book. Thanks to the Firebirds and my husband for keeping me sane during the first draft stage of this novel—you were pillars of support when I needed it most. Huge thanks to my editor, Kerri Buckley, who amazes me with her ability to simultaneously find and fix problems with a single stroke of her electronic pen. And to the rest of the Carina team, thank you for lining up all the publishing hoops so all I have to do is fall through them.

  And last but not least, to Andy, because she said so.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  There were times that having a tail came in handy. This was not one of those times. I shifted slowly, trying to curve my body further into the tight space the home’s floorplan had called the ladies’ bower. Otherwise known as the narrowest walkway between a master bedroom and a bay window I’d ever encountered. Not only did I need to fit through this very small space, I had to do it without causing the floor to creak under my weight.

  Or, considering I was currently well over anyone’s idea of a recommended weight, I should probably be more worried about the floor breaking. My dragon form—rather high up there on the largeness scale to begin with—wasn’t my first choice when working in small spaces. And it certainly wasn’t the form I’d choose for small spaces that required me to work both quickly and quietly.

  On the bright side, based on the guttural grunts and growling that floated up from the lower floor, I doubted the home’s inhabitants would have even noticed if I did break the floor. They were either in the middle of a sparring match or a particularly intense sexual encounter. With dragons, it was always a little tough to tell. Either way, they were making enough noise to drown out the worst of my struggles.

  Unfortunately, the homeowners’ preoccupation with physical activity wasn’t nearly enough to bump this gig from its “unluckiest job of my l
ife” slot. Nothing—and I mean absolutely nothing—had gone right, from the moment Simon had taken the call from the client until now, when I tried and failed once again to shove both myself and a massive Greek statue into little more than a closet.

  “Simon, if I survive this, I am going to kill you,” I growled into the tiny transmitter I’d looped around my neck by a thin chain. “Oyen is in the house, she’s either hungry or horny, and I am going to enjoy every single minute of slicing you into bite-sized chunks and eating you for dinner for putting me in the position to hear it.”

  There was a moment of fuzz over the line before I heard him chuckle. “No worries, Vanni, you’ve gotten out of worse than this.”

  “Just because I have doesn’t mean I like to. You keep promising me an easy gig. When are you going to follow through on that?”

  His voice became serious. “Sorry about the company. They must have decided to ditch the party at the last minute. Remember, panic doesn’t help.”

  I sighed. “Stay calm, stay strong,” I said, completing the motto he’d taught me back when I’d first started going out on jobs alone. “I get it. And don’t worry. I’ll dig around, see if I can find a few tricks up my sleeve. Savannah out.”

  Once again, I looked down at the contraption strapped to my body. Similar in structure to the rack used to carry drums on a football field, the setup consisted of wide metal hooks that curled up and around my shoulders and another metal plate running from just under my collarbone to my lower stomach. Attached to the bottom was a small platform, created specifically to hold the base of the statue I was currently hugging.

  “Could you please,” I muttered as I scraped one of the statue’s marble wings lightly along the papered wall of the bower, “help me out just a little bit?” I shifted my weight once again, and managed to jab a not-so-small hole in the opposite wall.

  The growls and grunts from downstairs never let up. So far so good.

  The Nike of Samonthrace seemed to mock me with her outspread wings but, like Simon, she stayed silent. At least she had an excuse—she was already missing her head. A trait Simon would be sharing with her shortly if I managed to get out of here with my head intact.

  I looked toward the bay window on the other side of the room. Only a few more steps, and I’d be home free. It had been constructed for the lady of the house, which is to say the glass panes had been removed to give Oyen the option of stretching her dainty, pearl-colored wings anytime she pleased. The opening took up half the wall, and there was no doubt I’d be able to get Nike through with room to spare. But first, I had to navigate this stupid hallway.

  The hall was plenty large enough for a single, smallish dragon, but not so much for her ancient Greek statue. Unlike Oyen—or even me—Nike of Samonthrace didn’t have the option of tucking her wings against her back like we did while making our way down the hall. Nope, the sculptor on this statue had to go and make the Greek god’s wings fully extended as if in mid-flight, causing me loads of trouble as I tried to contort my body in such a way so that the glorious wingspan left the hall’s wallpaper intact.

  Oh how I wished I could just use my hands to hook Nike under the arms and simply maneuver her like a child, turning the statue until her wings sat at a proper angle. But using hands meant morphing into my human form, and there was absolutely no way I could pick her up with my puny human muscles. In fact, if I even tried to morph out of my dragon, odds were the statue would drop from my harness and fall directly on the heads of the sparring dragons downstairs. At eight feet tall and carved from pure marble, she was heavy enough that I was beginning to wonder whether I was going to be able to fly with her strapped around my neck.

  I tried once more to get a good grip using my front claws, but nature had “gifted” me with tiny little stubs for my front legs when in dragon form, and I couldn’t quite get a grip. Other than picking my teeth after a meal, my arms were pretty much useless. Well, except when reading dinosaur books to Simon’s five-year-old daughter at bedtime.

  Minus the wings, I’m built exactly like the T-Rex pictures in Emma’s prehistoric coloring books, and the sight of me waving my stumpy little clawed appendages in the air never fails to make her giggle.

  Right now, that cute little kid and her mother, Simon’s wife, Jeanie, were the only things keeping me from choking my partner, because I’d just discovered another issue. The harness was equipped with a button that, when pushed, would tighten the straps just above the base of my tail and pull the bottom of the platform holding the statue in toward my body before locking into place. The goal of the contraption was to get Nike snuggled comfortably against me so that when I was stretched belly down in flight, her base wouldn’t sit perpendicular to my position and cause unnecessary air drag.

  We’d tested it at least a dozen times in the workshop, with Simon loading me up with all sorts of heavy things and sending me out to the small bit of tree-shielded acreage we’d bought for my test flights. But now, instead of the quiet click and hum of the motor as it pulled the metal bars toward me, the push of the button delivered only silence.

  Silence which made the girlish laugh of a female dragon coming from the base of the stairs sound even more ominous.

  Crap. I pushed the button harder, my frenzy increasing in direct proportion to the nearness of the homeowner.

  “Oh Leneth, you were absolutely right. This was so much more fun than a stodgy dinner at Adelaida’s. I still don’t understand why our dragon lord is so enamored with those silly humans. We already pay them enough to take care of our homes and businesses, I don’t see why we should be responsible for covering their health care costs as well. And to schedule the meeting around dinner! That decision basically announces that we’ll be having day-old meat. Probably even cooked. It takes all the fun out of eating when we’re not even allowed to catch it ourselves.”

  I heard the quiet murmur of the male dragon’s response, followed by another trilling laugh from Oyen. Then I heard the words that caused my heart to seize.

  “Speaking of hunting, I have the most delightful outlook installed just outside my bower window. It faces the barn, and I have some new stock that I’m sure will give us a run for our money. What do you say? Would you like to stay for dinner?”

  I turned my radio back on and tried my best to whisper. “Simon. There’s a really good chance I’ll be coming in hot.”

  There was a small pause before I heard my partner’s response. “Understood. I’ll be ready and waiting. Be safe.”

  “Fat chance of that happening,” I grumbled as I abandoned all pretense of stealth, wrenching my body into the most uncomfortable shape possible as I crow-hopped the last few feet toward the window. I reached the edge and looked around, trying to see just exactly where my best option for takeoff would be. If I chose wrong, the odds I’d be seriously injured were slim, but my crash to the ground would certainly increase my chances of being caught—a situation I’d rather avoid. I was a pretty good liar, but there were some things even my silver tongue couldn’t overcome.

  Being found outside of a stranger’s home with a not-so-small fortune in marble literally strapped to my body was one of those things.

  Just as Oyen said, there was an expansive stone patio built out over the first-floor study. Small torches hanging at regular intervals along the house’s walls were already lit, causing the entire space to be filled with dancing variations of light and shadow. Perfect ambiance for an art heist.

  Simon and I had planned my arrival to correspond with the timing of the guards’ shift change. I’d shown up in human form just before dusk, dressed in a wildly over-starched dress for my interview with the head housekeeper. I’d played the down-on-her-luck mother of two so well that I’d been offered a job on the spot, which I’d gratefully accepted. I’d then happily taken my new supervisor up on his offer of a tour before excusing myself a couple of minutes later for a trip to the ladies’ room.

  Instead of relieving my bladder, I’d relieved myself of the const
ricting dress and hose, stuffed them into my trusty hip satchel, and shifted. This was my first trip outside since, and I was slightly surprised—and pleased—at how dark it was.

  Thank the Lord for small miracles. Just like me, Oyen’s male companion had scales as dark as hers were white. Not only would the night help camouflage my presence, Leneth’s similar coloring would give me a better chance of Oyen’s guards mistaking me for the homeowner. Especially since the two dragons inside were planning on swooping down from this very patio. Sure, the statue would give me an interesting silhouette, but if I could manage to swing down into the open pasture near the barn and then back up into the air, they’d likely assume I’d simply caught my dinner instead of playing with it first.

  I heard the unmistakable thump of dragons behind me.

  Ready or not, it was time to go. I took a deep breath, and prepared to jump off a building.

  Chapter Two

  Unfortunately, I was spotted by Nike’s owners the very second I decided to take my chances in the air, and my “flight” became more of a stumble from the rooftop. The weight of the statue caught me off-guard, and my stumble was followed by a far from graceful save just inches from the rose bushes Oyen had planted outside the main dining room window.

  “What in heavens...” Oyen’s ladylike exclamation gave way to words much more crude when she realized what I was holding. “Shit! Leneth! Stop her. She has my Nike!”

  The male dragon—rendered dumb by the twin sights of me crouched in the garden with a life-sized marble statue strapped to my torso and his girlfriend hopping around like a chicken as she screamed dire threats from her spot on the second-floor patio—was understandably slow to respond. I took advantage of his confusion by spreading my wings and pushing hard against the ground to gain altitude. My first few feet in the air were a bit iffy as I adjusted to the not-so-convenient dead weight of everyone’s favorite headless goddess. But soon I was shooting toward the security tower as fast as I could fly.