9
Brad woke up warm and contented, with the first rays of morning light crossing over the golden bed.
Crossing over Rachel, still sleeping with his back to her, her long eyelashes brushing her cheeks. He’d never met anyone like her. How had he gotten so lucky?
His mate. Just when he’d almost given up hope, here she was, more beautiful than he could have imagined and smarter than he could have wished for. Her raven-dark hair was spread like a wing over the pillow. He wanted to kiss her awake, but first he should figure out where his uncle was at. The last thing he wanted was to be interrupted while they—
“Good morning,” Rachel said, and her voice felt like sunlight too.
“Hi,” he said, and slipped his arm around her waist, pressing a kiss to the back of her neck. “Did you sleep all right?”
“Considering…I think I slept pretty well. Were you all right?”
“I was too exhausted to do anything but sleep,” he confessed. He was a little grateful for the fatigue; it had kept him calm, away from hurting the dragons who’d hurt her. If he’d been in better shape, he might have let his fists get ahead of his uncle’s plans. “I feel a lot better now.”
She turned toward him. Was there anything he wouldn’t do for that smile? “You do?”
He liked the hope in her voice. He liked the lust he heard in it even more. “I should see if I have service, first. I want to know if Doug’s on the road, get an idea of when he’ll be coming. He’s got a lot to deal with when he gets here. I don’t want him—I don’t want to be busy, let’s just put it that way.”
She laughed. “I feel really cold, just leaving those guys alone and tied up.”
“We’ll feed them this morning. They’ll be fine.” Besides, they tried to hurt you. I could have done a lot worse—wanted to do a lot worse. “Even if they’re not connected to a clan, we have a court system, more or less. Someone will take care of them. Try to figure out what they did and why they did it, make sure they’re not hurting anyone else.”
“They won’t get killed…right?”
Even through all she’d been through, she didn’t want to hurt anyone. A perfect dragon’s mate, noted his dragon. Kind and caring. “No,” he said. “We don’t believe in life for life, even if they had killed. The clan heads often use magic, to make sure no one else will be hurt.”
“What kind of magic?”
“The worst is a seal. The clan heads can stop you from transforming, for years, even.” He shuddered. “You’ll still be strong, but just strong for an ordinary human, and if things go too badly, you’ll end up in the human legal system. In jail just like everyone else.” Jail sounded bad enough, but being unable to connect with your dragon—that was terrifying. When he’d heard about it as a kid, he hadn’t been able to sleep for days. “But there are other things they can do. Supervision by clan heads—kind of like house arrest, I guess. It depends on what they were doing and why. If one of the clans authorized all this, it could be bad.”
“Like…war or something?”
“I can’t imagine war,” he said, honestly. “But it could be trouble.” He reached over to the bedside table and turned his phone on. “Hey, we’ve got bars. I don’t know if you’ll want to keep yours in the rice another day or not, but it’s a start.” After a few seconds, his messages started coming through. A text from his sister, and two from his brothers—who’d obviously been tipped off about what was going on. Linden had written Do you know who’s responsible yet? while Aaron’s message was MATE?!?! followed by a list of heart and smiley face emojis.
Brad ignored all those and went to his uncle’s text. Leaving now, should be in by 8 am.
He glanced at the clock by the bed. It was 7:15. “Good news,” he said. “Unless you’re starving, we’ve got a little time—”
“I’m hungry,” Rachel said, rolling toward him. “But I’m not that hungry.” She was wearing one of Brad’s old t-shirts, which flowed over her soft curves. It skimmed her thighs, and his gaze was drawn to her creamy, soft skin.
Damn, she got him hard. He could look at her forever, if he didn’t want to touch so much. He put his phone down and put his arms around her, pulling her in for a kiss.
She kissed back, and she did feel hungry, pulling him close so tightly he could feel her short nails pressing into his back. He could feel her passion in her kiss, in her touch. In the soft way she moaned as he began sliding the t-shirt hem up her thighs. She parted her legs for him, and he slipped his hand between her legs, sliding in—
He broke the kiss and gasped. She was wet, oh, she was wet—
She moaned even harder as he pressed his fingers into the wetness, finding her clit with his fingertips and teasing the hard nub as lightly and gently as he could. She shivered as he touched her. Every motion of her body made his own body ache more intently. He wanted to make her forget everything she’d been through, everything but pleasure, everything but his touch.
He pushed the hair back from her face with his free hand and pressed his lips to hers again.
“Inside me,” she said, when they parted. “Please.”
He couldn’t say no to that. He pushed his boxers down and let her open her legs to let him in.
Her skin was even softer than the sheets, and her warmth was driving him crazy. He put his hands on either side of her body, kneeling between her thighs, dipping his head down to kiss each round, perfect breast in turn. She moaned harder as he brushed his tongue against her right nipple, and shivered delightfully as he took it gently into her mouth. He wanted to fill her, but not yet—he wanted to bring her to the heights of pleasure first.
“Don’t tease me,” she said urgently, and her hips pressed up into him, seeking him, wanting, wanting more.
He wanted to dip his head between her legs again, taste her all over again, but she was too eager—hell, so was he. More could wait. They’d have plenty of time later.
“Please,” she said. The way he said it made his mouth water.
He pushed into her slowly, as slowly as he could, listening to every breath Rachel took, feeling her body respond to every motion. He wanted to lose control, lose himself in her, but he couldn’t—not yet, not yet—
He focused himself on her, on her wetness, letting him in as she moaned, so, so softly. Her breath was ragged, desperate. Her hips jerked, and his whole world shook. “Good?” he panted.
She nodded, almost frantic.
He thrust as deeply in as he could, and her eyes went wild, wide. “Oh,” she gasped.
He kept control, thrusting into her deep, using her every moan and shudder as his guide. She was even more beautiful like this, wild and passionate, her perfect skin glowing with the morning light. “Oh,” she said, and he could feel her pleasure building, as she came closer and closer to the peak, as their passion built together.
She gasped one last time as her orgasm washed over her, and he let himself go, too, thrusting hard and fast into her as he found his own completion.
Rachel reached up and wound her hands into his hair as he finished. “Oh,” she said. “Thank you.”
“The pleasure,” he panted, “was mine.” He bent down and kissed her again. “Next time, we’ll…I’ll take more time.”
“I’m not sure I could’ve waited that long,” Rachel confessed.
He dropped down at her side, and they stayed together in one another’s arms for a little while, as their heartbeats slowed. “Your clothes should be dry,” he said. “Should I bring them up?”
“I guess you should,” she said. “You…I saw a shower, right? Do we have to heat up the water or anything?”
“It’s thermal heating,” he said, and kissed her cheek. “Warm water from the core of the earth.”
“Oh,” she said. “That sounds lovely.”
“Take as much time as you want to,” he said. “I’ll see if there’s anything edible in the kitchen after I check that repair job from last night. Hopefully it held.”
“Hopefully nothing tested it at all,” she said.
He gave her another long, deep kiss. What he would have liked to do most of all was to stay in bed with her another hour or two, sketching every perfect curve, but he knew he didn’t have that kind of time. Not today. “I’ll leave your clothes on the bed,” he said. “There’s a door into the master bathroom right there—” He pointed. “Just behind that wall hanging. Do you have…food allergies or anything? I should have asked last night.”
“No,” she said. “Nothing like that.”
“Okay.” He kissed her cheek again and got up before he felt any more temptation. “I’ll be back.”
He pulled his jeans on, washed up so Rachel could have the bathroom to herself, and went to the washer and drier they kept just outside the kitchen. The last thing he’d done before they collapsed into bed was throw Rachel’s t-shirt and underwear in the dryer, so she’d have something clean to wear in the morning. She’d saved out her bra—apparently those required special treatment, he’d have to learn how that worked—and her jeans and sweater had been clean enough, so the other clothes had dried quickly. He took them out and set them on the bed, then checked his phone. No word from Doug yet, so he had time to get some coffee around, at least. Maybe some food too. He was starving, and Rachel had said she was hungry.
He checked the basement first, to make sure that his quick fix had held, and then went up to the kitchen to see what else Doug had stocked up. He had hoped that he could do a little cleaning up, but the chaos of the night before had broken wood and even cracked the marble counter in one corner. A ceramic cookie jar and the mixer on the kitchen island were lost causes. He cleared them away, then snapped off the broken cupboard doors and threw them out, too. He carefully swept the floor, making sure nothing would hurt Rachel’s bare feet, before he started cooking.
The coffee was easy to find, at least; Doug always kept some high-quality stuff in the freezer, so he pulled that out and started a pot. He’d gotten out the bacon and sausage last night. A search of the kitchen yielded some microwavable oatmeal and a few frozen waffles—the kind that someone had cooked in the waffle maker, rather than the boxed kind, which was something—and a can of condensed orange juice. Brad mixed up the orange juice and got the sausage and bacon started while he waited for Rachel to come into the kitchen.
She came in as he was pouring his cup of coffee. Watching her walking down the hallway, barefoot, her hair wet from the shower, gave Brad a tremendous feeling of—
Not pride exactly. Contentment. His mate, in his lair. It was a feeling that things were exactly as they ought to be, even though he knew they had a mess on their hands. Things are exactly as they ought to be, his dragon reminded him. Messes can be cleaned up. Mates are for the rest of your life.
“Is your uncle here yet?” she asked.
“No, but he should be any minute,” he said. “But until then—”
She walked into his arms and they shared a long, sweet kiss.
“You made coffee,” she said, delighted. “It smells amazing.”
“It’s not bad. You can thank Doug for that, when he comes.”
“I have a lot to thank him for.”
Brad’s phone vibrated. “I…think you’re going to be able to do it in person.”
She smoothed out her clothes. “Do I look all right?”
“You look fantastic,” he said, taking out his phone. It was Doug, as he’d guessed. “I’m going to meet him at the lower level, though. Help yourself—I think the meat’s about done, and there are some frozen waffles, and oatmeal, if you’d rather.”
“I’ll take the waffles,” she said. “And that bacon you promised. Any syrup?”
“I didn’t think to look,” he confessed. “But probably, if you check the fridge. I need to go down and meet Doug. And then we can find out who these guys are and why they broke in.”
He transformed for the drop to the basement level and jumped into the tunnel, letting his wings slow his descent, but not too much. He liked the speed, for one thing.
For another, he wanted answers, and Doug was their best hope of getting those.
“Brad,” his uncle said, as he landed. He was in human form, wearing a business suit—Uncle Doug was the only person Brad knew who would put on a business suit to come inspect the family lair at eight in the morning—and he looked like he was in a terrible mood.
Which was understandable. Brad had the joy of finding his mate to balance out his worries. Doug had been alone as long as Brad had known him, and had the extra responsibility of being the clan head. And having Brad take his new mate into the lair…that probably hadn’t been an easy thing to think about either. “Your mate’s upstairs?”
“Yes,” Brad said. “She helped me look this over last night, but she needs some breakfast.”
“She’s competent,” Doug said, matter-of-factly, and Brad felt a surge of pride. That was high praise from his uncle most days. “Stayed pretty calm.”
“She could have died out there,” Brad said. “She’s taken all of it pretty well.”
“It might be shock, still. Your father said your mother had a few days to really let it sink in. But still…good sign.” Doug looked again at the torn wall. “Well,” he said. “Is this load-bearing, you think?”
“I could ask Rachel. She doesn’t know architecture, but she knows stone.”
“Just be ready to brace it with some magic,” Doug said, and transformed.
As he always did, Brad found himself feeling small next to his uncle. Humans stopped growing by twenty or so, but their dragon forms grew for another three or four decades. Doug was only around forty and was an ordinary, if tall, human, but he was one of the largest dragons Brad had ever met.
Doug matter-of-factly smashed through Brad’s shoddy repair, and then reached in and extended the size of the crack as well, breaking a human-sized hole. “Well,” he said, transforming back before he spoke. “Let’s take a look, shall we?”
“I should tell Rachel—”
“I’m here,” she said, walking toward them from the stairwell. “I heard—a lot of noise, so I thought I’d better come down. Um…this must be your uncle.”
Doug turned to her. “Nice to meet you, Rachel,” he said, pushing the formality away as quickly as possible. “I’m Doug, as you guessed.” He pursed his lips in thought for a moment. “Why don’t you and Brad go through—take a quick look, let me know what’s there. I’ll be right here if you need me. I want to see if there’s any kind of signaling on this side.”
“Signaling?” Rachel’s confusion echoed Brad’s.
“Sometimes with this kind of breach, the intruders will put in a signal. A warning, or an all-clear. If it’s there, it might show up when you step on their side, or as you come back through.”
Brad put his arm around Rachel. “I don’t want to have her come face-to-face with an angry clan head.”
“I’ve spoken with all of them,” Doug said. “They at least claim to know nothing about this. They won’t be in there.”
“All right,” Brad said. “But we’re not going to go too far.”
“I don’t want you to,” Doug said. “If this is too complicated, I’ll get the clan heads to come investigate properly.”
Brad went through the opening first, just in case, using the flashlight on his cell phone. As Rachel came in, he shone the beam around.
They were in a small opening in the rock, smaller than Brad’s lair. A tunnel just wide enough for a broad-shouldered man led out of the artificial cave.
Rachel immediately crossed the space and stuck her head into the tunnel. “This isn’t like yours,” she said. “It almost looks like it was machine-drilled, not—dragon-drilled, I guess. It looks like it goes straight up and out the mountain—if you squint, you can see sunlight.”
“Take a look around here, and let me know what you see,” he said, handing her the flashlight.
“Well, there’s this,” she said, using the light to illuminate the drill rig just to the right of the tunnel. The dragons had covered it with a tarp, but that must have been just to keep the dust off—there was no mistaking the shape or size. “I guess they’re not as good at magic, either.”
Well, that answered where the damage and shaking and noise had come from. “I’d better check the tunnel to the surface, too. They might have more equipment.”
She pressed her lips together. “Be careful.”
“Don’t worry. This is the easy part.” He transformed; the shaft wasn’t big enough for him to spread his wings, but he’d still be safer making the climb in dragon form.
Rachel turned out to be right. There was only one way into the space, and that was through a long tunnel to the surface. The tunnel opened into a small indentation in the side of the mountain, half-hidden by snow even if it hadn’t been covered by dragon magic.
The good news was whoever had been tunneling hadn’t tried to destroy the mountain or make their own lair here.
The bad news was whoever had been tunneling had gone straight into the lair.
Rachel was crouched down by a dark corner of the cave. “They’ve been camping here,” she said. “But no fire that I can see—you can’t really safely vent. They’ve got some MREs and canned beans, stuff you can eat cold.”
“We need to talk with them,” he said. “That’s going to be the only way to solve this.”
Rachel stood up. “But you still won’t know, really, will you? I mean—they could just lie to you.”
That was another thing Rachel didn’t know yet. “They can lie to me,” he said. “But they’d have to be very, very powerful to lie to a clan head. If I can beat them up, they don’t qualify.”
“So…he can force them?”
“Sort of,” he said. “It’s…not really ‘forcing’, it’s more like if he asks in the right way you’ll want to tell him everything.” It was one reason the clan heads were rarely in a straight hereditary line; when you couldn’t lie to Dad about where you’d been with the car, your teenage years got a lot more challenging. “And you’ll feel really good about it, like you just lost a weight off your shoulders.” He gave her his hand, to help her through the rubble. “There’s an agreement between the clans, that none of the heads will use their power without permission from the other clans. But my bet is that they’ve given permission. Doug said that the other heads say they don’t know anything about this.”
He helped her through the broken stone.
“Just a campsite, basically,” he said to Doug as they came out. “Don’t think there’s room for more than two people.”
“So if we’re lucky,” Doug said, giving a hand to Rachel and helping her down, “it’s just these two idiots up to no good.”
“Fingers crossed,” Brad agreed.
“You should eat breakfast,” Doug said, “and I’ll deal with them. They’re at the end of the hall?”
Brad nodded.
Doug turned his back and transformed in a beating of wings. Brad and Rachel took the stairs up. Halfway to the kitchen, Rachel started giggling.
“What?” Brad said.
“I just knew your uncle was the type to wear a bow tie.”
He laughed, too. “Let’s have some breakfast, and I’ll take you somewhere better for lunch.” He popped a pair of waffles into the toaster. “You said you wanted a waffle, right?”
“Please,” she said, taking the same seat at the counter she’d been at last night. “Along with that bacon. And a kiss, if you’ve got one handy.”
He filled her plate, then walked over with it and gave her a kiss, feeling his body thrill all over again as he drew her close.
“I…I want to see them,” she said. “After your uncle’s talked to them. I want to…I want to hear from them what they were doing. Why they did it. I want—an explanation, I guess.”
“You deserve that,” he said. “I’ll go see how Doug’s doing, all right?”
She nodded.
Walking down the hallway seemed like a long, lonely journey when it was walking away from Rachel. Dad had said there was a honeymoon period, but Brad hadn’t realized how intense it would feel, how much he wanted to spent every waking moment with her. But keeping her safe was more important still.
Doug had left the door open behind him. The shifters were still in dragon form, but they didn’t seem distressed. Brad had never seen anyone under a full enchantment before. Their eyes were wide open, and glued to Doug.
Doug snapped his fingers, like a hypnotist, and their eyes shut in unison. He sighed.
“You’re…done? Already?”
“I’m done,” he said. “What a pair of idiots.” He shook his head. “Come back to the kitchen with me, your mate should hear this too.”
“Her name’s Rachel.”
“Right,” Doug said, and Brad wondered if his uncle would ever bother to learn her name.
“Rachel?” he called when they’d reached the kitchen. “Are there any waffles left?”
“Couple,” she said, still sitting where Brad had left her. “And there was syrup in the fridge.”
“Good.” Doug opened the refrigerator and took out the syrup. “Do you want some warm syrup, Brad?”
“Um, no, I’m fine.”
“So I spoke with our…friends,” Doug said. “They’re unaffiliated, or at least they believe they are.” He cast a skeptical eye around the broken countertop and smashed cupboards. “You weren’t kidding about the fight.”
“What’s that mean?” Rachel said, popping another square of waffle into her mouth. “That they believe they are?”
“Neither of them are entirely clear on how they got to New York, much less how they found our hoard.” Doug carefully poured syrup into a ceramic decanter, then put the decanter in the microwave. “Something fogged their memories. Or someone.” He looked over at Rachel. “If we spend too long in dragon form, sometimes we have difficulty remembering…ourselves. That’s also a possibility.”
“So what…you, like, get amnesia?”
“It’s more complicated than that.” Doug got out a waffle and popped it in the toaster.
“Put one in for me too?” Brad asked.
“Oh, I ate yours,” Rachel confessed. “Sorry.”
“It would’ve been cold anyway, it’s fine—”
Doug cleared his throat. “As I said, it’s a bit more complicated. Your human side remains intact, as does your dragon self. It’s communication between the two that becomes more difficult. It’s as if you’ve split your self—it becomes harder to remember things, harder to articulate what it is you do remember. Whether they were persuaded to do so, or it was just an unfortunate choice, or someone put some kind of enchantment on them…that’s something we’ll have to sort out between the clans. There’s a group who will work with them, older dragons from a few different clans that look into situations like these. They’ll try to get to the truth.” He looked Rachel directly in the eyes. “But none of that explains or apologizes for what they did to you. An attack on an innocent who means no harm—much less someone who can’t shift—it’s a violation of our most profound principles.” He took a slow, deliberate breath. “We will find out how this happened. And we will ensure it won’t happen again.”
“But…you won’t kill anyone,” she said, her face shadowed with concern.
He reached across the counter and took her free hand, the one not busy with her remaining waffle. “You have my word. We will take no life. We may have to take away freedom, but we will not take either of those men’s lives.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Can I speak to them?”
“You can,” he said, “but I’m not sure how helpful it will be.”
“I want to see their faces,” she said. “I want to be sure—I’ll just feel better, I guess.”
Doug nodded. “That’s fine. There are two more clan heads on their way—it won’t take more than a few hours. When we’re together, you can untie them, and we’ll speak with them in human form. It might help us learn a few things, too.”
“Good,” she said. Brad was proud of her, of the determination written on her face.
“You’ve been very brave,” Doug said, “and very capable. I’m glad Brad found you. Not…not everyone is so lucky.”
“Thank you,” she said, softly. “I’m pretty glad he found me too.”
They finished breakfast together in near-silence. Brad pulled up a stool next to Rachel, and Doug ate standing up. Fussy enough to heat up his maple syrup, not too good to eat leaning over the counter…that was Doug, all right.
“You’ll need to tell your parents about Rachel,” Doug said, as he put his dirty plate in the sink. “They were getting worried about you.”
Rachel raised an eyebrow, amused. “Worried?”
Brad hadn’t been looking forward to this part. “There’s a legend—”
“Fact,” his uncle corrected.
“If you don’t find your mate before your twenty-fifth birthday…you’ll never have a mate.”
“That’s kind of dark,” she said.
“Well…my birthday’s less than a week away. So…they were getting worried.”
He couldn’t tell if she was disturbed or amused. “Were you getting worried?”
Brad suddenly wished his uncle wasn’t listening in. As if in response, Doug said, “I’m going to call the clan heads, see how close they are,” and walked down the hall toward their prisoners. “Brad,” he called back. “Can you heat our guests some oatmeal?”
Doug must have decided they didn’t deserve sausage or waffles. “Um, sure.” He got up and walked over to the counter.
“So…were you?”
“I didn’t forget you’d asked,” Brad said. “I just want to say this right.”
She waited. He thought.
Finally, as the water was heating for the oatmeal, he said, “I was worried, because I wanted someone to spend the rest of my life with. I want—I want a family, like my own. That’s important to me. But I wasn’t—” He looked over at her. “I wouldn’t have settled for just anyone. It was you. You’re who I’d been waiting for.”
“Okay,” she said. “That makes sense. But—that doesn’t make any sense. If you don’t find the right person before then, you just—suffer?” She frowned. “That’s so unfair. Why—how does that happen?”
Doug had returned, with his phone still in his hand. He stood at the entrance to the hallway and listened as Brad continued.
“Believe it or not, it’s the family curse. We don’t know exactly how it started—it’s gone on for generations, and the legends aren’t all consistent. But as far as we can tell it was back in the old country with a woman my great—” Brad couldn’t begin to remember. “My ancestor, at any rate, promised to marry. He gave her all kinds of promises, gifts, but insisted on keeping their love affair a secret. Some people say she was a dragon shifter, and other people say she was a witch—maybe both, who knows? The story goes that she died in childbirth, cursing his name and his cowardice. He took their son in and gave him the Banik family name, but it was too late. From then on, if you weren’t with your mate before twenty-five…you were alone.”
“That’s terrible,” she said. “She cursed her own son, too?”
“That’s how the legend goes, anyway.”
“That’s not how my mom told it,” Doug interrupted. “I heard she was jealous of a rival who stole her mate away. And when I’ve been researching the family I heard another story, about a stolen cow that was supposed to be a dowry, which seems pretty harsh, but maybe it was hard times. Cow was worth a lot, back then.”
“I guess none of us know the truth,” Brad said. “At least not the whole truth.” He frowned at his uncle. “A cow, really?”
Doug just shrugged his shoulders. His phone played something classical, and he disappeared down the hallway again, talking as he walked.
“Anyway,” Brad continued. “The Baniks who’ve made it to twenty-five alone—some have gotten married, but not many, and I don’t think there were a lot of happy endings.”
“That’s so cruel,” she said.
“We’ve tried to reverse the curse a few times, but—I don’t know. Probably there’s a prophecy or something that has to be fulfilled, and everyone forgot what it was…I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve met…kind of a lot of women in the past few years. Everyone in the family wanted me to beat the curse. It’ll be the same for my brothers as they get older—would be for my sister, too, if she could shift.”
She put her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. That…it must be hard on everyone.”
“It didn’t seem that real until I started getting closer to twenty-five, honestly,” he said. “Dad and Mom met in college, so they don’t have much trouble. Doug—well, he’s been alone his whole life. He doesn’t talk about it, but I guess I wouldn’t either.”
“No,” she said, softly.
“I don’t want you to think…we thought for generations it meant you had to get married, but then, in, um, 1864, I think? There was a delay in the wedding, and everyone was still okay. It was just having your mate, and maybe you had to tell everyone. But..” He smiled a little. “I want to tell everyone anyway. I can’t imagine keeping this to myself. But what about you? I mean, I know you weren’t waiting for your mate. But were you planning on getting married, having kids?”
“Someday,” she said. “I mean, my Ph.D work comes first.”
“Tell me again what you want to study.”
“My specialty’s isotope geology,” she said. “I’m most interested in the history of rock, I guess you’d say—I don’t know how much geology you know—”
“We know a lot of stuff about rock and stone composition,” he said. “But not down to the molecular level. Doug’s been interested in the origins of stuff for years, though, like how much meteor dust is in the metamorphic rock here in the lair. That’s the kind of stuff you’re talking about, right?”
She smiled. “Yes, exactly. I’ve put in for a research grant to do just that in this range, but you know how it is. It’s very competitive.”
This was sounding very familiar. “Do you remember the foundation name?”
“Are you kidding? I dream about it. Boispierre Foundation—oh, no. You guys aren’t French.”
“We’re not, but Doug thought he was being clever, going with a French name rather than using our home language.” He’d told Brad the further the foundation was from your family name, the fewer phone calls you got. “And the French explorers were all around here. Anyway—I don’t know if you’ll get that grant, but I bet Doug can work something out with you. He’s dying to have someone drill all the way down in this mountain, so to speak. And he wouldn’t have to hide the lair from you.”
“I don’t want to be anyone’s charitable contribution,” she warned. “Or any kind of bribe.”
“These mountains,” Doug said, coming back into the kitchen and pointing up at the stone that surrounded them, “are made of stars. And I want to know all about it.” He looked over at her. “If you want to know the truth, I did a search last night, and I’m reasonably sure you’re the candidate who had been at the top of the shortlist. My only concern was if we could work with you—or around you. The trouble with hiring perceptive scientists was that they tend to be perceptive. But I think when you get your phone working again—or get back to your laptop—you’ll see that I’d already chosen to bring you in for an interview, even before you met Brad.”
Her mouth formed a little o of shock. “Oh,” she said. “Really?”
Doug smiled, his tight, reticent smile, but still unmistakably a smile. “Really. I think you’re quite promising. And we won’t have as many concerns about security since you’re going to be part of the family.” Doug glanced over at him. “You still haven’t called your father.”
“Right,” Brad said. Doug was a lot of things. One thing he wasn’t: subtle. “I’ll…I’ll be right back,” he said, glancing at Rachel in apology.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Say hi for me.”