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.