Chapter 13
“Did you enjoy the time to yourself?” Colin asked when he returned several days later.
“I did. How was your trip?” she replied.
“Productive,” he replied. “Are you headed out for a swim?”
“I am.”
“I think I’ll join you. It’s been a long trip. I could use a bit of down time lounging in the pool.”
“Great. I’ll see you out there,” she told him.
She had not expected him today and was on the verge of walking from the sitting area of her suite when he had poked his head in the open door to greet her. The bigger surprise was how much her heart had clutched in her chest when he spoke. A part of her, it seemed, had missed him and was glad he was going to spend time with her rather than just going about his business now that he was home. Of course, she was also bursting to talk with him about the tower.
She was already out in the pool when he joined her, looking like a bronzed god walking out the main exit from the side of the house. It was hard to take her eyes off of him and even harder to push how it had felt to have him inside of her out of her mind. She turned and swam to the other side of the pool and back to take her mind off it and more importantly, to give herself something to do other than gawk at him walking toward her like some sort of slow motion excerpt from a low budget teen crush film.
Pulling up to the other side of the pool, she turned again toward him as he splashed into the deep end from the diving board, shooting beneath the water toward her and popping up almost directly in front of where she stood. Her hormones were working overtime, screaming at her to scratch their proverbial itch. She bit her lip and tried to focus on something else. It was a relief when he began to talk about something that led her mind toward other things.
“So, Carl tells me that he took you shopping while I was gone. Did you get everything you wanted?”
“Mostly. I ordered a few other things, some that have come and some that haven’t yet.”
“And he took you for a tour further out toward the old castle grounds.”
“Yes. It was very interesting.”
“Did he tell you the story behind it?”
“Part of it, yes.”
“I guess it is stolen property, in some sense.”
“How so?”
“Well, my grandparents didn’t own it. They just sort of kept it when their owners were killed.”
“You view them as owners? Not employers or something like that?”
“Absolutely not. They chained my grandparents down in a basement. They tossed them rancid meat to survive on. Each night, my grandparents hauled it away and buried it beneath where they burned their trash to mask the smell as it decayed into the ground before enjoying real food with gold they took from their confines.”
“So, they stole it from them, then?” she asked, not sure if she could really blame them.
“I think that is how the castle owners would have viewed it, but there was so much of it. A few coins here and there would not have been missed and who would suspect a dragon of stealing from them?”
“Why didn’t they just leave if they were kept in such harsh conditions?”
“They had nowhere else to go. They were poor. Dragons were feared, hunted, so they had to be careful about shifting where anyone could see them. It made it hard to take care of themselves. If they remained in human state, they struggled to keep food on the table. If they shifted, they risked being seen and tracked. As bad as it seems to be trapped in a dungeon or basement, if you prefer, it gave them the freedom to be a dragon without being harmed.”
“Were they overrun in the end? Colin said that everything was destroyed but the tower. The family died, and they survived. How?”
“Men overran the castle and killed the family, but when they made it to the dungeon, they encountered dragons and were destroyed. Those who were left took to the castle walls with catapults and such to reduce it to rubble in an attempt to bury the dragons beneath it.”
“But why? I assume they attacked for the treasure.”
“They did, but they didn’t know about the dragons, apparently. They thought they could wait them out, wait for them to die and then dig through the rubble to retrieve the fortune.”
“But your grandparents escaped with it?”
“Yes. Once the men had gone away, my grandfather pushed upward against the rubble in his dragon form. He was too large to move it, even with my grandmother’s help, but he managed to raise it enough to provide her with enough space to make an opening. They worked together to build a tunnel that they could hide, so they could come and go, working in the night to move it all to the tower.”
“How fascinating.”
“It is. It was always interesting to hear about things that happened so long ago from a first person account. You won’t find many that get that opportunity.”
“So, did the people not come back for the loot then?”
“Oh, yeah. They came back, but by that time, my grandparents had buried it beneath the base of the tower and built atop it, so they found nothing but a couple rebuilding the tower.”
“And they didn’t consider that the couple they found might have taken the treasure?”
“Of course, they did, but they quickly learned they had made a mistake when they attempted to grab my grandmother and pull her from the tower. They shoved my grandfather out behind her and threatened to do unmentionable things to her in front of him if he didn’t hand over what they wanted. Instead, they got to witness, first hand, that two people could shift from human form into dragons.”
“But I thought that was something that had to be kept secret, to protect them?”
“Do you think any of those men lived to tell the tale?” Colin asked, looking at her intently.
“Oh, wow. I can’t imagine.”
“You wouldn’t want to imagine. There are bones buried in the rubble of the castle, rubble that has since been taken over by the elements and covered with dirt and grass as if it never existed.”
“And if someone, someday, decides to dig up those remains?”
“It wouldn’t matter. They’d only find bones that have been there for much longer than they think anyone living could have killed them, only marked off as casualties in a very old land war between rival clans.”
“Surely, there is damage that cannot be explained?”
“Probably, but do you think a human investigator or even a seasoned archaeologist would ever even think to suggest that it might have been done by dragons? Something that isn’t known to exist?”
“I suppose not.”
“Anyway, my grandparents lived in the tower for a bit and then built a house beside where the castle had once been.”
“But it’s not there anymore.”
“No. It burned,” he said.
Ashley noted that there was something that seemed a bit terse about the way he said it and her thoughts that it wasn’t something he really wanted to talk about was only reinforced when he tried to dismiss the subject entirely a moment later.
“Anyway. I think I’m puckering up sitting in this water so long. I’m going to get out and go inside.”
“Yeah, I probably should do the same,” she told him, moving toward the steps.
He treaded ahead of her and walked up them to retrieve a towel from a nearby patio table beside where she had laid her own. They stood drying off as the sun began to dwindle on the horizon.
“I’d love to see the tower sometime,” she said, seizing an opportunity to ask before the subject was put to rest completely.
“Sure. We’ll go out there one day soon,” he told her, but something about the way he said it made her think it wasn’t something he really wanted to do.
As much of a story as he had told her about the history of his family’s property, she couldn’t help but feel there was something he was leaving out and it was something significant, whatever it was. She knew, though, that she had touched a nerve and because of that, she planned to not bring it up again. It didn’t change her wondering what truth lay below the surface, though.
“I’m going out tonight. Hot date and all that,” he said as he finished toweling off, seeming to enjoy displaying himself to her while reminding her that their night together had been a one-time thing.
“Well, good luck,” she said, wrapping herself in a towel and making a hasty retreat into her room.
Inside, she stripped off her wet suit and strung it over the railing of the shower before slipping into a soft pair of fleece pants and a light sweater. How could he be so open and honest, as if they were making a connection one minute and the next, he was behaving like some glory hound beating his muscled chest and declaring his prowess? It made no sense. Even back in New York, the day they had spent together after their meeting had been as if he had some interest in her beyond just a contract.
While she wasn’t an angel and consensual sex without strings wasn’t something she was against, she had thought there might be more to it until he just up and left so quickly the following morning. Still, she had told herself that he owed her nothing and put it out of her head. It hadn’t been the first time she had thought she had made a connection to someone and turned out to be wrong.
Then, he had flown all the way to the States to join her at the airport in Atlanta for their return flight. They had sat together and shared meals and conversation on the plane and during the layovers along the way. It was as if he was only capable of showing any sort of interest in another person for a day or two, at most. Then, he was off to do whatever . . or whoever. She would like to say that he was an enigma, but the bigger truth was that he seemed like a playboy who had no intention of getting too close to anyone.
Still, how could she be mad when she had no interest in being used by another man. How could she fault him for not wanting to get too close to her when she had gone into this entire thing with a mindset that it was better to be the user than the used. Why she was wasting her time worrying about whether or not he paid any attention to her one way or another, she couldn’t decipher, but she needed to stop. He was an arrogant playboy and that was all she needed to know to keep her on the right path toward her own goals.