3. Maya

3

Maya

The necklace was out of her hands. Gone. No longer her business—not that it had ever been her business.

Whatever reason Corin Blackburn had for sending her a piece of jewelry that glittered like someone had pulled down the Milky Way to loop around some rich lady’s neck—she didn’t want to hear it. Was it his way of apologizing? Was it—

It didn’t matter. She’d sent the necklace and the slightly bitten packaging it had come in straight back to him. No return address.

Not that he needed a return address. If he wanted to find her, he knew exactly where she was.

And she wished that thought made her feel grumpy, not … excited.

Pah.

“Mama!” Tomás sang from his chair. “Mama, Mama, Ma-ma, Ma-ma—”

“Ba-by, ba-by, ba-by,” she sang back at him, banging an upside-down mixing bowl with a wooden spoon. He stared at her, mouth agape. “Ohhh, sorry, little man. Big noises are your job. I forgot!”

She laughed and set the bowl and spoon in front of him. He grabbed both with an expression of naked glee. She hid her own smile as she turned back to the kitchen counter—and the other mixing bowl, which would have been upside-down on the floor in half a minute, muffin mix decorating the floors walls and ceiling, if she hadn’t given Tomás the decoy.

“No like nananas!” Tomás declared as she mashed browning bananas into the bowl.

“I know, sweetpea, but last week you didn’t eat anything but bananas, so now we have a whole lot to get through.” Because everyone and their neighbor had helped them stock up after seeing Tomás dive dragon-snout-first into a banana split dessert at the local restaurant.

Her neighbors were amazing. But sometimes overwhelming. And not only when it came to groceries.

“No like nanananana muffins,” Tomás declared darkly.

“Mm-mm. And I bet you don’t like spinach, either,” Maya mused, peering over the recipe.

“Spidge!” Tomás’s eyes lit up.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Really? Well, okay…” She shook her head. The recipe called for enough banana to hide the taste of spinach, but hey, if her little dragon liked spinach more than bananas this week, maybe the green stuff could do the job of disguising the unacceptable yellow fruit. “Plus, we can take them when we go and see Lainie and Harrison and their new baby! Won’t that be fun?”

Work was over for the day and she had her regular baby-date with Lainie in a half hour. Normally she wouldn’t put this much effort into messing up her kitchen this time of day, but she hadn’t made it to the grocery store yet this week.

And she knew better than to appear at a house with a newborn and not come bearing stacks of easy-to-eat snacks.

BANG-BANG-BANG—

Ting!

Maya frowned. Was that her phone? Hard to tell now that Tomás had started drumming again. She tapped her pocket, then her apron. No phone. Oh well.

And, wow, was oh well still a novelty when it came to answering her phone. Once, she would have dropped everything and scrambled to find her phone and make sure she was well on top of whatever work emergency was summoning her. But now?

Work was over for the day. Which meant work was over. For the whole rest of the day.

Truly, she was living the dream.

Not the dream where Corin loomed up out of the shadows, dark and blazing and shirtless for reasons she didn’t want to interrogate, but still. A dream. A very nice dream, with time for banana muffins, hanging out with other sleep-deprived parents and, later, a walk down to the beach. Maybe Tomás wouldn’t even fly off and try to break into the ice-cream parlor.

BANG-BANG-BANG—

And soundproof earbuds. She scooped mashed banana into the muffin mix, and bit her lip, wondering whether to risk asking Tomás if he wanted to help her spoon it into the tray. In the pro column: it would be adorable, it would assist his fine motor skills, it would be less noisy than the drumming.

In the con column: the whole reason she’d given him the bowl to drum on was to keep him away from the goopy muffin mix. His motor skills were actually pretty fantastic already, in human and dragon form—it was convincing him the mix belonged in the muffin tray instead of artistically dotted around the house that would be the problem.

BANG-BANG—

She winced. “Hey, sweetpea, let’s tone it down a bit—”

He stopped immediately.

Maya blinked.

Not that her son wasn’t the sweetest, most adorable and considerate baby in the world, but listening wasn’t one of his top skills. Then she saw it wasn’t her he was listening to. His gaze was distant, his head tilted as though he was hearing something far away.

Fire blazed in his eyes.

Maya darted forwards, not quick enough to even get close as he shifted into dragon form and zipped out the door. The bowl and spoon clanged to the floor.

“Shoot,” she muttered and rushed after him. She was halfway up the stairs when he shot back down, a glittering bag dangling from his claws.

He crash-landed onto her chest and peered quizzically up at her. His net bag of treasures jangled against her apron. “What did you go and get that for all of a sudden?”

Guilt pinched at her. Was he still feeling the loss of the diamond necklace? He’d given it up easily enough, but the town’s dragon guardian, Apollo, had told her all about how important a hoard was to a young dragon. Was the loss of the necklace making him feel insecure about the rest of his treasures?

He chirruped to her, tilted his head, and she just managed to wrap her arms around him before he shifted back to human. Her heart thudded in her chest, the same way it always did, seeing the magical creature transform back into her dark-eyed little human boy.

He stared up at her, confounded. “Muffins?” he asked.

She laughed. “I was baking them, when you flew off on me. Shall we get back to it?”

“Yeah!” He hugged the bag to his chest. She smiled at the sight of the familiar treasures within it: the teaspoons he’d stolen from her kitchen drawer and the kitchen drawers of everyone they’d visited with in town, one of her old bracelets, some shiny rocks and shells from their beach walks…

And Corin’s watch.

Her smile fell.

“Let’s get back to our baking,” she said, infusing her voice with false cheer.

She was just putting the tray in the oven when someone knocked at the front door. Tomás muttered to himself, and Maya moved him to one hip as she went to open it.

Standing behind the door with her hand still raised to knock again was her best friend, and the reason she’d been able to build a home for herself in Hideaway.

“Felicity!” Maya blinked. “What’s wrong?”

“Not sure yet.” Felicity pushed her dark hair back off her face and wrinkled her nose at Tomás. “Hey, you.”

Maya wasn’t fooled. She’d known Felicity for years. She didn’t need the wispy blossoms of magic flitting agitatedly around Felicity’s head to know that, whatever was going on, it had pulled the rug from under her feet.

“What do you mean, you’re not sure yet?”

“Because I haven’t checked with you yet to decide how we feel about it.” Felicity took a deep breath and met her eyes. “Corin Blackburn is here.”

Corin was in Hideaway Cove.

Even half an hour later, Maya wasn’t sure how she felt about it. She just knew she felt it a hell of a lot. Her skin was scalded with the intensity of feeling . Of—of—

Anger. Frustration. Confusion. Hadn’t she made herself clear? She didn’t realize she had to add ‘And don’t come visiting either!’ to the note she’d sent with the necklace!

She wasn’t going to jump and run when he called, either. Let him wait until the muffins were cooked and on a rack to cool. She’d called Lainie to tell her she would have to rain check on their hang-out. And showered. And changed her clothes. And not changed again, because Corin Blackburn was not worth worrying over what she was wearing when she went to meet him.

He was waiting at Felicity and Apollo’s house, though to hear Felicity describe it, it was more like he was jailed there. Which was something, at least.

“When did Mr. Blackburn arrive?” she asked Felicity, back downstairs.

“Not long ago. Mays—are you okay with this? The last time you saw him…”

“I was freaking out and acting like my whole world was coming to an end?” Maya huffed out a breath through her nose. “I’m not scared of Corin Blackburn. I wasn’t scared then, either—”

“Could have fooled me,” Felicity said under her breath, but with an elbow in Maya’s ribs to make sure she heard it.

“Fine. I was scared. Not of him. Of—of…” Her shoulders slumped. “Everything was so out of control. And maybe he could have helped. And then…”

“Everything would have been even more out of your control?” Felicity suggested.

“I don’t need his help.” Maya glanced at Tomás. He was still holding his treasure bag in one hand. The other held half a banana-and-spinach muffin. “Did you sense him coming?” she wondered out loud. “Is that why you flew away to pick up your hoard?”

Tomás stuffed the muffin into his face, kicking his feet, and didn’t reply. Maya sighed. “I don’t need his help,” she repeated. “Not that he ever offered it. Come on. Let’s go find out what he wants now.”

Felicity and Apollo lived up the hill, in a buttercup-yellow house that looked like it was plucked straight from a children’s picture book. Apollo was waiting at the door to welcome them. He grinned widely at the sight of Tomás covered in muffin crumbs, and winked at Maya.

“Give the word and I’ll catapult him out of here,” he told her cheerfully.

Maya’s heart was in her throat. “Has he told you why he’s here?”

“Only that he wants to talk to you.” Apollo waved a hand airily. Sparks followed the gesture. “Also some stoic rumblings about making things right, but I didn’t pay any attention to that.”

Making things right? What did he have to make right? She was the one who’d run away with stolen goods. “How did he get here?”

“He flew in, the show-off.”

Apollo didn’t mean on a plane. Maya frowned. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

Felicity wiggled her fingers. “He has this shadowy magic that kept him hidden in the clouds. And once he was in town, our magic kept him hidden from anyone outside, of course.”

Maya had no interest in keeping a mental spreadsheet of what she knew about Corin’s magic, but she filled it in, anyway. A dragon shifter with ‘shadowy magic’. As opposed to Apollo, with his sparkling hearthfire magic. And the only other dragon she knew of, Felicity’s old boss Montfort, with his classic ‘breathe a lot of fire’ magic.

Trepidation trickled down her spine and she looked down at Tomás. Just the fact that he could transform into a dragon was enough, wasn’t it? Would he have more magic, too?

“Shadowy magic,” she repeated uneasily.

“Alas for him, it did not keep him hidden from our magic.” Apollo pulled Felicity close and kissed the top of her head. “I wondered if we would have an opportunity to practice throwing invaders out again—but he was surprisingly polite. Knocked on the perimeter and sat waiting with his tail around his paws until we answered the door.”

If he can fly in dragon form safely, why did he chase me in human form? Maya had fled in her car after Tomás stole the watch from Corin’s desk. He’d followed in his own vehicle. If he’d flown, she never would have escaped.

She gnawed her lower lip, troubled.

Did he not want to catch me?

Apollo misread her hesitation. “He’s here on sufferance,” he reassured her.

“Yeah. If he upsets you, he suffers,” Felicity said with a wicked grin.

Maya smiled weakly. “Thanks, both of you.”

“If you’d like some backup in there—”

“No. But could you look after Tomás? I’d like to talk to him alone.”

She opened the door and went through.

And forgot how to breathe.

Maya spent half her evenings at Felicity and Apollo’s place, sharing an early dinner before walking home with a sleepy dragon toddler over her shoulder. She’d sat at this table more times than she could count. She’d sat there surrounded by friends, by magic she’d never dreamed of, and frequently covered in a thin paste of whatever Tomás had been eating.

But seeing Corin there…

Had the kitchen gotten smaller since she was last here? Or was it just that Corin Blackburn could loom even when he was sitting down?

It took all her resolve not to hesitate in the doorway. She forced her pace to stay even as she walked in and sat down at the dining table opposite him.

Her pulse thudded in her throat. He was exactly the way she remembered him, exactly how he appeared in her goddamn dreams. Even when he wasn’t moving, there was a sense of restrained power in every angle of his tall, athletic body. His black hair was swept back from his face, drawing attention to the sea-glass shimmer of his eyes. She’d seen those eyes sharpen with interest or humor, darken with frustration—but they’d always seemed somehow veiled when he looked at her.

Not now. Now, they were piercing.

He’s here. For me. She couldn’t think of anything else. Even if it wasn’t true.

It couldn’t be true.

“Mr. Blackburn,” she said coolly.

“Miss Flores.” His eyes had snapped onto her the moment she set foot in the room. The fire in them was banked, but she knew it could flare up at a moment’s notice.

Did she want it to?

She cleared her throat. “What are you doing here?”

“I would have thought that was obvious.”

“ I thought I made it clear I don’t want you in my life.”

“You need me.” There it was: the flash of fire in his eyes, and the answering tug in her heart at his words.

She straightened her shoulders and made her voice perfectly cool and professional.

“I need you, sir?”

Frustration darkened his eyes. Was it frustration? Or … another sort of frustration…?

She shook herself. Now is not the time. Save it for her dreams tonight. No, don’t, and don’t even think about that right now anyway—

Corin cleared his throat. “You recently returned something that belonged to me,” he said.

“The necklace.” Was he going to accuse her of stealing it? Was that why he was here?

She clenched her fists under the table. It was so hard to concentrate with him in front of her, looking like—like—like he’d always looked. Dark and gorgeous, a collapsing star that pulled everything else in the world towards him.

It had been so much easier to ignore her attraction to him when they saw each other every day. After so long apart, it was like stepping into the sun after endless winter.

He pulled a small case from his pocket and laid it on the table between them. When he flicked it open—she already knew what the damned thing looked like. A waterfall of diamonds, shining like rainbows. “Why did you bring that here?”

“Do you know what it is?”

“Some priceless artifact I have no interest in getting my hands on.”

He sifted his fingers through the gleaming jewels. “This,” he said, his voice velvet over jagged stone, “is the Ocean of Stars necklace. Generations of royalty around the world have begged, bartered, and spilled their own blood for it. It has been in my family vault for the last twenty years.”

“Then you should leave it there,” she told him. “What is this about? I told you to take it back. All I need from you is for you to leave me alone. Don’t send me priceless rubbish from your hoard as though you need an excuse to—” Her cool demeanor fractured. She snapped her mouth shut, but it was too late.

An excuse to what? See her? Talk to her? Accuse her of further theft?

None of this made sense.

Nothing to do with how she felt about Corin Blackburn had ever made sense.

Corin leaned forwards, his eyes intent on hers. She felt like a little fish lost in the deep sea, lured in by a shining bright light. “I did not send you this.”

“What?” She gaped at him. “No—what are you talking about? Of course you—”

“Someone stole the necklace from my clan’s hoard and sent it to you.”

Cold crept up her spine. “But… Why? Why would anyone do that?”

“It’s a statement of power. A boast that they can bypass my defenses.”

“But why send it to me ?” Her voice rang in her ears. Plaintive. Begging, though what she was begging for, she couldn’t admit even to herself.

A muscle in Corin’s jaw tightened. “I cannot say. But it is clearly a threat.”

There was a beat of silence between them. The feeling that the world was crumbling around her. Again.

She clutched at what she knew, hoping that if she held onto the pieces strongly enough, they would start to make sense.

“I thought it was you.” But it wasn’t him. He’d already said that. She shook her head. “A threat? Who would threaten you by sending treasure from your hoard to me ?”

“That is what I intend to find out.” Something moved behind his eyes, and his mouth opened as though he was about to say something more—then he closed it with a snap.

As he looked away, one thing became clear.

Every angle of his body was straining away from her. He would rather be anywhere but here , she thought.

She’d been ready to tell him he had no place in her life. Ready to freeze him out for approaching her, after the way he’d behaved the last time they saw each other. And for—for being a dragon shifter all this time, when she’d been struggling with Tomás, with no idea what she was doing.

Which didn’t make any sense. Because why would he care about her personal problems? Why would he help her, if she ever gave him a chance to?

But he wasn’t even here for her.

No. He’d come all this way for the same reason as the last time he followed her here. Someone messed with his hoard.

The pang in her heart—it couldn’t be disappointment.

She pulled herself together. She spent so much time pulling herself together, these days. In her perfect, slow-moving, single-calendar life. “Fine. I’ll believe it wasn’t you. Who could have sent it, then? And how did they know where to find me?”

An expression that on any other man might have been regret flitted across his face. “You don’t understand dragon society, but—”

“I worked for your grandfather and then for you, for five years. And my best friend is engaged to a dragon shifter. I can extrapolate.” She folded her arms. Finally. Something she could speak knowledgeably about. “Dragons, like all shifters, keep your true natures secret from the human world. Not that it stops you from behaving like complete cavemen. For example, the Blackburns and the Montforts are infamous rivals, but what the tabloids don’t know is that you’re both dragon shifters. Dragon shifters who spend more time posturing over who’s the most powerful businessman in town than you do actually running your companies, most days.” Her mind raced ahead. Pieces fell into place. “If dragon shifters put the same amount of energy into personal espionage as you all do into corporate espionage, and stealing each other’s treasure, then it’s no wonder your enemies found me. I worked for the Blackburns for half a decade and then disappeared? Even if they didn’t know the details behind why I … quit, they must have seen an opportunity.”

“An opportunity. ”

She’d seen grown men go pale and shiver when Corin snarled. But she was still inured to it, apparently. Except for the faint thrill that raced up her spine.

“An easy target. Me. No longer directly associated with the Blackburn clan, but with a history that meant I could still be used to harass you.”

Corin stopped snarling. He actually looked slightly sick. “As devastatingly accurate as ever, Miss Flores.”

“But why me?” she went on, because she had control of the conversation this far, and no way in hell was she letting Corin take it back. “I’m not the only person to leave your employment. Have you checked whether other pieces are missing from your hoard? Whether other ex-employees have been approached like this?”

“I have not.”

And there was one good reason for that, wasn’t there? She drummed her fingers on the table, feeling slightly sick herself. Say it , she told herself. Just say it.

Corin’s eyes were shards of ice with a heart of black diamond, piercing her, as though he was willing her to speak.

“The watch,” she forced out. “Other employees have left, but none of them stole anything from your personal hoard before they disappeared. Whoever it is, they targeted me—me and Tomás—because they knew about that.”

Corin was silent, so she made herself say the next thing, too.

“You followed me here the last time, with all your cousins in tow, because your draconic honor was damaged when Tomás took your watch. I’m not being targeted because of my connection to you—I’m being targeted because of how that connection broke . I’m someone you already don’t trust. Someone you would naturally suspect.”

“That isn’t true.”

She scoffed. “You already chased me halfway across the state to get your watch back. Anyone who knows about what happened that night will know—”

“Is that what you thought I was doing?”

His tone drove the breath from her lungs.

Then what were you doing?

After what felt like an eternity, she could breathe again.

And she did not ask the question that made her skin thrill with hope.

She cleared her throat.

“Whoever they are might be trying to further turn you against me. Or—no, that doesn’t make sense. Against Hideaway Cove in general? They might think you’d see Apollo as harboring a thief, and that would be enough to make him your enemy. Or—sir?”

She couldn’t read the expression on his face. Which was concerning, because she had a great deal of experience reading Corin Blackburn’s features.

His throat bobbed. “You don’t need to call me ‘sir’ anymore, Miss Flores.”

“And my name is Maya. Sir.”

His eyes flashed. “Maya.”

Oh, god.

That had been a mistake. She did not need the memory of him saying her name like that, floating around in her brain.

She swallowed. “Corin.” Nope. Saying his first name did not make things any better. Why had she thought it would?

Why was she like this? Why? She’d behaved like a normal person around him the whole time she was his assistant—and now he couldn’t breathe without her losing seconds to imagining what his mouth would feel like on her neck?

Her heart thudded. He wasn’t here for her, she reminded herself. He was here because someone had stolen from him and implicated her. She was someone else’s pawn in whatever stupid dragon game was being played here.

But he was so…

Magnificent.

He took her breath away.

And she would let him take everything else away, too.

And … she had been sitting here creepily staring for too long, and he was watching her with eyes that saw too much.

He stood slowly. Caught in the deep-sea shadow of his gaze, she almost lost hold of herself.

“We’ll leave at once,” he declared. “I’ll make the arrangements. You can stay at—”

“Excuse me? We? I’m not going anywhere with you.”

She’d almost let his sea-glass eyes fool her. She’d slipped into problem-solving mode as though they were still in the same place they were a year ago. Employer and employee. The boss who makes the problems, and the assistant who solves them.

He looked at her in surprise, as though he’d never imagined her disagreeing with him. Well, too bad. If she let him take charge now, she’d never be free of him. She wasn’t his assistant anymore. She didn’t have to arrange her words to suit him.

She didn’t have to do anything for him.

“Tomás and I are staying right here. We’ve barely got settled in Hideaway Cove. I’m not going to turn his life on end again. Besides, we’re protected here. Apollo and Felicity’s magic means no one can come near me if I don’t want them to.”

“You trust them to protect you?”

“Who else should I trust?” she shot back.

His expression locked down.

The door opened. “Did I hear the dulcet tones of disagreement?” Apollo asked, his voice deceptively light. Maya’s shoulders relaxed. But something inside her tensed, too. She appreciated Felicity’s mate running to her defense, but part of her resented the intrusion.

A dumb part, she told herself. Whatever Corin and her were, now that he wasn’t her boss, and she knew his secrets, they weren’t … they weren’t…

They were fighting in her best friend’s kitchen, that’s what they were doing. Apollo had every reason to interrupt.

Apollo put his hand on the back of her chair. “Shall I ready the catapult?” he asked.

“No.”

“Shame.”

She swallowed. “This is—the situation is more complicated than I thought.”

“Maya is in danger.” Corin’s eyes flashed. “And I intend to stay here to protect her.”