Desired by the Dragon Read online

  “I needed to talk to you, and you didn’t come to town today,” she groused. He wasn’t used to such an edge in Moira’s normally soothing voice.

  “I worked all night,” he tried to explain. “Slept in, and then I had to work on my new piece.”

  Moira was turning in a slow circle taking in his studio. Robin had built her artists’ colony from scratch. His cottage was just a simple rectangle with one bedroom, a big eat-in kitchen, and a small sitting room.

  In many ways the living quarters were incidental. The studio ran the full length of the back wall of the cottage and was as deep and half again as high. Robin had taken advantage of every scrap of light by constructing the roof and walls entirely of glass.

  The back wall had a single door that led into the cottage, and a small counter with a deep sink. The remainder was shelves and cupboards for supplies and racks for finished canvases. Quinn had almost filled the racks. He had set up three easels in front of the windows. Because he worked in oils, he found it easier to work on multiple paintings at once. That way he always had a dry surface ready. It was a cloudy day, so he had opened the blinds completely. Late afternoon gloom barely illuminated the room.

  Even though there was a powerful extractor fan, he always worked with at least one window open to air out the fumes from his paints and turpentine. Moira marched across and closed the window. Then she shut and locked the door into the studio. Maybe the fairy princess had come to ravish him? Although she looked incensed rather than passionate.

  “I’ll put these canvases away,” he told her. “Let me know what I owe you, and I’ll settle up before you leave.”

  “It’s cleaner than I thought it would be.” She scowled at the tiled floor. It was blotched with old paint stains, but Quinn kept it swept and mopped. Dust stuck to wet paint and clogged brushes. Besides he was dragon enough to prefer order and comfort to squalor and dirt.

  “Why are you angry?” he asked. “What did I do?” He thought. “Or not do?”

  “You didn’t tell me you were engaged.”

  Oops. “You didn’t tell me about your previous relationships either,” he pointed out. “Cynthia and I are no longer engaged.”

  “She told a reporter yesterday that your marriage will take place next year,” she snapped.

  “Then she lied. She gave me back my ring. I told her I was sorry she felt that way, but I accepted it. As far as I am concerned, our relationship was over from that instant.”

  “Clearly, Ms. Fitzhugh didn’t get the memo.” Moira didn’t look as if she believed him.

  “She may have decided a Drake in the hand is better than a fiancé in the bush. But since we haven’t been in touch, I wouldn’t know about that.” He moved a little closer. “I consider myself a free man.” He grazed one flushed cheek with the back of his fingers. “I am a free man.”

  Moira looked uncertain. The stormy look in her eyes intensified.

  “Look,” he said. “I was about to have breakfast. I just made coffee. Would you like some?”

  “Breakfast?” she sneered. It wasn’t a very good sneer – her face wasn’t designed for sneering. But it told him that his fairy was still plenty pissed.

  “I told you, I got up late,” he explained with a patience he was far from feeling. Damn Cynthia. He didn’t need this kind of aggravation while he was courting such an elusive female.

  Moira didn’t respond. She was examining his latest painting. “This is good,” she said. “Maybe the best one yet. You could be a modern Richard Dadd.”

  Richard Dadd was a Victorian painter who had specialized in fairies and the supernatural. “Hopefully without Dadd’s mental health issues.” Dadd had spent years in an asylum before killing himself.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Nothing wrong with your mental health. I think the general public is going to go for these trees in a big way.” She seemed less vexed. Which was a good sign. Wasn’t it?

  She stepped one pace to the right. “Yup. If you look at those trees long enough they turn into people. Spirits anyway.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “It’s good.”

  “It’s not finished.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “The sapling has no spirit,” he argued. “It still needs to be infused with consciousness.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t have a soul yet?” she suggested. “What are you going to call this piece?”

  “I don’t know.” Naming his paintings was always hard. “The Tree Nursery?”

  “Nah. Sounds like a plant store. You need something like, Soul Emergent - Number One.”

  “That is better. More modern. More New Age. Thank you. Coffee?”

  But Moira had moved to the left-hand canvas that was angled away from the middle one. Too late he remembered he had been working on her portrait.

  “You – you Peeping Tom,” she accused. Her face was red and her eyes were slate-colored.

  “It’s not what you think,” he protested.

  “Is this, or is it not, a nude picture of me?” She was practically vibrating with rage.

  “I painted you as I imagine you look with no clothes,” he told her. “Not from life.” Although he was pretty sure that was what she looked like.

  “You had no right!”

  “No right. Just inspiration. I could no more have not painted that portrait than I could have stopped breathing.”

  “Pretty words. But I will not have a nude portrait of me on public display.”

  “Never. This is just for my private collection,” he swore.

  “Collection!” Her voice could have shattered glass. She dashed to the other easel. Fortunately that was another tree portrait.

  Unfortunately, she moved to the racks of completed paintings. She found her portraits almost immediately. She began pulling them out until she was surrounded by a damning circle of them. He thought they were getting better and better. But since he could no more have scraped down a portrait of Moira and painted over it, than he could have gouged out his own eyes, there were a great many of them. Some on artist’s panels, some on canvas.

  At least in the first ones she was clothed.

  “They’re good,” she conceded after a long time. “Very good. But you still can’t show them.”

  Expose his mate to public view? Never. He shook his head. “I have no intention of letting anyone else see them,” he vowed. He stood directly behind her, looking over her shoulders. Should he risk touching her?

  “I’m still refining my technique, and I haven’t gotten the color of your hair or eyes right yet.”

  And she was never going to be his mate.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Moira~

  She was furious with him for painting naked pictures of her, and he wanted to discuss fricking color theory? Would she ever understand men?

  “Did you paint pictures of her?” she demanded.

  Quinn looked like a baffled pirate. His black beard and curling hair looked tousled, as if he had not bothered to groom when he got up. Not that he was as disheveled as he had been. His blue work shirt was relatively paint-free too. As were his jeans. There was no sign of that disgusting smock. No smell of stale booze either.

  “Do you mean Cynthia?” He sounded incredulous. He shook his head, ran both hands over his head and down over his beard. He emerged looking sleek and well-groomed, but no less puzzled.

  “How’d you do that?” she asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Comb your hair and beard with your hands.”

  He shrugged. “How did you get away from me out by the car? One moment you were right beside me, the next you were halfway up the path.”

  She laughed. “You got me there. I just can. It’s a fairy attribute. No big deal.”

  “Flying without wings,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Pretty much. But we’re getting away from the main point, which is did you paint your former fiancée?”

  He shook his head. “I’m a landscape painter. And besides,
she is always being photographed.”

  Those sounded like stock excuses. Interesting. Reassuring. “Presumably you are still a landscape painter and yet.” She waved a hand at the ring of portraits.

  He pounced. Held her close against his chest. Her heart was beating like a frightened bird’s. “Don’t. Please,” he begged.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Please don’t destroy or erase them, or whatever you were going to do.”

  Moira made two discoveries. The first was that a humble, supplicant Quinn was as desirable as scruffy, indomitable Quinn. And two, she could not destroy those works of art. She was still outraged that he had executed them, but they were magnificent. She was magnificent. She peeped at them again. Yup. Magnificent. Sensual. Beautiful. He obviously saw her as some sort of sex goddess.

  “Please,” he entreated.

  “Very well. Let me go.”

  He loosened his grasp. “I never want to let you go,” he said.

  She turned to look at his face. That pressed her breasts into the stone wall of his chest. She took a deep breath. Big mistake. Her nipples tingled and her insides melted. “Let’s go have that coffee,” she said.

  “Must we?”

  “Yes.”

  He released her. Like a damn fool, she felt chilly without his hot body against hers. She rushed into speech. “What happened to Quinn the drunk?”

  “Quinn the drunk?” He was perplexed. Then he chuckled. “Oh, you mean those old jeans and that smock. Jeans are mine. Found the smock in the studio cupboard. I thought they made an excellent disguise.”

  “If you want to be taken for a derelict!”

  “Not by you.” He turned his head to smile at her. Her insides went from squishy to liquid. “Let’s have some coffee.”

  He poured her a mug and passed her an unopened carton of cream and a sugar bowl with decidedly lumpy sugar. “Would you like some eggs or toast?” He reached into his fridge and removed a box of eggs.

  “Coffee is fine. Where do you keep it?” she asked.

  “Keep what?”

  “Your booze.”

  “There’s a bottle of chardonnay in the fridge, if you want some,” he said doubtfully. “I know I finished the red last week. I think I brought some odds and ends from my liquor cabinet with me. You’d have to look in that little pie safe in the sitting room.”

  The wine in the fridge was half-empty and wearing one of those little black plugs that allowed you to pump out the air and keep the wine longer. There was no beer. The pie safe held exactly six bottles all poked behind a dusty set of martini glasses and a shaker. All more than half full. Two still sealed.

  Cognac, orange liqueur, vodka, sweet sherry and two brands of single malt. Not exactly the collection of a serious drinker. She looked in the trash and behind the cottage for the empties. Nothing but an empty bottle of Cabernet sauvignon. She should have been relieved, but she just felt more irate.

  By the time she got back to the kitchen, he had prepared a big plate of scrambled eggs and a mountain of toast. He had set one place and now he sat down to eat. She slipped into her own chair. She sipped at her mug. Her coffee was cold.

  Quinn took a big bite of eggs, chewed, swallowed. “Heat it up in the microwave. Do you mind telling me what that little ritual was all about?” he inquired pleasantly. But she could tell he was seriously annoyed.

  She turned from the microwave keypad. “I was making sure you really don’t have a drinking problem.”

  “Like Bramwell?”

  The truth dawned on her. “Exactly like Oliver Bramwell. I take it that it’s his smock and alcoholic fumes you’ve been wearing into town.”

  “Part of my disguise,” he returned with satisfaction. “I drink. Mostly wine. But not while I’m working, and mostly I’m working.” He shrugged and applied himself to his breakfast again.

  “Huh.” She brought her reheated coffee to the table. “Let’s get back to your hoard of naked fairy pictures.”

  He looked dumbfounded. Beneath his beard, his face flushed scarlet. He swallowed his mouthful of toast. Drank coffee. Rose to refill his mug. “Can I freshen yours?” he asked.

  “Yes, please. And then you can explain that hoard.”

  He winced. Brilliant fairy that she was, she deduced hoard was the word that embarrassed him. He poured them both coffee, returned to his place and attempted a placating smile. At least she thought that was what he was doing. Looked more like a buccaneer’s grimace to her. She sipped her hot coffee and waited.

  “You inspire me,” he said slowly and earnestly. “I don’t think I’m actually hoarding naked fairy paintings. I am painting my muse.” His broad shoulders flexed in a shrug. “They just accumulate.” He sat down and resumed his meal.

  “Twenty-three paintings are a hoard,” she informed him sharply.

  “Twenty-three!” His eyebrows rose. He looked pleased as a small boy who had discovered he had even more model cars than he thought. “And each one better than the last.”

  “You can’t keep those things where anybody could see them.”

  She recoiled at his fierce expression. Quinn looked suddenly bigger and even more menacing. “They wouldn’t dare.”

  “They might see them by accident. As I did.”

  He scowled. “I need a secure room,” he said as if she had one in her hip pocket.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Quinn~

  Dragons were hoarders. It went with the territory. Oh, these days they didn’t call it hoarding. They had collections. Collections with no end. He had grown up in a house full of masterpieces. Works of art from every period, the accumulated acquisitions of generations. The famed Drake Art Collection. Moira showed no sign of thinking this urge to collect was normal.

  He rushed into speech, attempting to make her understand. “I’ll make sure your portraits get moved someplace safe.”

  “Like a vault.”

  She did understand. “Exactly like a vault.” He needed a treasure house for her portraits. Maybe the vault at Shoreside?

  “And will you rent one to stick me in too?”

  That had to be a trick question. Maybe she didn’t understand after all. “Those paintings are private. I don’t want to share them with anyone. But I also don’t want to paint over them. That would be like effacing you. They have to be stored away from profane eyes.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Not that you are not a treasure. But I draw the line at sticking you in a treasure chest.”

  “Do you?” Moira’s voice was very dry.

  “You don’t hoard your friends,” he assured her. It was one of the first rules taught to dragonlings. Spoken aloud to Moira, it sounded like lunacy instead of an essential life lesson.

  “And we’re friends?” she asked skeptically.

  “Certainly,” he assured her. He smiled. “And something more.”

  “More?”

  “There’s passion between us, Moira Fairchild. I want you. And I think you want me. Am I wrong?”

  “No. Not exactly. But it bothers me that you ditched your fiancée and now you’re pursuing me.” Her eyes were the color of storm clouds again. “Are you on the rebound?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Can you be sure? I know you mortals are swayed by your emotions.”

  “Well, sure.” Where was she going with this? “Isn’t everyone?”

  She shook her shining head at him in gentle reproof. “Not fairies. We deal in logic and rational thought.”

  “Huh.”

  “It seems illogical that you cared enough for Cynthia to wish to marry her, and now you have no feelings for her at all.”

  He told her the truth. “Ah. Well, the thing is that Cynthia found me boring. After a while that gets old. It’s hard to keep feeling the passion when the other person keeps putting out your fire.”

  Moira’s feathery brows snapped together. Her nose wrinkled the tiniest bit. “What does that mean?”

  Quinn cleared his throat. “Lo
gically, Cynthia seemed to be everything I needed in a bride. She had looks, education, a similar social background. My parents liked her. And we seemed to click. Right up until I put a ring on her finger. After that she got less and less interested in me and doing the things I like to do.” Including fucking. But that was a tad crude to mention to the fairy princess.

  “I suppose,” she said reluctantly. “I guess we will have to wait and see if you get bored with me.”

  “Never,” he assured her. It was literally inconceivable to him. Comparing her to Cynthia was not like comparing apples and oranges but like comparing dirt and diamonds. There was no comparison.

  Her face didn’t change, but her eyes turned darker. She was uncertain. Worried.

  He hurried into speech. “We’ll go as slowly as you want,” he told her.

  “And you’ll put those pictures of me someplace safer?”

  “This very afternoon. I’ll put them in the vault at Shoreside. Do you want to come with me?”

  “To your family cottage?”

  “Yes. We can take the sailboat out – if you like sailing,” he suggested hopefully. She was dressed for sailing. More or less. And they had lots of sweaters and life jackets in diminutive sizes – for his cousins’ children.

  “Of course I like sailing. I was born on this island. I learned to sail, before I learned to walk.”

  It took some doing to cram all Moira’s portraits into the cottage vault. Fortunately the Drakes were used to storing their art collection at the end of each summer and the underground safe-room had been built with extra spaces. Since none of his portraits were framed, by removing a couple of the framed ones, he could fit them all in.

  “You are making room by moving Renoirs?” Moira demanded incredulously.

  Quinn shrugged. “Your privacy is far more valuable to me. We’ll put these back upstairs.”

  “What if someone steals the Renoirs?” she worried.

  “They’re insured. Besides, who on the island is crazy enough to steal from dragons?”