Price
FIVE
I'd left this house for work every morning for three years and never once had to make myself do it.
But this morning, I sat at the end of my own drive with the engine running, watching Cam let himself back inside with the door code I'd taught him, and I wanted to forget about work for the day and stay home.
Don’t.
Huh, that made no sense. My beast wanted me to leave? Don't what?
Don't go. Stay home because he’s here.
I put the car in drive and clicked the remote. The gate opened slowly as if it were deciding whether to let me out.
That gate agrees with me.
As I drove to the studio, I had that niggling feeling that I’d left something behind. My dragon did his best inside-me version of an eye roll but didn’t say anything.
The studio, a low brick building I’d bought when work outgrew the house where I lived before I became a father, was twenty minutes away.
It was on the outskirts of town and set on a huge lot surrounded by trees.
I needed the solitude so I could concentrate.
My assistants were human—you couldn’t advertise for dragon glassblowers—so I only used my beast’s fire when they weren’t there.
By the time I'd let myself in and brought the furnace up to heat, the reluctance to be away from my mate had given way to distraction, and that was worse. Distraction and molten glass didn’t belong together.
Glass was my life’s work. I mostly made vessels, vases, and bowls.
But the big commissions were installations that paid for the mortgage and upkeep of a house with five bathrooms. My clients were often private collectors who’d fly me out to hang what I’d made.
When I was interviewed about my work, there were always questions about how I worked the heat and how long I kept the glass molten on the end of a pipe.
People were particularly interested in how close I stood to the furnace without flinching.
But they didn’t know the trick. As a dragon shifter, fire had never been my enemy. Fire was something you could use to mold glass into art, and people assumed the furnace was the whole story because that was what they saw.
And I worked it like any glassblower, especially with my assistants around. Alone, I had my own fire for the things a furnace couldn’t do, like reheating a piece as I turned it and coaxing a color until it was just right.
I had a meeting with a potential client, hence the suit, which went well, and after they left, I changed into my overalls.
But I was acting like an apprentice when I scooped up the glass I didn't need, turned a pipe I wasn't watching, and let the molten blob sag and slide off the end onto the work bench with a slap.
All the years of my hands being reliable and Cam had reduced me to a lovesick fool.
I pictured him in the house moving through the rooms and sitting in the courtyard, belonging within those walls as his scent did.
Since my brother died, I’d devoted myself to raising his children.
I’d decided that was enough, my life was full and complete, and I never considered dating or that fate might step in and give me a mate.
Fate had played a disastrous role in my family’s life, and I’d wished I could get a court order making it stay away.
But fate had revealed its dominant trait, that of being unpredictable, when it brought Cam into our home.
“I can’t do this.” I couldn’t work under these conditions. The commission could wait. It was better to lose a day than ruin a piece because I couldn’t keep my mind on what I was supposed to be doing.
I banked the furnace and scrubbed the studio grime off my forearms. I studied the scars that wouldn’t fade.
No glassblower worked without collecting burns.
Hot glass looked like cold glass, and even the most careful reached for the wrong end of the pipe.
A dragon shifter’s skin wasn’t fireproof, not in human form when my assistants were here and I couldn’t hide behind my beast’s scales.
But it was tougher than a human’s, and a burn left a mark but didn’t maim.
Cam wasn’t expecting me until after lunch, but I needed to be with him, even if we were in separate areas of the house. Us being under the same roof was enough for now.
The house was quiet as I stood in the entryway, but Cam’s scent wafted around me and I inhaled it. My shifter hearing picked up the tapping on a keyboard in the courtyard.
Ohhh, that’s our favorite place, and he likes it too.
Cam had set up his computer under the umbrella with a jug of water beside him.
He was frowning at the screen. I knew that look.
He wasn’t happy with what he was working on.
Meara had shared her new logo, thanks to Cam’s brilliant design, and Cam himself had asked if I was okay with him freelancing when the children were at school.
But my eyes were drawn to what he was wearing—or not wearing. He had on a pair of shorts, and his chest was bare. Sweat trickled over his skin, and my shifter eyesight picked up the droplets tumbling onto his lap. I shivered, something I rarely did.
He hadn’t seen me, and my dragon and I agreed that we’d burn the world down before we let anyone hurt him. Before Cam, only three people meant that much to me, and all of them were my kids.
“You’re home.” He leaped up and the chair crashed onto the stone floor. I picked it up and it survived, but Cam trying to destroy the furniture was becoming a habit.
Just buy more. My dragon didn’t care about money.
“Is everything okay? Are the children here? Jack didn’t jump off anything, did he?”
“It was a slow day and I left early.” I wasn’t going into details. “Keep working if that’s what you’re doing. You’re not on duty until the children’s pick-up time. How’s your ankle?”
“It’s fine.” He stretched out his foot that was attached to his bare leg that disappeared into his shorts. I fisted my hands, thinking I’d have to go into the garden and get a grip.
“I’m puzzling over a logo for a bakery. They want one that’s rustic but elevated.” He made a face. “Translated, they have no idea what they want.”
Cam put a hand to his chest and his eyes went wide. “Oh.” He fumbled for his T-shirt, but he was so clumsy, he stuck his head through an armhole. He made an odd squawking noise as he tried to untangle himself. I stood awkwardly wanting to help but was wary of putting my hands on him.
When he finally got the shirt on, his cheeks were pink with embarrassment.
“What do you do? I realized I have no clue what my boss does all day. And you’ve changed.” He pointed at my overalls.
“Glass.” That made me sound as though I installed windows. I turned my arms over without thinking, and Cam’s gaze went to the burns. “I make big glass installation pieces as well as vases and bowls.”
“Oh, you made the dragon in the playroom.”
I nodded. He’d seen it, which pleased me and my beast.
He eyed my scars again. “Must be dangerous.”
I didn’t want to get into how I worked, so I just muttered, “Sometimes.”
“But can I see? Not now but sometime?” He tugged at his tee. “Are you famous?”
“Not outside of art circles and private collectors, but I have pictures.” I pulled my phone out and leaned over his shoulder to swipe through the gallery. We were so close that his scent was making me dizzy.
Cam didn’t comment as a disinterested observer would. He didn’t use the word pretty or ask how I did that. But he zoomed in on the lip of a blue vessel where the color faded into something paler.
“You did that gradient on purpose. Most people would have hidden the seam but you made it the whole point.” He tipped his head up, and my insides got warm and gooey.
What? I can’t see anything. My dragon was a little freaked out. Tell whatever’s gooey to stay away.
“You’ve got a good eye.”
“So do you.” I hadn’t told him I’d seen the logo he did for Meara, so he was probably thinking Huh?
He gulped or maybe that was me, but neither of us moved, until he did and bumped the glass half full of water. I grabbed the laptop, but to the human eye, my quick save was more superhero than human. Cam raised a brow but didn’t question me.
We spent the next few hours apart, though I took quick peeks at him whenever I went to the kitchen for coffee. My caffeine intake was double what it normally was, and I was jittery when I went to collect the kids. I told Cam to stay where he was and wrestle with his bakery problem.
The children almost fell into the house as they yelled and talked about what happened at school.
Isla wanted to play pickleball, and somewhere between the car and the kitchen, Jack had lost a shoe.
Bea was furious about a recorder she shared with another student, saying the kid had licked it.
The four of us made a face—no, make that five, because Cam had emerged from the courtyard.
Cam found the shoe and agreed to play pickleball on a day when they had no homework. He mouthed to me “Can we get another recorder?” And I nodded.
“We’ll get you your own and I’ll put your name on it,” Cam told my eldest. “Not a sticker but a design that you can help me create, and that recorder licker won’t be able to breathe on it, let alone lick it.”
Bea brow creased in concentration. “Can it be green?”
That was the color of her dragon’s flame—all the kids had different colors—and it was her favorite.
“It can be whatever you want.”
“Okay.”
Bea wasn’t as outwardly emotional as Isla or Jack, so her “okay” was high praise.
That night when everyone else was in bed, I wandered into the courtyard that already smelled like Cam.
My friend, Theron, would laugh at me if he knew, but I hadn’t told him.
Also his mate Ledger hadn’t been here since Cam arrived.
Their youngest had been ill which had kept him away.
I’d done exactly what my friend had, fallen for a human living under my roof, and we’d hidden our dragons behind bracelets and cover stories.
We have to keep Cam from running, my beast suggested.
I can’t make him a prisoner.
I had to show Cam one side of me and hope that he liked me enough so I could reveal the rest of me.