ROMANCE: SHAPESHIFTER ROMANCE: Dragon Baller's Bride (Dragon Shifter Alpha Male Romance) (Paranormal Romantic Suspense) (28 page)

“
P
lease
, just a few more days,” Cara begged.

“It’s been three months,” the woman said. Her eyes were hard.

“You don’t understand.”

“
You
don’t understand. I’ve seen a hundred like you. Never enough money, always a kid to feed. I give you another month, and you’ll only be behind then, too. And if I let you all do this, you know what?
I’ll
end up on the street.”

“You can’t do this,” Cara whispered.

“You’ve lived in New York how long?” The landlady asked her.

“Seven years.”

“Not long enough to learn your lesson.” The woman shrugged her shoulders. “You let your head go under; you’ll never come back up. You should run back to…” Her eyes raked over Cara. “Vermont? Indiana?”

Cara did not bother answering.

“We’ll be out by tomorrow.”

“You’ll be out tonight. Get your things.”

“I can’t hire movers tonight!”

“Well, take what you can carry.”

The door slammed, and Cara gave a little cry.

“Mom?”

“It’s going to be okay, Darren.” She said feeling terrified. “It’ll be okay.”

She always said that. And it was never true. She couldn’t cry, couldn’t cry… Her stomach rumbled and she swallowed hard.

“I packed my things,” he said tentatively. “I didn’t know which of yours to pack.”

And at that, Cara did cry. She slid down the wall and buried her face in her hands and felt the tears take her, wracking sobs that shook her body and tore themselves out of her mouth until her throat was raw. She felt Darren’s arms around her, and she wanted to scream at everyone, at the world, at God for letting this happen. A child shouldn’t have to know to pack his things in the middle of the night. He shouldn’t have to leave everything behind, again and again and again.

She should give him up for adoption. The thought was so terrifying that Cara gave a whimper, wrapping her arms around Darren and holding him tight; fingers digging into his back until she felt him squirm. It would be better for him…

And it would kill her. She tried to calm herself, but the tears kept coming—harder, now. She was selfish, stupid, a failure. The words marked her steps as she walked to work, as she poured coffee, as she trudged home at night. They haunted her when she snatched an extra packet of ramen off the shelf and put it in her pocket, and they resounded in her head when she lay awake, stomach twisting with hunger.

The words hit her afresh now, swamping her. The landlady was right. Cara was drowning, and she was taking Darren with her. And that, she could not allow herself to do. Which meant there was only one thing
to
do: go to Craig’s parents. Beg. Accept every single insult they could throw at her, because there was nothing more important than Darren. He would grow up well-fed. He would hate her. He would hear every day that she was a failure.

But he would survive.

She would go now, before she lost her nerve.

And then her fingers clenched around him again, and Cara looked at the clock, tears blurring her eyes. 12:45AM. They’d be in a worse mood if she woke them up now, she told herself. One more night. She’d keep Darren with her for one more night. Bargaining with the inevitable, but she was too selfish to let him go yet.

“We should go.”

“Where?”

“We’re…”
Don’t let him see.
“We’ll go to the coffee shop for the night.”

“Are we allowed to do that?”

“We’ll have to be very careful,” Cara said, her heart breaking and tears welling up in her eyes even as she tried to smile. “I need you not to go in the kitchen when we get there, okay? Everything has to stay clean.”

“I’ll be good.”

Oh, God, she could not do this. “I know you will, sweetheart.”

Cara pushed herself up and went to the bedroom. Her clothes, she rolled and stuffed into a backpack. A little box with a necklace from her father, a bracelet of her mothers. A tiny stuffed bear; the last thing she had left to remember her sister. On impulse, she went to the kitchen and took a mug from the cupboard—her favorite, blue with stars. She pulled the loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter out of the cupboard, then stuffed their toothbrushes and her makeup into a plastic bag.

“Ready to go?”

Darren looked around the apartment, and squared his little shoulders. “Ready.”

“You’re being so brave,” Cara told him as they walked. She looked down at him and tried to smile.

“You’re braver,” Darren said promptly. He huddled against her as they passed by alleyways. A few people still on their landings looked up blearily. The smells of alcohol and cigarette smoke swirled through the air, and Cara wanted to cry at the thought of Darren seeing all of this. He should be home in bed.

Tomorrow night, he would be. Her fingers clenched, and she uncurled them with an effort. It was best, she told herself.

At the inner gate of the coffee shop, she paused uncertainly. Mack would see all of this tomorrow. The security cameras were state of the art, and the lights never went out in this building. Though there might be hundreds still at work above her, the throngs had long since cleared, and the place seemed like something out of a horror movie—creepily deserted. Well, there was nothing for it. She just had to hope Mack didn’t fire her.

A small voice in her head told her that after tomorrow, it would not matter very much. Cara tried to ignore it.

“Hello?”

The voice startled her so much she dropped the keys. They clanged to the floor and she whirled, her heart in her throat. When she saw who it was, her shoulders slumped.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” Perry Hammond said easily. He looked at them. Looked at the suitcases in their hands. And then he smiled at Darren. “Little man, would you give me a moment alone with your Mother?”

“Um…”

“It’s okay, Darren.” Cara could feel herself shaking. She squeezed his fingers. “Why don’t you go look at the fountain?”

“Sure,” Darren said. He trailed away, looking nervously over his shoulder.

“We got off on the wrong foot,” Perry told her. His eyes were dark, and there was something in his expression she could not name. “But I promise you; I wish only to help.”

I don’t need help.
But the words of her tired refrain would not come. She did need help. She only stared at him.

“I have a guest bedroom,” Perry told her softly. “Please, Cara. Don’t be too proud to take help.”

“I have no pride left,” Cara told him, and to her surprise, a smile split his face. Genuine, and filled with humor.

“That,” he said, “I will never believe.” Then his face softened. “Just for tonight. Will you accept my help?” He saw her waver. “No strings attached.”

He was lying. She knew he had to be lying. And yet her heart didn’t believe that. She really was just as stupid as they were going to call her tomorrow. She always fell for the wrong guys.

“Okay.” Throwing away everything. Accepting whatever would happen. “Darren. We’re going to stay with Mr. Hammond tonight.”

The cab ride was silent, Cara knowing that her son was terrified, and having no words to reassure him. She could not even reassure herself. Perry, meanwhile, looked out the window as if he could not sense the thinly veiled panic in the car. He tipped the cab driver as exorbitantly as he’d tipped Cara the night he came to the diner, and led them to a chrome-plated elevator in a gleaming lobby.

“Mr. Hammond,” a bell boy said, smiling.

“Good morning, Tobey. This is Cara, and Darren.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Tobey held the door for them and pressed 27, then waved to Perry as the doors closed.

Cara wanted to gasp when the doors opened. The elevator, it seemed, came out directly into Perry’s apartment, floors of the same pale marble leading to Persian rugs and a gorgeous fireplace, and the biggest kitchen she’d ever seen sat in one corner. Art hung on the walls: star charts and old nautical maps, and a few pictures of a younger Perry with boys and girls who could only be his siblings, from the look of their matching dark eyes.

“This way, little man.” Perry picked up the suitcases and showed Darren to the bedroom. Cara could hear the shower turn on and off, and the sound of drawers opening, and then Perry emerged, smiling tentatively.

“Can I get you a glass of wine? Tea?”

Courage. She had to have courage. Cara bit her lip. “Just tell me what you want.”

He sighed, hands in his pockets, and then he beckoned her into the living room, gesturing to one couch as he sat on another.

“I’m not sure…” He stopped. “I’m not sure that I’m up to telling you the whole story.”

Cara watched him, curling her legs up to her chest, and Perry sighed again.

“Cara, you remind me… of me. A few years ago. Well, more than a few.” He ran a hand ruefully through his hair.

“You’re a billionaire,” Cara said bluntly. More bluntly than she wanted to.

“I didn’t start out that way. I started out like you.” His eyes met hers. “I was too independent.”

“Too independent.” Cara wanted to laugh, or cry. She wasn’t sure which.

“Independence makes you strong. Teaches you to stand on your own two feet. But it can cripple you if you let it, just like anything else. In you, I see dreams that go…beyond this planet.” His eyes drifted to one of the star charts. “Your son didn’t get his intelligence from nowhere, Cara. He got it from you, and he’ll get your competence, and your drive, and your humor, too. But one thing you should show him, before it’s too late, is that people need other people. No one can go it alone.”

“You’ve got it all wrong.” Cara swallowed hard. “You think you can just put me back on my feet and I’ll go back to school and become some big deal.”

He just watched her, elbows resting on his knees, and she looked away before she could let her eyes drift over his handsome face. Before she could think of how things might have been—if she had finished her schooling, if she had met him as a scientist, as a woman with a career. A woman worthy of him.

“I’m a screw up,” she said quietly. “I’m grateful for your help, Mr. Hammond—”

“Perry.” His voice was deep, sending shivers down her spine.

“Perry, okay. I’m grateful. But you’re just going to be disappointed in me.”

“I don’t think so,” he told her quietly. He stood up and held out his hand.

She stood, warily. She was still as a statue as he leaned close, his lips brushing her cheek, her jaw, and at last—lightly—her lips. When he drew away, she knew her eyes were wide with shock.

“I think you’re the most beautiful woman, inside and out, that I’ve ever seen,” he told her. “I think you have it in you to do everything you’ve ever dreamed of. Tomorrow morning, you can walk out that door and never see me again. All I want is for you to bet on yourself.”

And he left her there, standing open-mouthed in his living room, with a tiny smile as he closed the door to his bedroom behind him, and locked it.

No strings attached.

It could not, she told herself, possibly be true. But she touched her lips, where she could swear she still felt his kiss, before making her way into the bedroom where Darren was already fast asleep.

N
o strings attached
.
Cara scrubbed at a particularly stubborn grease spot and frowned.

Was it possible, at all possible, that Perry had meant what he said? When she woke up the next morning, Perry was gone and there was fresh coffee. ‘
Bagels in the fridge’
said a note on the counter, and Cara had stared at it, reflecting wryly that the only way Perry could show himself to be a
more
perfect man would be to have flowers and bring her breakfast in bed. He was playing the gentleman, and he’d been doing so long after any reasonable man would have given up the chase.

She did not understand it.

“Time for your break,” Mack said, sticking his head into the kitchen.

“Not for another thirty minutes.”

“Nah, you can take mine. Someone’s here to see you.”

Perry? Her heart fluttered, and she tried to calm herself. He was just like all the others, she said silently to herself. She just hadn’t figured out his angle yet. She should
not
be this glad to see him.

Her face fell when she came out of the kitchen, and her stomach did an uncomfortable sideways leap.

“Craig.”

Why, in the name of all that was holy, did he have to be so hot? His T-shirt clung to his torso, arm muscles peeking out perfectly, and the amount of stubble on his chin made him the perfect mix of clean-cut and bad boy. Even the stockbrokers, hurrying to and fro with their air of importance, were sneaking admiring glances his way.

“So what’s this?” He leaned against one of the pillars, arms crossed, smirking.

“What’s what?” She knew him well enough to see the trap coming; she just didn’t know from where.

“Should I play back the message for you? I had to play it about five times before I could stop laughing long enough to listen.”

The message. She swallowed, hard, and felt her face go red. She could still remember it: on the steps outside the apartment so that Darren wouldn’t hear, tears streaming down her face and her voice choking over the words.
I need your help.

“That was five weeks ago,” Cara told him bluntly. She knew she had to be careful, that she could not afford to piss him off—not today, not when she needed to see his parents later. But it was so difficult. You never knew what you might say to make Craig angry. There was nothing he wanted more in the world than to have people need him—and nothing he despised more, either.

“And what, since then you’ve figured everything out?”

She didn’t have an answer to that, and he smiled. It was not; she reflected, a nice smile. Maybe she could consider this a warm-up for tonight.

“So you didn’t get thrown out of your apartment?” Craig asked her.

“How did you know that? How did you find me?”

“I have to keep tabs on you somehow, don’t I? You’re taking care of my son. I need to make sure he’s okay.”

“Taking
care
of?” Cara asked him incredulously. “He’s my son, too, Craig. And you know where to find him. You have for all his life. I always made sure you knew where I was.” She swallowed. “And I never let him know you were too lazy to come see him.”

His eyes flashed, and she tried to feel remorseful—but damn, it felt good to tell him off. It felt good to say to his face all of the things she said to the mirror while she brushed her teeth, or to the phone she hadn’t dialed.

“Lazy?” He asked her dangerously. “Which one of us is lazy, Cara?”

You.
But she knew what was coming.

“You’re the one who dropped out of college,” he told her cruelly.

“You told me to. You told me to take a semester.”

“Because you were useless that year.”

“My family had died!” Cara stared at him, chest heaving. “I lost everything. Of course I was sad, Craig. I thought you understood.”

“And you thought you’d get pregnant and take my money, too?”

“It was an accident,” Cara said through gritted teeth. She had said this a thousand times, and he never believed her. But she was determined that someday, he would. Someday, he would see she was not a gold digger.

“Sure. Which is why you’re doing so well for yourself, huh? Working your dream job, finished up your degree, living in a posh apartment.”

Cara could feel eyes on them. In the corner of her vision, Mack was hovering awkwardly, and the line of people waiting for coffee was gawping as if this was some kind of street theater.
Go away
, she wanted to yell.
Leave me alone.

You deserve this,
her mind told her quietly. It was funny, how much she sounded like Craig sometimes.

“I’m here,” Cara said, “to provide for my son, because his father won’t give a cent to see him clothed. I’m here because school doesn’t pay.”

“Oh, sure, that’s why. Like you ever planned on finishing that degree. What was it you kept telling me you’d do someday?”

“Stop it, Craig.” Her heart was beating wildly.

“Something with robots? Cyborgs? You were going to build… what was it…”

Stop it.

“Satellites. Like you could ever do that.”

“I said,
stop it.
” Was that her voice? It came out like a command, and even Craig fell silent. If everyone hadn’t been looking before, they were now. Cara clenched her hands and raised her chin. “I’ve worked for everything I have in this life. I love your son more than life itself, and I would do anything—
anything
—to keep him safe. If you don’t care that your son is growing up to be an amazing man; that he’s smarter than I ever was, that he’s going to change the world someday, well, you’ll have to make your peace with that. I know I’ve had to. But if you’re going to leave us to fend for ourselves, Craig, then you leave and you never come back. I’m done hoping. And don’t you make fun of me for having dreams. At least I
have
dreams. And you know what? I’m going to go back to school. I’m going to finish. I’m going to do everything I planned on doing. And you’re going to look back on your life and see you never did anything at all. You’re not even going to remember most of it.”

She pushed her way past him out of the cafe, fighting not to break into a run. She could not think, not even for a moment, or she would break down right there on the lobby floor and scream. She had been waiting; she realized. All these years, telling herself she was alone—but really, she had thought he would come through. How stupid could she be?

“Cara, wait!”

“Turn around,” Cara hissed over her shoulder, “and walk away. I don’t want to see you ever again.”

“Cara, you can’t take what I said seriously.”

“Why not?” She rounded on him. “You’ve said it enough, haven’t you?”

“I didn’t mean it, I just… seeing you like that. I was wrong about you, Cara.” He stepped close.

Cara stepped back, unsteadily. He should not look like a romance novel hero. It wasn’t fair. She wanted to believe he was telling the truth.

“I’ve spent seven years trying to get over you,” he said softly, his eyes fixed on hers. “Come on, Cara, give me a second chance. I’ve missed that fire.”

A second chance. How many times had he walked out on her?

But she wanted, so badly, so very badly, for him to be telling the truth. Her mind was telling her not to be a fool—like it always had, with him. What were a few mean jokes, a few nasty words, when he had the body of a God and a fortune to match? She’d be safe forever… and she’d learned what it was to be hungry.

She was wavering, and he saw it.

“Cara, I’ve been terrible. I thought I wanted a party girl, but you were always the one for me.”

He’s lying, don’t believe him.
But she took one unsteady step toward him.

“I haven’t been able to forget you. Do you know how many times I’ve almost called you?”

Another step.

“I was ashamed of how I behaved after Darren was born.” His brown eyes were very warm on hers. He held out his hands. “That’s why I didn’t call. I knew you’d say all the things you said in there. I deserved that.” He gave that too-perfect smile of his, white teeth flashing in a tanned face.

Another step.

“Come on, Cara. We’ll give it a second try. I was always a better person when I was with you.”

She was shaking as she reached him. She wanted to believe, and even when she knew it was a mistake, she couldn’t stop herself from standing on tip toe for him to kiss her. The picture was too pretty, too safe, too secure. She could put up with it, she lied to herself. A few mean jokes, a few mistresses. He’d try to be a good husband, wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t he?

His hands stroked up her arms and his tongue probed into her mouth, and all of a sudden Cara wanted to cry. This was all too familiar. The pretty picture only came with a sick rush of dread now. She knew how this ended.

It took all she had, but she pushed herself away. And as she turned her face away so she wouldn’t have to meet Craig’s incredulous gaze, she saw dark eyes watching her. Perry. He pushed himself off the pillar he’d been leaning on and walked away, and without another word to Craig, Cara took off.