Page 24 of Dragon His Heels
“You aren’t supposed to say that,” Gabe reminded her. To Noah he said, “They’re fine.”
“Didn’t think that was the problem.” The chef returned to his cook station.
“If you knew about me sooner, my mommy would have gone away sooner,” Ruby said. “Aunt Talia says I can’t see her until she gets well. And she says Mommy has been sick for a really long time, so it’s going to take a long time to get well again.”
“Aunt Talia?”
Ruby shrugged and returned her focus to her plate. “She said I could call her that.”
There was pain in the little girl’s voice. Even Gabe, with his incredibly limited experience with children, could hear it. He reached out, awkwardly patted her shoulder. “Hey, you’ll get to see your mom again. I promise.”
She kept her gaze locked on the pool of syrup on her plate and didn’t say anything for a long time, until she whispered, “When I do, will I have to go back there?”
“No.” He didn’t know the rules about dragon parents who lived separately, in different colonies, but he didn’t care. He was a reeve, and if he wanted to keep his own daughter, he damn well would. If her mother wanted to be part of her life, well, Jasmine would just have to move back to his colony—without actually mating with him.
He momentarily forgot about pretty much everything else going on as he watched Talia stride into the room. Her thick, dark hair gently waved over her shoulders. She’d enhanced her face with just enough makeup to add to her beauty without overdoing it, like so many dragon females did. She wore a casual blue, sleeveless dress with flowers dancing along the hemline.
Gabe’s dragon roared, disliking the fact that Noah was able to see her dressed like this. Stupid, pointlessly jealous dragon.
Noah wasn’t remotely paying attention to her, that dress probably wasn’t sexy to anyone other than Gabe, and since he didn’t want to mate with her, technically, Talia was free to do whatever the hell she wanted. If she wanted to walk up to Noah and rub against him like a cat, she had every right to do so. Gabe might rip the other guy’s head off, but she was still free to do as she pleased.
Talia glanced down at herself before sitting on the stool next to him. “Something wrong with my dress?”
“No. Why?”
“You’re glaring at me.”
Noah turned around and presented her with a plate of pancakes, and Gabe forced his gaze to remain on his own food. “Just uh…that’s a nice dress.”
Her smile was so bright it damn near blinded him. Mental note: Talia liked compliments. It was probably something he should have been aware of before now, given how closely they’d worked together these past five years. Man, he was a self-absorbed asshole.
Just clueless, his dragon said.
Shaking his head, Gabe searched for a distraction from the pretty dress, her long legs, that pleased smile. The fact that he wanted to drag her back upstairs and do more than have non-sex.
Fuuuuuck.He needed to get a grip on his dragon. The damn animal was out of control.
Clearing his throat, he said, “Did you know Ruby’s never been to school?”
“No, I didn’t,” Talia responded, clearly oblivious to the chaos in his head.Thank the gods.“We’ll let the schoolmistress know, though. She may want to give her extra tutoring to catch her up.”
Gabe pushed his empty plate away. “Come on, Ruby. Let’s go brush our teeth so we can get a move on.”
Sitting so close to Talia was making him twitchy anyway.
***
The schoolhouse, an old stone structure nestled against the tree line on the other side of the lake, belonged to the colony, like Gabe’s house and the land on which it all resided. The Elders were responsible for managing and maintaining it all. Which basically meant they determined what needed to be done and then told the younger dragons to do it.
The schoolmistress was one of the Elders, a wily, old, white-haired lady who had taught Gabe everything he’d learned about being a dragon. He always suspected she had been the first to recommend him as successor when the previous reeve died without an heir. Which was weird, because he’d been a hell-raiser even as a child, and it had only gotten worse over the years.
“So the rumors are true?” Old Ilsa asked when they stepped into her office, located at the back of the stone building, behind the classroom where her assistant, Clio, was teaching whatever lesson the young ones were learning today.
The older lady climbed out of her chair and walked over to Ruby, cupping her chin and lifting her face so she could study the child’s features. Ilsa glanced first at Gabe, then at Talia, before releasing the little girl and returning to her seat behind her desk.
“She looks nothing like you,” she said.
He shrugged. “Talia says she’s mine. No reason to doubt her.” Other than the fact that he’d never had sex without a condom in…ever. But things happened, rubbers broke, and Talia was too damn thorough in everything she did for him to question her.
