Page 28 of Saving the Last Heir
“I’m lost. What’s the problem?” I frowned at her.
“In a twist of fate God himself would marvel at, your car owner’s dad used to give us a ton of business, but when he retired and left the business to his kid, that dried up. There were some other things too, but that was the big one. We’ve been on a downward slide ever since. This other shop has been wanting to expand and branch out from doing custom interiors to under the hood and bodywork as well. He’s offered to buy me out three times in the last eighteen months. He’s a dipshit who doesn’t know a pair of pliers from a screwdriver. The guy’s great with other stuff, but I wouldn’t trust him to change my fucking oil. Plus, he’s offering bargain basement prices.”
I nodded. I knew enough about business to see the guy’s angle. “He doesn’t want the hassle of finding real estate and retrofitting it. He wants something turnkey.”
“Bingo. He hopes to swoop in and yank the shop from me for pennies on the dollar and come out ahead.”
“What’s the play, then?” I asked. “By now, Alessio Torrence has probably reported the car stolen. I can’t very well pull it into that shop. It’ll be impounded in a minute, and I’ll go to jail.”
“I distract the guy.” She flashed me a cocky grin. “I’ll call him, ask for a meeting.” She held up a finger. “I’ll make sure it’s eitherbefore or after work hours, and tell him I want to discuss the sale of my garage.”
“But you said?—”
“I’m notactuallyselling,” she said. “It’s a distraction, so you can get in there and grab what you need and get out.”
“I don’t know what I need,” I said, sudden panic rising in my chest. “I don’t know the first thing about upholstery and colors or anything else.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, then licked her lips. “I can teach you.”
Again, my inner dragon pushed me further than I would normally go.
“Whatelsecould you teach me?”
This time, she didn’t take her eyes from mine. She held my gaze long enough that the electric tension between us seemed to burst in the air around us like fireworks.
Then, when things felt like they’d reached a head, she leaned even closer, eyeing me speculatively.
“Whatdoesa dragon do for fun?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Wouldn’tyoulike to know.”
Shyanne took a deep breath, pulling the air into her lungs, then turned away, obviously doing her best to not think about the same things I was trying not to think about. Some strange connection had bound us, a sexual energy fed back and forth between us that both she and I noticed. If we hadn’t been in a life-or-death situation, I might have tried to make a move, to see if she wanted what I wanted. I’d never been one for one-night-stands or to jump into bed with someone I just met, but…dear God,there was something about her. I hungered for her—her scent, her look, her personality. I’d never been this attracted to someone so quickly.
“I’ll put a call in to the guy tomorrow morning,” she said. “I’ll either need to use your phone or go back and get mine.”
“I can head back. I’ll get your phone and close up the shop door. I feel bad about leaving it open.”
She blinked at me in confusion. “You’d go all the way back there?”
I shrugged. “I can fly. I’ll probably be back in less than an hour. Where’s the phone?”
“Do you always play the white knight when you aren’t playing the bumbling car thief?”
“Whoa!” I said with a laugh. “Who said I wasbumbling?”
“You got schooled by a human woman,” she said, crossing her arms. “I still remember the look on your face as I drove away in that car.”
“Schooled? I seem to remember you scrambling up a toilet to get away from me.” I frowned, my smile fading a bit. “By the way, I’ll pay for the damages, and go ahead and double what I was going to pay for this. I’ve made your life hell, and you deserve a nice payday.”
Her eyes almost bugged out of her skull, but she gave me a single nod. “You really do care about doing the right thing, don’t you? You know that’s…well, it’s sort of hard to find these days.”
“Doing the right thing is easy,” I said.
“The fact that you say that impresses me even more. But seriously, what else do you do? Other than like, being the prince of winged dragons, or whatever?”
The question struck me as strange, not because it was silly or inappropriate, but because I’d rarely had time to think about it. Since The Vanishing had taken a stranglehold on my race, we’d operated in a state of constant panic and anxiety. That tended to happen when you weren’t sure if your loved ones were suddenly going to vanish into the ether, never to return.
“I’ve got my friend Christian,” I said lamely. “We do a few things outside of the normal alpha stuff.”
