Jorden: The McCade Dragon –Erotic Paranormal Romance (10 page)

I have two of those big dolly things you asked for. I’m going to bring them by on my.... What is it? Is someone there with you? I can be there in ten minutes. Call to—

We have a fox in the building, and we were just trying to figure out if he is a shifter or just a fox.
He asked her what color he was.
Red. I’m assuming that you know a fox shifter.

Yes. A family of them, as a matter of fact. You do as well. Maxwell and Abby Fox, as in what they are.
She decided that she didn’t like him very much
. Just go where he can see you. If it’s Maxwell, he more than likely already knows you’re staring at him.

She told Gavin who it was and he whistled. When Maxwell, if it was him, turned and looked at them, Abby came into the room with a large picnic basket. She was just a person, thankfully, and smiled at them. Waving them down, she told Kenton that was who it was.

As they made their way to the couple, Gavin was going on about how he’d felt the man shift. That might have been what she felt too, and asked him how he knew. He just grinned at her, and she knew she was going to be upset for some reason.

“Vance bit me.” She asked him why he’d do a fool thing like that. “Because he said that if I was ever lost or hurt, he’d be able to find me faster. And he said that if I was really smart, I’d let a few other people that he knew do the same. He told me that Dad can find you easily enough, but the rest of them might have some trouble.”

“I see.” She really didn’t, but decided to ask someone about it. Not Vance. While she liked him a great deal, he scared the shit out of her. There was a quiet deadliness about him that made her think that he was forever watching a person to see where he could stick a knife. Maybe not her, but she didn’t think she was far off the mark about him. “The next time you have someone bite you, could you ask me about it first? I might not want them knowing where you are all the time.”

Abby said that Maxwell had decided to have a little sniff around. Not that he expected to find anything like foul play on any of the merchandise, but it was a game he loved to play when he had free time. Apparently Maxwell considered himself quite the detective. When he joined them for the lunch they’d brought in, she asked him about his finds.

“Nothing much. The big dresser there, the one with the mirror, it’s been in the home of someplace where perfume was spilled on it. A great deal of it.” Jasmine told him that according to the paperwork she’d been able to match up to it, the dresser, along with a chair that she’d not been able to locate just yet, had come from a brothel. “Well, that explains the other scents. A great many males have…well, it was touched a great deal by men.”

They laughed at his obvious embarrassment. She told him about some of the things she’d been able to unearth. “I’ve also found a lot of books in the back. I don’t think that Hubert knew their worth. There are two first editions that I’ve found, as well as a few signed books that I’m going to have to find the author.” Abby told her about the author that had come through town about thirty years or so ago. “Do you remember his name? I might have some of his work. There are a lot of books by him that are about this area.”

“No, child, I can’t remember. But I’m sure that Aisha might. I think she might have put him up for a couple of days. He was a nice man, down on his luck. I believe that he might have paid his way through here with copies of his books.” Jasmine made a mental note to ask her. “Before I forget, a nice sized box arrived for you today. I guess it was forwarded here from your old place. I’m not sure how they connected your home there to this one, but it’s still out in the garage. They arrived just as we were leaving the house.”

It wasn’t until the couple was gone that she thought about the box. It would be nice to have something from their own home, and she was excited to go and open it. But as she was reaching for her notebook, something occurred to her. Their house had burned to the ground. There wouldn’t have been anything left. Not to mention, as Abby had said, how did whoever sent it here know where she was? Getting up slowly, she went to find Gavin. He was going through some boxes of comic books that she’d found, and only had to look at her to become worried.

“I need for you to do me a favor and not leave here.” He nodded and asked her what was going on. “I’m not sure, but it’s about that box. I think something is wrong with it, it’s not safe. If I know that you’re here, I don’t have to worry about whether or not you can be hurt or something.”

“Because the house burned down.” She nodded. “Mom, Uncle Vance knows that I’m upset. He wants to know what’s going on. He’s talking to me from this connection that we have because of the bite he took.”

“Tell him....” She wasn’t sure what to tell him. The truth? Maybe, but what if he was hurt from whatever it was? But if she lied to him, he’d more than likely know that too. She decided that the truth was easier to figure out for him. “Tell him what we’ve just figured out.” She watched her son, all she had left in this world that was hers. When he nodded to her, she felt better knowing that he was on her side.

“He said for us to stay here, and that he’s having Dalton and Dad come here too. He also said that his mom will be here as well…they were having lunch, and she’s going to hang out with us. All right?” She hated to interrupt his time with his mom. “Mom, he said that he’s going to have a team go and have a look at the box, and the inside of the house too.”

The McCade men had lunch with their mom at least once a week if they could, and they all met on Sunday evening for a family dinner. She and Gavin had been excited to join them this time.

Jorden joined them a few minutes later. Dalton said that he was going to have someone search the other houses, as well as any places that someone might think they had a connection to. The first place on the list was Jorden’s studio. It only took them five minutes to find the bug and figure out the fingerprints on it. The second bug in his studio was a little harder to find, but no less scary. Someone had been listening in on them.

They were still going over the furniture that she was having moved when Jorden told her that Vance was coming here with Kenton. Emma was with them as well, and she was fired up. Jasmine asked him about what.

“Apparently she got a box as well. It was addressed to Emma with one ‘m,’ but she didn’t see it on the stoop until one of Vance’s team came to talk to Kenton. They haven’t opened either of them yet, but Vance has some questions for you.” She nodded. “We’re fine, honey. No one is going to hurt us.”

But they were trying to was all she could think about. Someone was trying to hurt her and Emma. And had she not been here when the box was delivered, she might well have opened it without thinking. Emma might not have…she had the mind of a criminal. Not in a bad way, but she was forever thinking outside the box. Jasmine decided that she was going to do a bit of that on her own. It might well save her new family’s life.

The box had been ready to explode had she opened it. Emma’s as well, but the amount of explosive material in Jasmine’s would have taken out the front of the house as well as part of the garage. When she sat down, Jorden held her hand while Vance told her all of it. The prints on the box matched the one on the second bug in Jorden’s office.

“So you know who it might be?” Vance nodded. “Does that mean you go out there and arrest him or something?”

“Or something. But for now we’re going to leave the bugs where they are.” She asked him why he’d do that. “Because they’re not aware that we know, and it’s better to have a bug in your offices than a bomb in the garage. The bug, while annoying, won’t take out all my manly parts when I get too close to it.”

“You’re sick, did you know that?” He laughed at her. “Won’t they think it odd that the box didn’t do what it was supposed to do? Like kill us?”

“You’re not home.” She said she knew that. “What I mean is, neither you nor Emma have been home all day. That will buy us at least a few hours to figure out a plan, execute it, and do something to the bad guy.”

“Do I want to know what that might be?” Vance said nothing. She thought maybe she might like his silence over telling her the gory details. “You bit my son. To find him. Would he really benefit if he had more people that could find him? Like some of your team?”

“Yes. But if you don’t mind, I’d very much like to decide who does it.” She nodded. At this point, she’d about agree to anything so long as they were safe. “Also, if you would be so kind as to let me as well as a few others have a little taste of your blood, we’d feel a great deal better.”

“Yes. Right now I’m so afraid that I’d even let the president have a little bite.” He assured her that as a mated cat, his wife would be very upset about that. “The president is a shifter? Who else? The pope?”

“No, not the pope. But there are quite a few in offices right now. Not so many around here, but there are a few.” Jasmine didn’t want to think about that and told him so. “You will be better at this once you are around us more.”

“Will I be? Around you more? Because I don’t want to be killed. And it’s looking to me like some dick wants me six feet under a great deal.” Vance assured her that she’d be around for a long time if she paid attention to her surroundings. “Thank you, I will from now on. And you take care of my son.” He told her he would. Jasmine hoped so. She couldn’t lose him. Any of them.

Chapter 8

Aisha wanted to hug the young man, but she was also trying to wait for him to come to her. Gavin was a good boy; scary smart, it seemed, but nice and very polite. And today he was spending the day with her while his mom organized the move into the new building. When he sat across from her, she handed him the list of names and explained what she was doing. Maybe, she thought, he’d help her out a little too.

“These are the names of the people that have paid to have dinner at the Mother’s Ball. Can you help me put their names around tables?” He asked her what sort of order they went in, and she told him instead what they were doing. “Every year, as you’ve heard, we have this charity event to raise money for different projects in town. Mothers down on their luck who might need help with the rent. Or a child that has no coat or school supplies. The fund is there for them to use. Of course we run out very quickly nowadays, but we can help a few people.”

“Mrs. McCade, you’re saying these people overpay to eat at this dinner thing, and you use the money for the underprivileged. Is that all?” Aisha asked him what he meant. “I mean, you just have a dinner for them. And that money—I’m assuming that it’s more than a burger price—is what you use to help people. And that building that we helped you look for? It looks like the school lunchroom where I went to school. Can’t you get something, I don’t know, prettier for this?”

“If I do then we have to use some of the money that would go for the children. Believe me, I’ve thought of that too. We have about seventy-five people pay a hundred dollars a plate. To be honest with you, less and less are showing up. I’m betting you can help me with that. What did you have in mind? And before you answer that, I want you to know that you’re now a part of this, being a McCade.” He nodded and smiled at her, and Aisha fell right over in love with the boy. Looking down at the list, she could hardly see it for the tears. But it was him calling her Mrs. McCade that got her going. “Gavin, you’re a wonderful young man, but if you continue to call me Mrs. McCade, I might make you in charge of this thing.”

He laughed, such a wonderful free sounding sound. “I’ve talked to Mom about it. And you know that I lost my grannie not long ago.” She told him again she was sorry about that. “Me too. She wasn’t…I loved her very much, but she was older than you and she wasn’t in the best of health. Besides, you’re fun. I don’t mean that Grannie wasn’t fun, but she was more of a quiet fun, I guess.”

“Thank you. I’m very spry for my age. And raising six boys all by myself made me very quick on my feet.” He laughed with her. “You don’t have to call me Grandma, but Aisha would be nice.”

“I’d like to do that.” She nodded. “I call Jorden Dad now, and the others Uncle. If you’d not mind me calling you Grandma, then I’d very much like that.” She nodded and had to wipe at the tears. “Mom told me that you’d be my step-grandma, but she didn’t think you’d ever treat me that way. The step part, I mean.”

“You tell your mother she’s brilliant, and I love her as well.” He nodded and looked at the charts. It was time to change the subject matter or she’d be sobbing like a baby. “I have them all in order there. Friends and family together with people they know well. They seem to enjoy that.”

“Why?” She said that was the way they did it. “Okay, but sometimes maybe they’re sick of their friends. I don’t have a lot of them—being a nerd does that for me—but I would think if you sort of mixed it up a bit, people might have more friends when they left.”

She just stared at him. The kid was right. She was usually so bored at this thing because she knew all the stories of the people she sat with. Picking up the list, she looked it over and told him he was right. In ten minutes they’d cut all the names from the sheet and were taping them to the tables in no particular order. No one was spared…even spouses were separated.

“What else did you have in mind?” He looked at her when she asked. “You had an idea for us to make more money. What is it?”

“An auction.” She told him she didn’t have anything to do that with. “No, but there are merchants in town who could donate. Grocery stores could give gift cards. Mom, I bet she’d give you something to auction off. And Aunt Emma, if she were to bake a bunch of those cookies she does and box them up pretty, someone would pay to get those. Too much, but it’s all a tax write off anyway, right? Even a different place to hold it. If you asked someone, say the guy that has the big barn out of town, if you could use it and tell him what you’re using it for, he’d let you. Might even help you decorate it up so it looks less like a barn and more festive.”

He got up then and left her there. An auction? How did one even go about getting that organized? And she knew Roger Gent. He was a nice man that had had that barn built when his eldest daughter had been married. They’d used it for the reception. And it had been prettied up too. When Gavin returned, he had some papers in his hand. He told her what he’d been able to figure out. She quickly read it over and looked at him. The kid was going to go far, she knew it.

“Will you help me? I mean, it says here that when you get people to donate, you should pick them up in person and give them a thank you note.” He made another suggestion. “Yes, I like that. Their picture on the gift along with their store front is an excellent idea. And if we can get some nicer gifts—I’m not saying we will—but we might be able to sell more tickets for this thing as well.”

“I don’t see why not. And you’re making all the flowers, right?” She told him it took her days to get them together. “Why not let one of the local florists do it? And then give them away at the end of the dinner. This article I read about it said that florists have contests within their own shops that one of their employees might win as best table decoration. Grandma, you need to delegate more, I think.”

He was right. Not just on the delegation part, but how to make this charity event more of a fun thing rather than just a boring dinner. As they pulled out phones and started making lists, she realized that she and Gavin were having a blast. Within an hour she was getting very excited. They had twenty donations that varied from gift cards to a full day at the spa. She had him call Emma and ask her about the baked goods.

When he laughed and put the phone on speaker, she thought for sure that Emma was going to tell them they were nuts. But the girl was laughing harder than Gavin was, and she wanted to tell him to cut it off, they’d do something else.

“I was thinking that instead of cookies from me, how about cakes auctioned off by the women in the groups?” Aisha looked at Gavin as she continued. “They bake up their best cake and put it in a pretty basket to be auctioned off. I saw that on a movie once; it was picnic baskets, but this could be fun too. I’m going to bake some scones and other sweets to raffle off too, but I think if you get the community involved like that and what Gavin has suggested, this might be the hit of the year.”

When Jasmine and Jorden joined them a bit later, they not only had a list of places that were donating items to be raffled off, but had sold over sixty more tickets to the dinner. All in all, it was a very profitable day for the charity.

“I can’t believe this. All because you made a simple suggestion. Gavin, I love you to pieces.” When she hugged him to her, he wrapped his arms around her tightly. Aisha thought it was one of the best hugs she’d ever had. Hugging him back, she looked at her son. Jorden had given her this. Him and his new mate.

Before she could burst into tears, because as surely as she was standing there, she knew that she was, Aisha moved into the kitchen and leaned against the door. When she looked at Meggie, her long time cook, she just shook her head and left her as well. Aisha loved her family so much.

~~~

The man standing in front of her building gave her pause. Jasmine thought about walking by, just pretending that she wasn’t headed to the antique store, but he saw her and smiled. For some reason she didn’t think of friendship. More like he was the big bad wolf and she was lunch.

He isn’t human.
Dragon told her to cross the street.
Hurry. I feel danger from him, and I believe him to have anger in his heart.

She was nearly across the street when he called out to her. Going faster, keeping an eye on him, Jasmine screamed when someone grabbed her left arm. The man, a stranger too, pressed something over her mouth and nose and she knew she was a goner. Reaching to Jorden, all she was able to say was
danger
before everything blacked out.

Waking up, she knew that she’d been put somewhere damp. The ground beneath her not only felt like dirt, but it was cold as well. When she started to sit up, Jasmine realized that not only were her hands tied, but her feet as well. And there was something across her mouth. Rolling to her side, she tried to get her bearings.

My lady, you must be very still. I know not how badly you are hurt.
She told dragon she didn’t hurt, but almost as soon as she said it to him, she began to feel every muscle protest.
They have tossed you around as if you are nothing. I have told the others, Kenton and Jorden, that you are awake as well.

Do you know where I am?
He said that he did not.
Can I talk to Jorden or one of the others?

Jorden said that he has tried several times to reach you and cannot. He believes that you are in some sort of deep hole, or that you are being shielded from him. Lord Kenton is having no more luck
. She asked if Gavin was all right.
Yes. As soon as I realized that you were taken, I contacted Jorden and he gathered the young man up.

At least he was safe.
Do you have any idea who those men were? I’m assuming that they want the earrings, right?

That is what we are thinking. You are well then? I am to tell Jorden how you are faring. I do not think he believes me when I said you were unharmed.
Jasmine laughed.
I will tell him you have not lost your sense of humor, shall I?

Yes, tell him that and tell him that I love him and I really am doing well.
Jasmine told the dragon that she was tied up and gagged and to let them know that.
Also, there is dirt under me. I can’t see any walls as yet. So I’m thinking that there is either no electricity in this building or I’m in a cave as they think.

She could hear noises but not what they were. It sounded like a cat with their tail in a wringer, something her grannie had said all the time. It wasn’t until she’d explained that old washers had a ringer on the top of them to squeeze out the water from the clothing rather than a spin cycle that she got it. Jasmine missed her more and more daily.

Mistress, Kenton has suggested that you try to smell things. I told him that you might not be able to smell much as you are gagged, but he assures me that you would be able to smell with your nose, not only your mouth as I can.
Jasmine felt a little burble of laughter escape around the gag and thanked the dragon for that.
It is my pleasure. But can you help them in this? He assures me that it will be most helpful if you can narrow things down for them to find you.

Inhaling deeply, all she could smell was tape. But when she tried to separate that smell from the other things, she could smell a man’s cologne as well as iron, like old water in an iron pail or something. Telling the dragon that and the noise that she could hear, Jasmine waited for some feedback.

Everyone just refers to you as the dragon or Dragon. Do you have a name?
He asked her what she meant.
I mean, I’m Jasmine, my son is Gavin, what is your name? Surely there is something more than just the dragon or Dragon.

I have been called Dragon forever, my lady. There was a time when I was called the McCade Dragon. Not me, in fact, but one of my ancestors that lived with them as a dragon. If it would help you, I can be called what the first of the McCades was called. A great and powerful name it was.
She asked him what it was.
His name was Caelin. It is an Irish name that means powerful warrior. He was, according to records, both. He had three wives, each of them bearing him a daughter, but he never gave up on having a son when they died so young. Then late in his life, his wife, older than most at that time to be giving birth, gave him a son. This son became the one who came up with the idea to have the dragon move into the jewels to be safe from mankind.

What a sad story. I’m glad that he got himself a son, but that is no less tragic, don’t you think? But I like the name. That is what we will call you from now on. Caelin, the McCade Dragon. I like that.
He told her that she humbled him.
No, you’re going to save us. And my ass right now. Do we have anything yet?

She heard the voice before she got an answer from Caelin. There was a bright light, making her close her eyes against it, and then it was out. Not moving at all, she waited for someone to say something. It was then that she smelled the man’s cologne. It was the same as she had smelled on the tape.

When one of them spoke, she decided that she needed to remember his voice in the event that he got away and she had to identify him. The second man spoke as well, and it was all she could do not to turn and look at him. It was Vance, she’d bet her life on it. But she kept her eyes closed, trying to pretend that she was still out.

“I told you. He’s kidnapped her and plans to do all sorts things to her to get the earrings.” A finger touched her cheek and she thought it might be Vance as the other man continued. “He sent one of his flunkies out to California too. He was telling me how he came across another piece of the pie. Why pie? Anyway, he sent that boy out there who doesn’t know shit about things the way you and I do.”