Page 28 of Hungry Like A Dragon
Chapter 6
“Don’t forget, this is all an act.”
It was at least the tenth time the woman had made a similar comment since they’d concocted this plan while eating the hearty omelets he’d whipped up as she breastfed Sadie and sucked down coffee like a vampire drinking blood.
“Yeah, I was there when we came up with this idea.” Her paranoia that he might suddenly want to mate with her was a tad over the top.
It’s just lust, he reminded his dragon. Or maybe himself.
But, yeah, that meant they had nothing to worry about. He wasn’t about to fall in love. And she sure as hell was determined to keep their relationship on a strictly physical level.
Which should be the perfect scenario. Therefore, he shouldn’t be irritated at her constant reminders that last night meant nothing.
“We’re a happy couple with our infant daughter, tourists visiting New Orleans, and we’re from a colony out west. Our reeve loves antiques, so we’re looking for something appropriate to take back to him,” Petra repeated the story they’d concocted prior to setting out on this excursion down Royal Street. There were antique shops as far as the eye could see. And they had to visit every single one, at least until they found—or didn’t—Gabe’s mother.
They had no idea what the woman looked like and they weren’t 100 percent certain she owned one of these places. But if this brought Petra that much closer to moving home, he was more than happy to help her, as she put it, turn every stone.
Noah stopped pushing the stroller at the first storefront. Sadie was in the seat, clutching a brightly colored toy and observing her surroundings. Petra had fed her right before they left the house and said she should be good for at least three hours before they’d need to take a break.
“All right, ready to practice for your Emmy?” he asked. Petra rolled her eyes, but the smile tugging at her lips told him she appreciated the reassurance that he understood the rules of this game.
Not that they had to put on much of an act in the first location. The owner was human, and there were no signs any dragons at all had entered the shop. Still, Noah thoroughly enjoyed wrapping his arm around Petra’s shoulders when the pleasant woman greeted them and asked if she could help them find anything. And he took perverse pleasure in kissing the top of Petra’s head, breathing in the strawberry scent of her hair and holding his breath, willing his dragon to calm the hell down because his body was reacting quite predictably to a scent that had somehow become erotic to him.
Totally acting. This wasn’t real at all.
“She looks just like you,” the elderly man in the next shop said to Noah while talking nonsense to Sadie, who offered up a gummy smile in response.
“We did make a beautiful baby, didn’t we, sweetheart?” he said to Petra, grinning widely for the shop owner’s benefit. Really, it was an act.
The third and fourth places offered up similar experiences with the proprietors who greeted them. Finally, halfway through their stroll around the fifth shop, Petra grabbed his forearm and gave it a squeeze. “Smell that?”
He sniffed the air and then glanced around sharply. “Dragons.”
A tinkling noise indicated another customer had entered the shop. Noah watched two young dragons in shorts and T-shirts nod at the human woman manning the place, before heading toward a curio cabinet made of white-washed wood and glass. Inside was an assortment of dragon-shaped bric-a-brac. Mostly wood, pewter, and colored glass. None looked particularly expensive or terribly old.
“Is it weird that there’s a display of tiny dragons in this place?” he whispered to Petra as he nudged her away from the two young men pointing at the curio cabinet while the shopkeeper used a small silver key to unlock it. Noah pushed the stroller behind a teal-colored folding screen with giant magnolias painted on it and stood there spying on the interaction between the dragons and the human woman.
“It would be if it wasn’t a place dragons frequented,” Petra replied.
“It’s still weird. They don’t look valuable, although they do look like something a dragon would hoard. Which means it’s odd that they’re out here, for sale, instead of hidden away someplace. And check it out, she’s selling a few to those kids.”
“More than a few,” Petra said. “That one kid is buying a dozen, at least.”
“Did you see how focused they were when they walked in? Like they knew the display was here.”
The kids paid for their merchandise and headed for the door, stepping to the side so a jittery female could enter before they made their exit. She, too, was a dragon, and headed straight for the curio cabinet.
There was a lull after she left, and the shopkeeper headed over to see if Noah and Petra needed any help.
“Those dragons sure are popular,” Noah commented, nodding at the display.
The older lady nodded. “I know. And they aren’t even antiques. Which, by the way, I’m not supposed to tell customers. Even though it doesn’t matter. People looking for antiques don’t even bother with that cabinet. But all those little dragons are definitely popular. I figure it’s like a Pokémon phase or something.”
Or something.
“Are you the owner?” Petra asked.
The human woman chuckled. “Oh no. I just work here part-time.”
