Day Care Dragon (Bodyguard Shifters Book 4) Read online

  "Mr. Darius owns this building and he's letting us use it. Isn't that nice of him? Say thank you, children."

  There was a piping chorus of thank-yous, and Darius felt tiny, sticky flingers clamp around his hand. He resisted the urge to yank away, and looked down at yet another child, this one with her hair up in braids that were clasped at the end with clips shaped like sunflowers. She wore a brace on one of her legs that made it drag when she walked.

  "Dragons are my favorite," she whispered, her eyes very large.

  "Really, little one?" She reminded him ever so slightly of his granddaughter Skye. She had the same huge eyes and caramel-colored skin. Darius knelt down to bring him closer to her level. "Mine too," he told her, and she flashed him a shy, gap-toothed grin, covered her face with her hands, and twisted around to bury her head in Loretta's skirt.

  "Did I frighten her?" Darius asked anxiously. It was suddenly, peculiarly important for these children to like him. They were, after all, important to Loretta.

  "Oh no, she's just shy," Loretta reassured him, resting a hand on the child's head. "Now we're going to go play a game." She gave Darius a wide smile. "Would you like Mr. Darius to play with us, children?"

  Squeals of delight greeted this suggestion. Darius stared at her in mute horror.

  "It's all right," Loretta said, crouching down. The children clustered around her. "We'll play an easy game and explain the rules. Even someone who hasn't played before can play it, because it's always nice to make sure that everyone has fun, isn't that right? What do we want to play?"

  "Dragons!" chorused a number of high-pitched voices.

  ... and that was how Darius ended up playing tag with a couple dozen squealing, fleeing preschoolers.

  "Rarrr!" Loretta cried enthusiastically, playfully grabbing at two nearby children, who smacked into each other trying to get away from her with shrill giggles and shrieks. She gave Darius a hopeful look.

  "Rarrr?" Darius said cautiously.

  "Eeeeek!"

  "Rarrr!"

  "EEEEEK!"

  They were so very ... loud. And so fast. He started to get the hang of doing play-grabs without actually catching any of them, and then he began to figure out how to tell when they actually did want to be grabbed after watching Loretta catch a little girl and spin her around and then let her go with a delicate touch that sent her careening off on a new trajectory like a small squealing pinball.

  He was half deafened and completely worn out when Loretta and her two assistants corralled all the children and got them to sit down on the mats for some kind of bright-colored snack and paper cups of juice.

  "I think Mr. Darius earned his snack too." Loretta winked at him. "Would you like grape or orange?"

  She was flushed and breathing hard, her hair escaping from its fat braid. If he hadn't been surrounded by preschoolers, the urge would have been overwhelming to put his hands in her hair and see if he couldn't mess it up further.

  She was still looking at him. Oh right. She'd asked a question. "Grape?"

  Loretta pressed the grape snack into his hand, kissed him on the cheek (causing a chorus of renewed squeals from the children; some of them even flopped down and covered their eyes in death-throe dramatics) and then went to get out some books from a bright plastic crate they'd brought from the regular day care location.

  Darius ended up hanging around throughout the reading of the classic works of literature Where's My Worm? and A Turtle's House Is In Its Shell. After that the children were settled down for a nap and Darius decided to find some peace and quiet, and possibly a stiff drink.

  Loretta found him sitting in the stairwell and plopped down beside him. "You poor thing," she said, leaning her head on his shoulder. "You look like you need a nap too."

  Darius brought up a hand behind her back and worked his fingers through her thick hair, freeing some more of it from her braid. "I thought my job was stressful and difficult, but I don't know how you manage to do this every day."

  "It actually gets easier when you're used to it. Sort of." She raised her head and turned to brush her lips across the line of his jaw. "Thank you for being a good sport."

  He turned his head, catching her lips with his own. When he had sufficiently nibbled her soft mouth and the graceful curve of her neck until she was dewy-eyed and dazed-looking, he leaned in close and murmured, "How about we slip out of here and find somewhere a little more private?"

  Loretta smiled against his lips. "Tempting, but if I leave my co-workers alone to deal with a bunch of screaming preschoolers with cabin fever, they won't just fire me. They'll tar and feather me and then run me out of town on a rail."

  "Hmm." He kissed her lightly and pulled away, looking down at her with new appreciation. "You really love doing this, don't you."

  "I do. I know it wouldn't be some people's idea of a great career choice, but I really love working with the kids. The thing I didn't like about it is that it doesn't pay very well, but that's kind of ... not really a problem now, I guess. The kids are great and I feel like I'm doing a wonderful service for working parents."

  Her eyes shone like stars. She really did love doing this, Darius thought. And it also occurred to him that this wasn't the sort of problem that you could just throw money at to fix. He could give Loretta enough money that she would never have to work again, but someone still had to take care of those kids. It might as well be someone who really loved them.

  And the kids were an oddly intriguing bunch of little monkeys. He had never been a kid person even when he had small children of his own. But ...

  But maybe that was part of the problem. Keeping to himself. Not being involved with the world. Taking people for granted. He had always thought of humans as creatures very unlike his own kind, but these children were just like his own children had been when they were small—or like Skye, his beloved granddaughter. Not so different after all.

  "Darius?" Loretta asked softly, when he didn't respond. She smiled and touched the corner of his mouth. "Penny for your thoughts."

  "I was just thinking," he said quietly, "that if you and the kids are a package deal, I'm fine with it."

  She broke into a wide, shining grin. "I swear there won't be toddlers climbing all over you most days. I really appreciate you helping us out like this."

  "It was no hardship." And as he said it, he knew it was true. "What would I have been doing today, anyway? Sitting in front of a desk, earning money to add to a hoard that's already too much to spend in a lifetime? I'd rather be here with you and the kids."

  Loretta kissed him hard, pushing him back against the wall of the stairwell. "Darius Keegan," she murmured against his mouth, "you are a good person."

  "Never been accused of that before." He ran his hands through her messy hair, now all but completely escaped from its braid. "You know, we're in a hotel. You do get a lunch break ..."

  "Mmmm." He felt the curve of her smile, and then he tasted it.

  The door to the stairwell banged open. "Boss—" Maddox began, and then broke off. "Uh. Sorry."

  Darius took a deep breath and got himself under control before turning to give his unfortunate employee a level stare. Loretta hastily patted at her hair, trying to put it back into some semblance of order.

  "Hello, Maddox," Darius said. "Excellent timing as usual."

  "Sorry, boss—sorry, ma'am—but this is serious. Business. Can we talk?"

  "Anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of her," Darius told him.

  "I can leave if you want," Loretta said softly.

  "No." He took her hand. "Stay. Maddox, what is it? Is everyone all right?"

  "Are the kids all right?" Loretta asked, picking up on Darius's worry. Her fingers tightened on his.

  "Oh, no, nothing like that." Maddox glanced over his shoulder and then closed the stairwell door behind him, giving them some amount of privacy. "It's, uh." He glanced at Loretta. "Rodan Sharpe. He made another move. A big one."

  Darius hissed through his
teeth, a sound no human throat was meant to make. His life was too perfect right now. Of course that asshole would show up and try to ruin it.

  "Who's Rodan Sharpe?" Loretta asked, giving Darius a distressed look.

  "A business rival," Darius said briefly. "And he's been making moves. It's just that I no longer care what he does."

  "You're going to care about this one," Maddox said. He took out his phone and turned the screen where Darius could see it. "He hacked our computers and got into our accounts."

  It took a long moment for the words to sink in. Darius stared at the words on Maddox's screen on the website of a very exclusive London bank—ACCOUNT CLOSED. Maddox silently paged to another account, and another.

  ACCOUNT CLOSED.

  ACCOUNT DELETED.

  USER NOT FOUND.

  "Are you saying," Darius said finally, "that I'm broke?"

  There was a humming in his ears ... the furious vibration of his dragon. His vision dimmed with the struggle of keeping it under control.

  "Nowhere near," Maddox said quickly. "Of course not. You've got assets he couldn't liquidate. A lot of your wealth is in the form of physical objects—gold, art, jewels. But ... there's more bad news."

  "What else could he possibly have done?" Darius hissed.

  Maddox's jaw clenched. It was obvious that he didn't want to say what he was going to say. "He got into our computers, remember. Which means he had access to the electronic records for all your titles and deeds." He stopped again.

  "What did he take?" Darius hardly recognized his own voice.

  "Everything he could get," Maddox said heavily. "Not the mansion; I checked that first thing. But titles, deeds, stocks ... that kinda thing. He's got most of your real estate. All of your companies. Almost everything that was in your name is in his name now."

  Darius drew slow breaths, getting himself under control. Calm, he told himself, told his dragon. It would do no good to lose his temper. Not unless Sharpe was standing right in front of him, where Darius could get his claws into him ...

  "You just tell me what you want me to do, boss," Maddox said, his voice a low rumble.

  I want him dead. I want you to bring him to me. I want to tear him apart.

  But then the soft pressure of Loretta's hand on his own, the sound of her voice, restored him to sanity. She was saying his name. He turned to look at her, and through the red haze clouding his vision he saw her eyes fixed on him with soft concern.

  "Darius, are you all right?" she asked.

  I will be. When Rodan Sharpe is dead.

  "It's business, that's all," he said, his voice icy with his effort to keep his dragon under control.

  "It sounds like more than that. What's going on? I don't understand."

  A sudden wave of panic swept over him. If Rodan Sharpe was taking everything away from him, for reasons Darius still didn't understand, the most prized part of his hoard was no longer his money or his jewels: it was Loretta. His children were probably safe; Ben and Tessa's cabin was a secret hideaway concealed under a shell company, and Melody and Gunnar lived on the road with their converted bookmobile RV. Both of them would be difficult for anyone to get to.

  But ... Loretta. He could not let Sharpe come near her. He couldn't even risk the possibility.

  "You have to go somewhere safe," he told her. "Maddox, take her back to the—"

  "No!" Rather than pulling away, she squeezed his hand tighter, taking it in both of hers. "I'm not going anywhere. Not until I understand what's going on."

  "I have an enemy," Darius told her. He held her hands and looked into her eyes. "I should have told you about this sooner. But I don't know who he is. I don't know why he's doing this. I still don't know. All I know is, he's out to take everything away from me. And I can't let him take you, Loretta. I can't think if you're not safe."

  He could see her thinking about it, the thoughts turning behind her summer-sky eyes. Then she said, "Are the children in danger here?"

  "I really don't think so," Darius said. "Particularly if I'm not here."

  "Then ... then I'll go tell Becky that I had a family emergency and had to leave." She gripped his hand. "And you can take me wherever you need to."

  "Your job—"

  "Darius, look. I'm not going to quit my job just so you can take care of me. But taking some time off work because you're having a crisis ... that's what people in a relationship do for each other. What kind of girlfriend would I be if I didn't?"

  She leaned forward and kissed him, then let go of his hand—he could still feel the warm imprint of her flesh on his—and got up. "I'm just going to go talk to Becky. Your car's outside, right?" she said to Maddox. He nodded. "Meet you out there, then." And she left swiftly.

  "That's some woman," Maddox told Darius.

  "I know." He pried himself off the stairstep like an old man, all his muscles and bones aching; he was that tense. Maddox offered a hand, but Darius ignored it.

  "What do you want to do, boss?"

  With Loretta gone, he could speak more freely. But he realized that he still didn't know. Sharpe had made the next move, all right. Sharpe had made one hell of a power play. Darius wasn't sure how to counter it, not without knowing who Sharpe really was.

  "We have to arrange some kind of meet," he said. "I want to talk to him. Can you do that?"

  "He's not gonna meet you face to face, boss. Not if he has any idea what you can do. Hell, the way he's escalated things, he'd have to be a complete fool to meet you face to face even if he thinks you're a normal human."

  "So find a way. I need to see him. I need to know who he is."

  And then I'll destroy him utterly, as utterly as he's trying to destroy me.

  Chapter Fourteen: Darius

  In the limo on the drive back to the mansion, Darius told Loretta the entire story of Sharpe's campaign against him. He faltered slightly when he came to the apartment fire, but he had already decided that he was going to have to tell her everything. Nothing held back. Not if it put her in danger.

  Still, he waited in an anxious silence as she took it all in.

  "My building was burned down because of someone looking for revenge on you?"

  "I would have done anything," Darius promised earnestly, "anything, to avoid having put you in danger."

  "But you still don't know why he's doing it."

  "Not yet."

  She nodded slowly. He couldn't tell what she was thinking. Then she said, "You know, after growing up in a trailer park with a passel of cousins, I learned a lot about feuds. I know the kind of thing I had to deal with is awfully small potatoes by your standards. Someone setting apartment buildings on fire isn't the same thing as an angry neighbor leaving bags of dog poop in your driveway or your cousins shooting fireworks into the middle of the Sandersons' barbecue in retaliation for the dog poop thing—"

  "Someday I must meet your family."

  Loretta winced. "Anyway, the point is, I know it's not the same thing. But I also know how you can get these things spinning out of control 'til the whole family is involved and nobody even remembers what the original feud was all about. I know this Sharpe guy thinks you did something to him that's worth all of this. But I don't think it's your fault, no matter what he thinks."

  She didn't blame him. His dragon collapsed in a limp heap of relief. But Darius wasn't willing to let himself off the hook so easily.

  "Loretta ... I might not remember what I did to anger Sharpe. But I haven't led a good life, by your standards. I have a long history of doing things that are ... less than noble. If it wasn't Sharpe, it could have been someone else. I'm sure that I have many enemies with valid grievances." He had to take a breath before he could go on. "I would do anything to keep you safe, but I can't help feeling that the thing I can do to keep you the safest is just to get the hell out of your—"

  Loretta clapped her hand over his mouth, cutting him off in mid-sentence.

  "Don't you dare start with that 'better off without me' bullshit. N
obody tells the Somers women what to do, Darius Keegan. Not you, not this Rodan Sharpe jerk—and you better not think about it either," she said in the general direction of the front of the limo, where Maddox was driving in perfect silence.

  "Not gonna try, ma'am," Maddox said after a moment. "My ma didn't raise an idiot."

  "Neither did mine." Loretta looked Darius in the eyes. "Whatever you're into, I'm in it too. And that's just the way it is. So let's see if we can figure this out and deal with it before he sets any more apartment fires, okay?"

  She took her hand away. Darius just stared at her. How, he thought, dazed. How, after the life he'd led, had he gotten so lucky? How did he deserve this?

  The answer was, he didn't. Love wasn't a matter of being worthy or unworthy. What mattered was what you did with it once you had it.

  He took her hand and kissed her. He had no more answer to give.

  ***

  Normally the sight of his mansion blazing with light on top of the cliff set Darius's soul at peace. This time, it only reminded him of how much he'd lost, and how much he still had to lose.

  If he couldn't get it back, his business empire was gone. All those companies. All those offices.

  ... Meaningless. All of it, meaningless. When he tried to think about specific companies he'd lost, he couldn't even remember their names.

  It had become a game. It was like playing with pieces on a board, trying to gather all of them before his opponents could get any. Now all his pieces had been swept off the board by an even more ruthless player, and all he could feel was ...

  Relief.

  Oh, there was anger, as well. He was going to make Sharpe pay for this, especially for putting Loretta in danger. But he also wondered if he even wanted to get it all back. The acquisition itself had become more important than anything he'd actually acquired. Maybe it was time to take a break. Retire. Think of his family for awhile, rather than making money ...

  But first, he had to get Sharpe off his back, or nothing of his would be safe ever again.