Taming the Dragon by Kendra Leigh Castle Page B

seeming to echo all around her.
“What do I need to do?”
    Relief flickered across Morgan’s face before she took a step
back and turned away, beckoning.
    “Step into my office.”

TWO
    “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
    Tess pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket, cross-checked
the handwritten directions with the GPS on her phone, and then looked back up at
the ramshackle old house in front of her. Then she swore quietly.
    “Either she got it wrong, or the guy doesn’t live here
anymore...or this is some kind of sick joke that ends with me being cut into
tiny pieces,” Tess muttered to herself. Her eyes roamed over the sagging
two-story structure squatting near the edge of a steep, rocky incline that
bordered the edge of a river’s choppy waters.
    The wood siding had faded to the point where it was as gray as
the day’s sky, weather beaten and badly in need of replacement. Most of the
white paint had peeled off the wide porch, and what remained was so dingy it was
almost indistinguishable from the color of the rest of the house. The curtains
were drawn in every window, and what had once been a gravel driveway was so
overgrown with weeds that it was tough to tell where it ended. So tough that
she’d parked across the street in front of a scrubby little cottage, its front
yard full of more windmills, gazing balls and ugly statuary than grass.
    This place gave her the creeps.
    The only surprise was that this supposed bazillionaire’s house
hadn’t been vandalized. It might be in rough shape, but it looked to have gotten
there naturally. There were no broken bottles, no busted windows, no garbage
anywhere in sight. Weird. Like everything else about this job. Tess’s eyes
narrowed as she tucked both the paper and her phone back in her back pocket.
    She hesitated, then lifted her hand to clasp the charm that
hung from a glittering chain around her neck. The little silver dragon with
emerald eyes that Morgan had insisted she deliver here was warm to the touch. It
had been since she’d put it on for safekeeping earlier, though that had to be
from lying against her skin all the time. Tess liked it. Okay, hell, she more
than liked it. There was something about the necklace that made her want to just
say forget the job and keep the trinket. Which wasn’t like her...she was no
thief.
    She forced her fingers open and tucked the dragon back beneath
the neck of her T-shirt, against her skin where she preferred it. The heat from
it made her shiver with pleasure. Strange...it seemed to have heated up more
just in the time she’d been standing here.
    “Time to get this over with,” she told herself. If no one
answered the door, she’d just return the stupid necklace to Morgan, tell her
Thanks but no thanks, and figure something else out.
    Tess headed up onto the front porch, the old wood creaking
loudly under her weight. She took a final glance around at the deserted road,
and then pounded on the door.
    “Hello?” she called, silently cursing herself, Morgan Le Fay
and especially her former band mates, Mike and August, for busting up the group
and removing her only source of income in the first place. “Mister St. George?
Are you home?”
    She tilted her head close to the door, trying to hear any
movement at all. There was a sound from deep within the recesses of the house
that sounded like a deep— very deep—sigh. The door
rattled slightly, as if there’d been a strong breeze. But the air was very still
out on the porch.
    The hairs on Tess’s arms prickled. A thin rivulet of sweat
trickled between her breasts. It was only then that she realized how
uncomfortably hot the silver dragon had become against her chest. Swallowing the
panic that urged her to run as far away from this house as possible, Tess
knocked again.
    “Mister St. George,” Tess said, her voice stronger now. “I’m
supposed to deliver a necklace? From Morgan Le Fay?”
    She could actually feel whoever was
in the house turn his full