Danburn: The English Dragon ― Erotic Paranormal Dragon Shifter Romance (2 page)

Three hours ago, Louisa had called her and told her that she was in trouble, which by Kendrick’s estimation happened about four times a day. It was out of the pan and into the fire for her sister. Just trying to figure out how she did it was usually more of an effort than she cared to make any more. But the call had come, and she’d driven her piece of shit car to where Louisa said she was, to bail her out if she could. There was no money, so if that was going to be it, Louisa was going to have to deal with it on her own. But who the fuck knew there really was an English castle here?

The night was so nasty and cold that she wished now that she’d stayed home. No matter what she did for Louisa, it was never enough, nor did it keep her out of the next bout of trouble. But when she’d mentioned guns and men, like an idiot, Kendrick had dropped everything to come to her rescue. And more than likely had lost yet another job because she couldn’t stay until the end of her shift. Life with her sister was as bad is it came, she thought.

“I should have my head examined. Again.” She huddled into her soaking wet coat and stomped her way back to the main road to her broken down car. “Come and get me, she said. They have guns and they’re going to kill me. Perhaps I’d get some peace and quiet if they did.”

Stopping in her tracks, Kendrick felt herself start to cry at what she’d said. There was no way she’d leave Louisa to get shot just so she’d leave her alone. She loved her sister more than she did herself at times. But it was becoming too much. She was broke, thanks to her, late on all her bills, again thanks to her sister, and she’d not had a decent meal in longer than she could remember. Her belly seconded that comment by growling loudly.

Louisa was a good person when she wanted to be…mostly when she needed something or someone to do something for her. Her troubles, Kendrick knew, happened because she was so demanding, and when someone told her that she was going to get this or that for her troubles, she believed them. Kendrick had learned her lessons at the hand of a very nasty person, namely her own mother, and knew that trusting anyone could get you killed. Or worse.

“Beat me once, shame on you. Beat me a couple of dozen more times, and I have to learn to run and hide better.” She stood in the middle of the field, not having a clue where she was, and then heard a sound behind her. “Fuck.”

Diving into the brush closest to her, she lay as still as she could, trying not to think about what might be sharing the place with her as two men walked by her. One of them, she knew, was the quiet man at the door.

“I was bringing her the phone. Why would she leave when I told her that I would bring her the phone?” The other man said nothing but grunted. “It’s not my fault that she has not the sense of a toad to get in out of the rain. I guess I could have talked to her more, but I was so shocked to see her there that I was rendered speechless for too long.” She wanted to get up and tell him had he invited her in, she’d not have been in the rain, but said nothing.

The two of them were just passing her when they stopped suddenly. Sure that they’d found her, she wished now that she’d brought some sort of weapon with her. A rock would have made her feel better than she did at the moment.

“She’s here. I can smell her.” The other man lifted his nose to the air, and Kendrick had a feeling that he really could smell her. She’d left work so quickly to get to Louisa that she’d not had time to change her clothing. She knew she smelled of french fries and greasy meat. “You look over there and I’ll go this way. And for Christ’s sake, Noah, don’t step on her. Danburn is pissed enough about this.”

“Yes. I will try. She didn’t appear to be injured. But I will be careful.” The other man—Sniffer, she decided to call him—told him to hush. As Sniffer made his way toward her, she closed her eyes and wished she was home in her own bed, wished it as hard as she’d wished for a great many things lately.

Peeking beneath her lashes, she knew that someone was standing over her. She saw his boots first. And the insane thought of how expensive they looked and how totally out of her league they were was running through her mind when he bent his knee to become eye level with her. He didn’t say anything but put out his hand to her, which she refused to take.

“I just wanted to call someone. I don’t know who it might have been, but I thought someone could help me out.” He said nothing but kept his hand where it was. “Why don’t you pretend that you didn’t find me? I’ll go back to my car and sit there until either this monsoon takes me away or the sun comes up. I’m sure this Danburn person wouldn’t care a fig if you just left me here.”

“It won’t work. He’s very stubborn. And until one of us shows up with you, my boss will make us keep looking for you. He is, at this moment, looking in the opposite direction that you took, by the way. Did you know that you are about five feet from the lake?” She didn’t even bother turning. It would be her luck that it was just a ploy to catch her off guard…or maybe there really was a lake behind her. One with a great big monster in it. “There is one. It’s deeper than it looks, and holds all sorts of secrets that you are better off not knowing.”

“Right now I wouldn’t care if something lurking it in came out and gobbled me up. I’m so fucked right now.” He nodded, but said nothing more. “I don’t suppose you know a woman by the name of Louisa Barrera, do you? She’s my sister, and the reason I’m out here this late at night.” He told her that he did not. “Well, it was worth a shot.”

Standing up on her own, she watched the man as he put two fingers into his mouth and made the most amazing sound she’d ever heard. Being called a simple whistle wasn’t enough. It was perfectly pitched and loud enough to wake the dead. The man from the doorway came toward them with a small flashlight. It occurred to her then that she had one in her glove box, but the battery was more than likely dead. Why should that work out for her?

“You should have waited, miss. I was returning with the phone.” She wanted to say something along the lines of she hadn’t felt welcome, but didn’t. “The master of the house is most upset with you. He said he has enough going on right now, and he’s right. Danburn is usually right.”

“Me? Why is he upset with me? I didn’t do anything but ask to use the phone. You guys came out in the rain to find me. And I doubt very much he’s always right. Bossy more than likely, but not always right.” She was sloshing back with them in the event that one of them would offer to give her a lift back to her car, which she’d only just realized was in the opposite direction from where they were headed. “I think we’re going the wrong way. I just want to go home now. I’ll find her in the morning. Why I believed her when she said that men with guns were after her, I have no idea.”

“Guns? Your sister told you there were men with guns after her? Well, if that’s the case, I think we might know her after all.” She stopped moving when Sniffer spoke. She was still standing there when he turned and looked at her. “Blonde with dark eyes. A mark on her left arm that looks like someone touched it with a curling iron?”

“I have no idea what color her hair is now. It’s been a couple of days since I’ve actually.... Never mind. The mark, it was a branding iron. One of her boyfriends thought it would be cool if they branded each other. She was first, and he chickened out when she screamed and fainted. Where is she? Dead? Please tell me she’s all right.” He assured her that when he’d left to find her she was fine. “I can take her now if you’ll just let me use the phone to call in a favor. My car won’t…it’s too far for me to take her back by walking.”

“She’s been shot.” Kendrick felt her knees just give out, and something—or she supposed some
one
—scooped her up before she fell. The voice of the man, strong and angry, made her struggle against him, but he commanded her to be still and she did.

“What were you thinking walking around in the rain like a fool? You could have been killed or drowned. Do you have the sense that God gave you?” She struggled again and he told her to be still. “If you fall now, I will simply have Noah get the car and run you over several times for scaring the household.”

“You are a charmer, aren’t you? I bet all the women around just fall at your feet from the way nice things just roll off your forked tongue. Let me go, you buffoon. I just want to get my sister and get the hell away from you people.” He laughed, and Kendrick wanted to hit him, but they were suddenly standing in the hallway of the most beautiful area she’d ever been in. “Where the hell am I? Dead?”

“No, you are not dead. There is something decidedly wrong with you, isn’t there?” She looked at him then, really looked, and wished to Christ she hadn’t. Men like him, handsome and sexy, were not something one like her saw much of. If ever. “This is my home. And you are an unwelcome intruder. Had you not upset my household, I would be sleeping in my bed, not soaked to the skin looking for you in the rain.”

“Danburn!” The woman’s voice coming from the staircase sounded shocked. It took all the energy Kendrick had to tear her eyes away from the hunk of nasty beauty to look at her
.
“
Nous ne traitons pas invité cette façon. Quel est ton problème?
”

“I’m not a guest, but an intruder, as he called me. And if you’re going to speak a different language to chew him out, you should know that I can speak more than most people.” Kendrick looked at the man, then back at the woman. “As for what is wrong with him. I would say that he’s not any different than he normally is, a nasty dispositioned prick that got up on the wrong side of the bed today, and is taking it out on the people around him like it’s his job. Like he does daily.”

The woman laughed and reached out her hand. “Hello, my dear. I’m the nasty dispositioned prick’s mother, Lady English. I’m to understand from Noah that your sister is here. Let me take you to her.”

As they moved by the big man, Kendrick couldn’t help herself. She stuck her tongue out at him and flipped him off. There was going to be hell to pay for that, she was sure, but right now she felt like she’d won a small battle. And she had a feeling that there were going to be a few more battles before this was done.

Chapter
2

“You have seven meetings today, three of them before lunch. A meeting with Mrs. James at eleven-thirty, and then—”

“Where is she?” Noah asked him who. “That woman. The sister to the one that I brought here. Where is she sleeping? Has she been fed and given clean clothing?”

“To my knowledge, she is still with her sister and has been most of the night. Mary said that she’d not left her but to use the bathroom and to inquire about something to drink for herself. She did come down for some toast about four this morning. And we would not allow anyone to sit around in wet things in the house, sir. No matter what has brought them to us.” Danburn had started for the offices that Pierce, his physician, worked from when Noah stopped him. He knew the man was upset with him. But damn it, there were strangers in the house. “My lord, she was moved to a room. The pink one on the second floor, sir.”

He started for the stairs, wondering what he’d done now. A “my lord” and a “sir” all in one statement meant that he’d done something terrible. He’d deal with it later. Danburn took the stairs two at a time to get this taken care of. What he didn’t expect when he opened the door after a brief knock was to find the woman from last night crying.

“What is wrong with you?” She told him it was none of his business. “Of course it is. You’re in my home, using my things. Everything you do here is my business. Answer me right now. I want you to go down and get something to eat, too. There is no point in you getting ill and having to prolong your stay.”

“How much money do you have? Do you own a car? Or do you have a limo service cart your ass all over the place?” Danburn felt his anger burn at him, and told her that it was none of her concern. “So you can keep your own business matters private, but no one else can? I guess I should have expected that from a man like you. Don’t you think that’s a little one sided? And I’ll eat when I want, what I want. As soon as Louisa is able to move, we’ll be out of your hair anyway.”

“I don’t care for your tone. Most people do what I tell them without hesitation. I don’t care for you telling me what you will do.” She looked at Noah when he walked in with Mary, who was carrying a small tray. Before Danburn could guess her intent, the woman got up, thanked Mary, and took the tray from her. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Helping her. Us domestics have to stick together, I think. As for people doing what you tell them, I’m pretty sure that my sister and I are the only ones not on your payroll, so of course they do what you tell them.” She set down the tray that he only just noticed had tea and a bottle of over the counter pain reliever on it. He turned to Noah when he laughed. “Ah, you don’t care for that either.”

“Care for what?” She told him laughter. “Of course I do. Just not at my expense.” As she struggled to open the bottle, he reached out and took it from her to open it. She snatched it right back and glared at him.

“You are the rudest man I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. Don’t you have old women to throw out on their collective asses or something?” He took a step back from her and she glared harder. “You do that? You throw people out of their homes? I should have guessed it earlier from your mean disposition and lack of good manners. Your mother must be very ashamed of you.”

“I most certainly do not have bad manners. I am this way because I’ve had my sleep taken from me by having to look out for someone without enough sense to come in out of the rain. And what I do is called foreclosure. Had they made the payments on time, there would be no reason to toss them out on their collective asses, as you so delicately put it.” He wasn’t sure what he expected her to do next, but when she turned her back to him and sobbed, he took a step toward her. As soon as he put his hand on her shoulder to...he supposed comfort her, she turned and slapped him on the cheek. “What, pray tell, was that for?”

“I want you to leave us alone.” He took a step back from her. The anger in her body and voice was palpable. “Get out. You heard me, get out of here.”

He was nearly to work when he touched the place where she had hit him. It wasn’t sore—she wasn’t able to hurt him, not a mere human—but it did sting in a way that made him regret not just allowing her to do it, but forcing her hand in doing so. Not that he had any idea what he’d done to provoke such a response, but she had hit him.

“Do you know anything about her?” Noah said that he had someone working on it. “Tell me what you find out. You do know that whatever those men wanted of her sister, they’re not going to stop at just hurting her.”

“Pierce mentioned that the sister smelled of fast food, probably a burgers and fries sort of establishment. I’m going to see if I can get Connie to get some information from her today.” Danburn nodded. Connie Weeks was his secretary, and she could dig out the most useful information when he needed her to. “The younger woman is most unusual, is she not? I mean, she dislikes you, but there is a quality about her that makes the staff want to protect her.”

“She’s violent too. Why did she hit me? I didn’t do anything that warranted such a response from her.” Noah said nothing, but Danburn saw the ghost of a smile. He wanted to ask him what it meant, but thought he’d be better off not knowing. “Make sure that there are extra guards around the house until the two of them are gone. And tell Mom that I’d prefer that she stayed away from her. We know nothing about either of them, and I want to keep it that way.”

By the time Noah dropped him off at his offices, they had gone over his schedule again. The meetings wouldn’t be too bad, not the ones before lunch anyway. He did have that thing with Julia that he had been looking forward to getting over with, but now he wasn’t so sure.

Julia James was in trouble. Trouble that she’d brought on herself, but he wasn’t going to be sucked into it as she had planned. Now he was glad that he’d made a few inquiries a month ago and backed off. Julia didn’t know it as yet, but she and her brother were in some serious shit, and he was going to help bring her down.

Danburn had been approached by the Federal Bureau of Investigation just after he’d put in a few calls about Julia and her brother. The Feds had filled him in on a great many things, one of them being that her brother had committed all kinds of acts that were going to earn him some very serious prison time. And Julia was just as deep in it as he was.

Had it been up to Danburn, he would have broken things off with her weeks ago. Not that it mattered. Until the government men had approached him, he’d only been using her for a sexual partner, and she’d been someone to hang on his arm when he needed a date. But now it was about to come to a head, and he was going to celebrate when it was done. Today was going to be a good day, he hoped.

At nine-thirty he looked up when his door opened. He had no idea who he expected to be there, but it certainly wasn’t Noah. Not yet at any rate. Standing up, reaching for his jacket as he waited for him to speak, Danburn knew that something had happened to his mom. Those women had hurt her, he knew it.

“They’re gone.” He asked Noah who. “The women. They made a call just after you left, and then someone in a very old van took them away, your mother told me. Louisa was in a great deal of pain, but Pierce gave her something for it. Their names are Louisa and Kendrick Barrera, by the way. When I returned home this morning, I spoke to your mother and finished the list that you gave me before I went to talk to Mary. She was cleaning the room when I went to check on the two of them.”

Noah sat down, something he’d never done before in his presence. Danburn sat in the chair across the couch from him and waited for him to speak. He was afraid, and Danburn was seldom afraid of anything. But something had upset Noah, and he didn’t care for feeling so helpless.

“Noah, what happened? I mean, it’s not like you to come back here to tell me that they left. What else happened there at the house?” Noah looked at him, and he could see the pain in his eyes. “Did they hurt you? Or anyone at home?”

“Not that I’ve been made aware of. But I never saw them…the Barrera sisters, I mean. The two men from a van came into the house, Mary told me, gathered up Louisa, and then they all left with Kendrick. There were no harsh words. In fact, Mary said that other than thanking her for helping, Kendrick said nothing at all. I spoke with your mother and she was most upset with you.” Danburn nodded. Of course, Kendrick had probably blamed him for all of this. “She seems to think that you should have done more to help her.”

“I have no idea what that might have been. It’s not like I caused her sister to be hurt. And I didn’t tell them they had to leave right now. But they’re gone now, so that’s all that matters.” Noah shook his head. “What else was I supposed to do? Give them keys to the vault in the basement? Let them live there for the rest of their lives while we sat back and let them rob us blind? I swear to Christ, you try to do a good thing and it comes back to bite you in the ass.”

“Mistress wants me to find them. She told me that she would…well, she can be most persuasive when she needs to be. But I am to find them for her, and find out if they are in need of anything.” Noah looked at him. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin in telling her what they need. They don’t have much at all. When I was looking into things, as you asked me to do, I found that while Kendrick does work, she is behind in all of her bills.”

“I don’t understand why Mother would even care.” Noah said he didn’t understand women at all, so he could not help him there. “You found them, I take it. I’m assuming that they don’t live in the lap of luxury? You do know that this entire thing is more than likely a scam, right? That they found out that I’m closing up the castle and moving here, and in a few weeks they’ll say they left something behind and will get into the house. The next thing we know, they’re living there and there isn’t shit we can do about it.”

Noah said nothing, but the longer he sat there, Danburn could see the anger surfacing on his face. Even his body was stiff with it. Good, that meant that they’d not get by anyone at his home while he was away. Noah would take—

“I shall leave you now, sir. I’m not sure why I even came by.” He stood up and so did Danburn. There was a stiffness there that Danburn was sort of leery of. “When will you be returning home this evening? I shall have Mary leave you a plate should it be too late.”

“What the hell just happened here?” Noah told him he had no idea what he meant. “You’re angry. And the reason I know that is because you look like someone stuck a pole up your ass, and you’re calling me sir again. You know how I hate that.”

“Yes, I do.” As Noah made his way to the door, Danburn felt lost and pissed. But he wasn’t sure why he should be feeling either emotion. “I shall see you this evening, sir.”

After he was gone, Danburn wanted to throw something. He didn’t care what it was or even what it might break when he did, but he was pissed enough that he wanted to destroy something. It was a feeling that seemed to overwhelm him a great deal lately, and he hated it.

Going to his desk, he did a search on the two women and found nothing other than an obit stating that they were the only living children of their mother, Nettie Barrera. And searching for her name, he found several articles mentioning her being a wanted woman in the attempted murder of a minor.

His frustration grew when he found an article dated several months ago about Louisa. She’d been arrested and released on bail when the people she’d been with were caught up in a robbery. Nothing more was mentioned about her involvement, nor about why she’d not gone to jail. Danburn called his friend at the police station, Jake Ludlow.

“Yeah, I know them both. Mostly the older of the two. Louisa has a history, I’ll tell you that much. As for the sister, the only time we see her is when she comes in to bail Louisa out. Not for anything major like the other one.” Danburn asked him what sort of stuff. “Parking violation once. Some trouble with a neighbor about trashcans not being taken back when they were empty. Stupid shit like that. Kendrick is a good kid that has been dealt a bad hand. I’ll tell you about it when I see you next time if you’re interested. Her sister, Louisa, is a piece of work that makes me think that she’s always going to be in trouble somehow. She isn’t bad, but seems to find herself in situations that go bad. And she’s very…well, gullible, if you want to know the truth. I think she needs a keeper. But yeah, I can send you over what I have on her.”

“Do you know anything about Kendrick? I mean, other than she bails her sister out? And has shitty neighbors?” There was silence on the other end, and he was sure that Jake was going to tell him it was none of his business. He was getting sick of hearing that. “Jake? What is it?”

“Kendrick is on our radar, but not like you think. Hang on.” He heard the sounds behind the man suddenly cut out. “She’s a good girl, like I said. Works hard. But with a sister like hers, she runs into trouble too, and gets hurt when she feels the need to tread where we’d think twice about going. But because of Louisa, Kendrick is behind in her rent, bills going unpaid. Twice recently she’s had run-ins with her landlord. Mostly, I think, he’s pissy because she’s not sleeping with him, but she is behind in a lot of things. In fact, in two days I have to go and evict her. She knows about it. I already talked to her last week and gave her a little extra time so she could see if she could get the money. But she told me that she’s already working her ass off at four jobs and can’t swing it. I think Louisa is draining her.”

“You mean financially.” Jake told him it was more than that. Like she literally was draining her by sucking her dry of life. “I see.”