Dragon Soul (Dragon Falls, #3)(19)

“Hey!” Sophea said, pausing in the act of buttering another roll. “Let’s keep the name calling to a minimum. And just for the record, Rowan does not know me. We just met on the plane, remember?”

Rowan studied Sophea. He liked her face. It was what people referred to as heart-shaped, but softened, so her chin didn’t look pointy. Her eyes were deep set, but with a little tilt that belied her mixed ancestry. Her hair was a rich shade of brown that reminded him of the chocolate they’d just been mentioning—it hung to her shoulders, a rippling curtain of silk that drew him like no other woman’s hair had.

For a moment, the idea of her straddling him, her hair teasing his naked flesh, flashed through his head, but he quickly stifled such inappropriate thoughts and tried to remember what the conversation was about.

“Er… do I have something on my face?” Sophea asked, becoming aware of his scrutiny.

“Eh? Ah, no. My apologies for staring. I was considering what I knew of you and why you would try to make us think that Zeus wasn’t a real person.”

She gawked at him, and it was so genuine, he had a niggle of suspicion that she wasn’t faking her reaction. “Oh, come on, now. You’re not going to start with that weird stuff that the others are doing, are you?”

“What weird stuff?”

She nodded toward Mrs. P. “She told me she knew who my husband was despite the fact that Jian had only come to the U.S. once, and then he was killed. And she said some pretty odd things about him. She said he was a dragon.” She gave a short laugh. “A dragon! Have you ever heard anything that crazy? It’s right up there with insisting that a mythical Greek god is alive.”

“The Greek pantheon are demigods, not full gods, I believe,” Rowan answered, wondering what she had to gain by refusing to admit the obvious. She must know that he wasn’t fooled. Perhaps if he made it absolutely clear that he knew just who and what she was, she’d drop the pretense. He had a feeling he’d like her a whole lot more if she stopped pretending.

She snorted. “Right, of course they are. Because why wouldn’t they be?”

“Just as you are a dragon’s mate. A red dragon’s mate, one whom the silver wyvern says was not tainted by demons.” He met her gaze squarely, hoping she could read the sincerity in his eyes. “I understand what you are doing, but you should know that the act isn’t necessary. I have no fight with the dragonkin… quite the opposite, actually, since I’ve been engaged to help them, not to mention my history with the First Dragon.”

She stared at him for the count of eight, then gave a little shake of her head. “And you look so very sane. Sadly, you’re just as cracked as the rest. Well, fine, be that way. If you guys want to insist that the unreal is real, you go right ahead. But I’m just going to ignore it.”

“Why are you…” He stopped, and looked at Mrs. P.

She shrugged. “She is as she is. I cannot change it.”

“Are you saying she’s telling the truth?”

“Hey!” Sophea said, indignation causing her lips to thin. “I’m sitting right here, you know.”

“Possibly,” Mrs. P said, just as if Sophea had not spoken. “It’s difficult to tell, and really, I don’t see that it matters.”

“I have the horrible feeling that one of you is calling me a liar,” Sophea said through apparently gritted teeth.

“If she is telling the truth…” Rowan fully considered this previous suspicion. If that was the case, then it changed everything. Or did it?

“Yoo hoo!” Mrs. P, obviously tired of the conversation, dipped her knobby fingers into her water glass, and flicked the water at a middle-aged man sitting by himself at the table next to them. “You there, in the blue. Yes, you. Do you like older women?”

“You’re about to get a swift kick to the shin, buster,” Sophea told Rowan. “How dare you imply I’d lie? I never lie! It’s a personal policy of mine, one that I started when I was a little girl at the orphanage and had to be nice to people who might want to adopt me. Do you have any idea the sorts of people who want to adopt plump half-Asian girls? Let me tell you, they aren’t the cream of the crop.”

Mrs. P leaned out of her chair at a perilous angle, the better to speak to the now-startled man at the next table. “You look like you have lots of energy. Limber, too.”

“Er…” the man said, glancing around as if for help, but the other few people in the dining room were focused on their own affairs.

“Everyone lies at some point or other,” Rowan told Sophea. He wasn’t sure what to believe about her now. Either she was a very good actress or she was as innocent as she professed. But even if she was the latter, would she stay that way for very long once she knew the truth about what Mrs. P had in her possession?

“I don’t,” Sophea insisted.

“Not even a white lie to keep from hurting someone’s feelings?”

“Not even then. I’d find some other way to get around being hurtful.”

Mrs. P leaned so far out of her chair that Sophea had to grab her to keep her from toppling to the floor. “What’s your name, handsome?”

“Edvard,” the man said in a pronounced Scandinavian accent. He scooted his chair a little farther away from Mrs. P and tried to focus on his meal.