Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(68)

The crowd started to clap. The announcer said her name. The crowd erupted into a huge cheer.

Huge. Swelling. Everyone clapping, yelling her name.

Lina pushed off her hood and stared at them.

The cheers swelled even higher. People waved signs with her name on them. And Paris’s symbol: Fluctuat nuc mergitur. She is tossed by the waves, but she does not sink.

Oh, hell. She could feel her eyes getting damp. Talk about pressure. If she cried out here…

She revved her chainsaw. All right, dragon. It’s just you and me.

The contest was timed. She had two back-up ice blocks, but it was better if she got it right the first time. Blade whining into the ice, all the power in her arms holding it steady, as she made the big cuts for the body.

Okay. Good. She hadn’t cut off any heads.

She set the chainsaw down and dropped to smaller tools, the crowd buzzing in her ears like the chainsaw had, fading to the background.

She made the dragon flying, mouth open, roaring. It was hard as hell, so much harder than carving it curled up sleeping. She had to make a slim enough base that it looked truly as if it was flying on its own, but not cut away all its support. You should never, ever, try to fly without support, if that support was available to you. She looked into the stands at her family, her father gripping the rail, her mother clasping her hands together, her grandmother running prayer beads through her fingers, almost certainly murmuring bismillah since she knew her granddaughter was too much of an eye-roller over religion to do it.

She looked up at Jake, high in the stands. He was checking the crowd, but as if he felt her eyes on him, he looked down at her. Their eyes seemed to hold across that whole distance, and he lifted a fist to her.

She focused back on the dragon, feeling as if her eyes were shining so bright she could melt it into shape with a look.

Wouldn’t that be nice. But no, she only had her power tools. Refining the wings. The long necks now. Two necks. Her two-headed dragon.

Its sharp teeth.

Even a hint of the curve of its tongues, inside those mouths opened to roar.

Take that, she thought as she finally stepped back, as the buzzer rang to end her time. The dragon gleamed there, beautiful, flying dangerous and free, ready to take on any enemy who tried to stop it, two heads grown from the base where the last enemy had tried to take it down.

I’m Lina Farah.

The crowd was applauding wildly. Cameras flashed. She pushed off her hood again because, hey, it might be cold in here, but if she was going to be famous and in pictures all over the place, this was the way she wanted it, standing proudly beside her accomplishments.

Thank you, she mouthed to her family. And lifted her hand to wave at Jake.

And the dragon soared.

***

“Second place?!” Lina could not stop fuming. “Second place?” She gesticulated and stomped up and down the beach. The cold blue waves of Brittany crashed against dark cliffs beyond her. “They gave first place to a stupid basket of flowers?!!”

“I think they were oysters,” her mother said. Lina’s mother looked very like her daughter, even to the messy bun in which she currently had her brown-black hair. Jake assumed she was in her fifties, but she looked barely forty, with maybe two strands of gray in her hair. Hell, if Lina aged like her mother and Jake kept treating his own body the way he did, people were going to think he was twice her age by the time they were in their fifties.

Maybe he should really think about some choices that would…give them a long future together.

“Those were oysters?” Lina said, outraged.

“Open. On the half-shell. So he was honoring local specialties. And the sculptor worked in the Brittany flag in at the base. You know how they are over here.”

“Why didn’t he just carve a flat stack of crêpes,” Lina said, very dangerously. “I mean, I could have done that, with a lot less trouble, if they wanted local symbols.”

“Also, he was a local sculptor,” her father said. “He probably knew everyone on the jury. Probably married to one of their sisters or something.”

“They probably just wanted to show they couldn’t be swayed by the crowd.” Her mother sniffed. “With whom you were clearly the favorite.”

“Second,” Lina said grumpily.

“Sure was a beautiful dragon, though,” Jake said, and looped his arm around her shoulders, pulled her into him, and kissed the top of her head.

Which was almost fraternal of him, come on, but three sets of brown eyes fixed on him like hounds on a bunny rabbit.

“So,” her father said, far too neutrally. “I don’t think we’ve really gotten a chance to get to know each other. Jake…Adams, is that right?”

Jake made a concerted effort to look upright, trustworthy, and like he had been a monk in a previous life and had only been convinced to come out of the monastery because their daughter had made him. But he kept his arm around her shoulders.

“I’m pretty sure Adams is not his real last name,” Lina said.

Oh, thanks a lot. “That is not helping, Lina,” he muttered.

“Oh, really?” Her father folded his arms.

“It’s complicated,” Jake said. He gave her mother a hopeful smile.

Her mother cocked her head, considering him thoughtfully. “What’s your job in life, Jake?”