Hidden Passions (Hidden, #7)(63)

"That's a true Mona Lisa smile," observed a familiar voice.

Startled, Chris stopped the blender's whir. One of the hosts from As Luck Would Have It had come over. His multiple viewings of their dragon special allowed him to identify her as Jin Levine. The interviewer's half elf genes made her extra pretty, though her human ones probably weren't chopped liver. Her hair and eyes were gold, her flawless skin kissed by the same 24-karat tone. Her lashes had to be false. Otherwise, they couldn't have been sooty.

"Daiquiri?" he offered. "I've made a fresh batch."

"I'd rather have your special, the mango martinis I've heard so much about."

She practically purred the words. Chris suspected she could turn reading a grocery list into a flirtation.

"Coming up," he said with a strictly professional smile.

Jin wasn't discouraged. She was a professional herself. Bending one sleek golden arm, she leaned on the bar top. If he'd been a different sort of man, he'd have admired the way she filled out her bikini. "You seem familiar. Have I seen you somewhere?"

"I'm a fireman," he said. "Sometimes we get caught on camera."

"No." Jin tapped her lips, not cooing over the fact that he battled fires. "It's something else. It'll come to me. I've got a memory like an elephant."

Chris fought a sudden chill. Unless she'd been a news junkie as a child, she was too young to remember his family tragedy.

"There isn't anything else," he said. "I'm a simple guy."

When Jin smiled, her mouth curved deeper on one side. The expression made her look unexpectedly likeable. "If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that hardly anyone is simple."

A stir of sound and movement saved Chris from having to respond. Whatever the disturbance was it had started by the pool. A reporter down to her toes, Jin used her high-heeled sandals to peer over the party crowd.

"Oh boy," she said as if she didn't know whether to be worried or excited. "Hold onto your swizzle sticks. We've got faeries incoming."

The faeries' entrance was a sort of invasion. Nine purebloods in silk robes filed out through the window doors that connected the penthouse to the pool deck. Chris had never seen so many high fae in person in one place. Even from where he stood, their combined magic closed his throat. These were the beings who'd created Resurrection--possibly the actual ones, given their race's longevity. As amazing as it was to be a shifter or an elf, compared to the fae, their power was a small drop in a big bucket.

"Naughty, naughty," Jin murmured. "Cass didn't invite you to this party."

Her tone was humorous, her pretty face less so.

Feeling a sudden need to have free hands, Chris put down his drink mixing tools. "Why do you think they're here?"

"For them, I imagine." Thoroughly somber now, she tilted her head toward the young dragons.

That wasn't right. Tony's pack had risked their lives to protect the brood. No snooty faerie cabal ought to be able to sweep in and threaten them. Chris stepped out from behind the bar, his tiger's energy swelling inside him.

"Hey," Jin said, laying a cautionary hand on his arm. "Don't go all feral. I didn't say I thought the fae meant them harm."

"I need to get closer." His voice wasn't normal. His tiger had roughened it. He wasn't sure he should trust his urge to let it out . . . or if he could resist it. Obviously, he'd watched that dragon special too many times. He'd developed a sense of ownership. Knowing this was inappropriate didn't seem to matter. "Your friend Cass doesn't have to face them alone."

"She's not," Jin said, patting him. "Every wolf in this place just went to DEFCON-1, besides which Cass can handle more than people think. Look, the red dragon just flew over to help her confront them. This is politics, right here. Let the girls do their Madeleine Albright thing."

Jin seemed to know what she was talking about.

"I still want to get closer," he said gruffly. "I can't hear what they're saying from this distance."

Jin flashed a brilliant grin. "Eavesdropping is a goal I can get behind."

They shouldered through the crowd until they reached the concrete paving around the pool. Jin was right about the wolves. They'd drawn closer to the line of faeries and then fanned out, treating the purebloods as a threat that needed containing. Tony seemed to have exited the water hastily, his gorgeous underdressed body dripping from head to toe. Because those droplets were distracting, Chris yanked his gaze away. Cass and the red dragon stood nearer to the faeries than anyone. Rick's fiancee looked calm. To the sensitive eye, however, she vibrated with tension.


Rick was vibrating too . . . with watchfulness. Though he allowed his mate to face down the party crashers, only a fool would imagine he wasn't ready to defend her.

Jin crouched down by the pool coping. "Hey, kids," she murmured to the children still in the water. "Why don't you swim this way and wait?"

They were shifter kids and aware that something was happening. Without complaint, they followed her suggestion. Chris spine snapped more alert. One of the fae was speaking.

"I am Dubh," he said. "Head of the Dragon Guild."

Chris wasn't familiar with the group. Maybe the guild was big in Faerie, where little things like extinctions weren't taken seriously. He'd have thought a dragon guild protected dragons, but to go by Cass's stiff reaction, the affiliation wasn't necessarily good news.