The Dragon's Tattoo: A Dragon Shifter Romance (Bluewater Dragons Book 1) Read online

  A woman’s voice behind me had my ears prickling. “Have you seen him yet?”

  I didn’t mean to listen in, but they were in the booth directly behind mine. I couldn’t help it.

  “No,” a new voice said. “But I heard he’s gorgeous.”

  I took a big bite of my taco salad and tried to mind my own business. It wasn’t easy.

  “Dr. White had to go on emergency leave this morning, and…” Someone dropped a tray nearby and I missed the new doctor’s name. “He was already in town and had applied at the hospital, so he got brought on immediately.”

  “What’s wrong with Dr. White?” the second voice asked.

  “His mom fell and broke her hip. He’s going to take some time off to take care of her. Must be nice to be able to do that. When it happened to my Nana, we had to put her in a state-funded home.”

  She sounded a little bitter, but I didn’t blame her. I would’ve been in her shoes, too. But I never had a Nana, so what did I know?

  “He used to live in Bluewater, apparently, and decided to move back home. That’s all I got from the nurse that scrubbed in with him on surgery this morning.”

  So, the new doctor was a surgeon. That was fine. It meant my schedule wouldn’t change. Dr. White worked in the primary care clinic a lot but wasn’t a surgeon. I wondered how they’d revamp the duties to make it all work, but that was way above my paygrade.

  I wondered if I’d known him before. We’d had several doctors come and go from Bluewater Memorial since I started here long ago as a CNA. It was probably one of them. I couldn’t think of a single one that I had any issues with, so whoever it was would be fine.

  I’d intended to go straight home, but as I passed my dad’s body shop, I decided to pull in at the last second. My shift had ended at five, but he kept the shop open until at least seven. I knew he’d be there, working away.

  “Dad?” I called as I walked into the bay. “You working?”

  “Hey, sugar!” Dad popped his head out from under an old truck. “It’s about time you stopped by to see me.”

  “Yeah, snookums, where’ve you been?” My dad’s right-hand man, Cooter, walked in from the office. “Working yourself to death?”

  Dad looked at me with his eyebrows raised. “He’s not wrong.”

  I rolled my eyes and walked over to the toolbox beside the truck. “Says the man who will probably be here banging on these cars until it’s dark.”

  He rolled back underneath the truck. “Hand me the ten!”

  I snorted and got the socket for him. “Sure, sure.” I’d been handing him tools since I could walk.

  “How’s work?” he asked over the clanks of whatever he was doing with the socket I’d handed him.

  “Fine. Nothing new. There’s some new doctor I haven’t met yet.” I leaned against the truck and about five seconds later jerked upright when Dad smacked my leg. “Sorry!”

  I knew better than to lean against vehicles while they were jacked up.

  “What’s in your head?” He rolled out from under the truck and sat up, handing me the tool to put away.

  I shrugged. “I just wasn’t thinking, is all.”

  Cooter snorted. “You look like you’ve got a bug up your butt.”

  I shot Cooter a glare and pointed at him. “You hush.”

  He glared right back. “You need a life.”

  “Hey,” I said defensively. “I have a life.”

  Dad had to chime in, too. “A life outside work.”

  Oh. Yeah. Maybe.

  “You’re going to end up like me, working until you exhaust yourself before falling into bed and getting up the next day to do it all again.”

  I didn’t tell him I’d already been doing that. It wasn’t like I had a lot of friends to go out with or a boyfriend or anything.

  “It’s fine. It’s not like I want to be a grandfather one day or anything.” Oh, great. He was bringing out the big guns. “I mean, you’re my only daughter. I guess I could always sign up for one of those programs where kids come to visit the elderly.”

  I dropped my hands beside me and threw my head back. “Dad.” He was laying it on thick. If he said one more thing about it, I was going to end up biting his head off.

  “Oh, you know I’m not serious, sugar. I’m happy if you’re happy.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I smiled at him until he rolled himself back under the truck. He never had put pressure on me like that. If, one day, he died without grandkids, he’d never make me feel bad about it.

  I would, though. I’d never told him about my PCOS. Somehow, I just never could bring myself to. How could I tell him that he’d never have grandchildren? I supposed that wasn’t true though, I still could adopt. I’d been feeling the biological tick. Not to get pregnant, necessarily, but to decide one way or the other. I didn’t even know if I’d make a good mother. I’d never had one myself, how would I know if mothering would come easily to me? And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to give up my independence, such as it was. I mean, I didn’t go out often, but when I did, I called up my best friend, Kaylee, and we went out. Or stayed in, depending on our mood.

  But oh, what joy I saw on my patients’ faces when they held their little babies in their arms. And goodness knew I’d tried to get pregnant, for a long time. I’d been hoping it was Bret that was firing blanks and not my PCOS, up until he got his side chick pregnant.

  “Dad,” I called under the truck. “What are your dinner plans?”

  “Cooter made chili,” he yelled back. He’d slid quite far underneath.

  Cooter’s chili was pretty damn good. I turned to find the older man grinning at me with a knowing look on his face. Dad and Cooter had been best friends all my life. When I was younger, I’d called him Uncle Cooter. “Save me some?” I asked.

  He rolled his eyes and looked down at the table full of tools in front of him. I followed his glance to find a grocery store bag on the side of the table closest to me.

  Cocking my head, I gave him a sly smile. “Uncle C, is that what I think it is?”

  “If you think it’s a baggie of corn chips and a baggie of cheese and a baggie of sour cream plus a big bowl of chili, then you’re as smart as I think you are.”

  I squealed, playing it up a little, because I knew how happy it made Cooter. This was how he showed love to me, Dad, and the other guys in the shop. He cooked for us all the time. He wasn’t quick with the words of affection, but he made a damn good roast.

  He was covered in oil and grime, so I didn’t hug him, but I did give him a huge grin. “Thanks. I’ll take it to work with me tomorrow.”

  He nodded. “Good. Get out of here.”

  Dad rolled out from under the truck again and stood. “We don’t like you driving at night.”

  I shook my head at both of them. “You’re worse than a couple of old hens.”

  Dad shot Cooter a glare. “Maybe he is.”

  I waved at them and left them arguing. They’d be arguing until they were old and frail. Hopefully, anyway. If something happened to one of them, I wasn’t sure what the other would do. They’d been working together for so long, they were like a staple in our small town. Everyone came to Will’s to get their cars fixed. And everyone thought Dad’s name was Will and called him that. Only people who knew me knew that our last name was Wills, and Dad had used it in a bit of word play for the shop name.

  When I turned on my car, I used the fancy-schmancy voice feature to call my best friend on the way home. “Call Kaylee,” I said in a clear, firm voice.

  “Hey, biatch!” Kaylee always answered with some inappropriate phrase or another. “What’s going on?”

  “Should I have kids out of obligation?” I blurted. Kaylee was the sort to lay it all out there with.

  She burst out laughing. “Leave it to you. You know the answer to that.”

  I sighed and turned on my blinker to head away from town and Dad’s shop. “I know.” I wasn’t trying to sound sullen, but that’s how it came out.


  “What’s brought this on?” A thumping sound came through the car’s stereo speakers and when her voice came back on, it was apparent she’d put me on speaker. “Why all the sudden interest in having obligatory babies?”

  “I don’t know. Dad said something about wanting grandkids one day.” The light turned green, and I turned onto the coastal road that led to my small cottage home.

  “Then tell him to buy one.” Kaylee’s flat voice made me laugh, as I’d known it would. “Or he can have another kid, if he wants to try again for a boy.”

  We both laughed, her more sarcastically than me. There was a tinge of hurt in my laughter, because I was convinced that he’d really wanted a boy all along.

  “Listen, if it’s meant for you to have a baby, you will. It’ll happen. And in the meantime, we can get drunk and flirt with sexy men.”

  “Or in your case, take them home and help them lose their innocence.” I grinned out at the road as Kaylee laughed harder.

  “You’re thinking about Bret, aren’t you?” she asked once she’d calmed her giggles.

  I sighed. “Well, I wasn’t, until you brought him up.”

  “You’re a terrible liar. Have you seen him lately?”

  It was impossible to work at the hospital and not see him. He was half the reason I usually went to the cafe and not the cafeteria. He liked the full service of the cafeteria and went there most often for his lunches.

  “I don’t care about Bret or his life, or his new baby mama.”

  “The offer to burn his house down stands.”

  Bret had been my college boyfriend, and then fiancé. We’d lived together in a large apartment near the hospital in downtown Bluewater Cove. The wedding date had come and gone this past winter while Bret was at our apartment with his new fiancé and her pregnant belly. He’d been cheating on me all along, apparently, and it only came to light when his current squeeze got pregnant. He’d then tried to blame me by saying I was too busy and worked too many hours.

  He was lonely.

  “And I still might take you up on it, but honestly, Kaylee, the hurt isn’t nearly as bad as it used to be. And me thinking about babies might have been spurred a little by them, but it’s a valid question. At my age, don’t I have the right to be wondering if it’s time to get pregnant?” I’d be turning thirty-five soon, and that was considered a geriatric pregnancy and came with its own set of complications.

  “Yes, you have the right to think about it. As long as you’re not obsessing over that dirtbag.”

  “I know that his cheating was his problem, not mine. It wasn’t my fault.” She’d been drilling it into my head since it happened, and somewhere along the way, the reality that it had been Bret’s fault and not mine had sunk in and I’d finally begun to believe it.

  “I’m glad to hear it. Now, when are you off again?”

  I’d picked up a few shifts. “I’m honestly not sure. Let me check and I’ll text you. Girls’ night?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  We hung up as I pulled into the driveway of my new cottage. When I moved out of Bret’s, I’d moved back in with Dad in his place behind the auto shop for a little while, but then decided I wanted some time to myself. I’d gone from Dad’s to the dorm room, where I roomed with Kaylee. Not that I regretted that, she’d become a lifelong friend. After the dorm, I’d moved in with Bret, then when that went to hell, back to Dad’s.

  For the last six months, I’d lived in my cottage, alone.

  And it was wonderful. If I wanted to eat ice cream in bed, naked, I did. If I wanted to dance off the ice cream I’d eaten in bed, I did that, too. I watched TV if I wanted to, cleaned when I wanted to and had my girly face products and lingerie spread out all over the house.

  The only thing that sucked was eating. Cooking for one was a major bummer. I avoided it, generally, eating at the hospital or Dad’s whenever I could. Eating out so much meant that I danced more than I used to, but that was okay, too. There was nothing wrong with streaming exercise videos to earn the large fries instead of small.

  After a shower, I made the bed and curled up in it, throwing my robe at the end and enjoying the feel of the clean sheets on my naked, damp body.

  I considered myself, trying to be as self-aware as I could. I wasn’t ugly, though I also wouldn’t have said I was the hottest person in Bluewater. Sometimes I was funny, and I was loyal for sure. I didn’t steal or anything. Dad had installed a pretty decent moral compass.

  My teeth were always clean, and I’d never suffered from acne. In short, I was decent.

  So why did men seem repulsed by me? Bret was the only man that had ever shown me any attention, and I’d fallen for him hook, line, and sinker. He’d kept me at home as his steady, boring wife-to-be while he’d snuck around with all the exciting women he’d wanted to.

  The only other man I’d ever had any sort of relationship with sprang to mind. Anthony Mason. He’d been my best friend all through my childhood and half of high school. He’d kissed me one time, then disappeared, saying his family had gotten him into some prestigious school in England.

  Except that he’d never sent so much as an email. He’d said we would video chat or text, and though I’d sent a few messages, I’d quickly given up when there was no reply.

  That hadn’t stopped me from stalking his social media. When he left, social media was just getting a real foothold and we’d both just made accounts on the two biggest platforms. He’d never unfriended me, but I was always very careful about how much I let him see and I never, ever liked, commented, or reacted to any of his posts.

  It was petty, but it was life. And he seemed to be living his best life, by the looks of his accounts.

  He’d left me as if I’d never mattered to him in the least. No way would I let him know I stalked him occasionally online.

  I fell asleep thinking about him, and when my alarm went off the next morning, I woke with a dream slipping away so fast I had no idea what it had been about, but somehow, I knew, just knew it was the recurring dream I had where Anthony kissed me and as soon as our lips touched, he jerked back and looked down at me as if I repulsed him.

  As soon as I walked into the primary care clinic, the receptionist, Cam, skittered across the office. “Come on,” she said. “You’re late.” Her layers of bracelets clacked as she moved.

  “Sorry, I stopped for coffee. I was out.” I held up my large to-go cup as proof.

  “That’s all well and good, but we’re meeting the new doctor. He’s replacing Dr. White for the foreseeable future.”

  She grabbed my arm as soon as I stashed my purse and jacket in the back room. “Hurry,” Camilla urged.

  We walked into the staff room, the last ones to enter. They’d left the chairs closest to the door open around the big conference table. We sat and looked at the head of the table to find the hospital CEO standing with the new doctor.

  “Thanks everyone for taking the time to have this little introductory meeting,” he said.

  I looked at the new doctor standing beside him for the first time to discover his gaze was glued to me.

  My jaw dropped as I tried not to shit a brick.

  It was Anthony fucking Mason.

  2

  Anthony

  The old tattoo had tingled once yesterday, but I’d expected that. I’d only been back in town for a few days. When the time came for me to come back to Bluewater, my parents had warned me that Skylar hadn’t moved away, as I had always hoped she would. I was prepared to run into her again and do my best to ignore the mating call.

  Yeah, right. I should’ve stayed gone. I’d never intended to come back and take over as alpha during Skylar’s lifetime, but my father up and decided he wanted to retire and enjoy the good life, so he said. Then, in the next breath, he told me I couldn’t get any ideas about Skylar, that humans and dragons couldn’t mate.

  I should’ve told him no. Told him to wait.

  But here I was, getting ready to be introduced to my new team, and my
tattoo tingled again. It had been tingling for two or three minutes now. She had to have entered the building, at least.

  They’d warned me Skylar was a nurse, but I’d stopped them there. I didn’t want to know. As my tattoo flared to life, scalding my arm for the first time since I was sixteen years old, I stiffened and looked at the door of the small conference room.

  And she walked in. She didn’t notice me, either. My dragon roared inside me, urging me to make my presence known, but all I could do was stand there and try not to look shocked by her presence.

  I schooled my features into an inscrutable mask, something I’d perfected during my intern years. And finally, after what felt like a dozen lifetimes, she looked up and met my gaze. My breath caught in my throat. My tattoo burned until it throbbed to the beat of my heart, which was beating in double time.

  After all these years of my instincts screaming at me to go home and find Skye, there she was, sitting at a conference table in front of me.

  I knew I should’ve checked to make sure she didn’t work here. Of course she worked at this hospital. Of all the doctor’s offices and all the hospitals in the world, she worked here. She could’ve gotten a job at a nursing home, pediatrician’s office, telehealth, even.

  But no. She worked at the one place I wanted to work now that I’d be in Bluewater indefinitely. As of the next new moon, I couldn’t move away from the cove without moving the entire clan with me.

  They’d go if I ordered it. But I’d never do that to them. This was their home, our home, and had been for a couple of centuries now, though the clan had grown exponentially in the last hundred years or so. So much that the townsfolk had decided years ago we were some weird cult.

  I had no idea how to remedy that situation. I didn’t even know what to do about my fated freaking mate sitting right in front of me, pretending she didn’t know me.

  Starting something up with Skye would mean directly disobeying my alpha. But he wouldn’t be alpha for long. Soon, it would be me. That changed things a lot.