The Dragon Marshal's Treasure (U.S. Marshal Shifters 1)

The circumstances made it rude to laugh at that, so Theo put his hand up to his mouth to cover the sound with an unconvincing cough. “Okay, nutcrackers first. I can see why you’d want them out of the house as soon as possible. He had a lot of them, didn’t he?”

“He had even more nutcrackers than he had mistresses,” Tiffani said. “And believe me, that’s saying something.” But the fond look hadn’t left her. She shook her head. “Jilly always knows what to do.”

If he wanted to make her feel better, concentrating on her stepdaughter rather than her scoundrel of a husband was probably the best tactic. “The two of you must be close for her to come home to help you out with this... transition.”

Over in Tiffani’s blind spot, Gretchen shot him a thumbs up and then said, “I’m going to do a quick perimeter check just to make sure we don’t have any uninvited guests—the press love those shots of Louis XIV furniture being dragged out onto the lawn, and I think you’ve probably had enough of that attention lately. But please save me a cookie.” She bounded off, a lynx in spirit if not in fact. If there were anyone there to catch, she’d catch them, and send them off reconsidering ethics in journalism, The

o had no doubt of that.

It left him to follow Tiffani to the kitchen alone.

The chocolate chip cookies were the size and consistency of saucers. Theo had never baked anything so homey and uncomplicated—dragon households had soufflés and madeleines and petit-fours or they had nothing at all—but even he could tell that there had been either too much or too little of something or something else had been done for too long or not long enough. Or both. They had an enticing smell that reminded him of human open houses, but when he snapped off a bite, he felt a throb in his gums as his teeth cursed him for it.

“Tell me more about Jillian,” he said quickly, hoping to distract her from what would probably be an ongoing attempt to dispose of this without actually eating it.

Tiffani ate her own cookie without the faintest trace of fear. She must have had a jaw like a crocodile.

“She’s extraordinary. She works for the community center over in New Rochelle. She started off just doing their marketing work, but now she heads up all their kids’ activities, too. I’ve seen her go to a gala with finger-paint still drying on her hands and make presentations that had the whole room digging for their checkbooks. She’s nothing like her father.”

He stepped around the subject of Gordon Marcus. “Did the two of you hit it off right away?”

“Oh, when we first met, I was too terrified of where I’d ended up to charm a potted plant, let alone some shy thirteen year-old. I was only twenty-two myself and I was just so unprepared for everything. I wouldn’t have known what to do with a baby, let alone a teenager. And I thought for sure she hated me. The wicked stepmother.”

Dragon fairy tales were always just a little cockeyed from their human counterparts, but Theo recognized this bit. “You don’t seem especially wicked.”

“The cookies are poisoned,” Tiffani said. “By my terrible baking. I can tell they’re awful, by the way, you don’t have to pretend to eat it.”

“You’re eating it.”

“I’m eating everything. I’m exhausted with trying to look like an aerobics instructor.” She took another vicious bite of cookie. “Gordon didn’t try to help us get to know each other, either. He said Jilly had a mom already and he didn’t want that ‘maternal shit’ all around him. He said he liked me because I was ‘fun.’ He meant dumb.”

“You don’t seem dumb any more than you seem wicked,” Theo said.

It sounded to him like Gordon Marcus had thought his new wife would be a younger, sexier, bouncier version of himself: selfish, devoid of conscience, and intent on moment-to-moment gratification. To Theo that made Marcus the dumb one.

He wished Tiffani would have nodded, at least. That she didn’t showed that her husband had stolen something from her, too. Not her money, maybe, but her confidence.

“Anyway,” Tiffani said, “I didn’t listen to him. But all I knew back then was how to do hair. I’d been a stylist, before Gordon. Jilly has such beautiful hair. I put it up in Princess Leia buns for her, gave her a million little braids, whatever she could think of. That perm just about killed me—living through the eighties once was bad enough—but I still did it. She was such a shy little girl, but if you paid even a moment’s attention to her, you could see how smart she was.”

“I loved those Leia buns. I wore them every Halloween.”

Jillian Marcus breezed into view to Theo’s right, passing him to inspect the cookies.

Theo, who had only just managed to find a tactful moment to drop his in the trash, decided at once that he would take one from her if she offered.

Her long, dark auburn hair was pulled into a casual ponytail. Her clothes were rumpled and dusty from a hard day’s work unearthing nutcrackers. Everything about her radiated a lively, down-to-earth warmth that that made it impossible to look away from her.

Though he had to admit that his delight at having her in the room wasn’t entirely about some high-minded, ethereal notion that, though he’d never met her, she felt like coming home. She was also gorgeous enough to stop his breath in his throat.

Jillian Marcus was all beautiful curves and soft-looking skin sprayed with freckles. Her hips were round and generous, made for hands to cradle them as she danced. He had the strange thought that she would taste of cinnamon, hot and familiar and intoxicating.

He forced himself, with great difficulty, not to stare. Be professional. Be Emily Post.

Who is this Emily Post to us? His dragon lashed his tail from side to side. She is not this lady whose hair is the color of fire. Never mind Emily Post.

Her hair is a much darker red than fire, Theo thought back, feeling like he was somehow playing directly into his dragon’s claws. She’s just—hotter than fire.

He hadn’t yet stopped staring. He was glad her attention was elsewhere. She was looking at the cookies with a curiosity that suggested they were the end result of some decades-long experiment. She picked one up and then put it down.