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

“Rogue English professor?” Theo said, nodding at it.

“Whoever it was came back after they put the frame up and got halfway through spraying DON’T FRAME THIS, YOU before they must have gotten scared off by the cops. That’s down by the garden-side door.”

“Did they frame it anyway?”

“Of course not. We at The Steeplechase are very respectful of the wishes of graffiti artists as long as they express them in a timely fashion. I’m on the fifth floor.”

The elevators were comparatively mundane, though they did all have glassed-in signs exp

laining in brief the history of The Steeplechase. Words like “eccentric” and “quaint” tended to turn up a lot.

She had gotten her place at a discount even for The Steeplechase because it was right off the bank of elevators—she slept with earplugs to keep herself from hearing chimes all night long—so all it took was a single turn before she was unlocking her door.

This really did feel intimate. But, she reminded herself, she was showing it to the person in her life who would most appreciate and understand what she was showing him.

This is moving so fast. Like land-speed records fast.

But she had heard so many stories—even stories without dragons!—that had this kind of fairy tale love. How many times had she heard grandparents at the center reminisce about how they had known right away? How many times had some elderly man looked lovingly at his wife while telling Jillian how he had proposed to her before the sun had even gone down? History was full of people who had fallen in love at first sight.

And anyway, she told herself practically, I didn’t fall in love with him right when I saw him. I fell in love with him on a squeaky attic bed.

Jillian let Theo in.

She tried to remind herself that he came from a family and even a species that appreciated beauty, grandeur, and wealth; that he was a man who knew the worth of things at a glance. If he didn’t like her apartment, that was only understandable.

It was just that this was the life she had built for herself, not the one that she had been born into; the one that was still good, not the one that had turned out to be rotten at the center all along. She wanted him to like it because she wanted him to like her.

Her hands were sweating enough that her fingers slipped on the light switch on the first try and she only got it right on the second. Well, there it all was on display. There she was.

Theo walked past her into the apartment and said nothing at first, as if he wanted to give her his true opinion and not some immediate, easy reassurance. Even though she was going crazy with anticipation, that made her feel better. He knew that she wanted honesty more than anything else.

She looked around. Demerits popped out at her—a stack of junk mail lazily left on the coffee table even though there was a trash can right there, the weird color mismatch between the couch and the throw pillows, the fridge with its takeout menu magnets proclaiming how little she used the kitchen.

But even on edge, she could also see why she called the place home. It was a little sanctuary of peace and coziness that she’d made in a stressful, chaotic life. The throw pillows had been chosen not for their color but for their unbelievable plushness, so she could rest on one of them on the nights when even watching TV sitting up felt like too much to ask. The books with their tightly stuck-on USED stickers on their spines had been culled from hundreds of visits to thrift shops and secondhand stores. She could have told him where each one had come from.

Theo turned back to her. There was nothing but sincerity on his face. “It’s you. It’s beautiful.”

She laughed to conceal her relief. “Oh, come on.”

“I mean it,” he said. He picked up a coaster off her table, handling it was delicately as if it had been priceless china. Of course he’d gone unerringly to the small extravagance that she’d allowed herself, to the little touch of beauty she most liked. The coasters were colored, crackled glass, each one different and flawed-looking, like a segment of geode with more restrained colors. “These are beautiful and they’re durable, too, you can feel it in the weight. There are all these little touches, but it’s the overall feeling that matters, not each and every bit of furniture. This is a lovely, comfortable parlor, much homier than your father’s house. There’s a lot more soul.”

“It’s the only other place I’ve ever lived,” Jillian said. “On days where everything has gone wrong, I like coming home and thinking that this is sort of my life’s work, too... making a life for myself.” She touched her eyes and was relieved that she wasn’t crying. “I guess you’d know about that.”

“You’ve done a much better job than I have. Dragons aren’t notorious for liking comfort, but away from them, it didn’t seem like grandeur was what I really wanted. And I couldn’t figure out what I did want, so I have... nothing. Very shiny and expensive nothing, in some cases, but still nothing.”

“Hey.” She reached up and put her hand on his cheek. “Just remember you in the waterpark. Dumb rebellion that was tasteless except for how it was exactly what you needed—fun, casual splashing around in a place where no one knew you. Your judgment is pretty good, I think. You can figure out how to decorate a living room on a budget. And if not, we’ll watch some HGTV together.”

“I do like the shows about DIY,” Theo said, with adorable earnestness. He kissed the top of her head and she felt him breathe in the scent of her hair. “You make me feel like I could do anything. Even do my own tiling.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Jillian said.

*

On the way to his office, she could tell it was his turn to get nervous, or at least he thought it was, because he couldn’t stop drumming his fingers against the steering wheel even when the song on the radio—a sweetly sad Patsy Cline ballad—resolutely refused to have any percussion in it. Jillian wanted to reassure him that she would like whatever was important to him, but she knew exactly how reassuring she would have found that kind of promise and so knew it wouldn’t do any good. They were learning, step by step, what trusting each other really looked like.

She decided to distract him instead. Luckily, it wasn’t hard to think up questions she needed him to answer.

“You said shifters know who they’re going to fall in love with right away, right? Do they always find the other person?”