“I’ve had a call from Sanderson.”
Well, shit. The board of directors had called his mother.
London felt like a little boy being chided for his misdeeds all over again.
“He was concerned,” Johanna continued. “Apparently, you’ve been missing more and more work. Your last exhibit did poorly, and I began to worry that you’re slipping into poor health. I thought it best to come for a visit. In case you needed me to nurse you back to health.”
Just like his mother and two brothers, London was a dragon. He didn’t get sick. He’d been around for centuries and had never gotten so much as a cold. Even when sanitation and the medical field were budding industries that killed more people than it saved. Johanna knew that, of course. She liked nothing better than to jet around the world, wrangling one of her three sons. She was known for her unannounced, unexpected visits. Her gift at meddling was legendary.
In fact, London was sure it had been Johanna who had called Clive Sanderson, and not the other way around.
“There’s more.” She turned on her heels and settled at the table, where she sipped her tea like the queen herself. “I can’t have this, London.” She took her sizable purse and retrieved a file from it.
Even before she spilled the contents onto the table, London knew what it was. Yet there they were. The tabloid covers of the last few weeks. Each cover and headline was more salacious than the last. He had been seen leaving multiple clubs and parties, each time with a different woman on his arm.
“Do you have any idea how difficult it’ll be to get you to disappear once we have to start all over again?”
Johanna was talking about their reset.
The Warwick family had been one of the richest in the world for centuries. They had managed that simply because they were dragons. They aged slowly, and their shifter constitutions made it difficult to kill them, either with disease or weapons. Every generation, they had to pretend to age and leave everything to a son. They didn’t have sons, of course. It was just them, replacing themselves after a lengthy hiatus.
London had to admit that the entire world knew who he was and what he looked like. He would have a hell of a time disappearing when the time came. Not that he was willing to admit that out loud. He pushed the file away and took a long gulp of his coffee.
“I worry about you, London.” Johanna had softened her tone. “You’re my youngest, and you’ve always been the wildest. That’s my fault. It’s my own blood that holds that need for adventure. Your father must be turning in his grave to see you like this.”
Damn.
For all of the dragon shifter strength, there had been nothing to protect Alfonse Warwick from the plane crash that had claimed his life about thirty years ago. How the patriarch of the family hadn’t been able to fly to safety was a mystery. His remains had been recovered from the crash site. That was an image London would never be able to get out of his head.
His father’s broken body.
He suppressed a shiver. “Okay, Mom. I get your point. I’ll calm it down. I’ll throw a benefit or something to gather goodwill and then bow out of public life for a while.” He was dying of boredom just thinking about it.
Johanna arched one perfectly kept eyebrow at him, her bright eyes shining with experience and knowledge.
“That’s exactly right. You will do just that. And I have the perfect cause, and the perfect event coordinator we can hire. She’s also an expert when it comes to public relations. Ideal for you, really.”
London shook his head. “James and I have got it covered,” he argued.
His mother shook her head, daintily placing her cup back on its saucer. “No. We need the best eyes on this. I will be using the daughter of a dear old friend for this. A young American lady, Bethany Russo. She has been living in London for a few years now. She, at the head of her own PR company, was responsible for the wonderful gala at the Royal Opera House last year. She comes highly recommended, but I know she’ll do well because she is so like her mother. I’ll email you all of the details, but you should expect a visit from her quite soon.”
London’s jaw slackened. “But I haven’t even picked a cause yet.”
His mother waved him off. “Miss Russo will find you something suitable from the list I’ve already given her. More than anything, London, I want you to pay close attention to everything Miss Russo says. She has a degree in communications, specifically in media relations. She has been in charge of her stepfather’s image ever since her mother’s terrible accident. She’s the professional we need on this. And so help me, if you mistreat the girl, I will banish you to the countryside for the next two hundred years. Have I made myself quite clear?”
London shook his head, but there was no point arguing with Johanna.
“Fine,” he mumbled.
He’d lead the girl around, make life hard for her until she quit, and then London would be free to pick his own benefit.
It would be easy.
Chapter Two
London
As it turns out, it wasn’t gearing up to be all that easy to quickly dismiss his mother’s plans. Johanna refused to leave his apartment until they had properly caught up. She declared that she would be in town for at least a month, and that during her stay, she was expecting at the very least, one dinner with him per week.
London loved his mother very much, but ever since his father had died, she had these bursts of attention that she would lay on her sons. It was no easy thing, bearing the brunt of her caring. In fact, it was actually quite heavy. London knew that his life wouldn’t hold up under her scrutiny.
He hadn’t exactly been living the kind of life his parents had raised to him to have. He was forging a lot of their values. He didn’t even want to pause and think of the harm this could be doing to him. To his heart.
He had centuries still ahead of him to deal with the wounds he was causing himself. He’d be just fine.
What he needed just then was understanding, and someone to complain to. He had two brothers, both of whom would understand just how irked he was by Johanna’s sudden and overhanded appearance. He grabbed his cell phone and dialed his eldest brother’s number. It would be midday for York, all the way in the United States, but that was just fine. The man could use a break from running one of the world’s biggest banks. York was nothing if not an absolute workaholic.
“What?” York snapped on the other end of the line.
His brother’s gruff manner made London smile. There was no doubt in his mind that his brother had seen the caller ID, sighed profoundly, and grumbled out an uneasy greeting. London decided to do away with silly things like hello and jumped right into his reason for calling.
“Mom has just been by my apartment. She’s in fine form.”
There was shuffling on the other side of the line. York heaved a heavy sigh. “Can you blame her? The tabloids have been plastering your face on every cover for weeks now. I warned you to cool it.”
“I did,” London insisted, but only half-heartedly. There was no way York was going to believe him. “They’re recycling some of the pictures. I swear, it’s not as bad as it appears.” It was, though. And they both knew it. “Can’t you tell Mom to back off?”