Arousing a Dragon Page 4

  “Why?”

  “The Master does not like to be kept waiting once he has set his eye on something, miss. He had a forceful personality – is driven by results, if you take my meaning? He either wants you to commit now, or else he will continue his search for a caretaker elsewhere.”

  Caretaker? The Master? Aurora thought. Is this the sort of shit that occupies the days of the very rich?

  She puffed out her cheeks. “Okay, Mr. Travers,” she said, throwing caution to the wind, “I’m in. So long as you promise me that I’m not going to get stuffed and put on this guy’s wall or something.”

  Travers made a dry little sound, which Aurora thought might’ve been a discrete chuckle. However, when he spoke, it was in the same unruffled tone of professional cordiality.

  “I assure you, Miss Laurent, that the last thing that Mr. Hawthorne wants with you is to turn you into some sort of elaborate objet d’arte.”

  Aurora wasn’t quite sure what Travers meant by that, but his tone was reassuring.

  “Well, alright then. How do I go about this? Do you want to tell me an address or –”

  “The logistics of the operation should afford us no great trouble, miss,” Travers said. “If you would be so good as to turn in your seat, Miss Laurent…”

  “Turn in my seat?”

  Aurora swivelled on the bench.

  At that moment a sleek, gleaming white limousine pulled up to the curb, visible through the iron railings that separated the park from the street.

  “What the…” Aurora began, the phone still to her ear.

  “I presume from your tone of surprise that the Master’s car has arrived, miss?”

  “I presume that the car you’re talking about is a long white limousine?”

  “An admirable description, Miss Laurent.”

  “How did you know where I was?”

  “As I said before, miss, the Master does not like to waste even a moment of his time if it can be avoided.”

  Aurora got to her feet, looking at the stretch limo. This was it; her final chance to tuck tail and run. Bizarrely, among the whirl of emotions that she’d felt in the last eighteen hours – disappointment, sadness, gladness, fierce independence and crushing hopelessness – she was suddenly reminded of a porno that she had watched the other day in her cramped bedroom. It had involved a girl stepping innocently into a bus only to be confronted by a couple having sex – who she had then quite happily joined Aurora grinned, feeling a fluttering in her stomach at the thought of the threesome. Was she about to be faced by the same thing, but in a limo?

  Honestly, after the two days I’ve had, I wouldn’t even be surprised.

  A small cough sounded in her ear, and she realized that she had been daydreaming with her phone still pressed to her ear.

  “Miss, if you could please get into the vehicle and allow the driver to start. The master–”

  “Doesn’t like to kept waiting? Yeah, I get it,” said Aurora.

  She hung up on Travers and walked to the waiting car.

  The driver was standing at the rear door and, as she approached, he nodded and smiled at her and opened it.

  “There is champagne and a glass in the chiller, Miss Laurent,” the man said.

  “It’s a bit early in the day for that isn’t it?” Aurora said, surprised.

  “Mr. Hawthorne said that, after the night you have just had, you might need it. He also said that, from what he recalls of last night’s events, you had quite a liking for it…”

  Blushing, Aurora got into the luxurious white limousine and the driver closed the door gently behind her.

  Chapter 3

  The limousine cruised out of Alphabet City, turning left on East 15th Street, making its stately way north along FDR Drive. Aurora, still in a state of detached disbelief at where her life had taken her in just the past hour, stared out of the tinted window and watched the East River slide past. Everything had taken on a sort of colourful dream-like quality. Flashes of the past twenty-four hours kept skipping through her mind like bursts from a strobe light. Brodie abusing her on the phone. Dabbing cocaine from the nostril of a rich old woman in a bathroom. Apologizing to Fiona. Her phone vibrating and vibrating in her pocket. Handing food out to homeless Jake in the alleyway. Champagne and more champagne. Blurry, colorful dicks everywhere. Spraying a billionaire with a fire extinguisher. Jail.

  And now, here she was in a limousine as it whisked her past the United Nations.

  You probably wouldn’t have this experience back in Nebraska, she thought ruefully.

  Aurora blinked and took in her immediate surroundings. She didn’t know much when it came to cars – having about as much interest in them as she did in the lifecycle of sea cucumbers or who had the best batting average in the MLB that season – but she knew enough to know that the vehicle she was in just then would have been worth about five times her annual catering salary. The glassware and champagne bucket looked to be all made from cut crystal, and the champagne itself was a brand that Aurora had only seen pictures of celebrity weddings. The seats were smooth, soft leather, the trim and counter that ran down the length of one side of the vehicle and contained a bar and large flat-screen television looked to be made of real walnut. Lying on the long seat running down the opposite side of the limo to the counter were a couple of thin merino blankets, presumably for passengers who got a little chilly on their journey.

  As they waited to turn left onto East 79th Street, Aurora caught sight of a billboard advertising A Soft Summer Night’s Dream. Her mouth fell open in horror. A workman was pasting up a strip of fresh vinyl across the advertisement. It read:

  CANCELED

  “Oh, Jesus,” Aurora moaned.

  Surely there’d be hell to pay for this, one way or another. A squirming snake of guilt writhed its way through her guts at the thought of how much trouble Harper might get in because of her. She hoped desperately that her best friend would do the smart thing and throw Aurora under the bus in order to save her own job.

  The billboard slipped out of Aurora’s vision as the white limo turned into the glamourous neighborhood of Manhattan Island’s Upper East Side. Aurora had never had much reason to visit this part of New York, where the median property value was about $1.2 million and the average household income about two-hundred grand a year. She knew, however – from dreamy internet searches on her phone at night – that a three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in this part of town might set you back anywhere from two to fifteen million dollars.

  And that was at the lower end of the scale.

  Aurora gazed out at the beautifully dressed people hurrying along on whatever important business they on. She felt couldn’t have been more out of her elements if she’d been a fish thrown into the heart of a volcano.

  She was jogged from her reveries by the limousine coming to a gentle halt in front of the glittering glass entranceway of a sleek and elegant skyscraper. Aurora peered out through the tinted glass of the window and saw, above the main doorway the words, HAWTHORNE INDUSTRIES, gleaming in two-foot-high polished steel letters. This façade did nothing to quell the thought that this whole meeting had been some sort of terrible mistake or, perhaps, an elaborate joke.

  Aurora flinched as the door of the limousine was opened by a gentleman wearing a benevolent smile and an impeccably cut three-piece suit.

  Realizing that she was expected to leave the safety of the car caused Aurora to remember her own disheveled appearance.

  “Uh, just one minute,” she blurted to the waiting man, pulling the door closed before he could utter a word.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God,” Aurora squeaked to herself, looking wildly about for anything that could improve her appearance. In her current condition, she was not up to the task of chatting with a man who owned an entire skyscraper.

  There was a whir as the partition separating the driver from his passengers descended.

  “Is everything alright, miss?”

  With a sudden burst o
f inspiration, Aurora grabbed the champagne from its bucket and scrambled down the length of the limo so that she could hand it to the driver.

  “Would you mind opening this, please?” she asked.

  The driver took the bottle with a bemused expression and began to fiddle with the wrapper that secured the cork.

  Meanwhile, Aurora applied a little bit of the icy water in the champagne bucket to her palms. Then she combed her fingers through her blonde hair, twisting it into the most elaborate knot that she could remember.

  There was a pop from the front of the vehicle and the driver said, “Miss?” He was holding out the opened bottle of champagne. Aurora gave him a truly grateful smile – which made the man’s day – and took a swig straight from the bottle. She swilled the beautiful bubbly wine, hoping the impromptu mouthwash would replace the sour taste left over from the previous night.

  Aurora worried briefly if it was acceptable to turn up to a job interview smelling of champagne, but then her common-sense butted in.

  Better champagne than vomit, darlin’.

  There was no arguing with that. Speaking of vomit however…

  Aurora grabbed one of the gorgeously soft merino blankets, folded it and twined it about her neck in a fair imitation of a scarf. This not only added a certain je ne sais quoi, but also covered up the puke stain on the front of her black shirt.

  She made one last check of her face, applying some eyeliner and mascara so that she didn’t look as rough as someone who’d spent the night in a police holding cell.

  I’m not going to lie to you, her ever truthful brain said to her, but that’s probably as good as it’s going to get.

  There was a tap on the window and Aurora looked up. It was the man in the tweed suit rapping on the window. Through the glass she heard him say, “Miss Laurent? Is everything alright?”

  Taking one last steadying breath, Aurora opened the door and stepped out onto the curb.

  “Miss Laurent,” the older gentleman said, “allow me to thank you for coming at such short notice. I know Mr. Hawthorne will be extremely grateful.”

  Aurora wasn’t quite sure what to say, so she pointed out the obvious. “You’d be the man I spoke to on the phone, the English guy? Abraham Travers?”

  “Quite correct, miss. Although, if you’d prefer to call me Travers that would be more than acceptable.”

  “Just Travers?”

  “Yes, miss, that will suffice nicely.”

  “Alright. Well, Travers, what do we do now?”

  “If you’d be so kind as to follow me, I shall escort you to Mr. Hawthorne,” Travers replied. With that, the old man turned on his heel and started to lead the way slowly up the steps of the skyscraper.

  Aurora noticed that Travers walked with the help of a silver-handled cane. She wondered if he was the one in need of the caretaker.

  Once Travers had limped up the steps, a uniformed doorman opened the door with a reverential nod. Aurora followed the old man into a cavernous lobby with a white polished floor. It was filled with scores of men and women, some clutching files or briefcases or talking quietly into cell-phones. Their reflections hurried along with them, mirrored in the shiny marble floor like vague ghosts.

  As they made their way through the lobby, passing under a stunning light sculpture that looked like a great ball of golden flame lit from within, Aurora pulled out her phone and discreetly messaged Harper.

  I screwed up. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.

  Putting her phone away, she took a couple of strides so that she and Travers were walking almost abreast and said, “Travers?”

  “Yes, miss?”

  “What is it you do for Mr. Hawthorne?”

  Travers looked at the pretty girl next to him with an appraising but friendly eye. Then he said in his crisp aristocratic accent, “Well, miss, I suppose that one could say that I am Mr. Hawthorne’s man.”

  “His man? Like, you’re together?”

  It was a mark of Travers’ absolute professionalism that not so much as a hint of rose suffused his cheeks at the idea that he and Mr. Hawthorne were lovers. “No, miss. I am Mr. Hawthorne’s employee. I use the expression ‘man’ as the upper classes in the United Kingdom do to refer to someone employed in the capacity of a butler, valet, driver, and confidant. I suppose you might call me – if you’d allow me to utilize some of your American street parlance – Mr. Hawthorne’s right-hand man. I do for him what needs to be done.”

  They reached the back of the lobby and turned right At the end of the corridor an ornate iron portico spanned the passageway. An armed guard in a crisp uniform stood next to the iron gate. Travers nodded at the security guard and handed him a key card. The guard swiped the card against a scanner and the gate swung smoothly open.

  “Much obliged, McCann,” Travers said politely, retrieving the card.

  They stepped through the gate, which closed noiselessly behind them, and Travers opened a black door with another wave of the card.

  Aurora gasped in unexpected delight as she followed Travers.

  They had stepped into a beautiful courtyard that looked as if it had been lifted straight from of a Jane Austen novel. There were sculpted rose bushes and perfectly trimmed box-hedges. A fountain played in the middle of a manicured lawn. The only way that Aurora knew they were still in New York City was that the courtyard was surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers. Looking up at the towering modern buildings, Aurora noticed something strange. There was not a single window in any of the walls that looked down into the courtyard. They were, to all intents and purposes, out in the open, in the middle of one of the most congested cities in the world, and they had total privacy.

  “Wow,” Aurora breathed.

  A white gravel path stretched away from where they stood, looping around a statue of a majestic-looking serpent rising from an egg. The path ended at the huge oak door of a forbidding looking building constructed of dark masonry. It was a tall building– eleven or twelve stories high– but it was dwarfed by the modern towers that surrounded it. It had a gothic vibe, with it’s sharp corners, gargoyles, and arched windows. Odd that such a forbidding and creepy building should be fronted by such a wonderful garden.

  She realized that she had been gazing at the gloomy stone building for quite a while, and she looked down to see Travers regarding her.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Think nothing of it, miss,” the old man said with a smile. “I often catch myself musing on its architecture, even after walking this path for more than forty years.”

  “You’ve worked here that long?” Aurora asked, amazed. It was an increasingly rare thing for anyone to stay with one job for so long.

  “Yes, miss. I was taken on by Mr. Hawthorne’s father. I have known Mr. Hawthorne since he was a boy.”

  Aurora looked back up at the brooding stone structure.

  “Have you any idea how old it is?” she asked.

  “It was one of the first skyscrapers built in New York City,” Travers said. “At the end of the eighteenth century. These other buildings,” he said, gesturing at the glittering glass monoliths surrounding the courtyard, “sprung up around it.”

  “It’s – it’s really something,” Aurora said, somewhat lamely.

  “Yes it is,” agreed Travers.

  “And he – Mr. Hawthorne – works here?”

  “This is Mr. Hawthorne’s private residence,” Travers said.

  “Which floor?” Aurora asked. “I have a fear of heights. I guess that comes from being raised in a state that you could roll an eight ball across without it stopping.”

  Travers gave Aurora a patient smile. “Miss Laurent, everything that you can presently see – rose bushes, fountain, skyscrapers – is owned by Mr. Hawthorne and constructed at the behest of either himself or his late father. You have noticed, of course, the way that none of the walls of the surrounding buildings have windows in them? That is not an architectural anomaly, nor is it standard practice in New York City. It has b
een designed so that the Hawthorne family may enjoy these gardens in complete solitude.”

  “He owns…everything?” Aurora asked, her voice sounding rather insignificant.

  “Yes, miss.”

  Aurora gulped.

  They continued along the ornate path, their footsteps crunching loudly in the relative quiet of this metropolitan Eden. When they reached the impressive oak doors, Aurora noticed that the huge door handles were wrought in the shape of two dragons.The dragon eyes glittered, as if they were made from glass.

  “Are those diamonds?” she asked in an awed voice.

  Travers chuckled. “Not quite as expensive as diamonds, miss, but far more sophisticated,” he said.

  The old man bent slightly, so that his eye was level with the dragon. There was a dull whirring sound and then a retinal scanner flickered across the old man’s eye for only a second or two before shutting off. There was another whirring noise and then the sound of a heavy bolt drawing back. The massive door swung gently inwards, wide enough to admit one person.

  “After you, miss,” Travers said, standing to the side and bowing Aurora over the threshold. Aurora, becoming more and more aware that she’d washed her mouth out with champagne and was wearing a thin blanket around her shoulders like a shawl, stepped into the dimly lit entrance hall. She turned, expecting to see Travers following her, but the butler was still standing in the gap of the door.

  “You’re not coming?” Aurora asked, trying to keep the tremor in her voice to a minimum.

  “No, miss,” came the crisp reply, “The master was explicit in his instructions to guide you to the door of the house and then allow you to go up to his apartments on your own. I must take my leave now.”

  The old butler began to close the door.

  “Wait!” Aurora said. She cleared her throat and tried to regain her composure. “Wait, Mr. Travers–”

  “Just Travers, miss.”

  “Right. Um, where do I go?”

  “Ah, I do apologize, Miss Laurent. Please proceed to your right, to the elevator with golden doors. That elevator will take you precisely where you are wanted.”