Free Dragon's Eden by Tara Janzen

herself a mental pat on
the back for safely negotiating the waters of her past, then he
went and ruined it ail.
    “What happened to the guy from
Barbados?”
    Damn him.
    It didn’t matter, not anymore, she told
herself, not that part of it. And the rest of it would haunt her
every day for the remainder of her life whether she answered his
question or not.
    “He went up-country and fell in love with my
mother instead.” She gave a slight shrug to mask the pain in her
heart, though it wasn’t pain from losing a boyfriend. That pain had
long since passed. “Don’t get anything wrong. My dad never knew,
and my mom never knew that I found out or that he’d liked me first.
She never would have hurt me like that, never.”
    “But it hurt anyway.”
    Her answer was a lift of her own eyebrow.
She fought for acceptance of the consequences of her actions, the
truly awful ones, the ones she’d done three years after the debacle
with the guy from Barbados, every day of her life. She wouldn’t let
Jackson steal what little peace she’d won. “When you were sixteen,
did you lose the girlfriend of your dreams to your much more
handsome and sophisticated father?”
    He replied with a grin and a shrug of his
own, mimicking her. “I never knew my father. I was probably the
last thing he and my mother did together.” His grin broadened and a
mischievous light glinted in his eyes. “As far as losing
girlfriends, I don’t think it ever happened. I do remember taking a
few.”
    Sugar thought about that for a minute, then
slowly nodded. “Yeah, I guess you would.”
    She was out of her league, way out. Jackson
Daniels was the kind of man women shot when he rejected them. She
was the kind of woman men forgot.
    Strangely, the comparison gave her comfort.
She didn’t need to worry about anything happening between her and
Shulan’s half brother. That first night, when he’d said all those
crazy things, about how she was the embodiment of all of his
fantasies, he’d just been coming down off a heavy dose of
narcotics. Lord knows what he’d thought he saw when he looked at
her. More than was there, that was for sure.
    “Come on,” she said, grabbing an orange out
of one of the hanging baskets. “From now on, if you don’t work, you
don’t eat. We’ve got weeds to pull and flowers to pollinate.”
    “I’m pretty good at pollinating.”
    She didn’t look back to see his smile, but
she knew it was there, all over his face, cocky and wry at the same
time.
    “I just bet you are.” She started peeling
the orange, dropping the peel in her basket.
    He followed her into the cabana, sipping the
hot coffee. “You make the best coffee I’ve ever tasted.”
    “It’s Jamaican Blue Mountain.” Finally, she
thought with a silent sigh, they’d reached a level of normalcy.
Being nice to him was going to pay off. He was already more
relaxed, and a relaxed prisoner was less likely to bolt than one
pacing on the edge. All she’d had to do was confess a few shaming
episodes from her youth, open up a few wounds. The debt she owed
Shulan was going to be well and truly paid by the time Jackson
Daniels left Cocorico.
    “I’ve heard of Jamaican Blue, but I’ve never
had it before,” Jackson said, watching her deft, slender fingers
remove the last of the peel.
    “Henry brings it for me, along with a few
treats like this.” She held up a section of the orange and smiled,
a sweet curve of white teeth and impish pleasure, then popped the
fruit in her mouth, closing her eyes to enjoy it.
    He wasn’t sure, but Jackson thought he might
just have fallen in love, with her mouth if nothing else, though
the possibilities were high on there being something else. She
mystified him and fascinated him. Before he’d met her, he wouldn’t
have put the words innocent and sensual together, but she embodied
them both. In fact, her sensuality was probably the only innocent
thing about her. She was guilty as sin when it came to the part she
played in his