“Well, dear, you can’t beat Gray’s Hollow,” Mrs. McCullough said immediately, with a blinding smile.
“And you can’t beat Mayor Gray, either.” This was followed by a wink that made Cara blush a little, even though she agreed.
“Thanks for that vote of confidence, ma’am,” Gus said, and Cara could hear him struggling not to laugh. “But I just met Cara yesterday. Let’s not rush her into anything.”
He was holding on tight to her hand as he said it, though.
Mrs. McCullough shook her head. “Your mother and father decided on each other in the time it took her to pour him a cup of coffee, young man. I don’t know why you think you need more than a day.”
Gus shot Cara another sideways look, and Cara smiled and squeezed his hand.
“I’m not going to rush the lady,” Gus insisted, turning his gaze back to Mrs. McCullough. “Let’s give her until after lunch, at least.”
“You’ve dragged your feet long enough, Mayor,” Mrs. McCullough said sternly, but she added, “lovely to meet you, dear,” to Cara before she headed back across the street to a florist’s shop.
“Sorry,” Gus said, aiming them toward a surprisingly sleek-looking electronics store for such a small town. “That… might happen again.”
It happened eight times in the time it took Cara to pick out a new phone.
No one would let her have anything but the newest, shiniest one with all the best features, but there was some debate about exactly which one was the very best. She heard four different times about Gus’s mom pouring his dad a cup of coffee and the two of them basically being engaged by the time he’d finished drinking it.
She couldn’t decide whether that made her feeling of instant connection with Gus feel more or less strange. It did explain why he seemed willing to jump to the same conclusion, though. He must have been hearing that story about his parents all his life, and he’d been waiting for some girl to come along and give him a story of his own like that.
She couldn’t figure out why it was her, but as Gus introduced her to one person after another—always proudly, always holding on firmly to her hand—she couldn’t deny that he meant it.
No one, seeing her in her clean but still geared-for-a-road-trip clothes, seemed to think there was anything strange about Gus choosing her. Not one person made even the most veiled remark about how Gus could have had someone prettier, or skinnier, or richer, or more interesting.
The whole town took one look at Gus holding her hand and seemed to decide just as quickly as Gus himself had that they belonged together. Cara didn’t know how to react to any of it, but it was nice. Really nice. Fairy tale nice.
She didn’t have to go to Monaco to feel like a princess, apparently. Gray’s Hollow was already giving her as much of that as she could handle.
She wondered if Gus would mind her trying on that tiara she’d glimpsed the day before in the treasure room.
They’d barely stepped outside the electronics store, Cara’s shiny new phone in hand, when a woman hurried up. She was a couple of inches shorter than Cara with equally soft curves, though hers were firmly contained in a pantsuit. She had dark red hair caught up in a bun and wore sunglasses against the bright morning.
“Mayor,” she said sternly.
Gus squeezed Cara’s hand and, for the first time in the parade of interruptions and introductions that had been their morning, he sighed. “Cara, Deputy Mayor Hannah Cole. I did mention that work would find me, didn’t I? Deputy Mayor, Cara Linley.”
Cara couldn’t see Hannah’s eyes behind her sunglasses, but her smile seemed warm, and her voice was genuinely apologetic as she said, “I’m so sorry, Miss Linley, I just have to steal the mayor—it’s the state Board of Ed, Gus, and the school board is trying to punt everything to you again.”
Gus sighed once more and turned to Cara with an equally apologetic look.
Cara smiled and shook her head. “It’s fine, go. I’ll just—head back to the house.”
No way was she staying in town to be interrogated without Gus.
Gus reached for his keys, ready to offer them to her, but Cara waved them away. “I’ve spent enough time driving lately. It’ll be nice to go somewhere I can walk to.”
Gus gave her a warm, startled smile at that, and leaned in to kiss her softly.
“There’s a trail, if you don’t want to walk on the road,” he said, pointing to the end of the next cross street. “There’s a sign for the turn-off to the mayor’s house, you can’t miss it.”
Cara nodded, and Gus gave her one more kiss, leaning in to whisper, “I’ll be home as soon as I can, sweetheart.”
Cara bit her lip against the giddy warmth she felt at that, and only whispered back, “I’ll be waiting for you, honey.”
Gus grinned as he straightened up, and then he turned to Hannah and said dutifully, “Lead on, Deputy.”
Cara headed away down the street Gus had indicated, and though she felt plenty of looks directed her way, none of them seemed unkind, and no one pressed her. She’d nearly reached the trail when she heard someone running up behind her. She turned to see a teenaged boy, brandishing a colorful bouquet of flowers. They weren’t roses, but a riot of brightly colored lilies and orchids, rare and exotic hothouse flowers.
“Mrs. M says, welcome to Gray’s Hollow, miss,” the boy recited shyly, holding them out to her like an offering.
Cara resisted the urge to curtsey as she took them.
“Thank you,” she said. Gus had said something about people giving the mayor presents—did that extend to the mayor’s…
Her brain went a little blank at the thought of people in town already regarding her as the mayor’s—Gus’s—wife, and yet it seemed they almost did. She pushed the thought away and sniffed at the gorgeous flowers as she started down the well-tended trail, which climbed the slope up toward Gus’s house in a series of gentle switchbacks. She’d turned twice when she heard a familiar friendly bark, and Mouse popped out of the trees.
“Why hello,” Cara said, and she did try out a curtsey on Mouse.
He danced cheerfully in front of her, darting in to be petted when she reached out a hand. After a moment he settled in at her side, and Cara laughed.
“Are you here to make sure I don’t get lost?” she asked.
Then she realized—if Mouse had come to guide her safely up to the house, it was probably because Ilie was doing the same thing, somewhere out of sight, the same way Ilie had seen her fall and found her phone for her. As she neared the next turn up the trail, Cara looked around, trying to spot the shape of someone nearby in the trees.
“Ilie?” She called as she rounded the next turn. The path went straight up here—there was a flight of stairs, with a railing, and what looked like a larger, flatter clearing at the top. Cara took a deep breath and started up them, still looking around.
“Ilie?” she tried again. “If you can hear me, I’d love to see you. Gus said he’s excited for us to meet.”
Mouse had been keeping pace, right beside her, as they climbed the stairs, but a few seconds after she finished speaking he began to bark and went tearing off to the top. It was hard to hear over the barking, but she thought she heard something up above—something big, something that stirred the branches of the trees.
Cara ran, too.
She froze at the top of the stairs, clutching the railing and her flowers like they would protect her.
There was a thing, an impossible thing, in the clearing there. Wings, she thought first, and then she thought, dragon.
Just like in stories, just like in pictures, except that this dragon was undeniably real. He loomed over her, inky black with a blue sheen where the light touched, with silvery-gray eyes. His head, at the end of a long, sinuous neck, was held level with hers, and his wings were held half-open.