Zoey decided she had probably made enough of a fool of herself for one day. “Would you like to use the landline or my cell phone to call the garage? We have nothing in the nearby village, but there’s a repair shop in the town ten miles away. But it might take a while for someone to come out to help.”
“No, thank you.”
“No…?” she echoed uncertainly.
He shrugged those massive shoulders. “I don’t own a car.”
“But you said… If you don’t own a car, how on earth did you get here?” Tregarthen House was far too remote to be serviced by any of the forms of public transport. “Ah. Did you come on the train and have a cab drop you off here, or maybe you hired a car and drove yourself?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t understand…?”
“I flew here.”
She frowned. “But the nearest airport is also ten miles away, near to the town, so you would still have needed to take a cab or hire a car to get the rest of the way here.”
“And yet I didn’t.”
“Ah.” The frown lifted from her brow as a thought occurred to her. “You came by helicopter and used Uncle Edgar’s helipad to land.” She chuckled. “He isn’t going to be happy when he hears about that. Uncle Edgar is a typical only child,” she explained. “Which means he doesn’t share or like anyone else touching his things.”
“I didn’t use your uncle’s helipad, nor do I own a helicopter.”
Zoey huffed her frustration. “Then I don’t understand. You said you weren’t dropped off by cab. That you didn’t hire a car to drive yourself here. Nor do you own a helicopter.”
“That’s correct.”
“Then why did you lie about your car having broken down nearby?” she demanded to know. “Andhowcould you have flown here if not on a flight into the local airport or by a private helicopter?”
Hunter knewthey were all valid questions, given the circumstances.
But he would prefer not to answer any of them in the home of the man he suspected of having murdered Ben McGregor so he could take possession of the journal stolen from Belle. All those things having been done because of Wallis’s obsessive quest to discover if dragons had really existed.
“Is there somewhere more private we could talk together?” Now that Hunter had met Zoey and he knew who and what she was to him, he felt uneasy discussing those recent events in Wallis’s home.
The other man didn’t have Hunter’s heightened senses, so he wouldn’t be able to overhear their conversation, but that didn’t exclude the man from having other means of doing so. Tregarthen House wasn’t just a house. Its isolation and the walled grounds around it turned it almost into a fortress.
It was Zoey’s home too, of course, although Hunter could see little evidence that a second person had ever lived here, let alone a child and now a young adult.
There were none of the obligatory drawings or badly made pieces of pottery in the house usually associated with a child being in residence. Nor was there a worn swing or slide or any other apparatus outside that a child might have played with.
He was also, Hunter admitted, becoming more than a little lightheaded from breathing in Zoey’s scent.
“We could step outside,” she suggested.
Hunter nodded. “Then let’s do that.”
He could sense Wallis was in his study several doors down the hallway, the scratching of a pen nib on paper—he was using a fountain pen, in this day and age?—possibly evidence the other man was studying and making notes from the journal he had stolen.
Hunter could hear two ladies upstairs tidying the bedrooms, perhaps preparing Zoey’s room for her overnight stay.
The cook, her assistant, and the butler and footman were all in the kitchen.
Even so, Hunter felt uneasy discussing Ben’s death, the theft of the journal, and Edgar Wallis’s involvement in both those things while they were inside the other man’s house.
“Won’t you be cold?” Zoey eyed his T-shirt and leather jacket. “You aren’t exactly dressed for winter weather, and the wind can be cold up on this cliffside.”
“I’ll be fine.” Hunter and his brothers didn’t feel the cold like humans. In fact, being snow dragons, they preferred it.
