She snorted. “Right, of course they are. Because why wouldn’t they be?”
“Just as you are a dragon’s mate. A red dragon’s mate, one whom the silver wyvern says was not tainted by demons.” He met her gaze squarely, hoping she could read the sincerity in his eyes. “I understand what you are doing, but you should know that the act isn’t necessary. I have no fight with the dragonkin… quite the opposite, actually, since I’ve been engaged to help them, not to mention my history with the First Dragon.”
She stared at him for the count of eight, then gave a little shake of her head. “And you look so very sane. Sadly, you’re just as cracked as the rest. Well, fine, be that way. If you guys want to insist that the unreal is real, you go right ahead. But I’m just going to ignore it.”
“Why are you…” He stopped, and looked at Mrs. P.
She shrugged. “She is as she is. I cannot change it.”
“Are you saying she’s telling the truth?”
“Hey!” Sophea said, indignation causing her lips to thin. “I’m sitting right here, you know.”
“Possibly,” Mrs. P said, just as if Sophea had not spoken. “It’s difficult to tell, and really, I don’t see that it matters.”
“I have the horrible feeling that one of you is calling me a liar,” Sophea said through apparently gritted teeth.
“If she is telling the truth…” Rowan fully considered this previous suspicion. If that was the case, then it changed everything. Or did it?
“Yoo hoo!” Mrs. P, obviously tired of the conversation, dipped her knobby fingers into her water glass, and flicked the water at a middle-aged man sitting by himself at the table next to them. “You there, in the blue. Yes, you. Do you like older women?”
“You’re about to get a swift kick to the shin, buster,” Sophea told Rowan. “How dare you imply I’d lie? I never lie! It’s a personal policy of mine, one that I started when I was a little girl at the orphanage and had to be nice to people who might want to adopt me. Do you have any idea the sorts of people who want to adopt plump half-Asian girls? Let me tell you, they aren’t the cream of the crop.”
Mrs. P leaned out of her chair at a perilous angle, the better to speak to the now-startled man at the next table. “You look like you have lots of energy. Limber, too.”
“Er…” the man said, glancing around as if for help, but the other few people in the dining room were focused on their own affairs.
“Everyone lies at some point or other,” Rowan told Sophea. He wasn’t sure what to believe about her now. Either she was a very good actress or she was as innocent as she professed. But even if she was the latter, would she stay that way for very long once she knew the truth about what Mrs. P had in her possession?
“I don’t,” Sophea insisted.
“Not even a white lie to keep from hurting someone’s feelings?”
“Not even then. I’d find some other way to get around being hurtful.”
Mrs. P leaned so far out of her chair that Sophea had to grab her to keep her from toppling to the floor. “What’s your name, handsome?”
“Edvard,” the man said in a pronounced Scandinavian accent. He scooted his chair a little farther away from Mrs. P and tried to focus on his meal.
“So you’re telling me in all honesty—because you never prevaricate—that you are not a red dragon?” Rowan asked, the twisting conversation making him feel like he was a dog chasing its own tail.
“Edvard is a nice name. I bet a handsome, limber fellow like you would like to make a crisp, new American dollar, hmm?”
“Of course I’m not—” Mrs. P’s words must have registered with Sophea because she suddenly stopped speaking and gave an outraged, “Mrs. P! You are not to solicit others. I thought we had that clear earlier at the L.A. airport when you tried to sit on that young man’s lap.”
“My beau does not mind, if that is what you are thinking,” Mrs. P said, and pulled a dollar bill from her pocket, which she waggled at the unfortunate Edvard. “He only cares about his world, not this one. I will be faithful to him there, but here, anything goes.”
Rowan couldn’t help but admire the old woman’s moxie as she waggled two tufted white cotton ball eyebrows at the unwary diner.
“Please, behave yourself,” Sophea said, pulling Mrs. P’s chair a bit closer to her. “If you harass that poor man, we’ll have to have dinner in our room. It’s much nicer to have it here with Rowan, even if he did call me a big fat liar.”