Brilliant Heart (Dark Wing Series Book 2) Read online

  Brilliant Heart

  Ellie Pond

  Contents

  Preface

  1. Not Before Breakfast

  2. Testing

  3. A New Start

  4. This Isn’t Going to End Well

  5. Stone Heart

  6. The Big Bad Wolf

  7. Red Marks

  8. No Time for the Pain

  9. There is no Substitute

  10. Go

  11. Frosting

  12. Mutt

  13. Sensory Overload

  14. Bound to Happen

  15. Re-check

  16. Longest day part 1

  17. Elizabeth's Cabin

  18. Re-bound

  19. A One Leg Flamingo

  20. Baby Onboard

  21. Land in Ruins

  22. Port Authority

  23. Wolf Enough

  24. A Shift

  25. Not Going to End Well

  26. Big Brother

  27. Rocky

  28. Stronger Together

  29. Not on My Floor

  30. Coxcomb

  31. Pocket Lint and Other Things

  32. Snow White

  33. Doctor a Doctor

  34. Spiderman

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Preface

  While you don’t have to have read Hidden Heart—the first book in the series—you might enjoy Brilliant Heart more if you have.

  Thanks for picking up Brilliant Heart. If you’re not reading the free episodic series Crew Mates, you can subscribe to the Koi Pond newsletter and pick up the old episodes. There are a few Easter eggs in Brilliant Heart from Crew Mates. The link is at the end of the book. I hope you enjoy Elizabeth and Tad’s love story.

  1

  Not Before Breakfast

  She wouldn’t wait anymore—the to-do list for today took two legal-size sheets of paper, and her temples were beginning to throb. Elizabeth turned the knob and thrust open the door. Her eyes wide, she quickly closed the door. Her heart thundered against her ribs.

  “Doctor. I’ll be right out,” the captain yelled as she slammed the door.

  Oh my. Her eyes burned. Were there two naked women or three? It was 08:00, no—she glanced at her watch—it was 08:45 a.m. And there were three—she had seen at least five legs that didn’t belong to the captain. His eyes had held hers for a second before she yanked the door shut. She flattened herself against the waiting room wall to gather her faculties.

  The door swung open before she escaped down the corridor. “Dr. Cottage, I apologize for keeping you waiting.” The captain had on sweatpants and a Dark Wing dragon shirt with his caricature on it. His hair slicked back, he held an unbelievable poise for someone who had just had two-and-a-half pairs of legs wrapped around his body.

  Elizabeth opened her mouth, but her normal quick wit eluded her. The captain held the door, and three women sauntered out of his cabin. She had never seen them before, but that didn’t mean much. The captain had whoever he wanted on board, seeing that he owned the billion-dollar vessel.

  “I really do apologize, Doctor.” He never called her by her first name.

  “I guess we all have hobbies.” She smirked up at him.

  He laughed, and the sound vibrated out of his barrel chest. “Hobbies, yes. They’re old friends.”

  “That’s old?” Elizabeth pointed after the giggling brunette with gold Louis Vuitton stilettos dangling from one finger.

  He shrugged. Elizabeth glanced between the women and the captain, unsure if the women were supernatural and older than they appeared or if he was tossing sarcasm around. It didn’t matter.

  “Come in. I can offer you some breakfast if you like.” An untouched room service cart sat in the middle of the room. She glared at the leather sofa. She wouldn’t be sitting on it.

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  “Please, we didn’t have time for breakfast, and I would hate for all this amazing food to go to waste.”

  Elizabeth eyed the room, wondering if there was a sterile surface.

  “We can eat on the balcony.” He wheeled the cart out into the breeze of his private deck. Elizabeth plodded along behind him in her pink Crocs.

  He poured her favorite black tea without her telling him to. For a narcissistic dragon, he had a vast collection of details memorized for all of his crew members. He handed her a scone with cream and jam, taking black coffee for himself, and sat down across from her. He motioned for her to do the same.

  The dock below them bustled. A forklift beeped backwards as it loaded the ship up for the two-week cruise that started today. Strong port smells overpowered the salty ocean. Diesel fumes wafted up on the breeze from the tugs and the other boats that zipped by. The ship rocked on its mooring.

  Elizabeth crossed her legs; her shoes flapped against her blue scrubs with paw prints—an unusual gift from her mother, unusual in that she actually wore the scrubs, unlike the untouched gifts under her bunk. She touched the locket at her chest. The only other gift she’d ever liked.

  “Elizabeth.” The captain leaned forward in his chair towards her, his white teeth gleaming in the morning sun. “You haven’t opened any of my e-mails about redirecting the focus of your research.”

  “No, I haven’t.” She picked up her tea and sipped it carefully.

  “I see.” He pursed his lips. “We talked about this a few months ago.”

  “I remember you telling me. And then not listening to what I had to say.” She put her teacup down on the table. He didn’t want to talk about her research; he wanted her to change her research to another topic.

  “That’s how things work on a ship, Doctor. The captain gives the orders, and the crew follows through.”

  “In general, that’s true.” She looked over him to the dock below. This had been an amazing experience, and if it was over, then it was over. But giving up her research when he had approved it, when he hired her, was a different story.

  “I think if you read the e-mails you might be willing to take on my issue.” He crossed his arms over his chest, the T-shirt pulling taught.

  She could see how that move on most human women would work well. Her master’s thesis had even been on the pheromones of shifters and how they affected human women. But it didn’t do anything for her; she was above that. Before the construction of her shifter walls, she’d succumbed to the wiles of a bear shifter who persuaded her to keep his bed warm. She’d fallen for him as fast as her grades dropped. Then he’d met his mate. And she swore off dating shifters. Researching them, understanding what made them different—that became her new obsession.

  She tucked a wisp of auburn hair from her messy bun behind her ear. “Captain. I have spent the last two years doing research on the lives of widowed shifter mates and their longevity. I’m making great progress. I know that the issue you want me to take on is important too. But two years is too much time for me to throw away and not enough time to have come up with a solution for the thousands of shifter mates who die every year. They shouldn’t be doomed to get sick and die only because their mate has passed away.”

  Her voice got louder as she talked, and her body followed. She jumped up, next to the captain, her arms locked on the table, leaning towards him. Her cheeks flushed down to her neck. Her heart pounded in her chest. No doubt the dragon knew it, too. Specifically, he could hear a heartbeat he focused on from ten yards away. More than the wolves or even bears whose range fell in around five yards. Her thoughts raced faster than her heart. No, she would not give in on this point. It was important.

  After piecing her life and her gr
ades back together, she met Dr. Lila Garb, a genius in her research field and also a bear shifter whose mate had recently passed away in an accident. Elizabeth volunteered her time in Dr. Garb’s lab to learn as much as possible. When it came time to pick a medical school? She chose Dr. Garb’s alma mater. For her residency, she came back to the research hospital associated with Dr. Garb’s lab to be near her mentor in her final days.

  The day Lila died, a switch clicked in Elizabeth. She would find the answer to the untimely deaths of widowed shifters, she decided. Especially now that another friend was losing the battle against a seemingly invisible illness. And nothing would get in her way of solving the mysterious affliction. The Caribbean sun beat down on them as she blinked. A bead of sweat trickled down her neck.

  The captain laughed, one of his full-out belly laughs, and she wanted to kick him in the shins. How dare he?

  “Doctor.” He smirked at her and took a scone off the cart without a plate. He crammed his long legs under the little table. “Sit down, please. Let’s talk about this. I had forgotten how even after two years you are still new to pack life under an alpha.”

  Elizabeth crossed her arms in front of her. She didn’t step back, even though every instinct in her body wanted to.

  “Elizabeth, sit, please. Let me tell you what is in all of those e-mails you didn’t read. I apologize; I may have approached this the wrong way.”

  Elizabeth’s arms dropped to her side. Had the dragon apologized to her for the second time this morning and called her by her name too? She must’ve heard him wrong.

  2

  Testing

  Elizabeth sat at her desk. The pile of papers scattered around her didn’t help her headache any. With a sigh, she started to organize her desk again. While there weren’t passengers on board now, today would be one of the busiest days on the ship. The medic’s paperwork for the inventory landed in the pile on the left, while the notes for her research lay on the right. As a packet of papers dropped on the corner of her desk, a pale skinny girl in a loose skirt smiled down at her.

  “I’m done with the exam, Dr. Cottage. Do you have anything else for me to do?” The girl pushed her light brown hair behind her ear.

  “No, Marissa. That’s great. We’ll have a one-hour class on Tuesday.”

  “Thanks. Joe, you can have my seat on the sofa if you want.” Marissa turned and glanced back at the rest of the teenagers sitting around the office—two on opposite sides of the sofa, two in chairs from the waiting room, and the last one on the floor near the small porthole, a spider plant’s babies smacking the side of his head. At port the ship rocked with each wake from departing cruise and cargo ships.

  “I’m good,” the boy sitting on the floor grunted without lifting his head.

  The other five wouldn’t be as fast as Marissa, her star student. Elizabeth glanced over at them. Four of them were working hard, all but him. And he was another reason why she wouldn’t give up her research project. How Joseph could tolerate the plant swinging in his face, she didn’t understand. All the students but him had two parents working on the ship. Stephanie, Joseph’s mom, a widower, was getting sicker every week. She didn’t have the experience or knowledge to save her mentor Lila, but she was going to do everything she could for Stephanie.

  Movement at the door caught her eye. Anna waited for her to glance over. Elizabeth waved her in.

  Anna whispered. “The ship’s logistics manager is wondering if you have the final order ready?”

  Elizabeth sorted through the sheets. She was missing one page.

  “I told you I can proctor the exam. Nurse Stephanie is back from lunch with her bright smile.” Anna smiled at the kids around the room, not focusing on Stephanie’s son. Elizabeth was glad to hear Stephanie was upbeat—it must be a good day.

  “Okay, thanks. I’ll track the rest of it down.” Elizabeth waved the pages.

  She got up as Anna slid into her seat. Teaching teenager’s in her small office was difficult. The five-person occupancy sign bothered her as she left the room, as it did every class session. The Dark Wing had great spaces for younger children of the crew members. But the planners neglected the teenagers in their designs. All of their classes were held in offices with fire occupancy ratings below the number of pupils, all but their English literature, which the captain taught himself in his apartment-like cabin. The teenagers liked to talk about having snacks in his kitchen and spreading out over the sofas. She shuddered at the thought of the germ-filled furniture.

  * * *

  Elizabeth reviewed the latest round of blood results from widowed shifter crew members. The small testing lab held most everything she needed. The captain had seen to that. She had the best equipment; what she didn’t have was enough space for a normal-size person to turn around in. Her eyes were trained on the microscope when Nurse Anna came into the room.

  “They’re done. Well, mostly done. They have all turned in their papers might be a better way of framing it.”

  “That bad?”

  “Joseph wrote his first and last name, if that says anything.”

  Elizabeth stretched up, arching her back. “That’s better than last time.”

  Anna pulled up a stool. “Poor kid. Poor Stephanie, too.”

  “She would claw you if she heard you say that.”

  “I think about her. I would be the same way if my mate passed before me too. At least my children are adults, mostly—Rama has a lot of growing up to do, and Romie . . . don’t get me started on that boy.” Anna shook her head. Rama, her daughter, bartended at the smaller of the two poolside bars. Elizabeth was more Anna’s friend but closer in age to Rama. Romie, Anna’s son, worked with his dad in engineering and lived the shifter bachelor life. Women of all ages trailed after him and his movie-star good looks.

  “I’m going to tell them you said that,” Elizabeth laughed. She would never. “I found the supply list.” She held it up.

  “And now you’re going to go on shore and do something? Right?”

  “No.” Elizabeth stared her down.

  “Don’t give me that. I’m of an age where fun is a bottle of wine, quiet and a book. You, on the other hand, should be out doing something or someone,” Anna laughed.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Did you forget I’m a puma and I can taste a lie?”

  “I want to. But if I’m going to continue with my research and do the captain’s, I won’t have much time. I’m staying right here today.”

  “What do you mean? You’re changing your research?

  “No, not yet. I told him no. Not that he accepted my answer. But I thought I would try tackling both without telling him. His project has merit. I’m going to dip my toe in. I don’t want to promise him anything. I might spend the rest of my life on these two topics. I’m not one to commit easily.”

  “Split the little time you have?”

  “It’s not logical. But I’m going to give it a try.” Elizabeth’s cell phone rang in her pocket.

  “Are you going to answer that?”

  “No.”

  “You should. At least see if it’s him.”

  “It’s him. No one else would call me.”

  Her phone stopped ringing. She let out a sigh of relief. She couldn’t talk to Phillip today. Her phone rang again.

  “Good grief.” Anna thrust her hand into Elizabeth’s pocket and pulled out the phone. “Dr. Cottage’s personal line, this is Nurse Anna Smithfield, how may I help you, sir or madam?”

  Elizabeth made a face. She could hear him even though it wasn’t on speaker.

  “I want to talk to Elizabeth, Anna. Give her the phone.”

  Elizabeth made a motion across her neck and waved ‘no’ to Anna.

  “Let me see if I can find her. You know her, always leaving her phone lying around.”

  “Okay.” The anger in his voice slightly dissolved.

  Anna waited a minute with her hand over the speaker. She mouthed the words ‘you’re sure?’
<
br />   Elizabeth nodded exaggeratedly. “I can’t find her anywhere, Phillip.”

  “Tell her I need to see her. I’m working on a plan.”

  Elizabeth mouthed ‘no’ to Anna.

  “Phillip, are you sure that’s a good idea after what happened last time?”

  “I’m doing it. You can’t stop me. Tell her to call me.” And he hung up.

  Anna handed the phone back to her. “You should call him right back.”

  Elizabeth stared at the phone. “I hate this thing.”

  “You need to call him back.”

  “You’re right.” She hit redial. Phillip picked up without it ringing.

  “Phillip.”

  “Elizabeth. It’s great to talk to you. I didn’t think you would call me back.”

  “Neither did I.” He grunted at her words. She looked up at Anna who was motioning for her to continue. “Phillip, there is no reason for you to come down here. The ship sails this afternoon and there is nothing left to say. I like you, but I don’t want to leave the ship or my research.” She didn’t know why she told him she liked him. It had been a long time since she felt anything about him.

  “Continue your research here in Durham. We have world-class hospitals.”

  “Human hospitals,” Elizabeth said in a gloomy voice.

  “So? They’re hospitals.”