Page 89 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

She nodded toward the dance floor. “What about dancing?”

“No.”

She glanced down at Max. “Can you believe this?”

Max’s gaze shifted from me, to the dance floor, to Quinn. His expression remained neutral, but I’d begun to understand that neutrality from Max often concealed judgment.

“Do not recruit the dog,” I said.

A woman near the edge of the dance floor laughed as her partner turned the wrong way. The caller corrected the group, and the entire circle shifted into motion again: step, turn, clap. The people participating were smiling too broadly to care about whether they were elegant.

Quinn watched them with open interest, her earlier nerves having vanished. She’d never been to a gala. I’d nearly forgotten that. I’d spent most of my life avoiding places like this whenever I could and enduring them when I couldn’t.

To her, the room was still full of firsts.

That made me feel, briefly and uncomfortably, like an ungrateful prick.

“You really don’t like these?” she asked, quieter now.

“No.”

“Do you like any events?”

“They’re all largely the same.”

“They’re not. This one has a dog in a naval portrait over there.”

“It is a dachshund.”

“Exactly. Have you ever been to an event with a portrait of a dachshund?”

I looked toward the auction table. She was right. The dachshund portrait had a small crowd around it now.

“My dislike is not specific to the art,” I said.

“Then what is it?”

I should’ve given her a simple answer. I didn’t like crowds or posturing, noise or performative generosity. All true. None complete.

“At these events, people are often busy deciding what I am before I have spoken.”

“Dragon?” she asked.

“Sometimes. Other times they see me as heir, asset, threat. My father’s son. My mother’s son.” I let out a quiet breath. “Rarely just a man who would prefer to eat dinner without being analyzed.”

Quinn’s eyes met mine, and in her face, I saw the same recognition she’d given me earlier. “Yeah. I get that.”

I believed her. Our lives weren’t similar in the least, but Quinn Bradley also knew what it meant to enter places that decided who you were before you could speak for yourself.

She tilted her head in the direction of the dance floor. “Then let’s do something they can’t analyze usefully.”

“That sounds ill-advised.”

“It’s a group dance, Rafe. The stakes are low unless you count rhythm, and based on the situation over there, no one does.”

“I don’t know the steps.”

“Neither does half the people on the dance floor.”