In a Dragon’s Dream by Riley Storm Page 0,31

smiled, figuring that she was likely blown away by the generosity.

She was probably expecting to have to use insurance and that’s a fight and then—

“How often have you done this?” she gasped, aghast. “That’s so…so…routine.”

Oh. Rakell had misinterpreted her look.

“Not as often as I think you’re imagining, but it unfortunately does happen,” he said quietly. “Why do you think we mostly stay on the mountain? Out of human affairs if we can manage it? Things are just…easier, that way.”

“Right,” she said slowly. “I understand now. I think. But…why are you telling me all this?”

“Because,” Rakell said as a few more things fell into place in his mind about what had happened to them. “You’re in danger now, and I believe it to be my fault.”

Chapter Eighteen

Laura

“Your fault?” she questioned.

The fact that she was in danger now didn’t seem worth repeating. Laura had already come to that conclusion somewhere between Rakell throwing the woman across her office, and the male trying to kidnap her.

My life is different now, and I doubt it will ever be the way it was before.

Because of him. Rakell.

Laura folded her legs up under her as best she could. The loveseat was great for that, giving her the room to be completely up in it, without feeling confined. Right now it also helped to make her feel safe.

“I believe so, yes,” Rak said.

She liked that nickname. It made him more than just her bodyguard. More like a friend.

A friend you’ve made out with.

“I don’t understand,” she said, quashing that internal thought. Now was not the time for such things. “How could you possibly be the one putting me in danger?”

“By the simple expedient of being around you,” he said, refusing to meet her eyes.

Was he...ashamed? Or was that guilt she was reading from him? Perhaps a mixture of both. There was no need for him to feel either, as far as Laura was concerned.

“I think you’re going to need to elaborate for me, Rak. I’m not following what you’re saying. How the heck does that put me in danger? Are you not allowed to have friends?”

Rakell smiled tightly. “If only that’s what it was, then maybe there would be no issue. But the two of us, being out together in public. That’s the problem.”

“Huh?”

“Tell me,” he asked. “That couple. ‘Tina’ and whoever.”

“Josh,” she supplied.

“Tina and Josh, fake names I’m sure. Did they have a pre-booked appointment with you, before today?”

“No,” Laura said slowly. “They called a little while after we returned from lunch. Why?”

“I thought that might have been the case,” Rakell said unhappily. “That about confirms it. They must have seen us together.”

“So?” Laura still wasn’t following.

“I believe they think the two of us to be…together,” he repeated, emphasizing the word. “In the romantic sense.”

“Oh.” Laura sat back into the loveseat, grateful for the thick arms that supported her now as she thought everything over. “Tell me, Rak. Is that the truth behind what happened to Kristin? Were they actually after her this entire time, to try and what, get at Blede through her?”

Rakell nodded reluctantly.

“They didn’t come after me again, then.” she said slowly. “The first time I was simply collateral damage. Now though, today, they were coming after me…to get to you?”

She felt sick to her stomach.

Not at the assumption the, what were they called, Cado, yes, the Cado—not at the assumption the Cado had made about her and Rakell. But that if they had succeeded, she feared Rakell would have done whatever they wanted of him, just to get her back.

There was something Rakell wasn’t saying about all this. She could sense it in his hesitancy to say the word ‘romantic’. He’d wanted to say something else. A different term, perhaps? It probably didn’t matter. The situation was the same.

She, Laura Fitzgerald, a minor real-estate agent in a tiny town, was now caught up in a power struggle between two sides, both of whom were far stronger than she could ever be. Good dragons, bad dragons, they were still dragons to her tiny human person.

And there was a dead one back in her office.

Things were moving very, very fast. Perhaps too fast for her.

Laura shook that off, cracking down on her own mental gymnastics, bringing herself back to the present. To reality. A very different reality now that she’d had real, true confirmation of their existence. Not just the writings of someone who claimed to know about them. The two were very, very different.

All in all, it was a lot to handle and