Love Burns (5 page)

“No, seriously. If you pretend you’re dating me, not only does it get your father off your back about the whole marriage thing, but it might make Vromme think that the fire and ice dragons are capable of getting along with each other.”

Down the road, they could see several police cars and a fire truck heading towards them.

“Olivia, who knew you’d be out here this morning?”

She sighed. “Well, probably lots of people. Apparently the town puts GPS trackers in the cell phones of all employees. So I guess a really determined person could hack into the network. And this is the third time someone’s come after me, so I’d say they’re pretty determined.”

“Yes, I heard about that first time, in Montana. That’s how your arm was burned, right?”

She shivered again. “Yes. What could I possibly have done to anybody to be worth this much trouble?”

“Olivia, do you think it’s possible that your father is behind these attacks? I did overhear him saying that if you got married, then you’d be safe. Maybe he’s trying to force your hand.”

“My father?” she echoed in astonishment. She considered what he’d just said. “Well, I’d say it was a possibility if it weren’t for the fact that the dragon was straight-up trying to kill me. I don’t think my father wants me dead. He wants to control me. He was the same way with my mother. He’s an angry control freak. Also, he wants me to get married so he can collect the dowry. If he had me murdered, then he’d never get a dowry.”

Calder nodded. “That’s all true, although I still feel like he’s up to something shady. Well, whoever’s after you, you’d be considerably safer if you moved in with me.”

She started to argue, and he added, “What about your friend Ermengarde? If someone tries to attack you again, she’ll probably come out and try to defend you. With her frying pan.”

He had her there. Ermengarde was just like Olivia in her tendency to charge in first and think about the consequences afterwards. But she was human, so if she went up against a dragon, she’d be dead within seconds. Olivia would never forgive herself if that happened.

“Why would you do this for me?” she asked Calder.

He shrugged and smiled, giving her an innocent look. “Like I said. It helps South Lyndvale if I have an ice dragon living with me. Henrik will have to include it in his report.”

“So you’re saying this is all fake? You wouldn’t hit on me or try to flirt with me?”

“Of course I’d try to flirt with you.” He grinned at her. “But you’ll be sleeping in your own room, if you want to, and you can always say no.”

“Uh…I’ll have to think about it…” She saw her father’s patrol car pulling up, and grimaced.

Her father got out of the car and began barreling towards them.

“Done,” she agreed quickly. “We are now officially fake-dating.”

Calder sat with her at the police station while she filled out yet another report about being attacked by a fire dragon, and ignored her father’s furious protests about her choice of “mate”. Her father also nastily shut Calder down when he tried to inquire about the progress of the investigation into the attacks on Olivia.

Then she went to a car rental agency to rent a car. She took out the maximum amount of insurance, just to be on the safe side.

Afterwards, Calder sent several of his men to her house to pack up her belongings and move them to Calder’s, while she went to city hall and tried to get some work done. She spent the afternoon answering phone calls and catching up on everything she’d missed so far.

Finally, when she was done, she decided to go find the Mortensen kids and tell them that the bullies wouldn’t be on the playground. She’d already gotten an okay from city hall to hire back Lionel, the centurion her father had fired, in the capacity of security guard, and he was on patrol at the park that day.

He was turning out to be a big hit, apparently, as he sat there making ice sculptures and snow forts for the kids. The parents liked having him there, and the kids climbed all over him and begged him to make more snow for their snowballs. Younger dragon shifters didn’t have a lot of cold-making power.

She looked up the address of the Mortensen house by consulting city hall records. It turned out that the power had been turned off, she saw. She paid for it to be turned back on, putting it on her credit card.

Velma, the woman from the city utility department, made a face and shook her head as she accepted the payment. “You and your mother. Your family sure has a soft spot for those Mortensens.”

“My mother did too?” Olivia asked, surprised.

“Yep.” Velma nodded, her gray permed curls bobbing. “Always hung out with…what was his name…David, when nobody else in school would talk to him. But then he turned out to be a thug, just like his brother, you know. David robbed a bank and died in prison, and his brother – that was Louis – ended up in some kind of shootout with the centurions, and—”

“Oh goodness, look at the time! I’ve got to get to my…” Olivia trailed off as she hurried out the door. Velma would start talking and never stop. Literally never. Word around town was that she gossiped in her sleep – at least that was what her husband said.

As Olivia headed out to the Mortensen house, she felt a glow of pride that her mother hadn’t given in to the town snobbery. Maybe if more people had given the halfling family a chance, things would have turned out differently for the Mortensen men. Of course, they had made their own choices – terrible choices. But growing up in a town where everybody turned their back on you and told you that you were no good – maybe it had turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Most dragon shifters were rich, and a dragon shifter who was poor and was a halfling who couldn’t shift…well, unfortunately a lot of dragon shifters would look down on them. She was glad to hear that her mother had befriended them back in the day, and she intended to do the same thing.

When she got to the Mortensens’ run-down house on the edge of town, she saw four children playing outside.

The house was little more than a shack – it certainly wasn’t big enough for a mother and four kids. There was a scrappy vegetable garden that looked like one of the children had planted it. One of the windows was cracked, and from the way the Mortensens were treated in town, Olivia had a shrewd suspicion it had been a bully with a stone, not a kid with a baseball. It had been carefully taped – a neat repair job, but it would do nothing to keep out the weather.

The children stopped and looked up apprehensively as she parked and climbed out. Based on how everybody had been treating them, she didn’t blame them.

“Hey, guys! I just wanted to let you know that there’s an ice dragon security guard at the playground now,” she told them. “You can go back and play there any time.”

“I don’t think we’ll go back there. My mom said to tell you thanks, though,” Robbie said. “She’s at work.”

“Oh, what does she do?”

“Waitress at the North Pole restaurant, waitress at the Ice Pops diner, and works for the town sanitation department on the weekends.” He ticked off each job on his fingers.

“Wow. Busy woman,” Olivia said admiringly.

Robbie glanced at his younger sister, who was drawing pictures in the dirt with a stick. “We don’t have insurance, and my sister needs her medicine. Otherwise she has seizures.”

“Oh. That’s a lot to handle.” She tried to think what she could do to help without outright giving them money. “Would you like a part-time job in town?”

He shook his head. “Can’t. I have to watch the kids while my mom works.” His face lit up. “When I’m sixteen I can drop out of school and then I can get a full-time job and help my mom.”

Well, that sucks
, Olivia thought. That was the best that he had to look forward to? At least he wasn’t robbing banks like his dad and uncle.

“If you need anything, remember, call my office,” she told him. Then she headed to Calder’s house.

Calder lived right on the border of South Lyndvale and North Lyndvale. The house was small, for a dragon shifter’s home. It was brick, of course; no fire dragon ever lived in a wooden house. It had a steeply pitched roof, probably with asbestos shingles, and steps leading neatly up to a stained glass front door with a mosaic of a dragon breathing fire.

It was on several acres of property, studded with a string of small lakes sheltering among the pine trees. Beyond the water the land undulated gently before climbing into steep, thickly wooded hills that aspired to be mountains with their angular outcroppings of rock. Behind the house, she saw a small cobblestone guest cottage with roses growing out front.

Calder came out to greet her, and she felt a warm rush of arousal as he grinned down at her. The setting sun bathed him in golden light, and he was so big and broad-shouldered that he seemed to fill the doorway. He gestured at her to come on in. “Welcome to my humble abode. I’m not one of those dragons with a gold mine, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Neither am I,” she said. “No chance of me being your sugar mama, I’m afraid.”

Then she glanced up at him. “The rest of your clan lives in a castle, though. Did you move out because you’re planning on starting your own clan?” she asked as she followed him into the living room.

The floor was made of flagstones, and the furniture was good but well-worn. A leather couch and a matching recliner had scuffed arms, and the side table was piled with paperwork – Calder had been bringing his work home with him. He gestured Olivia towards the couch, then leaned against the stone mantel. She couldn’t help but notice that there were no family pictures, just an oil painting of a mountainous landscape hanging on the wall above his head.

He shook his head. “No, I moved out when I was eighteen, and I wouldn’t take their money. My family were notorious jewel thieves for many generations, and I couldn’t accept their money on moral grounds.”

“Oh, right. I met your mom. She told me that you had a falling out with your family for a while.”

“Whoa, back up. Back up several miles,” Calder said. “You not only met my mom, you two had a conversation about me? When did this happen?”

“More than once.” Olivia was amused by how rattled the normally smug, unflappable Calder was at this news. “She’s already decided that you’re marrying me, and she’s planning out the wedding.”

“She what? How did you two even meet?”

“She came to talk to me. Something about wanting to check out the woman her son was going to be mated to. Is your mother prone to hallucinations?”

Calder snorted. “She’s prone to a lot of things, but not hallucinations. I wonder what she’s up to.”

“Maybe she’s just trying to be a good, if nosy, mom?”

“That would be a change, based on past history.” He shook his head. “Well, you go get settled in. All your suitcases are in the guest bedroom. I’m going to grill us some steaks.”

After a quick shower, Olivia came out to find that he’d already prepared a delicious dinner of steak, red potatoes, and broccoli dripping in butter.

They were sitting in the kitchen eating when they heard a car pulling up out front. Calder walked over to the window and looked out, and scowled at what he saw.

“Prepare to lose your appetite,” he said, and went to open the front door. Olivia followed him. Her father, of course.

Teague came to the door with a gloating look on his face. “So it’s true. You’re not just dating him, you’re living with him,” he said to Olivia.

“Word travels fast,” she said drily.

“Good, good. Now I can notify the ice dragon council that you’re stepping down as mayor.”

She frowned at him. “I wouldn’t recommend lying to them, no.”

“Read the town charter. The mayor of North Lyndvale must actually reside in North Lyndvale,” he said triumphantly, then chortled at her look of dismay. “Of course, you could move back into your house, where you’ve already been attacked once. Or you could wise up and marry any of the very eligible candidates who are still interested in you. Ichabod is off the table, of course—”

“Oh, drat!” Olivia pouted and made a face. “And I was so looking forward to learning how to change adult diapers.”

Then she glanced at Calder. “He’s probably right about the town charter, though. I’ll just move back into my house and take my chances, I guess.”

Her father stepped aside with a flourish of his hand. “Right this way. Shall I help you with your suitcases?”

“Actually,” Calder said coolly to her father, “you’ll notice that my house is on the border of North Lyndvale. And although most of my house is in South Lyndvale, my bedroom is, in fact, in North Lyndvale.”

“But that’s… It doesn’t mean…” Quinton ’s face went dark with anger.

“Yes it does. Your daughter still lives in North Lyndvale.”

“I’ll take this to the town council!” Quinton spluttered.

“You do that,” Calder said coolly. “I think you’ll find that they side with her, given that they voted her into office unanimously.”

Olivia had to stifle her laughter as her father stormed out to his car and drove off with a screech of tires.

“Wow. If you look in the dictionary under ‘sore loser’, his picture is right there,” she said cheerfully as she and Calder walked back into the kitchen.

Then she glanced back at him. “Of course, I don’t really have to sleep in your room,” she said.

“Of course you do. Otherwise I’d be lying to your father, and the entire town of North Lyndvale.”

She scowled at him. “It’s not like the entire town of North Lyndvale needs to know my sleeping arrangements.”

“But I’d know.” He looked at her with an innocent expression. “And I couldn’t live with myself.”

“So you have an extra bed in your bedroom?”

“I do not. Why would I? But my bed is king-size.”

“Suddenly, taking my chances with that fire dragon doesn’t seem like such a bad idea,” she said huffily.

“Or you could sleep on your own side of my nice, comfortable bed, and I promise not to lay a finger on you.”

“Why not? I mean…okay. Just until we figure out who’s trying to kill me.”

“Just until then,” Calder said, giving her an innocent look that was entirely unconvincing.