DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  I walked out of the stable and jumped behind the wheel of the mule, but before I could power it up and drive away, Kirsten climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Get out,” I said.

  “Stop acting like a child.”

  I glared at her. “I’m not the one being a child.”

  “Of course you are. You and Trevor have been having the same damn fight since you were ten.”

  “I suppose you would know.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I ignored her, staring the mule and pulling out in a cloud of dust, pointing it back toward the lane that would take me to my parents’ house. Kirsten reached over and jerked the wheel, forcing the little four-wheeler to do something of a 180, headed back toward the main house.

  “I’ll show you around, since we have a little time on our hands.”

  “What if I don’t want to be shown around?”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  Chapter 2

  Kirsten

  I saw him sit up a little straighter when he caught sight of the building that stood where there was once nothing but a vast piece of land that seemed to go on and on for eternity. The building cut the land in half, making it seem smaller than it had been when we were kids. My heart ached a little every time I looked at it, even though I knew it was here for a good reason. This building was the salvation of the Three Nines Ranch.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a combination restaurant/gift shop.”

  Kevin looked sharply at me. “Like a truck stop?”

  I shrugged slightly, not missing the comparison. “We’ve begun inviting people onto the ranch as a sort of tourist thing.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “To pay the bills.”

  Kevin was quiet for a long moment, his eyes glued to the building ahead of us. It gave me a second to study him, to admire the angles of his jaw that I’d missed so much all these years. I wasn’t sure how I would feel when I saw him again, but I hadn’t expected the sight of his face, the familiarity hidden in his new muscles, his shorter haircut, to hit me the way it had. It was like this huge knot had settled in my belly, a twisting, pulling knot that had no relief.

  I, couldn’t believe he’d come back. I’d resigned myself to the idea that I would never see him again. Yet here he was.

  Had he really just come back for Dallas? Or was there more to it than that? Was it wishful thinking, hoping he’d come back for me?

  Yeah, it probably was.

  “Are things that bad here?”

  I bit my lip, biting back a few things that jumped immediately to the tip of my tongue.

  “Daddy let the herd thin out the last few years he was running things, deciding to concentrate on the horses and those stupid emus he brought in five years ago. No one wants emu! They want beef, and the price has skyrocketed these last few years, but the herd … it’s going to take time and money to rebuild our stock. Two things we don’t have a lot of right now.”

  “Is this temporary?”

  I shrugged. “Depends on how it works out.”

  “What do people do here?”

  I pulled the truck to a stop at the front of the building, shutting off the engine to give my hands something to do.

  “They come here and book their day. We offer trips out to the fields for people to watch the ranch hands do their jobs. We rent horses that they can ride on the trails. We have three wheelers we allow them to ride for an hour at a time down by the pond. And there’s a picnic package we offer for couples and families with small children up in the winter pasture.”

  “All things we used to do,” he said quietly.

  “Tourism is a big seller these days, Kevin. The Post Canyon Ranch has had success with it for over ten years.”

  “I just find the things you’ve chosen to offer interesting.”

  I didn’t feel the need to respond to that dig. I climbed out of the truck and headed inside, relieved to find more than a couple dozen people lounging around the dining room and a few more inside the souvenir shop/concierge area.

  I raised my arm, in the process of pointing things out to Kevin, when Janelle Waters caught sight of him.

  “Kevin? Is that you?”

  She squealed when she realized it really was him, rushing around the shop counter to run into his arms. All I could do was step back and watch as they hugged, reminded of the millions of times I’d seen her comfortably wrapped in his embrace in the halls of our high school.

  I wanted to scream. And the only word that bounced around inside my head was bitch.

  I didn’t want to hire her. I only hired her because there was a serious lack of appropriate applicants for these jobs when we let it be known how little we were offering to pay. I’d hoped Janelle would be one of those who’d back off, but she wasn’t. And she was proving to be a capable employee. Damn it! She was my best friend in middle school. My mortal enemy in high school.

  And Kevin’s girlfriend for three years.

  “I can’t believe you’re here!” She had this high-pitched voice that drove me up a wall. But Kevin didn’t seem to mind. He was grinning from ear to ear, his hands resting on Janelle’s hips as she stroked his cheeks. “You look good.”

  “So do you,” he said.

  Janelle stepped back and did a little shimmy with her hips, showing off the fact that she could probably still wear the same tight jeans she’d worn all through high school.

  “You really think so?”

  “Just as beautiful as you were on prom night.”

  She giggled, turning her head like she had a grain of modesty in her whole body.

  I’d had enough. I walked off, leaving them to their reunion. I’d asked him to come here for me. For Dallas. Not for some sort of high school reenactment. I was the boss now. I ran this place. The weight of its success or failure was square on my shoulders. I didn’t have time for this nonsense anymore.

  Kevin caught up with me in the restaurant, following easily behind me as I stormed into the kitchen. The chef had left a message up at the house that he was having a problem with one of the suppliers, so I decided to work that out while I was there. It only took a second, a second during which I was acutely aware of Kevin’s eyes on me.

  “You know she’s married now, right?” I asked as I swung myself into the cab of the truck a few minutes later.

  “I know.”

  “And she has three kids at home. I think the youngest is just a year old.”

  “Eight months, actually.”

  I glanced at him. “How do you know that?”

  He shrugged. “We left things on good terms. She wrote to me while I was overseas.”

  My eyebrows rose. I hadn’t known that.

  “Rumor was that the first kid was yours, until he came out looking just like Tommy Waters.”

  “There’s always rumors in a small town.”

  “The timing was pretty questionable.”

  “Janelle and I broke up more than a month before graduation. So, unless the kid was born on New Year’s Day, it couldn’t be mine. And I know he came in March.”

  I threw the truck into gear, really wishing he hadn’t just said that. I really didn’t need to know the last time he’d had sex with her.

  We drove out to the airstrip next. It was in one back corner of the property, lined up with the property fence. We’d chosen this spot because it had direct access to the road that we built to run up to the restaurant/visitor’s center. And because it was the one spot on the property that was as far from the cattle and the horses as possible on a working ranch.

  I got out and walked over to the tarmac, bending down to pick up a few sticky pebbles. This was my most satisfying improvement to the property. Not only was it a convenient way to bring in wealthy tourists who wanted to experience what it was like to be one of us, but it would be an asset in the future when we required a quick, easy way to bring in supplies and personnel from distant parts of the countr
y.

  I could remember when I was fifteen and my dad needed a special vet for one of my mom’s prized horses, but the man was in New York and getting him to the ranch was a logistical nightmare because of the number of flights and connections he’d have to make. Now we could fly anyone in directly to the ranch without all that fuss.

  “Impressive,” Kevin said.

  I turned and smiled, unable to keep that particular smile from my lips. “It was a long time coming.”

  He nodded. “I remember.”

  He gave me this look that I recalled from our youth, a look that said he was proud of me, that he knew I could do it. And he would be the one to know that. I talked to him about my plans for this place before things fell apart between us, before we lost whatever it was we had when we were small children. Even back then, I knew what I would do when it was my turn to run this place. He’d been my support, the only one who believed in me. Now … well, I was a strong independent woman. Did I really need that support now?

  “Kirsten!”

  Mr. Marconi was charging up to the fence that bordered both our properties. Marconi owned Marconi Farm, a four hundred acre horse farm that butted up against Three Nines on this corner. And he was deeply unhappy with the landing strip.

  “You hear from my lawyer? He serve the papers yet?”

  “Yes, Mr. Marconi.” I shook my head as I turned toward him. “But, like I told you before, this is my property, and there is no sound ordinance out here. The judge will throw it out before the ink’s even dry.”

  “You’re upsetting my horses!”

  “I’m aware of that. But this was the best place—”

  “For your animals! Not for mine!”

  “I told you, Mr. Marconi, we’d be willing to work up some sort of compromise—”

  “I don’t want compromise! I want this air strip gone! I want my horses to be able to graze in peace!”

  “Mr. Marconi, we served you notice when we started work on the air strip. We tried to contact you all through construction. You wouldn’t speak to us. So you can’t really complain now.”

  “This is my livelihood, you stupid bitch! I don’t have a big ranch like you! This is all I have, and now you’re putting it at risk with your helicopters and your private jets! I can’t allow that to happen anymore.”

  I just shook my head and started to turn away. Mr. Marconi, in all his class, spit through the chain link fence, a large loogie that landed on the back of my neck.

  “Fucking mulatto bitch! How they let some black bitch move onto this property, I’ll never understand. There used to be pride in this state, used to be a set of rules that everyone followed. No wonder the country’s going to hell!”

  “Enough!”

  Kevin brushed past me and charged at the fence, reaching between a couple of the links to grab Mr. Marconi by the front of his shirt. He dragged him so hard against the fence that the whole thing seemed to rattle against the metal posts.

  “Apologize to the lady,” Kevin demanded.

  “Fuck you!” Mr. Marconi said, but his tone was a little less confident than it had been a few minutes ago.

  “Apologize,” Kevin said in a low voice, adding something else I couldn’t quite hear. I turned, feeling the spit slide down the back of my neck like a lover’s lips. I shuddered, disgusted by the sensation.

  Mr. Marconi stared at me, hatred bleeding from his eyes.

  “I apologize, Kirsten,” he said in a low, angry voice.

  Kevin let him go, pushing him hard enough that he stumbled backward, falling on his ass. Then Kevin turned to me, pulling a handkerchief from his back pocket. He turned me, his hand on my shoulder, wiping away the spit with a warm, comforting touch.

  “I’m sorry he said those things.”

  I shrugged. “It’s not the first time.”

  We both knew it was the truth. My father and Kevin’s could be brothers, both tall and strong, both with blond hair and blue eyes. But our mothers couldn’t have been more different, both in looks and personality. Kevin’s mother was small, an Irish redhead with a slight accent who had the patience of Job.

  Rachel McKinsey was up at dawn to help feed the horses, then back at the house in time to wake her boys for school and feed them the homemade breakfast she’d thrown together between chores. Then she’d busy herself helping her husband on the ranch, gossiping with the other ladies who worked or lived on the ranch, and still have time to go home and bake cookies in time for her boys to return from school.

  She was the hardest working woman I’d ever met. Trevor told me once that she worked that hard because it was how she was brought up. Rachel grew up in poverty in Ireland, surviving only by her willingness to work. Meeting Jacob McKinsey changed her life, but it didn’t take away the drive to fight for what she had.

  My mother was the daughter of a doctor and his beauty queen wife. My mother grew up in a suburb of Dallas, competing in the same beauty contests her mother won before her, enjoying the benefits of being beautiful. And she was beautiful. Her skin was like silk, her bone structure as perfect as a marble statue. When I was a small child, I never tired of looking at her, never tired of staring at the many portraits of her that still hung in our house.

  She was a prize my father was humbled to have won. She was perfection. That’s why I couldn’t understand the occasions when I’d see people talk down to her, call her names that I was forbidden to repeat in our home, just because her skin was like the purest onyx stone.

  My mother could have spent her life lazing around the house, going to one beauty appointment after another, attending parties and ignoring her children. But when she was fifteen she’d visited a horse farm in California and fell in love with a thoroughbred called Quartermaine. From that moment on, she wanted to own and raise thoroughbreds.

  It was in that pursuit that she met my father and convinced him to allow her to bring the horses onto his family’s highly successful cattle ranch. I can’t imagine she had to do much to convince him. What my mother wanted, my father provided. That’s the way it’d been from the very beginning.

  Theirs was an intense love affair, much better than Cinderella and her prince. It was one that I’d always wanted for myself, the little looks and the hand touches. The secret smiles. I wanted that for Dallas, too.

  I sighed as I turned to look up at Kevin. “We should go back to the main house.”

  He gestured for me to walk ahead of him. I hesitated, feeling like I should say something, express some sort of gratitude, but I didn’t know how. But there was something about the way he was looking at me that told me it wasn’t necessary.

  “Cook was making chicken tonight. Why don’t you join me for dinner so that we can talk about Dallas?”

  “Okay,” he said, surprising me with a willingness I hadn’t expected. I smiled again, unable to hide my pleasure.

  I could see him looking around the house as we walked through the front doors, marking the differences with his eyes. My parents had chosen to retire a little over two years ago, but I hadn’t made many changes to the house just yet. I still slept in my childhood bedroom, still shared a bathroom with my sister when she was here. I could have moved into the master bedroom and shown my ownership of the property by taking over everything that had once belonged to my parents. But it felt premature. They weren’t dead, just retired to a nice condo in San Diego.

  The only real changes I’d made were a few décor alterations. Because they’d always seemed to be mocking me, I got rid of this set of Chinese vases my mother had kept in the library, the geishas painted on the sides watching my every movement. And I’d had a few of the portraits of my mother removed along with the select few my father had chosen to take with him to California. And my mom’s collection of carved horses had gone with them.

  “Some things never change,” Kevin commented as we walked into the sitting room.

  “We switched out the couches five years ago.”

  “They’re basically the same style, though.�
�

  “Yeah. My dad had them custom-made because my mom liked the old ones.”

  Kevin wandered to the back of the room, touching a grouping of family pictures that rested on the top of the baby grand piano in the corner. He lifted one or two, studying the faces in the frames. I wanted to move closer, to see which ones he was most interested in, but I was afraid I wouldn’t like what I saw.

  “I’m going up to wash up. Then we’ll eat on the back porch.”

  “Okay,” he said without bothering to look over at me.

  The moment I walked through my bedroom door, I wanted to throw myself on my bed and have a screaming fit. I couldn’t count the multiple times I’d done that as a child, most of my fits caused by Kevin. Him and Janelle … I shuddered, feeling disgusting in my own skin.

  I quickly stripped out of my work clothes, climbing into the shower and scrubbing at the back of my neck, the place where Mr. Marconi’s spit had landed. Then I scrubbed the rest of me, washing away the animal smells and the dirt that this place seemed to bury in my pores.

  It wasn’t fair how good he looked. He’d always been handsome, but the regimen of the military had added muscles, and time had taken away the boyish charm and replaced it with something that was almost irresistibly erotic. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel his touch on the back of my neck. And that touch brought to mind another …

  His breath was against my throat as he gently lay me down on the warm hood of his car. I couldn’t believe we were doing this, that we were doing it here. But then his mouth was on mine and all thoughts, all fears, just disappeared. I’d never had a kiss quite like his. Not that I’d kissed a lot of boys. I kissed Trevor once, but that didn’t really count. He wasn’t Kevin.

  His hand slid under the skirt of my cheerleader’s uniform, his hand warm on my bare thigh. I wanted to move toward him, wanted him to touch more of me, but I wasn’t sure if that would give the wrong message. But again … oh, it was so nice! No wonder my parents were always … ahhh …

  I shook my head, trying to knock the memory loose. That was a very long time ago, a moment of weakness that never should have happened. A mistake.