DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

“But …?”

  “But Dallas and I will inherit the ranch equally when Daddy dies. If she’s married, then her husband will have the right to her half of the inheritance and the idea of a guy like that having control of half our family business scares me. Not to mention her trust fund.”

  “Trust fund?”

  I picked at a piece of chicken, shredding it with my fingers as I talked. “Our grandfather created a trust fund for each of us that’s worth millions now. Dallas comes into hers on her next birthday. If she’s married, he’ll have access to it.”

  “Does he know?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  He pushed a few strands of my hair behind my ear, his touch a caress against my throat.

  “The same could be said for you. Do you think Dallas worries that you’ll marry someone untrustworthy?”

  “I don’t know. We’ve never talked about it.”

  Kevin took the plate out of my hand and set it on the side table, his hands caressing my arms as he slowly took my hands.

  “What if there was an agreement. Like a pre-nup?”

  “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

  “Not really. You can have a pre-nup signed up until the wedding ceremony actually takes place.”

  “But they probably ran off and did it already.”

  “Not until Monday morning.”

  I looked up, annoyed by the sly look on his face. I pulled my hand out of his grip and pushed his shoulder.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?”

  “Dallas didn’t want you to know because she doesn’t want you to ruin it.” He lifted my hand up to his lips and kissed it lightly. “But what if there was a pre-nup that expressly took away any rights he might have to the ranch or the trust fund. Would you be okay with them getting married then?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I have a friend whose wife is a lawyer. I bet I could get her to draw something up and fax it to the hotel.”

  “You have a lot of convenient friends. Like the one who owns this place. Is it the same person?”

  “No. This is Waverly’s place.”

  “The woman you work with?”

  “Yeah. She keeps this as a sort of family getaway.”

  “Family?”

  “I guess she has a sister and a couple of nephews.”

  I lay back and stared up at him from my perch on the pillows. “You know an awful lot about your coworker.”

  “Don’t be jealous. I think she’s sleeping with my boss.”

  That didn’t make it any better, but he seemed to think it would. I closed my eyes and found myself imagining Kevin screwing a woman on a desk in some dark office. It was not a pleasant image.

  “Do you want me to call this lawyer? Would it make things easier for you?”

  “I don’t know. It wouldn’t hurt.”

  He immediately climbed off the bed, his weight shifting the mattress underneath me. I peeked at him from under my lashes, then sat up as I watched him dig through my bag.

  “What are you doing?”

  “My phone’s dead. Is yours in here?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “What’s this?”

  He pulled a pearl handled .35mm out of my purse. It was a bulky gun, but a showpiece that my daddy had given me a couple of Christmases ago. It had a pearl grip with gold rivets. It even had my initials engraved there in gold.

  “My gun.”

  “You carry around a gun?”

  “You’d be surprised how violent those animal rights people can be.”

  He cocked his head, eyeing the pistol like it was contaminated or something. “You carried this on a plane?”

  “It’s a private plane. The pilot carries a gun, too.”

  He shook his head. “Open carry laws are just fantastic,” he said, a little sarcastically.

  “It’s Texas, babe. Everyone has a gun.”

  He set it on the floor and continued to search through my bag, finally pulling out my iPhone. A second later he was out the door, talking to someone named Alexander in a tone that suggested great respect. I got up and held the gun in my hands, running my thumb over the engraving. I’d never had to use the gun, but it was a blast to fire at targets sitting on a fence back at the ranch. Trevor liked to take me out shooting in the evenings, but we hadn’t gone in a while. I hadn’t missed it until just now.

  Kevin came back into the room, holding the phone out to me. I slid it and the gun back in my bag.

  “She said she’d fax it over tomorrow evening.”

  “Great.”

  “Now you just need to call your sister and explain what you want to her.”

  I groaned. “I’m not sure she’ll take it well.”

  “If it means having her sister at her wedding, I think Dallas will be thrilled.”

  “You think so?”

  He held out his arms as I climbed back onto the bed with him. “I think she’d want nothing more than for you to be happy for her.”

  “I should call her.”

  “You should wait until tomorrow. Or, more accurately, later today.”

  I glanced at the clock on the side table and groaned. It was nearly three in the morning.

  “I guess you’re right.”

  He ran his hand over my belly again as he snuggled against my shoulder, his breathing slowing as he relaxed.

  “Kevin?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You never answered me before. About Janelle.”

  Instantly he stiffened, his body growing rigid all over as his arms tightened around my waist.

  “I thought we were past all that.”

  “I just … were you in love with her?”

  He sighed. “I liked Janelle. A lot. And, maybe, I thought I loved her for a time. But it wasn’t the kind of love that turns into a lifetime commitment. It was more like a puppy love, a learning experience.” He kissed my shoulder. “I’m sure you had a few of those in high school. College.”

  “No.”

  “You dated. There was Trevor there for a while and that guy, Mike.”

  “Again, you need to have a conversation with Trevor. And Mike was just someone to make you jealous.”

  He chuckled against my shoulder. “It worked.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  I sighed. “I wish I’d known that then.”

  He kissed my shoulder again. “What about college?”

  “There were a couple of guys. Dates. Nothing serious.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because a part of me believed that you’d come walking through my dorm room door and apologize for being an ass.”

  “I was the ass?” He tugged my hair, made me look back at him even as his other hand was sneaking down over my hip. “I thought we established that things went the other way.”

  “Yeah, well, I couldn’t blame myself for my own misery. I wasn’t quite that mature yet.”

  “You waited for me,” he said softly, tugging me back against the mattress, his lips sliding down over the tip of my nose. “That’s very sweet.”

  “Sweet?”

  “Endearing?”

  “But you didn’t wait for me.”

  He pulled back a little, his eyes darkened with regret.

  “I never forgot about you. And I never met anyone who touched me the way you do.”

  “You never will.”

  He chuckled, amusement brightening his face.

  “Isn’t that the truth.”

  He kissed me again, his lips lingering against mine. And then he lay back, pulling me into his arms again. His breathing almost immediately slowed, moving into a gentle rhythm.

  “I love you, Kirsten,” he said softly. “I always have.”

  And then he was asleep, his arms loosening around me but never letting go.

  How symbolic.

  Chapter 8

  Kevin

  “There you are!”

  Jason had a wide grin
on his handsome face as we climbed out of the rental in front of the hotel. I could feel the tension that suddenly came into Kirsten’s body, but she was polite as we approached him. She even extended her hand for a polite shake.

  “We have about two hours before the wedding,” Jason said, gesturing for us to follow him to a set of couches of to one side in the lobby. “Dallas is going insane upstairs, afraid you wouldn’t get here in time to help her put on her dress.”

  “I promised we’d be here on time,” Kirsten said. “I’ve never let her down before.”

  Kirsten had been concerned, too. We got up well before dawn to catch the first ferry of the day, drove more than two hours, ran by the airport to pick up our bags that we had thoughtlessly left behind, and hit a formalwear store to purchase appropriate clothing for a wedding. It’d been an insane morning. I was ready to take a breather and sit still for at least ten minutes before the rush of the ceremony started everything all over again.

  “Of course, of course,” Jason said, settling on the edge of the couch. “She wants me to go ahead and sign the papers now, and then you can take them up to her. She’s in her own room. Insisted that we not see each other before the ceremony.”

  Kirsten glanced at me. I could read her expression as clearly as I could read the words on the page of a book. She was not warming up to Jason any more than she’d done before.

  “Well, here they are.”

  Jason pulled the papers out of his back pocket having taken delivery of them from the hotel staff. He smoothed them out on the table so that we could see they were the same papers the lawyer had promised she’d send. I picked them up and read through some of the sections, making sure she’d hit all the points I’d asked her about. Everything seemed to be in order, but I handed them to Kirsten so she could make sure. This was all for her, after all. But she seemed to trust everything was on the up and up because she barely glanced at them before handing them back to Jason.

  “I’d like to go upstairs. If you could …”

  “Of course,” Jason said again.

  He opened the stack of papers to the signature page. In three quick motions, he had it signed, a satisfied smile on his lips as he handed the papers back to me.

  “Great.”

  We stood up and had an awkward moment as the three of us just kind of looked at each other. Then Kirsten pointed to the elevators.

  “I’m going to go check on my sister.”

  I patted Jason on the shoulder. “I ordered a car. We’ll ride over together in a little over an hour.”

  “Okay. I’ll be in room 1016.”

  I nodded, patting his shoulder again, feeling for this guy. I should have gone up with him, but I felt like I needed to be with Kirsten right now. She was pulled tight as a drum and anything could cause her to break. The last thing we needed today was Kirsten broken.

  We stepped onto the elevator and Kirsten jabbed her finger into the appropriate button four or five times, like once wasn’t quite good enough. The moment the doors closed, I pulled her into my arms.

  “My sister’s getting married,” she mumbled against my chest.

  “I know.”

  “It seems really surreal. I’m not sure I’m ready for this.”

  “I know.”

  She pulled back and looked up at me. “I don’t mean to make it all about me, I just … it’s so weird! Dallas has always been this little girl I had to keep out of trouble. And now … am I letting her make the biggest mistake of her life? Is this the one bit of trouble I’ve been practicing all my life to keep her out of? What if something terrible happens to her? What if he hurts her?”

  “He loves her. And she loves him.”

  “Yeah, well, love can be blind sometimes.”

  Didn’t I know that?

  I kissed the center of her forehead. “Dallas is a big girl now. You raised her well.”

  Kirsten made a face at me. “Don’t be sarcastic.”

  “I’m just saying that this is the natural progression of life. You have to let Dallas make her own mistakes now.”

  She groaned and buried her face against my chest again. “Well, it’s not a done deed yet. Maybe something will happen. Maybe she’ll get cold feet and let us whisk her back to the ranch. Or maybe he’ll get cold feet and just disappear. Or, better, maybe he’ll have a sudden heart attack and die!”

  “That’s morbid.”

  “I’m desperate.”

  I slid my hand over her head, tugging her closer for a second before pushing her head back so I could see her eyes.

  “This is going to be okay no matter how it ends up. You have to trust that Dallas has common sense and she knows what she’s getting herself into.”

  “I know. I’d just feel better if they’d known—”

  “You’ve got to stop, babe.”

  Kirsten groaned. But then she reached up and kissed me. “I love it when you call me that.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t let it go to your head.”

  I laughed. The door chose that moment to open. She reluctantly pulled away from me, took a deep breath, and headed down the hall with her head held high. That was my Kirsten, the girl who faced even the most unpleasant events with confidence and calm. Only I got to see the meltdown. I liked that.

  Dallas wrenched open her hotel room door, her hands shaking, dressed in just the bulky robe the hotel provided.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she announced. “I can’t find the shoes I bought just yesterday to wear with the dress and I think the dress got delivered to the church, but I’m not sure and there’s no one there to call. And I can’t get my hair to do what it’s supposed to do! I’m going crazy, trying to get all of this stuff packed and myself ready and—”

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Kirsten said, taking her shoulders in her hands. “I’m here. I’ll help you.”

  Dallas made a funny little sound in the back of her throat and threw her arms around Kirsten.

  “Thank you!”

  She said the words to Kirsten, but she was looking at me. I just inclined my head and smiled.

  The girls moved into the room and disappeared into the bathroom. After much banging and laughing and conversation, they came back out, Dallas dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her hair a mass of curls arranged carefully on the top of her head. Makeup enhanced the natural beauty of her face, subtle and clean. She was glowing, the smile on her face contagious.

  “We’ve got a car waiting for you,” I said, tugging the pre-nup papers out of my pocket. “We’ll get this nasty business out of the way and then I’ll carry your luggage down to the car.”

  “You’re a saint, Kevin,” Dallas said, throwing her arms around me. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

  I held her for a long second, thinking how much like home she felt. I was a little overwhelmed with gratitude in that moment, grateful to be welcomed back the way I had after my long absence, grateful that her situation had led to Kirsten and I finding some sort of common ground again, grateful for the weekend I’d just spent with Kirsten. I kissed the top of her head and sighed.

  “We should do this before we’re all in tears,” Kirsten said, winking at me.

  I just shook my head as I reluctantly let Dallas go.

  This was going to be an insane day.

  Chapter 9

  Kirsten

  Dallas was a ball of nervous energy as we drove the half mile to the church. I held her hand and sat in silence, not sure what to say to make her feel better. Kevin knew what to say to her, how to keep her calm. I didn’t. But he’d put us in the car and watched us drive away, choosing to remain at the hotel to have the pre-nup faxed and to change into his suit.

  I would have preferred him to come with us—would love to help him undress—but he was being the practical one today. I was usually the practical one, especially when it came to running the ranch. But when it came to today … all I could think about was that I was about to watch my sister commit herself to guy she’d only
known for a couple of weeks. I’d actually consented to being here, to watching this. Not only that, but I’d sent the plane to California to pick up our parents.

  They were waiting at the curb when the car pulled up to the church. Dallas didn’t even see them until she stepped out of the car, so focused as she was on her nervousness. And then … it was like a burden was suddenly lifted off her shoulders.

  “Momma! Daddy!”

  She launched herself into their arms, screaming and laughing and crying all at once. Daddy took her face in his hands and pushed her back slightly.

  “You really didn’t think we’d let you get married without us, did you?”

  And then we were all laughing and/or crying. Anyone passing on the street probably thought we were about to attend a funeral or something.

  The driver brought our bags inside and we set about getting dressed. The hustle and bustle of the moment took our minds off of what we were there for. But then she was in her wedding dress and Mom and Dad and Dallas were all crying and reminding each other not to ruin their makeup.

  “I can’t believe my baby is getting married,” Mom said. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, chuckling a little as Dad came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. I found myself staring at them, staring at something I’ve seen millions of times through my life. There had always been so much affection between my parents. And with all the obstacles they’ve faced in their relationship—no one pretends that an interracial relationship is easy, even in these modern times—they only seem to have grown stronger together.

  It was a relationship to be admired and aspired to.

  Like I used to do as a child, I moved into their bubble of affection and they immediately moved to accommodate me, my father’s arm coming around my shoulders and tugging me against the length of him while my mother kissed my forehead and took my hands in hers.

  “We’re so lucky,” she said softly. “Two such beautiful, accomplished, intelligent daughters. What a better legacy?”

  Dallas came over, the wide skirts of her wedding dress pushing me over a little.

  “I hope my marriage is as perfect as yours,” she said.

  That’s what finally pushed me over the edge. Tears began to roll down my cheeks.