Dragon Fever: Limited Edition Holiday Romance Boxset

by Serena Meadows

  Digging the rolled cash from his pocket, Drake peeled off three one hundred-dollar bills from them and handed them to the girl. He caught Emily staring at him, her jaw loose, and offered her a tiny shrug in return. Accepting his change, he shoved it into his pocket, then collected the bags.

  “I had no idea you were loaded,” she muttered as she took a couple of the bags from him.

  “I’m not.”

  She glanced at him sidelong. “You sure looked that way to me.”

  Not quite certain what she meant by “loaded,” Drake absently wondered how long it might take to fully understand the intricacies of the human language. Or at least this one.

  The door and its musical chime behind them, Emily led the way toward the car, and Drake followed. He looked carefully around for danger, saw nothing, and was caught utterly by surprise by the gunshot.

  The bullet chipped the bricks of the shop behind him, which meant it had missed him by a hair. Or less.

  Ducking, roaring his fury, he shoved Emily toward her car. “Get in!”

  Another shot whined off the asphalt at his feet, and when that bullet struck, he realized he was the target, not Emily. She opened the car’s door and lunged inside. “Come on,” she screamed.

  Drake threw his bags into the car and searched the area the shots came from with his eyes. Scent and hearing did little for him here. There. The shooter stood beside a blue car in the parking lot across the street, a rifle in his hands. He raised it, then fired again. Smoke drifted from the barrel, and again, the bullet struck the asphalt first, then ricocheted to smash a shop window.

  “Drake!”

  Ignoring Emily’s frantic cry, Drake focused on the man with the gun. Then he ran. Across the parking lot and into the street, he saw the cars coming at him and dodged those who didn’t swerve around him. Horns honked, tires squealed, but he never took his eyes from his target. His rage filled him; his blood roared in his ears. I will kill you.

  The shooter saw him coming and turned to escape. He threw the rifle into the rear seat of the car, then jumped behind the steering wheel. Drake leaped onto the car’s hood as the stalker threw the car into reverse, staring through the glass at his prey. “You are dead,” he growled, lifting his fist.

  In a single blow, he smashed through the glass, cutting his knuckles, his hand, his arm up to the elbow. Not caring that his blood poured from his wounds, Drake reached for the man’s throat. Jerking his head to the side, avoiding his reaching hand, Emily’s stalker floored the accelerator and turned the wheel sharply.

  Centrifugal force threw Drake from the car’s hood. The broken glass mangled his arm further as he was launched disgracefully into the air to land hard on the pavement. Winded, gasping to breathe, he lifted himself up to see the blue car enter the traffic, nearly colliding with a truck. Smoke drifting up to mark its passage, the car quickly vanished.

  Grumbling at his failure to kill Emily’s enemy, Drake stood up. Unmindful of his blood dripping to the pavement, he finally looked around. People had emerged from their shops at the sound of gunfire, frightened, milling like sheep in a pen. They whispered and pointed at him, staring in stupefied horror at his mangled hand and arm. Sirens wailed in the distance as the authorities headed in their direction.

  A car screamed to a stop beside him. “Get in,” Emily ordered.

  Scowling at the watchers, even as more poured from doorways, Drake obeyed her. Striding around to the passenger side, he opened the door and slid in. He had barely closed it when Emily floored the accelerator and spun from the parking lot and into the street. She eyed him, looking from his face to his arm and back again.

  Chapter Five

  “Just what the fuck were you thinking?” Emily yelled.

  “That was your enemy.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  Scared out of her mind, furious that Drake risked his life to catch her stalker, frightened of the consequences to the shooting, Emily had no idea what to do. Drake bled like a stuck pig, his hand and arm torn to bits as though a Rottweiler had used him for a chew toy. That scared her most of all.

  That he punched a hole in the car’s windshield as easily as he might a paper bag frightened her even more.

  Drake stared at her, and she didn’t need to be a mind reader to know what was going through his mind. No doubt, he was baffled as to why Emily would be so angry with him when he came so close to killing the man who had tormented her. That only made her angrier and more scared.

  Drake leaned against the door and watched her. “What’s wrong?”

  “You are what’s wrong,” she snapped, swiping her hair from her face. “Just what were you going to do?”

  “Kill him.”

  “Oh, sure,” she replied, her tone caustic, and that obviously added to his confusion. “Just run up to a guy with a rifle and grab him by the throat.”

  “Right.”

  Emily took her eyes from the road to stare at his bloody hand and arm briefly. “You smashed your hand through a fucking car’s windshield.”

  “So?”

  Still furious, Emily rapped her knuckles on her car’s windshield. “That is safety glass, asshole,” she shouted. “It doesn’t just break. But you shattered it like it was putty.”

  “I think you’re upset over nothing.”

  “You’re bleeding all over my fucking car, and that’s nothing?”

  “I’ll clean it. But maybe you should calm down.”

  She screamed again, but this time, it sounded like wild, uncontrollable laughter even to her. He’s right. Acting like a panic-stricken school kid who just saw a spider won’t solve anything. Forcing herself to breathe deeply, she saw stars and feared she was about to hyperventilate. Then her sight steadied, and she could think again. Think more coherently anyway. She was still scared, and being scared always made her mad.

  “I’m sorry,” Emily said. “I don’t handle fear very well.”

  “You handled your fear with rage,” Drake commented. “It might be better to remain calm while frightened.”

  “What fucking good would that do?” she snapped, then held her hand up. “Sorry.” Her stomach burned with a stabbing fire, and she rubbed her hand over it as though that would alleviate the pain. It never did.

  “Fear keeps you alive,” he replied. “But fear coupled with anger only fouls up your ability to think straight.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  Heading toward her house, Emily kept an eye out for cops. No doubt, the witnesses to the shooting and Drake’s little stunt gave them the description, and maybe the license plate number, of her car. But whether it brought the cops to her door or not, she had to get Drake help before he bled to death.

  She glanced at him again, holding his wounded right arm with his left. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Your hand and arm cut to ribbons.”

  “A little.”

  Emily drew a deep breath, knowing she would need all her faculties in good working order if she was to survive the next short while. Suspecting that her stalker fled in terror, she didn’t pause to worry about him. “You need a hospital.”

  “No.”

  “Drake, one cut I can handle,” she all but screamed at him. “But this requires stitches, surgery, casts, repairing tendons. I have to take you to a hospital.”

  “No hospital. Let’s go back to your house.”

  “What have you got against doctors and hospitals?”

  By the way he stared at her, unblinking, Emily knew she would get no answer from him. “Fine. Get an infection, lose the hand, see if I care.”

  She jabbed her finger at him. “You try to sue me, and I’ll kill you myself.”

  “I don’t get infections.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “What is it to sue you?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Driving into her driveway, and then the garage, Emily shut the engine down as the door closed. She had regained some
of her calm but wondered if this particular bodyguard was worth the trouble. Maybe I should take a chance on the Rottweiler. Getting out of the car, she noticed that Drake showed no weakness from the blood loss, and yet her car’s seat and carpeting were full of the black-red crap. So much, she felt sick just looking at it.

  Without a word, she led him into the house and locked the door behind her. Without being told, Drake headed for the bathroom, still holding his right arm with his left hand.

  “He’ll need pain pills,” she muttered, tallying off what she had. “Got Vicodin, Percocet; right, those should be enough. What do I have to sew him up with? Thread won’t work. Shit, why don’t I have fishing line?”

  Ticking off what she could do and not do within her head, Emily went into the bathroom and found Drake running water over his bloody hand and arm. Dark red swirled down the sink’s drain, and Emily felt sick again.

  Not bothering to wonder why that didn’t hurt him—he’s a fucking robot; he’s the Terminator with blue eyes—Emily once again took from the cabinets the anti-biotic medications. “Those wounds need to be sutured, and I don’t have anything to sew them with.”

  Drake glanced over at her. “They’ll be fine if they just get wrapped.”

  “They’ll take three times as long to heal without being sewed.”

  Turning off the water, dripping pink-tinged droplets on the counter, Drake sat on the toilet. He kept his gashed arm over the second sink and said, “No rubbing alcohol. That hurts.”

  “Okay, so once gangrene and infections set in, maybe even a little flesh-eating bacterium working their charms, then I’ll take you to the hospital so they can cut your arm off.”

  Drake’s lips thinned. “I don’t get infections.”

  Emily rolled her eyes, then picked up the roll of gauze. Her stomach roiled as she gazed at the gaping wounds from his fingers all the way up to his elbow. Gashes that looked inches deep and ten times that long raced up at down his forearm. Shutting her teeth, knowing that it was only a matter of time before he died of sepsis, Emily wrapped his arm.

  From his fingers on back to his elbow, she wrapped roll after roll of gauze until she had no more. Lifting his arm, Drake examined her handiwork and wiggled his fingers that stuck from the end. “Thanks.”

  Emily gaped. “Do that again.”

  Drake obliged her by wiggling his fingers again. “Christ,” she muttered. “No tendon damage.”

  “Did you expect it?”

  “Yeah. Now go sit in the living room while I clean up in here.”

  He obeyed her as she washed the blood from the sinks, threw plastic from the gauze away, and tried to wash the blood from the carpet on the floor. That only reminded her of the amount of blood inside her car, and she groaned.

  “I can’t deal with that. Not now.”

  Drake was not in the living room when she came out. Looking around the house, she found him in the garage, kneeling on the cement, half inside her car. “What are you doing?”

  Drake lifted a bloody rag. “Cleaning.”

  “Son, it’s gonna take a lot more than that to get all that blood up.”

  Oddly, Drake found a way to clean the seat and the carpet by removing both and washing them in the shower. Red ran down the shower drain while he wet his fresh bandages, and, in her eyes, just added to the sepsis risk. But he refused to be deterred by her protests and set the seat and the carpet in the garage to dry.

  “I need a drink, and it’s barely noon.”

  Pouring a glass of wine, Emily sat in her armchair as Drake sat opposite her. His bandages, red-stained and wet, he wrapped in a towel before sitting down. She shuddered to think of the poison racing through his system even then.

  “The cops may show up.”

  Drake shrugged. “That man shot at me first.”

  “True, but we ran from the scene.”

  Emily stared at his towel-wrapped arm, chewing her lip savagely, unmindful of the pain. “We have to go to the cops,” she said at last, realizing they needed the police on their side. “I’ll make a call to the detective handling my case.”

  “What will he do?”

  “I’m not sure,” she answered, rising to get her cell phone. “But we need him on our side.”

  As she had his direct number on speed dial, Emily clicked it and hoped he was in, listening to the ringing. “Detective Carlisle.”

  “Hi, this is Emily.”

  She sat down in her chair, facing Drake, nervous, scared, as he said nothing for a long moment. Beginning to think that they had been cut off, she heard him say, “What happened, Emily?”

  “He shot at us, Clem. The stalker. He had a rifle and tried to kill Drake.”

  “Who’s Drake?”

  Meeting Drake’s calm blue gaze, Emily clutched her phone, sweating. “I hired him to protect me.”

  “Are you at home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Do not leave that house.”

  Her eyes on Drake’s arm, she said, “I have to get bandages for his hand; he cut it.”

  “I’ll bring them,” Clem Carlisle told her crisply. “How much do you need?”

  Emily gulped. “Lots. I’ll pay you back when you get here.”

  “Fine. Do not leave, Emily.”

  “I won’t. See you soon.”

  Clicking her phone off, Emily stood up to pace, restless, nervous. She had barely touched her wine and absently wondered about lunch. Not hungry, she glanced at Drake, and, no surprise there, found him watching her. “Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  Every few steps, she peered out the window. The sunlit street contained parked cars and a couple of kids riding their bikes up and down. Her house phone rang, startling her, wringing a sharp shriek from her lips. Spinning around, she stared at it for a moment, but Drake calmly, almost indolently, uncoiled himself from his chair and crossed the room to answer it.

  “Hello?”

  Listening for a moment, he held the phone out to her. “It’s not him.”

  Her hand shaking, Emily took the receiver from Drake. “Yeah?”

  “Hey, Em, it’s Jerry.”

  Drawing in a ragged breath, Emily tried to relax. “Hi, Jerry.”

  “I was just calling to find out when I can expect the next project.”

  Think, think. “Uh, I’m almost finished with it. Next week, I should have it done by then.”

  “Very good.”

  As her primary client, Jerry never wasted much time with social chit chat. He hung up, and Emily more slowly handed the phone back to Drake. He put it on its cradle, watching her with clear puzzlement. She tried to smile.

  “I have to get back to work,” she said, folding her arms over her stomach. “I don’t work, we don’t eat.”

  “You will,” he told her. “You have to calm down.”

  “I know. Easier said than done.”

  “Drink your wine.”

  Sitting down, Emily picked up her glass and took a sip. “It’s weird to be drinking in the middle of the day.”

  Drake said nothing but posted himself to watch the street as Emily fought to calm herself and quiet her mind. “Clem won’t arrest you,” she muttered. “You acted in self-defense.”

  “I did nothing wrong.”

  “I know. I’m just scared the cops won’t look at it that way.”

  By the time Drake announced that a car pulled into her driveway, Emily’s nerves had quieted somewhat. She joined him at the door, opening it as Clem Carlisle strode up her cement walk.

  “Emily,” he greeted her, his eyes swiftly taking in Drake. “Hi.” He held out his hand. “Detective Carlisle.”

  Drake lifted his own towel wrapped right hand, and Carlisle eyed it with alarm. “Uh, let’s go inside.”

  He carried with him a plastic bag from a drug store, ushering Emily and Drake in ahead of him. Nearing forty, Clem Carlisle stood a good deal shorter than Drake and owned a stocky build. His brown hair thinned noticeably
, and his brown eyes were sharply intelligent. He wore a suit with his tie loosened, his badge clipped to his belt.

  Emily gestured for him to sit. “Thanks for coming, Clem.”

  “I need to get your side of things, Emily,” he replied, his eyes on Drake. “Mind if I look at your arm?”

  Drake unwrapped the towel and then the damp and stained gauze. Emily looked away from his mangled hand and arm.

  “Jesus,” Clem hissed. “You should be in a hospital.”

  “No hospital.”

  “He wouldn’t let me take him,” Emily said wearily. “I just hope he doesn’t regret it.”

  “I won’t.”

  With a sigh, Carlisle took out a notebook and pen. “I can’t force him to go. Now, what happened this morning?”

  “I hired Drake yesterday as my body guard,” Emily began.”

  “What’s your full name?”

  “Drake Barish’ala.”

  “Got some sort of ID?”

  “No.”

  Emily groaned. She never even thought that Drake, wherever he was from, had entered the country illegally. No luggage, no passport, just popped in from the place he cannot talk about. “Clem, he might not exactly be legal here,” she said, “but can we worry about his immigration status later?”

  Carlisle sighed. “Just be glad I’m not an ICE officer and I don’t really care about where he came from. I might be more suspicious if I didn’t know what you’re going through, Emily.”

  “This morning, we went to that clothing store on Fifth and Harrison,” she continued. “We came out, and he fired a rifle.”

  “At you, Emily? Or Drake?”

  “At Drake. He was across the street, next to his car.”

  “How many shots?”

  “At least three,” Emily answered, running her fingers through her hair, remembering her stupefied horror at the gunfire, how she had frozen into place for a brief moment. “I got into the car,” she continued, shaking, “and yelled for Drake to get in.”

  “And what did you do?” Carlisle asked Drake.

  “I saw him with the rifle,” Drake replied. “I got angry.”

  Carlisle blinked. “Angry.”