“You alright?” he asked, and Russ felt like the man’s eyes were drilling into him, seeing past his careful exterior to the desire for Mandy that swirled beneath the surface. Russ could not—would not—allow Jake to know that he was still fighting a deep attraction to the woman he’d insisted had tried to trick him into falling in love. Russ quickly tried to blame his fascination with the wizard table on the game.
“I’m fine. Just choked on my beer. I was watching this game the wizards all play and trying to figure out the rules. I’ve never seen anything like it. And none of the shifters seem to play it.”
Jake grinned. “That’s because you need to be able to do magic to play. Watch closely. The wizards are using energy from their magic rings to move the figures around the table. Each player is assigned a color, and they move only the figures of that color. They try to push figures from the other teams down the holes, much like pool players try to sink balls into the holes. They also try to get their king wizard figure to touch the purple magic ball. Any time they touch the ball, they get twenty extra points. I’ve obviously never played, but I’m told it takes a lot of skill to defend your own figures from falling down the holes, while pushing your opponents’ players down the holes, while also trying to get your king to the magic ball but still preventing the other kings from reaching the ball. Each game lasts fifteen minutes, and at the end of that time you get ten points for each of your figures that hasn’t been pushed down the hole, plus, of course, points for each time you managed to touch the magic ball. Whoever has the most points wins.”
“My head hurts,” Russ said, trying to comprehend everything Jake was telling him.
Leif laughed. “Tell me about it. The game doesn’t make much sense to me, but the wizards love it.”
“What’s the game called?” Russ asked.
“Magic swivel ball,” Leif said. “Oh, look. Looks like the fifteen minutes are up.”
Cheers went up from the swivel ball table as Leif spoke. Mandy had won, if her whooping cheers were any indication. The other wizards started calling for a rematch, and Mandy was saying something about not playing again until someone bought her a beer for her victory. More laughter filled the air, and Russ felt a pang of frustration and jealously as one of the other wizards went to get Mandy a beer.
Russ wanted to be the one buying Mandy a beer, but he hated himself for wanting that. She had tricked him, after all. How could he ever trust her after that? And besides, she had built a happy life for herself in Torch Lake. He knew she wasn’t interested in leaving, but he sure as hell wasn’t interested in staying. He was out of here as soon as he finished his job. Even if he wanted to look past the fact that she had tricked him, there was no feasible way for them to build a future together. He had to get these ridiculous feelings of attraction under control.
“You’re staring at her.”
Jake’s words cut through Russ’s troubled thoughts, and Russ did his best to smooth his face into a neutral expression as he swung to look at Jake.
“I’m just interested in the game.”
Jake raised an eyebrow at him, and in that eyebrow were a dozen unspoken accusations. Leif and Clint were engrossed in their own conversation at the moment, arguing about a local broomstick flying team and whether the team had what it took to take the national title. They hadn’t noticed Russ’s obsession with Mandy, but Jake had. Russ frowned, and stood. He still had a good quarter-glass of his beer left, but he had to get away from this table for a minute. He needed to catch his breath and get his desire for Mandy under control.
“I’m gonna go take a leak.”
“Alright, man,” Jake said in a voice that said he knew Russ wasn’t leaving the table because he actually had to pee.
Russ didn’t care, he walked off quickly, careful to avoid looking in the direction of the swivel ball table for fear of accidentally catching Mandy’s eye. He felt like a magnet was drawing him toward her. He’d never experienced anything like this feeling before, and he hated that Jake seemed to have noticed the way Mandy affected him. Russ was beginning to think that coming out to the Winking Wizard tonight was a mistake. Sure, he was going to be in Torch Lake for a while, but that didn’t mean he had to make friends. After all, any friends he made he was only going to have to leave behind. And he didn’t want the guy who was training him to have fuel for teasing him about a love interest.
Russ bit his lip as he walked into the bathroom, heading into a stall and closing the door firmly behind him. He leaned against the door and tried to catch his breath. Had he just labeled Mandy in his head as his love interest? How had he fallen so hard in such a short amount of a time, and for a girl he could never have, no less?
Russ banged his head gently against the wall a couple times. It was going to be a long three months.
Chapter Nine
Mandy clinked glasses with her coworkers, and then took a long drag of her beer as they cheered and teased her about never letting anyone else win. Mandy acted annoyed, but she enjoyed the backhanded praise nonetheless. She spent most of her time at work being overlooked despite the fact that she worked harder and better than anyone else in her department. It was nice to be acknowledged for something for a change, even if it was just a stupid game of swivel ball.
The coworkers Mandy was with tonight were all men, but they were among the nicer men from the office. These were the guys who didn’t join in with Commander Hawkins and his ilk when they acted like women were incapable of accomplishing anything. Mandy would have preferred to have some of the gals come out, too, but they were all giving her the cold shoulder ever since she successfully completed her dragon recovery job. She’d thought they would be happy to have a female succeed, since this would make it more likely that they would get jobs of their own in the future. But they saw her victory as a threat to their chances of getting assigned to a dragon recovery job, and treated Mandy as though she had stolen something from them.
Mandy squeezed her eyes shut and took another long sip of her beer. Frustration was such a buzz kill. And to make matters worse, Russ was here and completely ignoring her. She’d seen him sitting over at Jake’s usual table, but had been careful not to let him see her watching him. She had developed a talent over the years for looking at people without appearing to actually look at them, and that talent was coming in handy tonight. She had watched Russ spying on her all through the first round of swivel ball. Not long after the game was over, he’d left the table, and he hadn’t come back since. She was beginning to think that he had left for the night, a thought that made her inexplicably sad. She knew he was not going to date her. He was interested in her—that much was painfully obvious from the way he openly stared at her. But he was convinced that she had tricked him, and his dragon pride was too strong to allow him to overlook that. Mandy gritted her teeth and took another sip of beer. She couldn’t act bummed right now. It was Friday night, and she was out at Torch Lake’s best bar, celebrating her most successful week at her job yet. She drained her whole glass in several long swigs, and then set it down with a defiant thud.
“Who’s ready for another round of swivel ball?” she asked. Cheers and laughter filled the air around her, but before Mandy could even move to start setting up the pieces, she felt a strong hand on her upper left arm. Her heart skipped a beat and she turned, half-expecting to see Russ standing there. But her eyes landed on a different dragon, and her heart fell.
“Jake?” she asked. “What is it?”
“What are you drinking?” he asked, pointing to her empty mug.
“Charmed Star Ale.”
“Come on, I’m buying your next round. We need to talk.”
He started dragging her toward the bar, which earned him a round of protesting howls from Mandy’s wizard friends.
“You boys’ll have to play the next round without Mandy,” he called over his shoulder. “I have some business to discuss with her.”
“Business?” Mandy asked, ignoring the protests still rising from her
friends. She glanced back toward Jake’s table, hoping that Russ would be back and this would somehow have something to do with him. But Russ was nowhere to be seen, and Jake wasn’t answering her question. He led her to two empty barstools on the far end of the bar. The spot was as secluded as possible on a busy Friday night. Near them sat two wolf shifters who were too interested in making out with each other to pay any attention to Jake and Mandy.
The bartender approached before Mandy had finished settling into her barstool, and Jake ordered a Charmed Star ale and a Dragon’s Breath lager When the man left to get their drinks, Mandy once again asked for an explanation.
“What kind of business do you have to discuss? I don’t normally work directly with trainers.”
“It’s not official business. I want to talk to you, off the record, about something Russ told me that I find quite disturbing.”
Mandy bit her lip. This had something to do with Russ? Had Russ said something bad about her? Or, perhaps worse, was he going to throw in the towel and head back to Chicago before his job was completed. He wouldn’t get his money if he did so, and yet, he wouldn’t be the first dragon to leave early. A few had left before they’d collected their million dollars, which had always blown Mandy’s mind. She couldn’t imagine how awful a training regimen would have to be to make her walk away and leave a million dollars on the table. That had been before Jake, though. Jake was still a tough trainer, but he played fair. No dragon had left before completing their assignment when he was in charge of them.
The bartender set down two mugs in front of them, the copper-hued Dragon’s Breath lager in front of Jake, and a purple, smoking Charmed Star ale in front of Mandy. Jake rolled his eyes.
“That’s such a girly drink.”
“It is not. It’s a magical drink. And besides, even if it was a girl drink, so what? I am a girl after all.”
“Indeed you are. Which is a nice segue into what I want to talk to you about. Russ told me that you were instructed to make him fall in love with you as a means of getting him back to Torch Lake.”
Jake let the statement hang in the air, but Mandy knew it wasn’t really a statement. He was asking a question. He wanted to know if Russ was telling the truth, and, if so, why the High Council would order such a thing. Mandy let out a long sigh. She didn’t know herself why the High Council had ordered this, but she wished Russ hadn’t said anything to Jake. Mandy could feel her cheeks burning with shame as she forced herself to meet Jake’s eyes. She knew she shouldn’t feel guilty. It wasn’t her fault that the High Council had given such an unconventional order. Still, if word was spreading that her mission had originally been a twisted attempt at romantic coercion, Mandy would never be taken seriously. Everyone would assume that any jobs she got in the future were only given to her because she was a woman. Mandy wanted nothing more in that moment than to lie to Jake, and tell him that Russ was talking crazy, but she knew she couldn’t do that. She didn’t make a habit of lying, and, besides, if she lied to Jake now, she’d be throwing Russ under the bus. She couldn’t do that to Russ, even if he did think that she was nothing more than a trickster with no morals.
“Russ told you correctly. The High Council ordered me to use my ‘feminine charms’ to try to lure him back to Torch Lake. I’m not going to lie; it troubled me quite a bit. But I assume the High Council has their reasons for doing what they do. I trusted them, and I made a good faith attempt at flirting. I realized soon though that I…couldn’t do it. So I reverted to the normal method of offering money to come back to Torch Lake.”
Mandy purposefully didn’t explain that the reason she couldn’t go through with tricking Russ into falling in love with her was that she had accidentally fallen for him in the space of one evening. She hoped that the anguish she felt just thinking about Russ wasn’t written all over her face. Jake was looking at her with hard, searching eyes, and Mandy had to fight the urge to look away. She wasn’t sure why he was so interested in Russ’s journey to Torch Lake, but she had an uneasy feeling about all of his questioning. After staring her down for quite some time, he finally looked away and took another sip of his beer. Then he sat there, staring up at the bottles of liquor behind the bar as he stroked his chin. Mandy did not speak again. She would wait for him to speak first, no matter how long it took. After about three minutes, which felt like an eternity, he turned back to look at her.
“Mandy, I went through Russ’s whole file after training this afternoon. After he told me that you supposedly had to seduce him in order to follow orders, I got curious. You have to admit it doesn’t sound like something the High Council would want.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Mandy admitted. She felt her whole body growing tense. Where was Jake going with this? Was he trying to accuse her of making all of this up? She almost laughed out loud at the thought. Anyone who knew her well knew she was hopelessly awkward when it came to flirting. The idea of her actually suggesting that she should seduce someone was preposterous.
“I read everything in Russ’s file,” Jake continued. “I didn’t just read the biographical information that is part of his profile. I actually went through all of the notes about tracking him down in Chicago, and about how the decision was made to use you for his dragon recovery mission.”
Mandy blinked. She had never read the notes about how she was chosen. She knew the High Council kept meticulous minutes of all their meetings, and that they discussed ad nauseam who should chase down each dragon. But she hadn’t wanted to read through a transcript of the High Council discussing her pros and cons. She figured they must have discussed at length how her ‘feminine charms’ might give her an advantage, and she had zero interest in hearing a bunch of old wizards and shifters talking about whether she was pretty or flirtatious enough to bring home a dragon.
When Jake saw that Mandy wasn’t going to comment, he kept talking. “There’s nothing in there about you flirting with or seducing Russ. There’s also nothing in the notes to Commander Hawkins telling him to instruct you to use your ‘feminine charms’ as you put it, and—”
“Are you saying I’m lying?” Mandy interrupted. “I didn’t come up with the term ‘feminine charms.’ Those were the orders I was given by Commander Hawkins. I have no idea why none of this shows up in the official notes, but I’m telling you, I was given clear instructions that I had to flirt. Commander Hawkins told me that if I wasn’t willing to do that, he would give the job to one of the other girls. You can ask anyone in the room the day I was assigned to Russ.”
“I know you’re not a liar, Mandy. Even though we haven’t worked closely together, whenever we have crossed paths at work, I’ve been impressed with your character and work ethic. Not only that, but I can see in your eyes right now that you’re telling the truth.”
“So why are you telling me all of this, then? If you don’t think I’m lying, then why make such a big deal about the fact that there’s no record of orders for me to seduce Russ.”
Jake gave Mandy a stern look. “Don’t you see? If you’re not lying, then someone else is.”
Mandy frowned. “What are you talking about? Who would do that?”
But as soon as the words came out of her mouth she knew. She knew before Jake even spoke his name.
“Commander Hawkins,” Jake said. “He’s the only authority figure who told you to seduce Russ, right?”
Mandy’s heart dropped as she scrunched up her brow. How could she have been so stupid? She’d had an uneasy feeling from the start about the High Council ordering coercion of a dragon. But she’d blindly trusted them because she wanted so badly to believe that they would never do anything wrong. Now, she thought about the fact that no one who helped her prepare for her trip to Chicago had seemed to know anything about the seduction plan. In fact, the equipment specialist had laughed in her face when she suggested that maybe she should have been given some tools to help her flirt.
“Oh my god,” Mandy said, her hand instinctively covering her mouth. Her jaw had droppe
d, and she felt as though the floor beneath her had been pulled away. “You’re right. No one else said anything about seducing Russ. In fact, most of them looked at me like I was crazy when I mentioned that plan. At the time, I brushed it off as people not wanting to discuss what could be a somewhat awkward topic, but now I see that you’re right. People just didn’t know, and they didn’t know because Commander Hawkins made the whole thing up.”
Jake had a grave look on his face. “You know that accusing Commander Hawkins of lying about the High Council’s wishes is a serious matter, right?”
Mandy put her head in her hands for a moment. Her Charmed Star ale sat untouched, the purple liquid swirling in front of her of its own accord as she sat, stunned. “If this is true, though, I have to tell someone. He cannot be allowed to make up orders like that!”
Jake looked around for a moment, making sure no one was listening too closely to him. “I have the transcript of the High Council’s meeting about giving you the job. It’s in my car. I think you should read through it. Once you see how they spoke about you, you can make your own decision about whether you think Commander Hawkins was lying to you.”
“And then what?” Mandy asked.
“And then you call me. If you want to bring an accusation against Commander Hawkins, I’ll help you do it.”
Mandy’s heart was pounding, and she pushed away her beer. “I think I’ve had enough beer for tonight. Mind if I go grab that transcript now so I can head home?”
“I don’t mind at all.”
Dragon Returning (Torch Lake Shifters Book 1) Page 7