If There Be Dragons Read online

  Or was all that only a result of defeating the dragon—her mother—that had tormented her entire life in one way or another?

  Brooke sorted and sifted and tried to understand. She’d been hurt too many times in her own life ever to willingly hurt another human being; God knew she didn’t want to hurt Cody. But she would never again allow herself to accept a situation simply because she craved approval or love, or feared to hurt.

  This time, she vowed determinedly, she’d know her mind and her emotions. This time she wouldn’t hide from herself as well as from others. She’d have no more dragons rearing their heads to frighten or bewilder or cause pain. Brooke Kennedy was going to take control of her life once and for all.

  She had thought playfully of dragons and princes after her dream, even going so far as to thoroughly enjoy Cody’s baffled reaction to being called Prince. But that flare of brief and childlike mischief had disappeared in the white-hot blaze of a man’s desire igniting her own.

  It wasn’t a game. They weren’t playing Let’s Pretend or living in a fairy tale.

  At the same time something told Brooke that somehow she could combine both the warmth of her just discovered childhood and her newly blooming womanhood in Cody’s presence. He had the ability, she realized dimly, to appreciate and understand both. He could pet and encourage the child while never losing sight of the woman.

  That realization warmed her, but it confused her as well. Part of her wanted to be the child because she’d never had the chance to be one. But a larger part of her desperately needed to become the whole and complete woman she saw reflected in Cody’s wonderful golden eyes.

  Alone, Brooke sat on the couch with her feet tucked underneath her and watched the fire she’d just built up. They had turned in for the night hours ago, but she had gotten up again and crept in here to think. And she smiled a little as she remembered how Cody had sensitively and deliberately kept things light between them. He’d left her at her door with a gentle kiss, demanding neither answers nor explanations.

  A remarkable man.

  Someday her prince would come…. Brooke knew that the Cinderella Complex was probably a valid theory, and that many women, conditioned by too many years of romantic expectations, believed at some level of themselves that their princes would, indeed, come. Handsome princes on the modern equivalent of a white charger, sweeping them off their feet in a breathless rush of romance and carrying them to Happily-Ever-After-Land.

  Cheated out of her girlish childhood by reality and denied daydreams by the control she’d been forced to exert over her own mind, Brooke knew that she herself had never indulged, even unconsciously, in fantasies. She’d never craved the “rescue” of a prince because there had been no child deep inside of her to create him. Hard reality had matured her swiftly, wrapping her in a shell of loneliness and confusion, and then layering over that with bitterness and pain.

  So Brooke had no real conception of the happily-ever-after dream. Day-to-day living she understood and accepted; disappointment and unhappiness she knew to be a part of life. If one were lucky, she’d come to realize, then a careful balance between happiness and unhappiness could be achieved; if there were no great expectations, there would be no great disappointments.

  And she was confused and afraid now because Cody had turned her smooth balance into something entirely different. There were high peaks and low valleys now, and the beginnings of expectations so great that they terrified her. A child locked away and hidden inside of her had been freed, and had dared to dream of a prince.

  Disappointment. She’d lived with it her entire life, watched it tangle with grief and loss. She was older more from experience than years. Older from loss. Loss of illusions, of ideals. Loss of a childhood barely begun. Loss of those she loved, or had wanted to love.

  She couldn’t bear to lose again.

  Cody, the golden man, the stuff of princes. He’d come into her life just ahead of a blizzard, the innate warmth of him contrasting dizzily with the cold winter and her cold loneliness. He’d come and said that he loved her, and had demanded before realizing that demands were blows from a punishing fist to her. Demands had bowed to patience, and he had taught her to trust him. To trust him…and perhaps to love him, but she couldn’t love him, couldn’t be loved by him, because—

  She couldn’t bear to lose again.

  Brooke sighed raggedly, barely seeing Phantom’s ears twitch at the sound as he lifted his head from the bearskin rug and looked at her alertly.

  That was it, then. The final dragon, the beast looming to block off her future. She couldn’t bear to lose again. She could, she thought, trust Cody not to leave her, but she couldn’t trust life not to take him away from her. And she couldn’t trust herself not to strangle him with her own fear if she let herself accept that she loved him.

  She heard herself laughing, a dull and unamused laugh. The last dragon, and not all the magic swords ever dreamed could slay it. It loomed mockingly in front of her, daring her to love and lose. It tormented her, because its golden eyes held the promises she’d seen in Cody’s eyes. And the newly awakened child-woman who’d dared to dream of a prince and conceive of happily-ever-after felt the familiar sting of reality and the bitter taste of disappointment.

  His voice came quietly into the firelit room, warm and gentle and as achingly familiar as bitterness and defeat.

  “Slaying dragons all alone in the dark?” Cody asked, coming around the end of the couch to sit down beside her. He was wearing a dark robe belted over pajama bottoms, his golden hair a little tumbled.

  Brooke absently tightened the tie-belt of her own quilted robe, looking at him and wanting desperately to go on looking at him because it fed something ravenously hungry inside of her. “Leave,” she said suddenly, almost inaudibly. “Go away, Cody—far away. I’m not good for you.”

  Half turned to face her, resting an elbow on the back of the couch, Cody lifted a hand to trace the distinctive widow’s peak high on her forehead. He was clearly undismayed by her abrupt words. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that,” he said softly.

  She shook her head a little. “I—I don’t think you’re very objective,” she told him.

  He smiled. “And you are?”

  “Yes.” Brooke gazed at him—direct, honest, her green eyes very clear and fathoms deep. “Right now, at this moment, I am objective. Right now I can tell you to leave.”

  “Right now,” he responded, “I can’t leave. Since that first night there’s never been a moment when I could have. And there never will be, Brooke.”

  Brooke looked at him steadily, the moment of objectivity passing. Her green eyes clouded, becoming opaque. He wouldn’t leave, and she’d never again be able to ask him to leave. “I’m not good for you,” she repeated painfully.

  His hand slid down beneath the heavy weight of her hair to cup her neck gently. “What is it, honey?” he asked quietly. “What’s that dragon been whispering to you here in the dark?”

  In a low voice, apparently going off on a tangent, Brooke answered his question with a question. “How old were you, Cody, when you realized that the world was bigger than you knew, and colder? How old were you when you—put away childish things and realized what reality meant?”

  He answered her soberly. “I was older than most—in my twenties. A close friend lost his parents, and I saw what it did to him.”

  “Thor,” she guessed, knowing the two men had grown up together.

  Cody nodded. “Thor.”

  Brooke was silent for a moment, thinking about the depth of this man, his sensitivity and understanding. She never ceased to marvel at his generosity of spirit, the luxuriant warmth of him. It was always unexpected, because Cody looked like a breaker of hearts, his face full of the handsomeness women endowed their dream princes with; but there was layer after layer of him, each one showing more of the innate wisdom and understanding that a much older man would have envied.

  “How about you?” he asked, knowing
what the answers would be.

  She looked into the flickering fire. “Six,” she murmured. “And ten. Have you ever lost something that mattered to you, Cody?”

  Cody looked at her, at the beautiful profile, and something as old as the cave lurched inside of him. He knew that there was a part of this woman he wouldn’t be able to touch even after years of knowing her; a scarred and lonely part of her that could never be revealed in mere words because the hurt had gone so deep.

  “No. I’ve been lucky.” He heard the choked sound of his own voice, and knew that the lump in his throat was born out of fear.

  She had sat here in the dark and fought a dragon alone, and Cody realized then that she’d lost the battle. It didn’t matter somehow that other battles had been fought and won; it mattered only that the silent battle in this firelit darkness had been lost. There was something between them now, something that hadn’t been there before. It was a chasm—he on one side and she on the other—and she wouldn’t help him to build a bridge. For some reason she’d made up her mind that there wouldn’t be a bridge.

  “You see?” she said very quietly. “I’m not good for you.”

  Cody thought at first that she was referring to his answers being so different from hers that she was giving the chasm a name. But then he realized that she was looking at him again, that she’d seen some reaction in his face that he hadn’t been able to control.

  “Look what I’m doing to you, Cody.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked tautly, wishing that he’d come into the room sooner; wishing that she hadn’t come to the decision that was making his heart pound sickly in his chest.

  “Hurting you,” she answered bleakly. Her hands locked tightly together on her thighs, the knuckles whitening.

  It sounded like good-bye, like the beginning of good-bye, and Cody realized then that he’d walk barefoot through hell itself, fighting dragons, devils, and demons to prevent good-bye. The fleeting thought of a life without her was an emptiness that struck him a physical blow.

  “No,” he said, denying that brief vision rather than her words.

  The opacity of her eyes hurt him. The dull remoteness of her voice hurt him. The chasm lying between them like the toothless grin of a mocking devil hurt him. It hurt him that there was a part of her he might never be able to touch, might never know, even if he somehow managed to bridge the chasm.

  With an odd little cry she suddenly reached out to him, her arms going blindly around his neck, her face against his shoulder, her voice muffled. “Oh, don’t. Don’t look like that,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to hurt you; don’t let me hurt you.”

  His arms went just as blindly around her, holding her to assure himself of the reality of flesh and bone. He felt her heart thudding in time with his own, and it still wasn’t enough. The fear of losing her was suddenly so strong that he would have done anything, sacrificed anything, for the certainty of never losing her.

  Cody had never felt so shaken, so desperate. This wasn’t a matter of physical desire; it was a feeling so crucial, a need so imperative that it defied description, refused the flimsy label of words. The steadily building emotions he’d grappled with during the past weeks paled next to what he was feeling then. Always strong, always able to cope with life and with himself, he felt parts of himself never exposed until then open up suddenly, and they were achingly empty because she wasn’t there.

  It was a madness just as violent, just as all-consuming as the passion they’d shared earlier. But this madness, this berserk need, was in his mind and his heart. He heard his voice, a rough and grating sound, and knew that the words were welling up from that madness, from that wild place deeper than conscious thought; knew that the words spoke a truth more basic than his conscious mind would ever know or understand.

  “I won’t lose you…can’t lose you…darling…my darling…nothing matters but you…nothing makes sense but you…there’s no peace without you…no life…I love you…I need you…so badly…I’ve loved you forever…even before I knew you…Brooke…my beautiful, hurt Brooke…I’m yours more than my own….”

  SEVEN

  BROOKE HEARD HIS words, heard them with her mind and her heart. She heard the sound of raw truth. She heard a winging wildness and vulnerability, and a soaring need unbridled by the trappings of civilized man. She heard a love so powerful, so basic and essential that it shook her as nothing had ever shaken her in her life.

  Not even a dragon could stand against it.

  The fear was still present, hovering around the edges of consciousness, demanding a confrontation. But she didn’t try to confront it then. There would be time for that, she knew. Time to discover if she’d been caught up in his madness because it was his madness, or because she shared it. Time to hear what price she might pay for the chance she was taking. Time to regret, if regrets there would be.

  But in that moment she jumped into the pit, eyes wide open and fully aware of the action. Dragon or prince, she was bound to Cody in some manner she couldn’t fully comprehend, could only accept. It was more than love, more than love knew how to be, and she embraced it and welcomed it because there was nothing else she could do.

  Her fingers tangled in his thick hair, she raised her head and looked at him, seeing even through the blur of her tears that his eyes, his beautiful golden eyes, were dim and distant, still in that stark place where the truth had been wrenched from.

  “Cody…I love you, Cody,” she whispered, wanting to shout it, wanting to sing it, but unable to force more than the whisper past the huge lump in her throat that might have been her heart. “I love you….”

  His eyes cleared, warmed, blazed suddenly with the fire she only then recognized as hers. A sound rumbled in his throat, escaped in a choked groan of relief, of delight. He kissed her with an urgency just this side of savagery, his passion the rare kind not of the flesh but of the spirit.

  Brooke responded wholeheartedly, sighing with contentment when he pulled her down on the cushions until they lay close together. “I love you,” she murmured, her head on his shoulder. The hard strength of his body was an anchor in the wind, and she nestled to its warmth with a feeling of coming home.

  “I love you,” he whispered, his voice as exhausted as her own, as drained by emotion. And there was contentment there, the sound of a man at peace.

  The fire in the hearth was long-dead ashes when sunlight began to crawl across the hardwood floor toward the couch. It crept slowly, its brightness waking Phantom momentarily. The wolf lifted his head long enough to see that his humans were still sleeping, then he returned to warm dreams of a summer valley and his sleek and canny mate.

  The light crept on.

  It shimmered brightly on the glass-topped coffee table, began climbing determinedly up the couch.

  Cody felt the light and heat, turning his head away automatically as his eyes drifted open. He saw Brooke’s sleep-vulnerable face nestled close, saw her hand resting trustingly on his chest. She smelled of a curious spicy cinnamon scent that was Brooke, and he gazed into her face intently, trying to memorize what it would take a lifetime to know….

  Brooke was dreaming.

  She was back with the dragon again, after the dizzying ride through the huge whirlpool, and she was sitting at the bow of her little boat, unworried this time by the possibility of falling into the pit. That first fall, the dragon had assured her, was the worst. It took only a little practice, he predicted, and she’d be quite good at it.

  He was floating just a foot or so away from her, his undragonlike face frowning slightly because they were disagreeing again. “You’ve fallen once and jumped once,” he reminded her sternly. “And you still won’t kiss me?”

  With all the gravity he could have wished for Brooke tried to make him understand what was still hazy to herself. “It’s not that easy. Admitting that I love is one thing, but I’m still afraid.”

  “What’s to be afraid of?” he asked reasonably. “People fall in love and have lives
together. You know—the pitter-patter of little feet, a mongrel dog, and a mortgage?”

  Brooke frowned at him. “You’re not people,” she pointed out.

  “I will be when you kiss me.”

  She frowned harder. “That’s just it—you won’t be. I mean, I’m not so sure you’re real. I’m nervous of extremes in anything, and you’re just a little too good to be true. If you’re who you’re supposed to be, that is, and I must say that you could look a little more like him if you tried.” This last was said irritably.

  “Kiss me and I’ll look exactly like him,” the dragon promised, ignoring the rest.

  Brooke folded her arms and glared at him. “You’re not listening to me.”

  “You aren’t saying anything that matters.”

  “It matters to me!” she almost yelled. “I can’t lose again, especially not him. I’d die if I lost him, that’s what scares me. There’s no going back now, I know that, but can’t you promise that I won’t lose him?”

  “You know better than that,” the dragon chided gently. “I don’t have the power to make that kind of promise, and I wouldn’t even if I could.”

  She was startled, then angry. “Dammit, why wouldn’t you if you could?”

  “Only children expect blind promises.”

  “I’m not a child! I—”

  “Aren’t you?” The dragon floated nearer, huge golden eyes very grave and too perceptive. “Aren’t you asking me to make the same promise you asked your father for when you were five?”

  Brooke wanted to rise, wanted to leave, or wake up, or lash out at him, but she was frozen, numbly listening.

  “He promised he’d never leave you, didn’t he? But he left, and never mind that it wasn’t willingly. A child couldn’t see that. He left you. And your mother left you, although in a different way. And then Josh left you. He didn’t promise that he wouldn’t; he was too sensible for that. But he left you in the end. And now you want promises from me, empty promises.”