Read If There Be Dragons for Free Online

compassion in strangers—particularly men. Few people casually met were unthreatened by her abilities. Only her friends—mostly unique people she’d met through Pepper—accepted her abilities without a blink. Those friends didn’t know of the early years and the bitter seeds sown, which was fine with Brooke; their easy acceptance helped her put everything in perspective.
    And so her painful words to Cody the night before had shocked her; she hadn’t realized that she still felt that unhappiness so strongly. Had Cody’s declaration of love frightened her so badly that she’d reached back into bitter memory for something to shove between them?
    Brooke swallowed the last of her coffee and immediately poured another cup. Love? The man was mad. Who would want to get involved with a woman who read minds and possessed dragons? That last brought a crooked smile to her lips. Dragons? Yes, and he’d neatly pounced on the biggest, most fire-breathing dragon of them all. A quick-witted, intelligent man, Brooke thought. And sensitive too. But she wasn’t about to get involved with him. Relationships between men and women had too many strikes against them to begin with without throwing psychic stuff into the pot.
    So. She’d try her damnedest to prove to him that there was absolutely nothing wrong. She was fine. And then he’d leave.
    Brooke felt a sharp pang, and instantly squashed it. He’d leave. If she could only get him away from here before night and the fear came—he’d leave. And she’d face that bogey in the dark the best way she could.
    She looked up quickly when the back door swung inward, not surprised by his entrance because she’d felt him coming. Almost absently she shored up her walls to guard against his odd ability to creep into her mind.
    “Morning.” Cody brushed snow off his shoulders, bright golden eyes looking at her intently.
    “Morning.” Brooke forced down the thought that last night’s lamplight hadn’t done him justice: how many hearts had he broken with those incredible golden eyes? Her eyes skimmed over his broad shoulders, the leanly muscular frame, then back up unconsciously to examine a face that was very nearly classical in its masculine beauty. A golden man, she thought dimly, with all the warmth and compelling attraction of the precious metal that had built kingdoms and toppled them.
    Gold fever, she thought, and then hastily dismissed the implications of that. “You’ve been busy, I see. How’s the ankle?”
    Cody was so fascinated by the easy amusement in her green eyes and the warmth in that gruff little voice that he nearly forgot to answer. “Oh, it’s better. The swelling’s gone down quite a bit. I’ve been making friends with Mister—although the effort was somewhat one-sided.”
    Brooke started to tell him that she knew exactly where he’d been, but swallowed the words. And she realized that last night’s declaration wasn’t going to be referred to; Cody apparently understood that she was hardly ready for love from a stranger. She said, “I gather you’ve also been fixing the generator.”
    He shrugged out of his jacket and crossed the room to hang it on the back of a kitchen chair, limping only slightly. “It wasn’t hard. I scrounged a bit and found some spare parts in the shed with the generator. Besides, I thought we’d probably need the juice; there’s a blizzard starting up out there.”
    She turned to look out the window, a little surprised to realize that she hadn’t thought to check the weather before. She saw snow beginning to blow around outside, the flakes ominously large. Absently she said, “I wondered why last night’s storm never hit; it looks like it was holding back until today.”
    “Stranded for days.”
    “I can always take you down in the Sno-Cat.” Brooke turned away from the window and looked at Cody, noting his startled expression. “The Cat can get through anything.”
    Cody stared at her for a long moment. “How about some