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He knew.
I hadn’t even told him, but he knew.
Salem had always been able to figure things out like that. He was a clever dragon, and my initial instinct when he said that he knew was to shift into my polar bear form and run out into the darkness.
At some point, night had settled on us here on Dragon Isle, and I knew that I was going to be spending the night here in the cottage with Salem.
Not that I minded.
That was what I’d come here for, anyway.
“What?”
“Just tell me,” he said gently. “Tell me what happened, Miranda.”
I took a deep breath, and then I blurted it all out.
“I finished law school. I got a job. It was fantastic. My boss was really cool, and I liked him a lot. I worked for him for six years, but then he got sick and had to retire. And then he passed away.”
It had all been really fast and really unexpected.
“I’m sorry,” Salem shook his head. “That must have been difficult.”
“It was.” Kevin had been so unlike Keith that it made my head spin. “His brother and sister took over his firm, and that was when everything kind of went downhill.”
Salem seemed to do quick math in his head, and then he asked me about the timeline.
“So, this was two years ago?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Four years of college, three years of law school, and six years at the firm.”
Fifteen damn long years that I should have spent here with Salem, but I hadn’t.
I felt a not-so-small twinge of regret as I thought of all of the many adventures I could have had with Salem. Sure, now we were together and talking and catching up, but we’d missed so much.
He looked at me carefully, and I wondered what he was thinking. The thing about Salem was that I never had to wonder for long, though, because he was always more than willing to tell me what he was thinking.
And he always chose to focus on things that surprised me.
“You finished your undergrad in four years?”
I nodded. It hadn’t been easy, and four years wasn’t the standard for graduating the way it had been once upon a time, but I’d barely slept, taken out loans, and worked as much as I could to make it happen.
In hindsight, it probably hadn’t been the healthiest way to use my time.
“Incredible,” he shook his head.
“Please don’t say I’m incredible,” I whispered.
I wasn’t.
Someone who was incredible never would have left him in the first place. Someone who was incredible wouldn’t have walked away after a fight and never looked back.
I wasn’t incredible.
I was just...
“Anyway, Keith – that’s the brother, my new boss – was fine at first. He was always hosting dinners for the staff members and the attorneys at the firm. The sister, Lane, kind of just did her own thing. She wanted to grow the company. Keith just wanted to coast.”
“Sounds like it was working out okay.”
“It was. At first.”
And then it wasn’t.
“Keith asked me out, and I said no. Conflict of interest. You know the drill.”
He nodded.
“And besides, I wasn’t interested in him.”
“I understand.”
Salem wasn’t upset that I was talking about the idea of me dating people. I’d been gone a long damn time. I was certain we’d both dated people over the years during the time I was apart. That was inevitable.
“It was kind of fine for a little while. Like, he backed off. He actually dated one of the paralegals for a little while. Then she quit suddenly and left, and I never knew what happened, but I think I have a pretty good idea now.”
I took a deep breath. Now that I was here and talking, it was harder than I thought it was going to be. I needed to just power through. Salem was patient enough. He’d been waiting long enough.
“It was about six months ago that Keith started having me stay late at work. He said he was in love with me, and that I was his everything.”
A lie.
“I told him that I wasn’t interested in him like that.”
The truth.
“And he told me that I didn’t have a choice in the matter anymore.”
Possibly true.
“He said that if I didn’t tell everyone we were together, and if I didn’t date him, and if I didn’t make the firm look good by being ‘his girl,’ that he was going to throw me under the bus.”
“Throw you under the bus? For what?”
Salem was doing a great job keeping his anger under control, but as my mate, I knew that he was probably boiling on the inside. Dragons were especially possessive and protective when it came to the people they loved.
He doesn’t love me anymore.
“That’s where it gets messy. After Kevin died and Keith and Lane took over the firm, something happened. Keith started messing with the books. Skimming off the top.”
“I believe the legal term is embezzlement,” Salem said dryly.
“Yeah, well, whatever you want to call it, that’s what Keith was doing, and I found out around the same time that he approached me.”
I had been an idiot for not knowing sooner.
I’d been a moron for not getting out before things escalated.
When Kevin was my boss, he’d been kind and fair. His siblings, on the other hand, fidgeted. They’d been bossy and arrogant and they’d made decisions that didn’t always make sense.
Half of the legal team had already left the firm.
That should have been a warning sign for me to jump ship before it was too late.
But I hadn’t.
I’d stayed on as an employee, clinging to the sinking vessel, and now I was paying the price.
“I’d suspected it for a while, you know. I got this bad, icky sort of vibe.”
“Is icky the legal term?” Salem asked. His eyes twinkled.
Ignoring him, I kept talking.
“One day, a few accounts I was working with just weren’t adding up, and I realized what was going on. That was the night he told me I had to be his or he was going to make me take the blame. He said he had proof that it was me who did it.”
“Is that so?” Salem asked. I wondered if Salem knew that his eyes turned orange when he got mad. For a lot of dragons, their eyes changed to gold or orange when they were angry about something, but Salem’s eyes only changed when he was really, really pissed off.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t sleep with him.” For some reason, that was something that I was proud of. Out of everything that happened, and out of everything I’d gone along with, I hadn’t slept with him.
Salem stroked my cheek.
“Finish your story, cupcake.”
“That paralegal he’d dated? She called me out of the blue last week. From prison. Told me that she heard we were dating, and she wanted to warn me. Apparently, she thought he’d been in love with her, but he’d framed her for a couple of legal things, too, and she had quietly been arrested and sent to prison. She asked if I could help her out.”
“By what? Doing a little snooping, getting some information on a flash drive, and turning it in?”
“Yes.”
“And how did that work out for you?” Salem asked.
“Well,” I swallowed hard. “Piper is still in jail, but...” I pulled the flash drive out of my pocket and held it up. “I have this.”
“You got the flash drive.”
“I got the flash drive.”
“And does it show you everything you need?”
“Yes,” I nodded. “I need to get it to Piper’s attorney so he can try to use it and get the information he needs to prove her innocence.”
“I’m sensing there’s a but here.”
“Keith caught me in his office,” I told him. “I tried to play it off, but he knew something was weird. He didn’t realize I had the flash drive, but that night when I went back to my apartment, he was there waiting for me. He wouldn’t leave me alone and insisted on staying all night.”
“He knew something was up.”
“I had to sneak out of the apartment.”
“So, you got away.”
I nodded.
“Then when I went back the next day, the whole place had been vandalized. I wasn’t sure if it was him or if he’d maybe left the door unlocked when he’d left, like maybe someone had broken in...”
I paused, trying to get through the story.
“Someone broke into my car, too.”
“What the fuck?” Salem bristled. I knew he wanted to protect me.
“And then someone broke into the law firm where I work. They went through my office in particular. Lane fired me immediately. She said she didn’t know – and I quote – ‘what sort of messed up shit’ I was into, but she didn’t want it around the office. Keith begged her to let me stay, but she was done. The look in his eyes, though...I knew he was the one who had done it. I knew he was looking for the flash drive. That’s when I decided to come here.”
I shivered uncontrollably.
“But he might have followed me, Salem, and I don’t know what to do now.”