Chained: Reckless Desires (Dragon's Heart Book 1) Read Free Page A

termination. She knew how the machinery of corporate law worked. She’d seen the gears grind up well-meaning people who thought good intentions were more powerful than a contract. It was just surprising to find that she was now the one caught in those jagged metal teeth.
    There was no one else close enough to call. Ex-boyfriends? She didn’t have any she was close enough with. And since she’d spent two years actively ignoring all of her non-work friends, none of them were likely to help her.
    That left only one person in the whole world she could call for help. But he was the one person she’d resolved to never ask for anything.
    She found his number in her contacts and thumbed the button. He answered on the first ring.
    “Hello? Who is this?” his voice was stern and distant. Like always.
    “Dad, it’s Bella. I need help.”
    Her father sighed with disappointment.
    “I’ve lost my job, Dad, and I have nowhere to go.”
    “I don’t have any money,” he said. “At least none to spare.” She could feel him pushing her away with every breath. Go ask anyone else , was the subtext.
    “I don’t need money. I need somewhere to sleep tonight.” She tried to find her grown-up voice, her lawyering voice, but when she spoke to him she was fifteen again.
    “I can’t have visitors here. The rules are very explicit. The Lord Winterborn detests guests.”
    Without him, she’d be homeless that night. Maybe she could track down an acquaintance and beg them, but without a phone it was unlikely.
    “Please, father. I’m begging you. I am literally begging you.” Her voice threatened to crack. “Please help me.”
    He sighed again, aggressively. The man had a thousand different ways of expressing disappointment with his sighs. “Very well. But it’s only temporary. A few days. Then you leave.”
    “Thank you. Seriously, thank you.”
    “Take the bus to Bearfield. I’ll meet you at the station after dark and then we’ll creep like common thieves back to my home so no one hears us.”
    Before she could say anything, the phone died.
    No service, it said.

Chapter 2
    T he bus ride gave Bella plenty of time to think, but she tried not to. During the day, the drive north was gorgeous—all mountains and sea and rolling hills. But at night it was all darkness and headlights. A sea of tail lights floated ahead of the bus, like embers from a fire blowing in the wind. She’d burned down her life—not on purpose, but the results couldn’t be argued with. The question was, could she rise from the ashes like a phoenix, or had the flames scarred her forever?
    God, she missed her phone.
    She arrived in Bearfield just after dark. The little vacation town was quaint, but too sleepy for Bella’s taste. It looked like the kind of place where nothing ever happened, and a new bakery opening up was the talk of the town for months. The bus station was just the parking lot next to a shuttered barbecue joint. A schedule tacked up on a post was the height of the technology on display.
    Bella missed San Francisco with every drop of her blood. It was such a beautiful city, full of opposites. The uber-rich, and the homeless. Cutting edge Silicon Valley ideas layered upon two hundred years of ghosts and traditions.
    She huddled into her sweater and sat on the curb, hoping her father would arrive soon.
    In the hurry to leave, she packed exactly one suitcase full of her own clothes. The firm had sent a messenger over, in Robert’s wake, with an itemized list of the suits and dresses and shoes and even underwear that they had paid for and therefore considered their property. They impounded her panties. What would they do with them? It was mortifying. When the firm said they had a monthly clothes budget for her, she’d never stopped to consider that meant the clothes belonged to someone else—but they did. Or at least she couldn’t fight them on their claims. What was legal so often was just what a wealthy person declared was legal, until