Page 23 of Secrets of the Dragon's Heart

“But I’m your monster, so you only have yourself to blame,” he said, taking her hand. “And now you’re stuck with me.”

“I can think of worse things,” she said, smiling at him. “I hope Max understands why I did what I did. I don’t want him to be mad at me; you’re one of his best friends.”

“He’ll understand,” he said. “You haven’t really done anything wrong, other than telling a few lies.”

“I hope that you’re right,” she said, looking up at him. “I can’t believe how wrong I got everything. I can’t believe I thought you were a bad guy. Looking back at it now, I see that it seems so silly.”

“But it brought us together,” he said, smiling down at her. “Max is going to give the island all the credit, you know that, right?”

Kennedy was silent for a second, “Where do you think that tiger came from?” she asked. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t think of a logical explanation. Tigers aren’t native to these islands, and they're not even close. So how did one get here?”

“I wish I had a good answer to that question. I was completely convinced that all this talk about the islandinfluencing people’s lives was just that, talk. I made that very clear when I got here,” he said, then shook his head. “Now, as much as I hate to admit it, I’m not so sure. Between the stories I’ve heard and our little encounter with the tiger, it’s getting harder to deny that it might be true.”

“It’s made me a believer, that’s for sure, that tiger was real, not our imagination and if you hadn’t shifted, it would have killed us both,” she said, then hesitated for a second. “Cameron, I think I should tell you that I was going to do a story about the island too. It was my editor’s idea at first, but when it looked like I might have been wrong about you, it started to sound like a good idea to me, too.”

“You said was,” he said, studying her. “Are you still planning to do the story?”

Kennedy shook her head. “Besides the fact that I’m personally involved, it’s not really my kind of story,” she said, then took his hand, making him feel the warmth of their love. “What’s happened to us since we came to the island is private, Cameron. I’m not about to share it with the entire world.”

“It’s going to be hard enough to tell Max; he’s going to be saying I told you so for the rest of our lives,” he said with a groan, then looked over at her and grinned. “I’m going to need lots of sympathy.”

“You’ve got that look in your eye again,” she said. “Behave yourself. I’ll give you plenty of sympathy when you deserve it.”

He laughed. “You drive a hard bargain, sweetheart,” he said, then looked up to see Max striding toward them, a mixture of anger and worry on his face. “But get ready for that sympathy. Here comes Max and he doesn’t look happy.”

***Kennedy***

Kennedy’s stomach did a summersault. Max had every right to be angry with her, and he might not be as forgiving as Cameron. “What the hell have you two been doing?” Max asked when they were close enough, then looked at their joined hands and let out a groan. “I should have known, but did you really have to block out the entire mountain with that storm? Do you have any idea how hard that was to explain to the rest of the people on the island? I’ve been doing damage control since it started yesterday afternoon. I was just glad to see it was gone when I woke up this morning, not that I slept that much…”

“Hold on,” Cameron said, interrupting Max’s tirade. “It was a storm, Max. We don’t control the weather. I’m sorry we didn’t come back sooner, but it rained most of the night, so we came back as soon as we could.”

Max let out a huff. “The only place it rained was up on the mountain where you were,” he said. “Look around you. Does it look like it rained here all night?”

They both looked around and then at each other. “No, but you can’t blame us,” Cameron said. “Besides, even if it was our fault, I don’t know how we could have stopped it. By the way, there’s a slim possibility that there’s a tiger loose on the island.”

Max’s mouth popped open, and he stared at them in shock. “Cameron, that wasn’t the way to tell him,” she said, elbowing him in the ribs. “Now he’s even more upset, and I still haven’t told him the truth about why I’m here.”

“A tiger…on the island. This can’t be happening. I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Max said, then looked at the two of them. “My cabin, right now. We’re going to get to the bottom of this and fast. Do I really need to send someone out to look for a tiger?”

“It looked real enough yesterday,” Cameron said, a sheepish look on his face. “I might have been wrong aboutthe island. There might be something to what you’ve been telling me.”

“You think,” Max said, rolling his eyes. “Let’s go. I’ve got to call Mateo, he’s the only one I can trust with this. If there’s a tiger roaming around the island, he’ll be able to find it.”

“Okay, start talking,” Max said before the front door to his cabin was even closed. “Tell me about the tiger first. We’ll get to the rest later.”

“Do you think we could at least sit down,” Cameron said. “We just hiked five miles.”

“Talk while you sit,” Max said, leading them back to the kitchen. “What the hell happened up there?”

“We stopped for lunch about half a mile from the cliff. We were almost done eating when a tiger came strolling out from the jungle,” he said. “It was clearly thinking we were dinner, so I sent Kennedy for help, but of course, she didn’t listen and came back. I finally had to shift to chase it off. The storm started not long after that. We found our way to a cave and waited it out, and now here we are.”

Max studied them for a second. “I have a feeling there are a few details you left out, not that I want to hear them,” he said, holding up his hands. “I just need to know if you two are together now, because it sure would be nice if this was the end of it.”

Cameron looked over at her, then back at Max. “We’re as together as we can be,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of stuff to work out, but I’m not giving Kennedy up even if I have to cause a big scandal. You should know that right now. You know what my father expects, Max. This is going to be a fight, but I don’t see what that has to do with the island or you.”

“Oh, it will, just you wait and see,” Max said, then looked over at Kennedy. “Now, do you want to tell me who you really are?”

Suddenly on the spot, her stomach clenched with nerves. “First, I just want to say that I’m sorry I lied to you, but as I explained to Cameron, I was trying to do my job,” she said, then let out a long sigh. “Now, it’s all a bit embarrassing, but I’m a reporter. I saw Cameron at a fundraiser, and well…I think I mistook attraction for the feeling I always get when I’m onto a good story. My editor and I cooked up the game show thing so I could come to the island and get close to him. Now I’m pretty sure I’m going to get fired when Steve finds out there’s no story.”

---