Page 38 of To Ignite a Dragon's Desire

“No. My bachelor’s is in business, but I took whatever job was hiring when the economy started to crash.” I sipped my beer. “I went back to night school while I worked in the kitchen at the retirement home until I got certified as a nursing assistant. I’ve been doing that for the past ten years. Or I was until we decided to… leave.”

And that’s all he was getting from me.

“I see.” Malachy’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “No wonder my brother is interested. You’re smart, capable, a hard worker, beautiful, and kind.”

He listed off the qualities like facts—not flirting—but I felt the blush creep onto my face anyway. These brothers sure knew how to make a lady swoon. He had to be lying to butter me up.

My eyes narrowed.Why?

“What?” Malachy asked.

“Nothing.” I shook my head, not sure if I could trust my instincts. Was he just being nice?

Should I be worried?

What I needed to do was change the subject.

I pointed to his healing injuries. “Want to tell me how those happened?”

Malachy took a long sip of his beer, studying me before he spoke again.

“Nope,” he popped his ownP.

“Touché.” I raised my beer toward his and grinned when he toasted me. It felt like a victory. My radar still wasn’t fixed. He didn’t seem that bad. And I guessed he did kind of protect the world according to the other dragons. “So, you’re the guardian.”

“You sound disappointed. Did you expect something else?” He drained the rest of his beer.

I hadn’t sounded disappointed. At least that wasn’t what I intended. But something told me this was more about him anyway.

“Someone bigger, maybe,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood again.

“They don’t make them much bigger,” he smirked, sliding his empty bottle across the counter. “Can I get another one?”

Since he didn’t need medical assistance, the least I could do was help with the pain. I cracked him a second beer and got us both a glass of water.

The phone buzzed in my back pocket and I pulled it out, hoping to see Ember or Willow’s name.

I deleted the unknown text without reading it.

“It must be hard, dealing with this whole prophecy-ending thing,” I said, trying to focus on problems that weren’t my own. I couldn’t imagine being pushed out of a job that important, especially when he’d been doing it for the past few hundred years.

Malachy huffed a hollow laugh. “You could say that.”

Kieran had explained that Malachy somehow absorbed the energy of the earth and calmed the seismic activity every time it fired up. But then things started getting out of control and Malachy had grown weaker as his term came to an end.

I wanted more details. Maybe then I’d understand how and why it was so important to Lucan that I was his mate. Then I could decide if I even wanted that role.

“You seem to know a lot about dragons for a human,” Malachy interrupted my thoughts.

“She knows what Kieran’s told her.” Lucan’s booming voice had butterflies swooping in my stomach. The tension eased in my shoulders—tension I didn’t even realize I was holding.

“Is everything all right?”Eww.Why did I sound so breathless? He was the one who’d changed into a dragon and flew off to fight… someone or something.

“It is now that I’ve dealt with the dragon.” Lucan’s smile had my toes curling. “Shawn is dead.”

I nodded as if this was the most natural thing in the world to hear. Took out the trash. Grabbed the mail. Killed the dragon knocking at my wards.

And I was still smiling.

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