Free Love Burns by Georgette St. Clair

behind these attacks? I did overhear him saying that if you got married, then you’d be safe. Maybe he’s trying to force your hand.”
    “My father?” she echoed in astonishment. She considered what he’d just said. “Well, I’d say it was a possibility if it weren’t for the fact that the dragon was straight-up trying to kill me. I don’t think my father wants me dead. He wants to control me. He was the same way with my mother. He’s an angry control freak. Also, he wants me to get married so he can collect the dowry. If he had me murdered, then he’d never get a dowry.”
    Calder nodded. “That’s all true, although I still feel like he’s up to something shady. Well, whoever’s after you, you’d be considerably safer if you moved in with me.”
    She started to argue, and he added, “What about your friend Ermengarde? If someone tries to attack you again, she’ll probably come out and try to defend you. With her frying pan.”
    He had her there. Ermengarde was just like Olivia in her tendency to charge in first and think about the consequences afterwards. But she was human, so if she went up against a dragon, she’d be dead within seconds. Olivia would never forgive herself if that happened.
    “Why would you do this for me?” she asked Calder.
    He shrugged and smiled, giving her an innocent look. “Like I said. It helps South Lyndvale if I have an ice dragon living with me. Henrik will have to include it in his report.”
    “So you’re saying this is all fake? You wouldn’t hit on me or try to flirt with me?”
    “Of course I’d try to flirt with you.” He grinned at her. “But you’ll be sleeping in your own room, if you want to, and you can always say no.”
    “Uh…I’ll have to think about it…” She saw her father’s patrol car pulling up, and grimaced.
    Her father got out of the car and began barreling towards them.
    “Done,” she agreed quickly. “We are now officially fake-dating.”

Chapter Nine
     
    Calder sat with her at the police station while she filled out yet another report about being attacked by a fire dragon, and ignored her father’s furious protests about her choice of “mate”. Her father also nastily shut Calder down when he tried to inquire about the progress of the investigation into the attacks on Olivia.
    Then she went to a car rental agency to rent a car. She took out the maximum amount of insurance, just to be on the safe side.
    Afterwards, Calder sent several of his men to her house to pack up her belongings and move them to Calder’s, while she went to city hall and tried to get some work done. She spent the afternoon answering phone calls and catching up on everything she’d missed so far.
    Finally, when she was done, she decided to go find the Mortensen kids and tell them that the bullies wouldn’t be on the playground. She’d already gotten an okay from city hall to hire back Lionel, the centurion her father had fired, in the capacity of security guard, and he was on patrol at the park that day.
    He was turning out to be a big hit, apparently, as he sat there making ice sculptures and snow forts for the kids. The parents liked having him there, and the kids climbed all over him and begged him to make more snow for their snowballs. Younger dragon shifters didn’t have a lot of cold-making power.
    She looked up the address of the Mortensen house by consulting city hall records. It turned out that the power had been turned off, she saw. She paid for it to be turned back on, putting it on her credit card.
    Velma, the woman from the city utility department, made a face and shook her head as she accepted the payment. “You and your mother. Your family sure has a soft spot for those Mortensens.”
    “My mother did too?” Olivia asked, surprised.
    “Yep.” Velma nodded, her gray permed curls bobbing. “Always hung out with…what was his name…David, when nobody else in school would talk to him. But then he turned out to be a thug, just like his