Free If There Be Dragons by Kay Hooper Page A

With the wolf comfortably inside with them now, she was no longer haunted by a mental cry she didn’t understand and was far more relaxed than Cody had yet seen her.
    And throughout the afternoon his seemingly casual but intent observation of her behavior gave him clues as to how to go about slaying the dragons standing between them.
    He noticed first of all that Brooke was intensely wary of being touched; drawing away seemed almost a reflex with her. While she could touch him with apparent calm when dealing with his injured ankle, or allow him to lean on her as she had the night before, the most casual of
unnecessary
physical contact caused an inner stiffening that Cody could sense more than feel.
    With the neatly logical mind that made him a wizard with computers, Cody sifted the possibilities until he arrived at one that seemed to explain Brooke’s wariness. Gradually he realized that the inner stiffening he felt was simply a shoring up of her mental wall. Physical contact, he decided, probably made her more vulnerable to mental contact.
    That explanation satisfied Cody’s critical scrutiny, so he set his mind to finding a way of dealing with the problem. The answer promised a great many sleepless nights for him; to become accustomed to anything a person had to be gradually exposed to it. And while his own inner conviction and strong desires might have led him to push Brooke into a relationship she wasn’t ready for, his innate wisdom and a caution born of love joined together in the voice of reason.
    So Cody held on to his willpower with every atom of control and set about getting Brooke accustomed to being touched undemandingly. He had to overcome instincts within her, instincts that had been sharpened by her need to guard her mind. He slowly and carefully had to invade the private territory that every human being claimed and marked as personal; had to convince Brooke that there was no threat to herself in allowing him so close.
             
    Brooke tensed slightly when Cody reached over to take her hand in a gentle clasp. They were sitting on a couch before a blazing fire in the sunken den. Supper was over and the wind was howling in the darkness outside.
    His hand was large and warm, its strength only a promise since there was no force in his grip. Brooke, her unusual senses reacting to the contact as iron to a magnet, instantly and expertly slammed the door opening between them. She felt the lightness that had been the rule since lunch evaporate, felt tension and uneasiness creep into her awareness. She wanted to pull her hand away, but couldn’t seem to, and she couldn’t say a word.
    Luckily for both Cody’s plans and Brooke’s composure, Phantom came into the room just then to create a timely diversion. The wolf moved steadily, swinging his splinted leg with a touch of awkwardness but seemingly in no pain. He negotiated the step down into the room cautiously, then came toward the pair watching him from the couch. He sniffed at the bearskin rug before the hearth and then, concluding that it wasn’t actively hostile, sank down on the snowy whiteness with an almost human sigh.
    “I guess he didn’t want to be alone,” Cody noted.
    “Looks that way.” Brooke tried to forget the hands clasped on the cushion between them, but her awareness of Cody—having nothing to do with her telepathy, she realized—wouldn’t let her forget. “Uh…how’s the ankle?” she asked rather hastily.
    Cody glanced at his bound ankle, which was resting on a pillow on top of the coffee table. “Fine.” He sent a faint grimace toward the crutches resting against a nearby chair. “You’ll be able to put those things back in the closet soon.”
    “When the ankle’s healed and not a minute sooner,” she told him firmly.
    “Yes, Doctor,” he murmured with a smile.
    “Don’t mock me.”
    He lifted her hand and kissed it briefly. “Wouldn’t think of it.”
    Brooke stared fiercely at the fire. Lips, she