Chained: Reckless Desires (Dragon's Heart Book 1) by Jacqueline Sweet Page A

cup of coffee waiting for her, light and sweet just like she liked it.
    “They’re always watching, y’know? And they like being helpful. Really, they’re friendly. Not like the other ones.”
    “What other ones?”
    “In other places, I mean. Last Halloween, when I met my boyfriend? There was this really nasty spirit that tried to get me killed. Some are like that. Just these like vibrations of anger and pain. But the spirits here are different. They aren’t angry. Or in pain. They’re just kind of sad and want to help out.”
    Bella wasn’t sure if she believed Chloe. Because, ghosts? Really? She wasn’t superstitious. She’d walk under a ladder just to prove a point. Black cats were the cutest of all cats. And the number thirteen was a perfectly good and ordinary number. But she couldn’t deny that Chloe seemed to know things, or that she had a spooky air about her. But Bella desperately wanted to be friends with the girl, so she kept all the doubt she felt out of her voice.
    And anyway, Chloe was busy. She had the kitchen all to herself. She may have only had to cook for a handful of people, but the recipes were not simple and the cleaning was not easy. The kitchen was one of five in the mansion, but it was the largest by far.
    Bella could feel her old instincts returning as she read through the sheaf of papers from Dorian. How long had it been since she’d really used her brain? Most of the lawyering work she’d done had not been complicated, but rather glorified scribe work. Taking a client’s needs and transcribing them into the formal language of the system, and then taking the formal responses and translating them back into ideas and words that the clients could understand, preserving as much nuance as possible. It was not satisfying work, by and large.
    She fell into the work, though. Her mind had been starving. Even with the great library—why was it a separate building?—she’d been unchallenged. That all changed with the new position.
    After hours of reading and drinking coffee and nibbling at the simply incredible scones topped with thick dollops of sweet cream, Chloe interrupted her.
    “Okay, break time,” she said, nibbling at a hunk of cheese like a blue-haired mouse. “What’s this thing you’re reading here?”
    Bella almost said, “The spirits didn’t tell you?” but she caught herself. She couldn’t tease Chloe or challenge her. The girl’s identity was wrapped up in her self-image of being a psychic. To poke at it would be to lose a friend, so instead she said, “There’s a lot here and I’m not a trained accountant, like Vincent was, so some of this I’ll need to google to understand, but the gist is that the estate is broke.”
    “But, how?” Chloe said. “It’s so big.”
    “It has no income and massive expenses.”
    “You should fire Rodney. That’d save some money,” Chloe laughed. “But then who would grope our asses when we weren’t looking?”
    “True,” Bella agreed, feeling a momentary stab of jealousy that she wasn’t the only one he flirted with. “Our asses would go sadly ungrabbed and unfondled.”
    “We could grab each other’s asses,” Chloe said. “But I’m straight, so I don’t think I’d do it right.”
    “Maybe we could hire someone cheaper? A dedicated part-time ass grabber?”
    “Do they have those?” Chloe asked, her head tilted slightly like she was listening to some distant music. “Is there an Uber for ass-grabbing?”
    “An AirBnB for sexual harassment?” Bella joked, then sighed. “But no, firing all of us wouldn’t even be a drop in the bucket. The estate hasn’t paid taxes in forever and there are other debts referred to in here, but I’m having a hard time figuring out their sources. But it’s a helluva lot of money. I can see why Winterborn is so stressed out.”
    Chloe gave her an odd look.
    “What? What did I say?”
    “Nothing, it’s just. I mean, I’ve only been here like six months myself. But they say