Page 31 of The Dragon's Mate Proposal

“I’m sure it was,” I said.

“Is,” Cade corrected firmly.

“You can’t possibly know that. Things have changed. It could just be—”

I stopped talking as we cleared a rise and the swimming hole, as he put it, became visible.

“Is,” Cade said emphatically, smirking as we walked down the slight incline and out of the shade of the trees.

There was no point in denying him this victory as my shoes sunk slightly into the sandy shores. The river itself ran past at a respectable pace, the sunlight glinting off its surface as it dashed against a rock, split around it, and continued to flow downstream.

In front of us, a wading pool filled with river water waited, serene and calm, mostly separated by the faster moving water by a sandbank, which allowed only a few handfuls of water to spill over the edge.

The word that came to mind was idyllic. There was just something so perfect about the setting.

“I could stay out here for hours,” I said, listening to the peace of the forest surrounding us.

Walking up to the edge of the water, I reached down to swish my hand through it, expecting it to be frigid.

“What the hell?” I asked, looking up sharply as warm, inviting water welcomed my intrusion. “How is this not freezing, or at least cool?”

“Hot spring,” Cade said with a knowing smile. He must have expected that reaction. “The river, though …”

I wandered over to the edge, dipping the same hand in. As I’d expected, the water was cold.

“That’s more like what I expected,” I said, standing up to look at Cade.

Only he wasn’t there.

I glanced around. “Cade?” I called, not immediately seeing anything.

“Over here,” came the muffled reply.

Hurrying around the swimming hole, I followed his voice a couple of dozen feet downstream. The sounds of activity were loud, and when I stepped around a bush, it became clear what he was doing.

A pile of fresh debris had been cleared from a low-rising metal box perhaps six feet by ten feet.

“The water pump?”

“Yeah.” He started going to work on it. I watched as he wrapped his hands around a large bolt that held the lid on. Muscles in his forearm, shoulder, chest, and core all tightened as he flexed. Metal shrieked terribly, and then the bolt gave way, turning easily. Cade repeated the process twice more.

“I guess tools aren’t really necessary when you have dragon strength,” I said with a little laugh, still finding myself surprised at the power these people possessed.

“For the big stuff,” Cade said, pulling the top off the cover and looking inside, pulling fistfuls of leaves and twigs out and tossing them aside. “But I’m going to need some screwdrivers to take this mess apart. I’ll probably have to rebuild the entire thing.”

He started poking and prodding around in the inside, continually tossing bits and pieces of stuff out as he went. At one point, an entire animal nest came sailing over the edge.

“What’s the verdict?”

“Well, the drive belt is completely chewed through, and there are several fittings that have come loose, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it needs several new capacitors. A new gauge … some pipe tape to resecure everything, of course, and possibly a …”

I smiled and nodded. I knew what tape was. And gauges. But the rest was all mumbo jumbo to me. Cade seemed to know what he was doing, though.

“So, can you get it up and going?” I asked.

“I should be able to, yeah,” he said, standing up, smacking his hands together to try to clean them off, though he only partially succeeded. Some of the dirt was sticking. “Just not sure when.”

“Great,” I said with a half-smile.

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