Page 16 of Sparks Flying

I’d come out here for a bit of peace and quiet to go over everything Patrick and his team had shared with me. I knew I wasn’t going to get that now.

This particular cliff had been my escape from life for as long as I could remember. It was filled with a lifetime of memories. Yet now, when I looked around, all I saw was her.

Confused and irritated, I knew I wasn’t going to get the peace out here that I came for, so I got back into my car and drove to the office. Maybe if I dove into work, I would stop thinking about the mysterious Westin Force girl.

If only it had been that easy.

All afternoon I thought of nothing but her.

Janice had called, asking to hook up for the night and I’d said yes on impulse. No sooner had I hung up the phone my raven began crowing in my head like never before. It gave me a massive headache bordering on migraine. So I called her back and canceled.

I was just packing up to call it quits early when Bernice knocked on my door.

“Dean, Patrick O’Connell is here to see you.”

Sighing, I nodded. “Let him in.”

When she opened the door, a breeze blew in. I sniffed the air. It was a weird thing to do and not normal for a raven shifter, but for some reason I caught her scent and I knew Patrick wasn’t alone.

Seconds later, it was confirmed. I wasn’t going crazy. Well, maybe I was, but I was right about this.

Patrick was staring at me.

“Sorry. Please, come in. Take a seat.”

“If this is a bad time, we can come back later.”

“No. Everything’s fine.”

“Okay then. Dean, this is Bailey. She’s one of our most promising interns this semester.”

I couldn’t help but notice how cute she looked as she blushed at the compliment.

“Bailey, this is Dean Davenport.”

“Head of Ravenden security. I read all about him in the briefing.”

Why did it bother me that she didn’t tell him we’d already met? There was no reason I knew of that it should be a secret.

“We’ve met,” I blurted out, and then glared at her as she shot me a look of exasperation.

I didn’t like that look one bit, and neither did my raven. I was still nursing a headache, only this time it was much worse because it felt like he was pecking the inside of my brain, trying to get free.

I’d never had an issue controlling my raven before, so why now? Other species, like wolf shifters, were infamously known for this sort of behavior, but not my kind. Patrick was a wolf shifter. Maybe being around him was rubbing off on me. Did that happen in real life? Could another shifter type affect my own animal?

I was going to have to ask my brothers about this theory, because it felt too dumb to ask Patrick.

“When did the two of you meet?” Patrick asked.

There was that look again from Bailey. It literally made me squirm in my seat.

“Archie asked me to check something out by the cliffs and he showed up there,” she said honestly.

“Pretty much,” I agreed.

Bailey wouldn’t even look my way, and it was pissing me off. What the hell had I done to deserve this?

I thought back to our brief meeting and there was nothing that I could come up with to warrant this.

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