Slaying the Dragon (Deception Duet #2) Read Online Free

deserves anything but the best. And that’s exactly what he’ll get.”
    “What if it’s a girl?”
    “Trust me. It’s a boy. I have a knack for knowing these things.” He winked and placed a tender kiss on my cheek. For the first time since leaving my doctor’s office earlier, I actually felt as if I could get through this, that I didn’t need Tyler to be a good mom to the baby growing inside me.
    I relaxed into Brayden’s arms, wanting to live in that moment for as long as possible. I was calm, the demons that had been haunting me absent. Brayden gave me a sense of stability and comfort that had been lacking from my life.
    “You loved him, didn’t you?” he commented softly.
    “I did, but it wasn’t real.”
    “What makes you say that? I saw the way he looked at you. I don’t care how good you are. You can’t fake that.”
    “He lied to me, boo.”
    Running his fingers up and down my back, he said, “I think he was truthful with you where it mattered. Nothing dishonest comes from love. We may hurt those we love, but we often think we’re doing right by them. We tend to lie to those we care about to protect them.”
    “There’s no black and white, only varying shades of gray hiding a kernel of truth,” I murmured, remembering my father’s words when he asked me to pretend as if he were dead. I had done so to protect him, to keep him safe. Did Tyler keep the truth of who he was and what he was doing for the same reason? And what was his kernel of truth?  
    His words from that day back in Boston, begging me to believe his love for me was real, replayed in my head, his remorse-filled eyes flashing through my memory. A look of realization washed over me and I snapped my eyes toward Brayden’s.
    A knowing smile on his face, he continued, “Like I said, you can fake a lot of things, Mackenzie, but you can’t fake being in love. There’s your kernel of truth.”

Tyler

    T HE AIR WAS DRY and dusty as I sat in the passenger seat of the all-terrain vehicle Eli expertly navigated through the barren desert of Sudan on a hot June day. The heat was unbearable, but at least I had all my limbs, which was more than could be said of many of the refugees seeking safety from South Sudan at the camp my brother’s company had been sponsoring for the past several years. The path that led me to this point in my life was an odd one, but I needed to be here.
    It had been over three months since I watched Mackenzie walk out of my life, but the look on her face when she found out the truth continued to haunt me, finding me no matter where I went. Every woman I saw had that same exact expression in her eyes. Men glared at me with a look of disgust, as if knowing I had destroyed the most precious gift there was…love. My betrayal and deception tormented me, reminding me I would never be worthy of anyone’s love again, especially Mackenzie’s. Regardless, I wasn’t giving up. I simply needed to do something to prove I had a heart…that I was someone worth taking a risk for…that I was someone worth forgiving despite the heartache I caused. But I needed to learn to forgive myself first, and I hoped that by protecting some of the most vulnerable people I had ever met would put me on the right path.
    However, that didn’t make me miss her any less. I missed her smile. Her voice. Her soul. Her heart. Her love. I was a coward. Even though I had limited access to a satellite phone and a computer here in the middle of nowhere, I hadn’t called or emailed her, following my brother’s orders to refrain from contacting her for security reasons. Even if I could contact her, nothing I said would ever tell her what she wanted to hear, what she deserved to hear. Instead, I kept a journal of all the things I wanted to say to her, hopeful she would be able to read it one day and see that she didn’t escape my thoughts once over the months of our separation.
    Carrying the guilt of the failed mission that would always haunt me, I