A Dream of a Deal (Caitlin Alexander Guardian Series Book 2)

A Dream of a Deal

Caitlin Alexander Guardian Series — Book 2

By Debra Sylver

Also in the series:

In Your Dreams – Book 1

A Dream of a Deal

Debra Sylver

Smashwords edition

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, dialogue and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 Debra Sylver.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electrical or mechanical without the express written permission of the copyright holder. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and you did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please go to your favorite ebook retailer and should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

Cover Design ©Melissa Alvarez, BookCovers.Us

Photography ©Depositphotos.com/ ©nejron / ©prometeus / © BackgroundStor, / ©lubavnel

ISBN: 978-0-9938211-5-8

To my favorite boys.

Table of Contents

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 — It’s nice to feel appreciated

Chapter 2 — You know you really want to

Chapter 3 — Your face will freeze like that

Chapter 4 — It’s written in your notebook

Chapter 5 — Nice move by the way

Chapter 6 — Nothing you can handle

Chapter 7 — She was in so much trouble

Chapter 8 — Affairs of the heart

Chapter 9 — A teenager in the house

Chapter 10 — Faeries for Dummies

Chapter 11 — The bargain

Chapter 12 — A high school dance

Chapter 13 — Is this a dream

Chapter 14 — Let the wooing begin

Chapter 15 — This one is special

Chapter 16 — Almost the size of dinner plates

Chapter 17 — Maybe the world would end

Chapter 18 — The lioness trusted him

Chapter 19 — Everyone knows

Chapter 20 — It’s your dad

About the Author

Bonus Excerpt from In Your Dreams

Chapter 1 — It’s nice to feel appreciated

Caitlin looked up from her computer in answer to the knock on her door. Come in, she called. A young woman walked in, looking upset. What’s wrong, Annette? she asked in concern.

Annette shut the door and started pacing up and down in front of Caitlin’s desk. She was petite with short auburn hair, green eyes and lightly freckled pale skin. Petite or not, she had a temper to match her red hair, and was one the best deal lawyers that Caitlin had. Caitlin had recently had her own role expanded to include supervising legal support for sales, and she was getting more involved in the revenue generating operations of the company. While it made life more hectic, it also made it more interesting.

Caitlin, I just cannot work with this sales team! Derek is constantly questioning my legal expertise, even in front of the client! I have no credibility with the client now, and cannot do my job properly. You must find another lawyer to negotiate this deal! she ranted. Flouncing over to the chair across from Caitlin’s desk, she sat down hard and crossed her arms.

Caitlin regarded Annette calmly. The deal Annette was working on was a high profile one that carried a lot of risk for the company. She was the best lawyer for the deal, and Caitlin was not going to replace her.

Are you sure that you aren’t overreacting? she asked gently.

Caitlin, during yesterday’s negotiation session, we had the lawyers on each side, the lead negotiators on each side, and a business relationship person on each side. Derek, as the business relationship person, is really just supposed to make sure that we maintain good relationships with the client during this difficult negotiation. He is not supposed to get involved in the actual negotiating! Yesterday, not only did he get involved, but he walked around to the client’s side of the table and sat with them, as if he were part of their team, not ours! Of course, we lost all traction and credibility from that point on. The lead business negotiator and I do not know what to do! Annette’s voice had reached an alarming crescendo by the time she had finished.

Caitlin hastened to calm her down. At the same time, she recognized that Annette’s concerns were valid. Body language like that in deal negotiations was a killer. Now the client knew that they could divide and conquer. More points to them, but she had to put a stop to it.

Let me talk to Derek, Annette. He knows how good a lawyer you are, and I will reinforce with him that given a choice between you and him staying on this deal, you will be one staying, Caitlin vowed. Honestly, how some people progressed up through the organization, she just didn’t understand. You did not throw your teammates under the bus. Ever.

Annette looked at her gratefully. Thank you, Caitlin. I don’t know what I would do without you.

You don’t need to thank me. That’s what I’m here for, she smiled. Now get out of here. I have a phone call to make.

After Annette left, Caitlin looked up Derek’s mobile number on their internal directory. Might as well get this over with. After a short conversation, Derek understood the new ground rules. Annette was not going to have any more trouble with him. She also called his supervisor, a woman Caitlin liked and admired, to give her a heads up about the situation so she would not be caught by surprise if Derek complained to her. She and Caitlin were two of the far too few female executives at the male-dominated company, and respected each other.

Just as she hung up the phone, Jaeden, the company’s Acting Chief Counsel, walked in her office. Ready for lunch? he asked.

Caitlin looked at her watch. Time for lunch already?

She considered Jaeden, appreciating the short blond hair, startling aquamarine eyes, high cheekbones, square jaw, sensual mouth and incredible body all in a well over six foot tall package. He had on a pair of gray slacks and blue checked shirt that brought out the color of his eyes. Her heart sped up a bit. Down, girl, she admonished herself. He’s the boss now.

She and Jaeden had a complicated relationship. Crazy as it sounded, they were both Guardians, protectors of the peace in an alternate reality that Caitlin had not even known existed until a little over a month ago. On her first trip there, compliments of a blow to the head, she had met Jaeden, the leader of the Guardians in that area.

Caitlin apparently was a special Guardian – she had a variety of powers that had manifested themselves almost the moment she had arrived, which was seemingly unheard of. Normally it took several months to a year for powers to appear in a new dreamer.

‘Dreamer’ was a term sometimes used to describe Guardians because they only visited the other reality when sleeping in their original reality. No matter how many days passed in the alternate reality, it all fit into the time spent sleeping in this one. Caitlin had passed several weeks in the other reality on her first visit, but in this reality, only the twenty-four hours that she was unconscious after she suffered a blow to her head had passed.

Not only did Caitlin’s powers start to manifest early, but they were also very strong, even for a Guardian. This made her a target for the other magical groups in that reality – the witches, the vampires, the weres, and the faeries, just to name a few. (She really needed a good guidebook to the other reality. She wasn’t even sure how many different types of magical groups there were.)

The witches, weres, vampires and faeries had all tried to take her as their own when she arrived, hoping to fulfill a prophecy that had been carried down through the ages. The prophecy said that a child of a Guardian would be born wielding powers of all the magical beings, and would bring together good and evil under his or her rule.

Since two Guardians could not produce a child – nobody knew why – each magical group thought that they were going to be the one to bring the Guardian child of the prophecy into the world. But they needed a Guardian female to mate with one of their beings.

Well, technically, they could have taken a Guardian male and mated him with one of their females, but practically speaking it was harder to force a male to mate if he didn’t want to. There were very few Guardian females for some reason, so Caitlin had attracted a lot of attention when she had first arrived. The strength of her powers was an added bonus to the different groups, kind of like smearing honey on meat left in the woods for bears. The bears were coming for the meat anyway – adding honey just excited them more.

During Caitlin’s first visit, some of the witches and wizards had kidnapped a woman named Clarissa, believing that her bloodline would be the one to produce the Guardian child. Clarissa was not a Guardian, but nobody knew exactly what she was – human, witch, were, or something else entirely. Caitlin had wound up leaving before the Guardians figured it out, or Clarissa confessed.

The witch who had kidnapped Clarissa did it because she had believed that Clarissa had already borne a child who would produce the Guardian child of the prophecy. Nobody knew where that child was, but the witch seemed sure that the child already existed. Clarissa did have a son, Liam, who appeared to be a werewolf, but according to the same witch he was not one who would bear, or more accurately father, the child of the prophecy.

It had been an exciting few weeks in the other reality. During that time, Jaeden and Caitlin had realized that they had feelings for each other. Much of her time there was spent with both of them trying to resist the attraction they had to each other. There was one major slip up one evening in Jaeden’s office where things had got a little out of hand, but they had been interrupted.

Looking back, Caitlin was glad it hadn’t gone any farther. Between the as yet undetermined relationship Jaeden and Bella, another Guardian, had before she came along, and Jaeden’s ex-girlfriend, Dr. Jenna Roberts, showing up, Caitlin didn’t want to become just another notch on Jaeden’s belt. That unfortunately didn’t change the fact that she was really attracted to him.

A complication was that she and Jaeden had performed a mind linking ceremony so that the Guardians could formally claim Caitlin and stop the attacks on her by the other groups. Eventually, she and Jaeden would be able to sense each other’s strong emotions from the mind link, but that hadn’t manifested itself yet and likely wouldn’t for many months.

Just in case all that wasn’t enough excitement, Caitlin had met the angels and demons, another rare occurrence. Lucky her. She also had the unheard of ability to teleport, which was a power of only angels and demons. Both the angel and demon she had met had separately confirmed that her teleporting power came from the angels, but could not or would not tell her why she had it. Guardians did not generally have angel powers. Another first for Caitlin. Yay, her.

All this passed through her mind in a few seconds. Jaeden had been asking her out to lunch for the past three weeks, ever since they got back. This was the first time she had said yes.

She was trying hard to keep her distance, to ignore the feelings she had for him in the hopes that they would go away, but it wasn’t easy. He was smart, principled, a leader – all the things she found attractive in a man. He also was gorgeous and had a killer body, which didn’t hurt either. She sometimes caught him looking at her in a way that made her heart miss a beat, and it was all starting to break down her resolve to keep their relationship strictly to a working one.

Part of keeping her distance meant only talking to him about work. She had even avoided talking to him about their other reality. He had broached the topic a few times, but she had always steered the conversation back to work. He had looked a little confused at first, but then stopped bringing it up. She thought that he believed that she was in denial about it.

But her reluctance to talk about it wasn’t because she thought it had been a dream or a product of an overactive imagination, but rather because it was something special that they shared. And if they talked about it, that opened the door to getting closer to him again. And after they had returned from their adventure, she needed some space. But it was hard to keep it up because the fact was that Jaeden was the only one that she could share certain things with.

And that’s why she had said yes to lunch. She still had questions she wanted to ask him about the other reality and what had happened there. And if she was honest with herself, she wanted to spend time with him, time that was not about their jobs here.

She rose to grab her purse and coat. It was mid-December in Ottawa, and cold outside. She was still wearing a short suit skirt, but with black tights and knee-high boots. Her gray cashmere sweater and a hanging pendant necklace completed the outfit. Underneath the sweater, she wore the sunburst crystal medallion necklace that Jaeden had given her when she mind linked with him and became a Guardian. All the Guardians had those necklaces and she almost never took it off, even if it was hidden under her clothes.

She felt Jaeden’s eyes on her, starting at her feet, moving up her legs and body until they rested on her face. His eyes traced her strong jawline, generous mouth, gray-blue eyes and long blond hair. She felt her heart speed up again.

Let’s go, she turned away to reach for her coat, breaking the spell. Jaeden took it from her and wordlessly helped her shrug it on. He opened the door to her office and they stepped out.

Where are we going? asked Caitlin curiously. She didn’t normally go out to lunch, her days usually being too busy to spend time in a restaurant.

It’s a surprise, he smiled. Okaaay.

They got into the elevator, already full with people leaving the building for lunch or to run errands. Christmas was soon, and it looked like many of them were going Christmas shopping, clutching lists in their hands with determined looks in their eyes and some with a hint of desperation. Caitlin realized that it was only a couple of weeks until Christmas and she still had most of her shopping left to do. When was she going to fit it in? She better find some time this weekend.

Caitlin and Jaeden were pressed close together in the elevator, her back to his chest. She was aware of his closeness, inhaling the spicy cedar scent that he usually smelled of. She felt him shift slightly, leaning forward as if he was smelling her hair. Was he really smelling her hair?

The woman standing beside Caitlin jostled her as she searched frantically for her ringing phone in her large tote. Jaeden put his hand on Caitlin’s side to steady her. She felt an urge to lean back into him and feel his arms around her, and actually started to reposition slightly before she caught herself. Too late, though. He had felt her movement and his hand pulled her slightly toward him as the door opened and people started piling out. They were the last two to exit.

The restaurant was a little Italian bistro that Caitlin had never noticed before, hidden away in the Market, an area of the city home to many restaurants and bars. The maître d’ fawned over Jaeden to the point where it was almost embarrassing.

Caitlin asked, Do you come here like, every day? The maître d’ seems to know you.

Jaeden shook his head with some embarrassment. No, never. I don’t get out to eat much, and when I do, it’s usually just to grab a quick sandwich.

So why the fancy restaurant? she asked teasingly. I already work for you. You don’t need to recruit me, you know.

He looked at her as if he wanted to say something. Then he said lightly, Ah, you know I don’t want to take my star employees for granted. That hadn’t been what he was going to say, Caitlin could tell. But she was content to let it lie, not wanting to open up a can of worms.

Well, thank you, she