knight, right. He snorted at the thought. I’m about as far from good guy as I can get.
Which meant he wasn’t the right one to try and save her.
Oh, but he’d like to.
***
Myrtle
Peering around the corner of the house, she looked out across the nearby field and sighed.
He was there. Standing next to the gate with Vanna, Josh on his back, arm wrapped around supporting the boy’s bottom.
Bane.
Even in her thoughts his name sounded mysterious.
He glanced up, and she stopped in place when their gazes connected. He stared, studying her so intently Vanna started to turn. Bane saved Myrt the embarrassment of being caught peeping by talking louder, shifting so Vanna turned with him, putting her back to the house.
He was a good man, a kind man, all the things Sharon had promised he was.
Why then was Myrt so afraid of finding herself alone with him?
***
Bane
Letting Josh slide to the ground, Bane stepped behind the gate and stood as casually as possible with a raging boner.
All it took was a look from Myrt and he was a goner.
Later, he promised his dick, as he had every day of the week they’d been at Vanna’s.
He suspected Vanna knew his frustration, since a bottle of lotion had mysteriously appeared on the nightstand in his room.
So later he’d jerk one out, imagining the sweet lips and soft words of the woman currently hiding around the corner of the house from him.
So fucked.
Bane laughed, caught Vanna’s look of confusion, and shook his head.
Or not fucked, as it may be.
Chapter Five
Myrtle
Perched on the edge of the bathtub, Myrt scrubbed across her forehead with the palm of one hand. The other rested against her stomach, fisted and pressing deep, as if her actions could force the nausea away. In the week Sharon and her kids had been here—and Bane, her mind needlessly reminded her—as if I could forget him—the sickness had settled into a terribly regular routine, there all day but far worse in the early morning.
She concentrated as she counted the days and then counted them again. The words of the holler’s witch echoed in her mind.
“Day one to day one hundred twelve of delayed courses, here are your tools.” Old Tabitha gently placed stalks of dried plants on the table in front of Myrtle, spreading them in a fan with her at the center. “Equal measures, just a scooch more than a pinch with hot water, steeped for twenty minutes. Three cups a day for three days, no more. Otherwise your water will sicken.”
“My water?” Myrt glanced at the younger woman seated to the side of the table.
“The herbs can be hard on the kidneys.” Young Tabitha went back to studying her nails, fingers curved over her palms as she ignored her grandmother’s narrowed look.
“Oh.” Myrt recognized the plants and herbs, naming them in her mind to help cement the memory. “And after a hundred and twelve days?” Not that she’d give anything a chance beyond the earliest indications, but it was always good to know the options. “Are there things to help bring on my period if it’s greatly delayed?”
“Nothin’ that won’t leave you sickened near to dyin’.” Old Tabitha sat back in her chair, creating space between her and Myrtle. “And nothin’ certain to any of this. You may not start your womanly cycles again for a space of months. Sometimes it’s better to let nature take its course.”
Those plants had been readily available in Kentucky. Sometimes reaped from the woods, the folds of land on the sides of the mountain offering up secret hoards. At times taken from cultivated flower gardens in town, Myrt creeping around the edges of yards in the dark, hands gathering up her dress as a sling to hold the treasures securely.
She had no idea what she might find in Florida.
A loud thumping echoed through the house, and Myrt stiffened, a sense of unease washing over her. Someone banged at the front door, demanding a response, the cadence setting up an echoing racket in her chest as her heart thundered fast.
The pounding continued, even with Vanna’s called greeting of “Just a minute” to tide over whoever it was. If anything, the knocking increased in speed and force, the fist attacking the surface of the door.
“Can I help—oh!”
Vanna’s pained cry had Myrt out the door and at the top of the stairs in a flash, in time to see Ian Sallabrook rock to a stop in the middle of the dining room. He’d left Vanna cast to the