Storm Born Page 0,10

off without him, but some niggling part always wondered what about me had made him lose interest. Not exciting enough? Pretty enough? Good enough in bed?

"Some things are worse than staying home alone," I muttered. "Dean is one of them."

"Timothy?" one of the girls called from the living room. "Are you coming?"

"One moment, gentle flower," he hollered back. To me he said, "You sure you wanna hole up here all night? It isn't really healthy to be away from people so much."

"I'm fine. Go enjoy your flowers."

He shrugged and left. Once by myself, I fixed a sandwich and shopped on the Internet, exactly as he'd predicted. It was followed by a puzzle depicting an M. C. Escher drawing. A bit harder than the kitten.

Halfway through, I found myself staring at the puzzle pieces without seeing them. Roland's quiet, fierce words played over in my head. Let Jasmine Delaney go. Everything he'd told me had been true. Dropping this was the smart thing to do. The safe thing to do. I knew I should listen to him...yet some part of me kept thinking of the young, smiling face Wil had shown me. Angrily, I shoved some of the puzzle pieces aside. This job wasn't supposed to be about gray moral decisions. It was black and white. Find the bad guys. Kill or banish. Go home at the end of the day.

I stood up, suddenly no longer wanting to be alone. I didn't want to be left with my own thoughts. I wanted to be out with people. Clarification: I didn't want to talk to people, I just wanted to be around them. Lost in the crowd. I needed to see my own kind - warm, living and breathing humans, not undead spirits or magic-infused gentry. I wanted to remember which side of the fence I was on. More important, I wanted to forget Jasmine Delaney. At least for tonight

I threw on some jeans and the first bra and shirt I could find. My rings and bracelets always stayed on me, but I added a moonstone necklace that hung low in the shirt's V-neck. I brushed my long hair into a high ponytail, missing a few strands. A dab of lipstick, and I was ready to go. Ready to lose myself. Ready to forget.

Chapter Three

I'd been people-watching for almost an hour, so I saw him as soon as he walked in. It was hard not to. The eyes of a few other women in the bar showed that I wasn't the only one who'd noticed.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, nicely muscled but not over the top in some crazy Arnold Schwarzenegger way. He wore khakis with a navy blue T-shirt tucked into them. His black hair was not quite to his chin, and he had it tucked behind his ears. His eyes were large and dark, set in a smoothly chiseled face with perfect, golden-tanned skin. There was some mix of ethnicities going on there, I suspected, but none I could discern. Whatever the combo, it worked. Extremely well.

"Hey, is anyone sitting here?" He nodded at the chair beside me. It was the only empty one at the bar.

I shook my head, and he sat down. He didn't say anything else, and the only other time I heard him speak was to order a margarita. After that, he seemed content just to people-watch, like me. And honestly, it was a great place to do it. Alejandro's was right next to a midlevel hotel and drew in patrons and tourists from all sides of the socioeconomic scale. TVs showed sporting events or news or whatever the bartender felt like putting on. A few trivia machines sat at the other end of the bar. Music - sometimes live, but not tonight - forced the TVs to have closed-captioning, and dancing people crowded the small space among the tables.

It was humanity at its best. Teeming with life, alcohol, mindless entertainment, and bad pick-up lines. I liked to come here when I wanted to be alone without being alone. I liked it better when drunk, stupid guys left me alone. I wasn't sure about articulate, good-looking ones. One nice thing I soon discovered was that with Tall, Dark, and Handsome sitting next to me, no losers dared approach.

But he wasn't talking to me either, and after a while, I realized I'd kind of like him to - not that I'd have any clue what to say back. With the glances he kept giving me, I