Beauty and the Beastmaster - Linda Winstead Jones Page 0,26

no qualms about killing anyone who got in his way. It pissed her off that her ex-husband still had the power to take away her feeling of safety, her occasional flashes of contentment.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said in a low voice. Another couple was leaving Eve’s and heading this way; soon they might be close enough to hear. Silas was a big guy, and he had those great dark eyes, and having him beside her made her feel safe. It was illogical, she knew that, but still, she wanted to enjoy that feeling for a while. “Mind if we walk a bit before I go home?”

He hesitated but then agreed, and they started walking. The downtown businesses had closed for the day. Eve’s would be open a little while longer, but unless there was activity at the police station, which there rarely was, everything else would remain quiet, deserted. Even the small grocery store, which had started closing at six in the evening, was dark. It made sense. They didn’t do much business after that time, from all she’d seen.

Not that she’d seen much of downtown after dark. She was always indoors, locked in, hiding from anything, anyone, who might be in the shadows. During the day she worked, she shopped, she went to the library to check out and return books. She had friends she visited with. On her days off she and Mia often walked up and down the sidewalks, shopping, eating, visiting. Sometimes she wondered what kinds of businesses had been in the empty spaces, and if anything new and exciting would ever fill them.

Every night she was inside her little house with the doors and windows securely locked. The curtains were always drawn. After dark, her home was a secure haven. Or had she made it a prison?

There was plenty of light to see by as they walked, sticking to the sidewalk, glancing both ways when they crossed one of the residential streets right off Main Street even though there was nothing coming, as usual. Habit, she supposed. For a while they didn’t talk at all. Neither of them could be called chatterboxes, and the silence was comfortable, for a while.

About the time a touch of tension started to fill the air Silas asked, “How did you end up in Mystic Springs?”

The question caused Gabi’s heart to leap, a little. She’d been asked that question before, but not in a while. She hadn’t expected it now, though she should have. It was always best to keep her answers simple.

“I was looking for a place to land for a while, and really just stumbled across this town.”

“We’re hard to stumble across,” Silas said, a hint of good humor in his voice.

“I pulled off the main road late at night. Mia needed a diaper, I was exhausted, I needed gas…” All true. “It was a desperate time. We had nowhere to go.”

“Did you not have any family to turn to?” The question was blunt, but not unkind or unreasonable.

“No. My mother passed away five years ago. I never knew my father. He died in an accident before I was born. I…” She hesitated.

“Mia’s father?”

Gabi stopped on the sidewalk. They’d walked farther than she’d intended, and were almost to The Egg. She visited the retirement home once a week, where she shampooed, trimmed, and curled gray, and sometimes purple, hair. She looked up at Silas. There were so many possible answers to that question, but she settled on the simplest. “He’s not in the picture.”

He nodded, and together they turned around. Their conversation had been too personal, too upsetting. That hadn’t been his intention, she was sure, but Gabi was positive she wouldn’t sleep tonight. It wouldn’t be her first sleepless night, or her last.

“What about you?” She asked, turning the tables. “Have you ever been married?”

“No.”

“You’re, what, mid-thirties? Why no wife?”

“I’m thirty-three, and I don’t have a wife because I don’t want one.”

“Okay. That’s fair.” Though she was certain she’d caught a touch of anger in his answer. Maybe there had been someone once, and it hadn’t worked out. “Do you have family in town, or nearby?”

“Both my parents are dead, and I never had any siblings. There might be an uncle out there somewhere, maybe a cousin or two. I’m not sure.”

“Out there, somewhere,” she repeated. “You make it sound like we’re on a desert island, separated from the rest of the world.”

“Aren’t we?”

They walked in silence for a few more minutes, before