Beauty and the Beastmaster - Linda Winstead Jones Page 0,3
came his way were simply lost, but far too many had been discarded by owners who got tired of them, or moved and didn’t want to bother taking their pets with them. Those poor animals were just dumped on the side of the road, left to fend for themselves.
There had to be a special level of hell for people who would do that.
As he took a bend in the path, Silas saw home ahead. His home, his business, a large pen for the animals he called his, for a while… and a white SUV parked beside his battered gray pickup truck.
He muttered a curse word. A handful of birds in the branches he ran beneath took flight in response to his anger. A squirrel abandoned a newly dug hole to take off, moving deeper into the woods. The truth was, while he had no choice but to deal with people, pet owners and law enforcement agencies for the most part, he far preferred animals to humans.
Before Silas reached the pen directly behind his home and office, a blonde he didn’t immediately recognize opened the SUV’s passenger door and stepped out. Donnie Milhouse exited from the driver’s side. As Silas let the newly collected animals into their daytime space, where a collection of other dogs waited, he remembered where he’d seen the blonde before. Holy hell.
He silently ordered the animals to remain calm and to welcome the newcomers — the dogs, not the people — then he turned away. If only he had that power with humans. Even if he did, it probably wouldn’t work with her. She’d never been one to get along well with others.
“Jenna Maxwell,” he said as he walked toward the couple. “What brings you back to Mystic Springs?” Clint would be pissed when he found out his ex-wife had returned.
She smiled. “It’s Jenna Sterling, now.”
“You remarried.”
“I did.” She shrugged. “That marriage didn’t last long either, I’m afraid.”
If she’d tried to change husband number two the way she’d tried to change Clint, he couldn’t be surprised that she was divorced again. Jenna was gorgeous — tall, shapely, blond and blue-eyed — but beauty would only get you so far.
Donnie stood close to Jenna, draping a possessive arm over her shoulder. Huh. A Bigfoot shifter like Clint had to be changed, but she’d take up with a werewolf? Made no sense to him.
“Let’s get to business,” Donnie said.
The hairs on the back of Silas’s neck stood up. There was something alarming about Donnie’s tone, something off about that crooked smile.
Silas ignored Donnie and focused his attention on Jenna. “Does Clint know you’re back?”
“No,” she said sharply. “And I prefer he not know. At least, not yet.”
“He’s married.”
“So I hear.”
“And he’s a friend, one of the few people I actually like, so why should I keep your secret?”
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Donnie said in a low voice.
“We can’t do everything on our own, as much as I wish that were true. Silas has always been reasonable. He gets it.”
Something was up. And when something was up in Mystic Springs, it usually meant trouble. “Exactly what do you need?”
Jenna smiled. “I figured it out. I know what to do.”
“I still have no idea…”
She took a step closer. “Alice Daniels, rest her bitter soul, wasn’t the only powerful witch in town. And contrary to popular belief, magic doesn’t cease to exist beyond the boundaries of Mystic Springs.” Before he could ask for more specifics she whispered, in a voice that sent a chill down Silas’s spine. “Brigadoon.”
March had come in like a lion, with wicked winds and a round of storms, but the past couple of days had been very nice. Warm, or at least warmish. The skies had been a particularly beautiful shade of blue.
Gabi turned her head and glanced out the window as Silas Hollister ran by, a pack of excited dogs running, jumping, and cavorting ahead of him. When she’d first seen him running down the street, a year or so ago, she’d thought he was chasing those dogs. It had taken her weeks to realize he wasn’t chasing the animals, he was herding them. He regularly took a pack of dogs out for a run. The dogs in the pack changed, she’d also noticed, though they were almost always mutts, mixed breeds impossible to identify.
Cindy Benedict had told her Silas trained the dogs that came to him. Gabi found the phrase dogs that came to him odd, but she’d learned to accept oddities