Beauty and the Beastmaster - Linda Winstead Jones Page 0,4

in Mystic Springs. Keeping her head down and her mouth shut was part of her survival plan. Don’t make waves. Don’t question a good thing. It was best to observe and keep her mouth shut. Still, the animals Silas herded hadn’t been purchased or rescued, they hadn’t been bred. They came to him, according to Cindy.

Not her problem; she should not care, or even wonder. So she didn’t.

She and Silas had been on what some might call a date once, a few months back. That disastrous evening had been her only date-like activity since coming to town. It was all Marnie’s fault. The friend and librarian had insisted on setting up a double date. Gabi had said no a hundred times, but Marnie was nothing if not persistent. At the last minute Marnie and Clint had cancelled, leaving Gabi alone with Silas. She wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Marnie had intended to cancel all along, though her friend had heartily denied that charge.

Everything had gone wrong. The strap on her favorite pair of shoes had broken while she’d been walking toward Eve’s to meet Silas. Neither of them were great conversationalists, and the silence over dinner hadn’t been comfortable. They’d both been coerced and then abandoned by their friends. The food at Eve’s had been good as always, but she’d choked on every bite and had ended up leaving more than half on her plate.

Eve’s feelings had been hurt, she could tell.

Halfway through dinner, Silas had gotten a call on his cell. He hadn’t explained exactly what was going on, but he’d been alarmed. She was pretty sure she’d caught one too-loud word from the woman on the other end of the line. Bats. That couldn’t be right. Bats in Mystic Springs? Horrors. Silas had wolfed down what was left of his meal, thrown some money on the table, apologized, and left.

Shortly after his abrupt departure, Gabi had started walking toward home. Well, limping, thanks to the broken strap on her shoe. She hadn’t even made it to the police station before it started to rain, suddenly and hard. Soaked to the bone, she’d collected Mia from a babysitting Cindy, gone home, and as she’d peeled off soaked clothes and tossed the shoes into the garbage can she’d sworn that dating was not for her.

Silas had stopped by the beauty shop a couple of days later, asking if she wanted to try again.

She did not.

He didn’t come to her to get his hair cut, so she didn’t have to see him often. She might run into him occasionally on the street, at town events, or in Eve’s. When they did cross paths he said hello and nodded, if she happened to look in his direction and he noticed her, but he didn’t ask her out again. Just as well.

His hairstyle was too neat for her to think he’d cut it himself. Like a number of the men in town, he probably went into the barbershop in Eufaula, which was just north of Mystic Springs. She didn’t mind. Her business was healthy enough without him, and the others who drove up the road a ways for their styling needs. She didn’t have to cut every head of hair in town.

Especially not his. Silas was one of those guys, too good-looking not to realize it, oozing testosterone. He didn’t have a beard, exactly, but he always seemed to need a shave. She suspected that was by design. Scruffy was a good look for him. Not every man could pull it off.

She’d been pretty vehement when she’d turned down his offer of a second date. He wasn’t the kind of man to presume she’d change her mind because he was God’s gift to women. She’d said no, he’d nodded and left, and that had been that. If he asked again…

No. She couldn’t let her mind go there.

The truth of the matter was, she could like Silas too much with just a little encouragement, and that part of her life was over. If she hadn’t realized it before their disastrous date, she’d accepted it after. She couldn’t afford to get involved, not with him or anyone else.

She loved to read, and was a regular at the library, but she was going to have to give up romance novels entirely. She’d stick to historical fiction and cozy mysteries, and then maybe she wouldn’t take the time to ogle a man running past her shop.

When she’d driven into Mystic Springs a year ago, she