Beauty and the Beastmaster - Linda Winstead Jones Page 0,42

overly dramatic woman, one for whom everything was a crisis. She hadn’t struck him that way, but he hadn’t been thinking clearly where she was concerned.

And he had to admit, that had been a shit-load of mice. No one but him would’ve been unaffected by the sight.

“The mice are gone,” he said.

She slipped past him, opened the door a couple of inches, and looked inside. “There were hundreds of them, maybe a thousand. Did you look upstairs? They can’t all be gone. They’re hiding, and as soon as I go back in…”

There were half a dozen people on the sidewalk. This was a small town filled with too damn many psychics, and they’d been out to dinner at the town’s only restaurant, so his relationship with Gabi, new as it was, wasn’t a secret. He stopped her rambling with a brief, public kiss that shocked her into silence.

“Trust me,” he said as he reluctantly released her. “They’re gone.” When she reached for the door again, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. “But the place needs a good cleaning before you get back to work.”

“Droppings,” she said with a touch of horror in her voice.

“Oh, yeah.” He looked to Jordan. “Would you call Trudy and ask her if she has time today to give the salon a good scrubbing?” Damian’s mother was a whiz at that kind of thing. A wave of her hand, a few properly spoken words, and in a matter of minutes the place would be as good as new.

“Sure,” Jordan said, heading back to her own business to make the call.

“I can clean it myself,” Gabi said. “I really should…”

“You should take the day off. Spend it with me.”

Gabi opened her mouth to argue with him, but she didn’t get far. “I have clients on the books. I need to call and reschedule.”

One of the women in the crowd waved a hand. “I had the ten o’clock appointment. Next week is fine. How about ten on Tuesday?”

Gabi nodded. “Yes, thank you. See you then.” She took a pen and a small notebook out of her purse and made a note.

Most people had that kind of information on a smart phone or maybe a tablet, but Gabi used paper and pen. As far as he knew, the only phone she had was the one in the shop. She wouldn’t want to use that one, since the last time she’d seen it the receiver had been swarming with mice.

“Come to my place, make your phone calls from there, and then we’ll take the rest of the day off.”

Again she hesitated, but then she said, “That might be nice.”

“Might be?” he asked, teasing.

Again, she looked like she wanted to argue but thought better of it. “Okay. But I have to be at The Egg by two.”

“Sorry,” he said.

Gabi laughed a little, but it wasn’t as bright as last night’s laughter. The rodent invasion had dimmed her light. “There are some lovely people in Mystic Springs’ retirement home.”

“A few, I suppose.”

He wanted to show her his home, where he worked, where he slept. For a moment, at least, he wanted to show her who he truly was, what he could do. He wanted to be himself in front of her and allow her to do the same.

It had been a long time since he’d had such a thought. He couldn’t possibly be himself in front of a Non-Springer.

As he helped Gabi step into his truck, holding her hand and offering support as she launched herself up and into the passenger seat, Silas wondered what the hell he was supposed to do next. He’d been in favor isolation since it had first been proposed, years ago, but for the first time he realized that the town would be lessened by the absence of people like Gabi. And Marnie, and Cindy, and the others who came and went. It was an easy concept to get behind, a clinging to those who shared so much history and magic, to isolate the magical town from outsiders who didn’t, could never, understand.

Suddenly the idea of separating Mystic Springs and the people in it from the rest of the world seemed more like self-imprisonment than peaceful isolation.

In the past year, her world had been small. She worked, she took care of Mia, she’d made a couple of necessary trips to the clinic in Eufaula. That was it.

Gabi had never ventured into the woods that lay between Mystic Springs proper and the river. The trees