P.C. Cast - Mysteria Nights

Finally, she got hold of herself, wiping her tears. “Oh, that felt good. I needed it, too. I think this is what’s known as divine intervention.”

Damon’s sparkling eyes seemed at once impossibly ancient and like those of a newborn baby. “Aye, more than you know, my fair maiden.”

“If I’m the fair maiden, then you can be my knight in shining armor. My hired knight. How does that sound?”

He dipped his head once. “’Tis a fair offer.”

They exchanged a smile that left her feeling cheerful and optimistic and warm all over. Really, really warm. Then she thought: what was she saying? Her smile fell as reality set in. “I can’t afford to pay much.”

He lifted his hands as if to say he didn’t care.

“Actually, I can’t afford to pay you at all.” She pushed back from the table. “I’m sorry. I made a promise I can’t keep. I’ll give you a ride back to town.”

“I don’t require money. I’ll work for . . . sustenance.”

She shivered at the look in his sexy eyes, the way he drew out that last word.

“Food,” he clarified. “And a place to lay my bones at night.”

Bones . . . bones . . . she tried to keep her mind out of the gutter. “Okay.” Why was she whispering? She thrust her hand at him. “Deal.”

He took her hand, and she got the most curious feeling that he’d rather lift it to his soft lips than shake it. “You’ve been kind to me, Harmony Faithfull. Yet, you ask nothing in return.”

“Why wouldn’t I be kind to you?”

The hard line of his lips softened into an expression of surprise and pleasure. “That question alone answers mine, lass.” He searched her face in a deeply intense, almost intimate way that made her go all squishy inside. Then he murmured, “Your goodness, it sits around ye like a halo. Are ye sure you’re not an angel?”

Her smile came partly out of pleasure from his compliments, and partly out of the irony of being viewed as an angel. While her attraction to Damon was definitely heavenly, it was anything but angelic. “Very sure. Kindness exists outside heaven, too, you know.”

“I’ve not much experience with kindness. With goodness.”

“We’ll have to change that,” she said, her heart squeezing again.

“Aye, we will. . . .”

He released her, then, and she slid her hand under the table. Closing her fist, she secretly held on to the feel of him.

Harmony stood on the porch as Damon strode off to the barn to arrange his new home in the hayloft with bedding, supplies, and a box of Oreos (the taste of which had rendered him nearly orgasmic).

Damon held no menace—raw, smoldering male sexuality, yes, but not menace. But she was an urban girl, born and bred, and it was always wise to make sure a person didn’t have a record a mile long. She considered herself street smart, observant, and never blindly trusting, but she wanted to make darn sure Damon’s looks, charisma, and charm—not to mention her hot-running blood and his miraculously timed arrival—weren’t interfering with her better judgment. Having his fingerprints checked out was the way to go. Any employer would do the same thing.

Harmony returned to the kitchen and wrapped the glass Damon had used with a paper towel. Carefully, she slipped it into her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. “Come on, Bubba. Let’s go shopping.” She needed to buy Damon some work clothes that fit, but first she’d pay a little visit to Jeanie Tortellini, the sheriff.

She cut across the field to where a stand of aspens and tall pines marked the beginning of the Rocky Mountain National Forest. After turning right, a quick walk on a dirt trail would bring her right up behind the Mysteria police station and jail.

Bubba jerked on the leash and started growling. “What, boy, another naked hunk?” At this rate, she’d have a whole staff of them working for her. Not bad for a single girl. But part of her didn’t want an army of muscles at her disposal. She’d rather have Damon, who engaged her on all levels, swinging from weary and jaded to boyish and full of wonder in the space of a heartbeat.

The puppy tugged hard on the leash and tried to run into the woods. Harmony held on with both hands. “Bubba, stay!”

Jeanie Tortellini burst out of the forest with a tall blond man trailing behind her. His wrists were bound with her police belt. The loose end Jeanie gripped in her fist.

Bubba broke into a full-fledged bark. “Hush, boy!” Harmony tried to quiet the pup.

Jeanie’s smile when she saw Harmony was genuine, if not a little startled. “Good morning!” She used her free hand to brush loose strands of hair away from her face. With pink cheeks, messy hair, and strangely bright eyes, Jeanie looked as if she’d been in a scuffle. But it was the woman’s appearance of having dressed too quickly that puzzled Harmony the most.

Jeanie’s hand went to her uniform shirt as if she, too, just realized the buttons were in the wrong holes. It must have been quite a struggle, her apprehension of the lawbreaker.

Harmony stopped about twenty feet from the pair. “I was on my way to see you. I need a favor.” She stole a glance at Jeanie’s prisoner. His white-blond hair swung around his waist, some strands tied in braids. And were those pointed ears peeking through the spun-silk hair? A bit of an unfortunate birth defect, because with his archer’s quiver, dark green tunic, and thigh-high leather boots, he was a dead ringer for Legolas from Lord of the Rings . “But, I see you’re busy.”

“I was,” Jeanie said. “But I’m not now.”

Making a quiet sound, the prisoner cast Jeanie a smoldering glance, and Jeanie’s mouth quirked in the barest of smug little smiles. Harmony got the feeling that there was more going on than she probably wanted to know. Par for the course in Mysteria.

“Behave.” Jeanie tugged on the belt and I’m-too-sexy-for-my-suede-tunic Legolas lowered his eyes dutifully. He had the perfect male pout, sullen and sensual. “How can I help you, Reverend Faithfull?”

Harmony unwrapped her paper-covered package. “I hired someone at the church this morning—a groundskeeper.” Deciding it was better to keep the lurid details of Damon’s arrival to herself, she moved the paper so Jeanie could see the drinking glass. “He’s not from around here, and as much as I think I believe what he’s told me about his background, it pays to be sure he’s not wanted for a felony. Can you check out his fingerprints?”

Jeanie took the paper-wrapped glass. “No problem.” The sheriff slid her gaze over the prisoner. Harmony could almost feel the electric surge of their eye contact. “If that’s all you needed, I’ve got to get this bad boy under lock and key.”

Legolas’s mouth curved. The idea of a lockdown seemed to invigorate the sexy pseudo-elf. Or did he just like being called a “bad boy”?

“Thanks, Jeanie,” Harmony said, unable to keep from staring at the man’s pointy ears. “Stop in for coffee this week.”

“I’ll be there. And be careful with your new help. If you need me, just call.”

“Will do.”

Jeanie grinned and gave Harmony a little salute. Then she frowned at Legolas, using the belt to jerk him forward. To Harmony, his stumble seemed a little staged.

Harmony gave Bubba’s leash a much gentler tug and continued toward town, and the One-Stop Mart, which conveniently did mean one stop in the true rural tradition of general mercantile stores. Since Wal-Mart hadn’t yet invaded Mysteria, and probably never would, it was the only place she’d be able to find work clothes for Damon.

Puffs of pink pollen whooshed with each of her footfalls on the path, drifting in cotton-candy mounds, a phenomenon that no one seemed to be able—or was willing—to explain to her, and that included the town physician, who Harmony swore, even if she wasn’t supposed to swear, that she’d spied waving a wand as she drove past his office the other day. A wand, as in magic wand, a fairy-godmother model, too, she assumed, because it had sported a shiny star at its tip. Harmony couldn’t imagine what the handsome but terminally distracted Dr. Fogg had been doing, circling the wand over old Mrs. O’Cleary’s white-haired head, but the very next day, when Harmony had seen Mrs. O’Cleary at the One-Stop, not only was the old woman’s arthritic limp gone, but her snow-white, overpermed pin curls had relaxed into soft, shiny blond waves! It was just the sort of weird, supernatural happening Mysteria produced in abundance.