Protecting Rayne

by Emily Bishop

  “There a problem here?” And there he was. The actor stopped next to me, eyes narrowed at James.

  “A problem? Why would there be a problem?” James smirked. “I’m having a chat with my friend here.”

  “We’re not friends,” I replied.

  “That’s right. We used to be a lot more than friends.” James winked and sucked his teeth.

  “Are you OK?” Jarryd asked. He didn’t touch me. but he didn’t have to. Every cell in my body zinged at the close proximity, at his mere presence.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Of course, she’s fine. She’s with me.” James chuckled. “You’re that actor, right? The, uh, one who recently broke up with his chick?”

  My stomach dropped. God, I had to extricate myself from this situation. It was too much to bear: going over this again and again in my mind was enough torture.

  “Jarryd Tombs.”

  “Right,” James said. “Well, on behalf of the citizens of Moondance, let me welcome you to the town.”

  “You’re a little young to be the mayor.”

  “The mayor?” James rubbed his hands together. “No, no, the mayor is a total ass. I’m James Goodman. I’m a son of a founder.”

  “That some kind of cult?”

  “A founder of the town, wise ass.” James’s shit-eating grin slipped. Uh oh, Jarryd had besmirched his beloved claim to fame, and faced with an actual talent, a person who’d earned their name instead of being born with it, that had to sting.

  Jarryd turned his back on the founder. “I’m sorry about what happened inside the store. Felicity’s a little overenthusiastic at times. Just ignore her.”

  James wouldn’t take that lying down. He tapped Jarryd on the back.

  The taller man swiveled again and bore down on him. “Back off,” the actor said, through gritted teeth. “You’re bothering Aurora.”

  “You don’t even know her. You back off.”

  Oh, good god. Now, I had to deal with macho posturing on top of everything else. He’s jealous. Jarryd is jealous. He likes you. I cut off that train of thought right quick.

  “What the hell is your problem, kid?” Jarryd asked. “You desperate to get your ass kicked?”

  “You offering, bud?”

  The opportunity to make my escape presented itself. Though it wasn’t cowardice, it was impatience that drove me.

  They were chest to chest, fury painted on James’ss face—his blond surfer ‘do flapped in the wind and made the snarled lips, pulled back over teeth so straight they had to be fake, almost comical. Almost.

  Jarryd didn’t sneer. He was the picture of cool rage—expression entirely blank, his lips parted but jaw tensed—and a muscle twitched beneath his eye. Night and day.

  Jarryd was at least two inches taller than James, who had to look up and kinda squint at the other man.

  A school kid railing against the principal. If the principal had biceps big enough to split his suit sleeves.

  I slipped past them and scurried down the sidewalk, still clutching my sugar and a now-squished loaf of bread. Nothing in my life had been normal thus far, so I should’ve expected something crazy to happen when I’d left the RV this morning.

  “Typical,” I muttered and didn’t look back.

  Wanting Jarryd didn’t make sense—our lifestyles didn’t suit, and I’d never pictured myself as the type of woman who settled for a fling. It was all or nothing, and this time it would have to be nothing. Jarryd scared me because he had everything I could ever want and never would have, and being with me would only bring him down.

  I strode under the wooden sign: Moondance Camp. My flats scraped on the gravel and I winced. I’d have to get myself a pair of proper walking shoes. Moondance was a small town, and I always walked instead of drove—uprooting the tent and the RV would be way too much trouble, but my pumps couldn’t handle much more of this.

  “Girl.” A hoarse whisper, just above the wind.

  I stumbled to a halt, almost dropping the sugar. What the hell? The trees nearest the dirt road stared on silent, their branches prickling with needles. A bird hopped along a branch, and a soft breeze rustled the grass beneath the gnarled trunks.

  “Must’ve been the wind,” I muttered but the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I paced forward.

  “Girl.”

  OK, that’d definitely been a person, a woman speaking from the depths of the forest.

  “Over here, my sweet.” A figure shuffled into view on my left, an elderly lady, wearing a long, purple dress. Her hair was tied back in a scarf, and her ears were decorated by rings that matched those piercing her nose. Wisps of white hair escaped the head scarf and curled down on either side of her leathery face.

  “Mama Kate?” I recognized her. She’d been a friend to my mother before it had happened.

  “Come with me, sweetness,” she said. “This way.”

  I didn’t hesitate. I trusted Mama Kate implicitly. She’d shown me nothing but kindness in the aftermath of my mother’s death. I followed her between the trees, twigs cracking beneath my feet, and into a clearing.

  Mama Kate had set up camp here—a series of tents rose around a central fire, and another woman, who wore so many beads she rattled when she moved, sat beside the flames, whittling with a knife.

  “You remember me?” Mama Kate asked and took a seat on a camping chair. She gestured for me to do the same.

  I took the chair beside hers and propped my sugar and bread on a porta-table next to it then clasped my hands together in my lap. “Of course, Mama Kate. You were good to me. I remember you.”

  “It’s good to have you back in Moondance. I knew you would be back.”

  Mama Katewas one of those old-school, intuitive types. She classed herself a psychic. I couldn’t comment as to whether that bit was true or not, but she’d always provided me with wise advice. If she wanted to talk, I’d listen.

  “You came back because of Libby,” she said.

  My gut wrenched. Libby. It’d been a while since I’d spoken my mother’s name out loud.

  “I wanted the time back,” I replied.

  “You can’t have it the same way, girl. None of us can travel back and change things. You know that better than anyone else.” The old woman tapped the tip of her hooked nose. “This isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Oh?” I frowned. We didn’t have anything else in common.

  “Think long about your actions in Moondance, dear. There are toxic people in this town,” Mama Kate said.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” said the other women by the fire, who didn’t even look up from her whittling to say it.

  “But there are good people, too.” Mama Kate waggled her finger at her friend.

  “OK?” What was I supposed to glean from this?

  “Some of them come from out of town.”

  I jerked straight in the chair. “What? What do you mean?”

  “She means she knows that you were with that actor guy last night,” the other woman said, still without breaking focus from her hunk of wood. “In her own mystical way.”

  “That’s—it was a mistake,” I said. Why are you defending it? “It doesn’t matter what happened. It’s not part of my life or my plan.”

  “Life doesn’t care about your plans,” Mama Kate said, with unusual clarity. “Destiny sneaks toward us, slow or fast, and that’s what’s coming for you. I feel it in my bones.”

  “Not creepy at all,” the other woman put in.

  “Girl, you’re some kind of fool,” Mama Kate replied, evenly. “Never mind Evangeline. She likes to talk like she knows what’s going on. She doesn’t know her face hole from her asshole.”

  “Must be how I lost that cupcake the other day,” Evangeline said and looked up from her project at last.

  I held in a gasp. She only had one eye, but it twinkled with mirth. A long scar ran down the side of her face, vicious and puckered white, disappearing beneath a patch over her other soc
ket.

  “Ignore the child,” Mama Kate said. “Listen close. Jarryd Tombs is a good man. I see auras, girl, and he’s good to the core. You could do far worse than him.” Even Mama Kate was clued up on celebrities. Then again, news of his arrival had spread through Moondance like butter on bread.

  “I’m not interested in doing anything,” I said and rose from the camping chair. “It’s getting late.” It was noon and nowhere near late. “I’d better get back.”

  Mama Kate caught my hand and squeezed it. “I want what’s best for you, child. Remember that. Men are easy to work out. They’re all bluster and bullhorns until you get them between the sheets.”

  “Oh god,” I replied.

  “Between the sheets, they’re malleable. Easy to manipulate—”

  “Please stop, Mama Kate.” I wriggled my hand free. “I appreciate the advice but I’m not interested in the between the sheets…?”

  “Dance?” Evangeline put in, helpfully.

  Mama Kate sniffed. “Everyone’s interested in that. Even eyeless women who can’t whittle to save their lives.”

  Evangeline raised the lump of formless wood. “Speaking of assholes, I know where you can shove this.”

  I burst out laughing in spite of everything that’d happened. Mama Kate had given me advice without realizing it. I needed to lighten the hell up. Jarryd Tombs wouldn’t be a threat to my plans in Moondance if I didn’t let him close. That should’ve been a comfort to me, rather than a fear.

  It wasn’t as if I couldn’t control my baser urges around him. I collected my bread and sugar, waved at Kate and Evangeline then made for the edge of the clearing. My RV wasn’t far from here, at least.

  “Remember what I said, girl,” Mama Kate called. “Get him between the sheets.”

  Can life get any weirder right now?

  Chapter 7

  Jarryd

  I tracked down the sidewalk away from the Moondance General Store, grinding my heels into the grit. Trees lined the road, their roots cracking through tar and concrete alike, twisting out from thick, scarred trunks.

  “Fuck,” I said and checked my cell. It was approaching noon. Rod Meller expected me to Skype him within the next five minutes, but there wasn’t a chance I’d be back at the hotel in that time—thanks, in part, to the dumbass who’d distracted me long enough for Aurora to slip away.

  The meeting would have to wait. I certainly couldn’t pick up a Wi-Fi signal halfway across the town.

  Moondance was small, but it wasn’t that small.

  Fuck the meeting. Fuck it all. It might have started as a passion project, but Pride’s Death was bringing me nothing but pain. I was cloistered, forced into a corner, questioned by my investor, and it was all my own dumbass fault.

  I’d sunk my own money into this project, and if it fell through, I’d lose cred in Hollywood and a lot of contacts. It might break my career.

  So, why aren’t you walking back to the hotel then?

  Freedom. I needed freedom from this. From the straight-laced business of creating something that wasn’t good enough to start with. “I shouldn’t have gone ahead with it until we’d gone over the problems in the script,” I said, to myself.

  I stopped in front of a dirt entrance and looked up at the blue sky then the sign over the road. Moondance Camp.

  Aurora was free. She was free as a fucking bird and, last night, I’d felt it, too. One taste of her wasn’t enough. I had to have more. I needed to know her mind like I needed to breathe. This isn’t normal. Ha, did she put a spell on me? Yeah, she’d love that insinuation. She’d slap me for thinking it.

  I stuck my hands in the pockets of my suit pants and faced down the sign. She was in there. Not in the actual sign but in the damn camp. Yeah, in there and probably upset over Felicity’s bitchery.

  My phone pinged, and I drew it out of my pocket, swiped my thumb across the screen. A text from Rod. “Fantastic.” I opened it and braced myself.

  Where the fuck are you, Tombs? This isn’t how I like to conduct business. If you miss another meeting, I’m going to can this entire project. Understand?

  I slipped the phone back into my pocket. I couldn’t bring myself to care that much. Guilt, yeah, but caring if the project was axed? Not as much.

  The guilt was for treating Rod this way. He’d stuck with me from the start, but hey, my endeavors in the past had paid out handsomely. Perhaps he expected every movie to pad his pockets as the others had. I couldn’t blame him for that.

  But the sign, the camp, and her.

  I’d already missed the meeting, so what the hell. Perhaps seeing Aurora again would give me the clarity I needed.

  I walked beneath the sign and down the dirt road that led into the camp. Five minutes later, I wended between plots and tents, toward her spot. Her RV and dark tent were still there, thank god.

  I moved the flap back and entered. She’d already set everything out again—the velvet tablecloth, the cards, books, crystals, and candles—but Aurora was nowhere to be seen. Mistress the kitty meowed from the front step of the RV.

  “Hey,” I said, and bent, scratching behind her ear. “Where is she?”

  “She’s right behind you, wondering what the hell you’re doing.”

  I straightened, slowly, excitement unfurling in my chest. She was here. She sounded angry, but she was here. “Aurora,” I said and faced her.

  She’d tied her curly hair up in a messy bun atop her head and wore a camisole—no bra, good Christ—and the long skirt that swished with every step. Her lips parted, face free of makeup, so beautiful.

  I grasped for words and found none.

  “What do you want?” Aurora asked and folded her arms.

  “You,” I replied.

  She inhaled, sharply.

  “A date. Let’s do something together. Now.”

  Aurora pursed her lips and stood her ground, but she didn’t say yea or nay.

  “Fine,” I said and reached into my pocket. I drew out my wallet, flipped it open, and extracted a couple bills.

  Aurora’s eyebrows rose high. “What the hell do you think I am?”

  I waggled the cash at her. Probably not the best way to make my point. “How much to have my palm read?”

  Her guard lowered slowly. She dropped her arms to her sides. “You want your palm read. The proverbial skeptic.”

  “Yeah. Humor me. The card reading was interesting. It would be fun to try palms. You do that, right?”

  She nodded. “On occasion.”

  “Do me.” In more ways than one, gorgeous.

  Aurora considered me, a quick onceover then pointed to the chair I’d sat in the night before. “All right,” she said. “If you insist.”

  “The money,” I replied.

  “Keep it.”

  “No. I don’t accept free stuff. Never have.” I walked to the money box she kept on the shelf, opened it, and slipped the cash inside. I returned to the table and took my place.

  Aurora moved her chair around to my side of the table, and sat close. She held out her hand. “I’ll need your palm to do this.”

  “Right.” I placed my hand in hers, dwarfing it. I’d never pictured myself with a petite woman, but Aurora broke every stereotype. She was off the charts, and I loved that.

  “Here,” she said and traced a line down my palm, sensual, slow. “This is your love line. It’s strong, see? But it’s intercepted here and here. That equals heartbreak.”

  “Oh.”

  “Palmistry isn’t my strong suit,” she said and dropped my hand. “You should speak to Mama Kate. I’ll get your money –”

  “No.” I took her hand and held it. “I want you to continue. It’s interesting.”

  “All right,” she said, reluctance entering her tone. She turned my hand over again, this time looking at its side. “See here? These are your relationship lines. The stronger and deeper they are, the longer the relationships will last.”

  “What do you see?” I studied her up close, her
long eyelashes, and the intense concentration as she turned my hand flat again and marked out the lines in question.

  “One shorter relationship, which ends sharply. Another long one. And that’s it. I—these intercepting the lines are supposed to be children. It looks like two—two children.” Aurora’s voice broke.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I need a drink of water.” She grabbed a glass from the other side of the table, dragged it close then glugged back some aqua. “There, see? Better.”

  I didn’t buy it. The children or the relationships had spooked her. Had she seen something she didn’t want to? Not that I believe this shit. Science and hard fact, that’s all that matters. Apart from this feeling. Christ, this feeling.

  It was a buzz between us. A tension I could touch or stroke, almost as I wanted to stroke her. “What else do you see?” I asked.

  She smoothed fingers over my skin, felt the dips and markings. “You have a long life line. But, huh, it looks like you had a negative experience earlier in life. An accident? Were you in a hospital, in a coma, maybe?”

  “That’s creepy. Yes, I was in the hospital when I was a kid. My, uh, my dad took me out on the ocean and I almost drowned. He wasn’t paying attention. I fell off the yacht.” I forced myself not to grind my teeth at the memory. I didn’t need memories of my father in my head now. Dickhead.

  “That might be it,” she said then ran her fingers over a center line next. “Your intelligence or head line.”

  “Is this the part where you tell me I’ve got a low IQ?”

  “Funny,” she replied and put down my hand. “Is this your idea of a good time?”

  “What?”

  “This,” Aurora said, and gestured to the tent and then herself. “I get it. I’m a big joke to you and your friends and your—Felicity.”

  “She’s not my Felicity. She hasn’t been for a while. And she’s an asshole.”

  “You class two weeks as a while?”

  Touché. “It’s not like that, Aurora. I’m not trying to mock you. I want to be around you.”