Blackthorne (The Brotherhood of the Gate Book 1) by Katt Grimm Page A

been an emergency or he would never have called the cell phone. You gonna tell me why he wants me to do guard duty?”
    Rhi grimaced. “You’re asking me? If I told you half of what has gone on today, you would say I was in dire need of lithium. And of course you aren’t alone—these woods are filled with warm and fuzzy critters.”
    Bobby Wayne hitched his gun up a little further to examine an imaginary dust speck on the barrel, pointedly not meeting her eyes. “You stay indoors tonight, Rhi and lock it all up tight. I saw some tracks I don’t know what to make of and I don’t think these are anything resembling ‘warm and fuzzy.’ Someone might be putting me on and then again, I might need to buy some more ammo. I’m gonna head down to Pam’s and make sure she’s tucked in, then I am going to give Houston a call. I get the feeling I might need more information and more supplies. I think our government has been up to something nasty…at least, I hope it’s our government.”
    Once Rhi would have silently snickered to herself about the paranoia of her neighbor, but tonight she felt a strange kinship with the man who Pam claimed had enough explosives in his cabin up the hill to single-handedly mount an offensive on Little Round Top. After shutting herself in her home, Rhi sat in the dark with Ellie Mae at her side, gazing out at the diabolical darkness of the night. The woods across the little valley seemed to breathe with evil. She absentmindedly massaged her neck with one hand and rubbed Ellie’s satiny fur with the other. She noticed the dog still sat as much at attention as she did when they first came into the house. Whatever was out there, hovering on the edges of her mind, was troubling Ellie’s thoughts as well. The emotional rollercoaster of the evening, coupled with a long shift at work, conspired to make Rhi’s eyes feel heavy enough to add a few pounds to her body mass. She fought the waves of sleep that washed through her body. She knew instinctively that tonight the moment she surrendered to the sandman…she would be another person in another time.
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    Raven was so glad that she had finally talked Mother into letting her go with her friends on a trip to the Garden of the Gods. The great red rock formations reaching for the sky made her spirit soar with joy, even though she didn’t have the strength to go walking among them with her companions. They had ensconced her on a throne of picnic blankets in a meadow near the wagons and reluctantly left her to her books and the view of the Colorado sky, edged with a crown of red sandstone. She arranged her skirts and lay back on the cushions of her nest to inhale the latest chapter of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe when a shadow fell across her book. Shielding her eyes, she tried to make out who the owner of the huge shadow was. Brilliant blue eyes captured her green ones and then he smiled. She knew she was lost with that smile. It simply took what breath she had away. She was shocked she did not swoon as he approached. He was a tall man, well dressed in a tailored walking suit, with shoulders that looked powerful enough to burst the seams on his jacket. Dark, shoulder-length hair dusted with white framed his handsomely weathered face. White teeth glinted as he spoke. “A fair maiden in a meadow on a spring day…reading Scott, I see.”
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    The pines in her yard swayed with her dreams and the wind howled as Rhi tossed in her bed. She jolted awake, groggy and in a fog for a second, and then resolved to not sleep any more that night. Instead she sat, staring down the drive to her home, and waited for him to come to her…a totally insane thought but there it was. Rhi knew any effort at sleeping would bring dreams of Blackthorne holding her in his arms again—even being awake didn’t keep the thoughts of his embraces at bay. Every molecule of her being called to him, some parts more than others. The depth of her longing for a man she