Having Faith by Abbie Zanders Page A

coursing through his veins.  Especially when he knew he was guaranteed success.  She might elude him temporarily, but he would always find her.
    He spotted Matt easily enough.  With that burnished brown hair and gray eyes he stood out.  Apparently a lot of younger girls noticed him, too. Kieran chuckled, seeing their interested double-looks and murmurs to their friends.  Matt, however, seemed oblivious to it all.  Kieran remembered those days with a slight pang of nostalgia.
    There!  Faith was behind Matt, trying to fade into the shadows.  That puzzled him for a moment.  Why?  Perhaps she didn’t like crowds.  Then he realized it was probably a good thing she was off to the side.  It kept her from getting caught in the throng moving to the next demo as part of the open house. 
    She was on the small side.  He wondered vaguely if her petite stature would be a problem, then dismissed it just as quickly.  If she really was his croie , as he suspected, then they would fit together flawlessly in all things.
    “That was the most freaking awesome thing I’ve ever seen,” Matt said, his eyes bright with excitement.
    “Thanks,” Kieran said modestly.  “How about you, Faith?  Did you like it?”
    She peeked around Matt’s shoulder.  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said truthfully.  “You were ... amazing.”  The color crept up in her face and she turned shyly away even as the beast in Kieran’s chest purred with her praise.  He had never been the sort to consciously try to impress a woman with any display of prowess, but standing before Faith, he had the nearly irresistible urge to preen.
    Outwardly, he smiled, pleased, and kept the preening to a minimum.  “How about some lunch?”
    “Oh, no, thanks,” Faith stammered, that restless look back in her eyes again.  “We really should be going.”
    Kieran frowned.  “Why?”
    “I wanted to get to the farmer’s market while we’re in town,” she explained.  “I was going to leave after I brought Matt in earlier, but I got caught up in your demo...”  She shifted her weight from side to side.  Quite a few people were trying to get his attention, and at least half of them were clearly unhappy that he was devoting so much of it to her.  Too bad.
    “Okay,” he said slowly, not liking the idea of her leaving one bit.  It was a natural reaction.  Now that he knew who she was to him he would always want to be near her whenever possible.  It was pure instinct, generated on a level far beneath layers of conscious and rational thought.  “I have to stick around for a while, but I can take you over later.”
    “I couldn’t ask you to do that,” she said, and he was beginning to sense her rapidly rising sense of discomfort as the small crowd around them grew.
    “You didn’t,” he said firmly but quietly.  Faith was uncomfortable in crowds, he realized.  And unfortunately, his interest in her was drawing more attention with every passing second.  His first instinct was to grab Faith and whisk her away to someplace more private, but that would only exacerbate the situation.  She was getting ready to bolt, and he had to do something.  If she left with Matt now, he would have no excuse to see her again later.
    And he needed to see her again today, if for no other reason than to confirm what he already knew.
    “Tell you what.  Why don’t you let Matt hang here with me while you hit the Market?” 
    He turned to Matt.  Enlisting an ally was good strategy.  “You don’t really want to troll the farmer’s market, do you?” he asked, appealing to Matt’s innate male aversion to shopping and hoping the kid took notice of the attractive teenage girls currently milling about.
    Matt looked hopefully at his mother, who in turn looked back to Kieran, her eyes narrowing somewhat.  Had she seen through his not-so-subtle ploy? 
    “You’re very busy,” she said, glancing nervously around them.
    “My entire team’s here,”