The Witch's Stone by Dawn Brown

write her book.
    All the more reason Caid was a poor choice for a romantic interlude. She couldn’t afford distractions. He was simply a means to an end.
     
     
    She was simply a means to an end, and he’d be wise to remember that. As hot water ran down his skin in a sad sort of piss trickle from the badly stained showerhead, Caid closed his eyes and tilted his head back.
    Hillary’s image floated before him, her eyes dark and haunting, her lips parted, waiting to be kissed. Caid popped his eyes open and shut the hot water off entirely, letting the cold spray hit his skin like tiny shards of ice.
    There, that would teach him.
    Satisfied his libido was back under control, he turned off the water, pushed back the cracked, yellowed curtain and stepped out of the cast iron tub.
    Messing about with Hillary would be a mistake. She wasn’t his type. He had no patience for temperamental bossy women--who no doubt after a decent shag would spoil the moment by looking to define their relationship . Or wonder where they were headed as couple . He rubbed his skin vigorously with a worn towel. For him, a shag was a shag. Good fun for both parties and nothing more.
    Hillary was the commitment sort. He knew one when he saw one. Probably controlling, too. Look how bossy she was just now. She thought there was a bloody madman in the house and she still needed to lecture on the pros and cons of their chosen search pattern.
    Aye, well, the hell with that. He’d no’ be foolish enough to tangle himself with the likes of her. He just had to remember to look past the pretty package. Past the long smooth frame. Past the perfectly curved backside. Past those misty eyes.
    And for God’s sakes, stop thinking about her in her underwear.
    He yanked on a pair of jeans and a heavy blue sweater before leaving the bathroom. When he would have gone back downstairs, the sound of shuffling paper from the other end of the hall stopped him.
    He followed the noise until he reached Agnes’s room. Hillary sat cross-legged in the middle of the bare wood floor, a thin hardcover book open on her lap. A tiny smile played at the corners of her lips.
    “What are you doing in here?” he asked.
    She looked up at him, the smile still in place, and he wished he’d just continued downstairs. With her expression open and unguarded, she was quite lovely.
    “I think this was your aunt’s room.”
    He cleared his throat before he spoke. “It was.”
    “This is a book of accounts.” She lifted the book to show the word in gold emboss on the faux leather cover. “But she didn’t record financial accounts. It looks like a long list of people who’d slighted her.”
    He chuckled and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning back on his hands. “I suppose the whole list consists of my father’s name.”
    “Not in this one, but she has a whole box full. This book seems fairly current. Look, I’m in here.” Again she turned the book so he could see, but from where he sat he could only make out scribbles on the page.
    “What does she have written beside yer name?”
    “Miss-Too-Big-For-Her-Britches couldn’t find the time to speak to me on the telephone. And after all I’ve done,” she read. “It looks like I was forgiven, though, there’s a line through it. Maybe after she’d convinced me to pay more to stay here.”
    “Am I in there?”
    “Not so far. When did you last speak to her?”
    “When I was ten.”
    “Judging by the number of people she has written in here, she probably didn’t have time for old slights. Listen to this one about Bristol. Pudding Constable thinks I’m a crazy old woman.”
    “My God, everyone she ever met must be in those books.”
    They laughed as she closed the ledger and set it back in the box.
    A means to an end, he reminded himself, not liking the easy conversation, or that she looked so damn pretty covered in dust, her hair pulled away from her face in a sloppy twist.
    “What are you doing in here, anyway?”
    His tone