“Yes.” Tolya waited, then asked, “Do you still want me to inquire about arranging for more humans to come to Bennett?”

Did she? Bennett’s population had been contained by the boundaries of the land leased to humans and, equally, by the amount of water the terra indigene had been willing to include as part of that lease.

“Let me review my list again. I truly believe we need to populate Bennett, but doing it in stages might be a wiser way to go about it.”

“Very well. I will wait to hear from you.” Tolya hung up.

Jesse set the receiver in the cradle and leaned back. She felt strongly that she was making the right choice for Prairie Gold, but she didn’t know if she was making a choice that the people coming to Bennett could survive.

* * *

* * *

When Abigail came out of the washroom, the glass had been swept up and the floor cleaned of any residue left by the candles she’d mashed. Kelley stood in the doorway between their two shops. When they’d first arrived in Prairie Gold, they’d taken whatever had been available for work space and a place to live. They couldn’t afford to pay for two shops, so they’d divided the display space of one by putting up a wall and doorway. The back room, which was a common workroom, hadn’t been separated. Didn’t need to be. She’d stayed away from his half of the room.

“I’m sorry I upset you,” Kelley said, staying in the doorway. “That wasn’t my intention.”

“I know that. Kelley—”

He held up a hand, cutting off her words. “When I asked you to marry me, you had conditions, one of them being that we live in a small town, the smaller the better. So we ended up here. Can’t get much smaller than Prairie Gold. This place suits you. You make your soaps and candles and don’t think about how we’re barely getting by.”

“We’re doing okay.” She ignored the way her heart started pounding in her chest.

“Because I repair jewelry people already own and make a few inexpensive pieces people can buy for gifts. Mostly we get by because I do odd jobs for anyone who needs an extra pair of hands and pick up enough money to pay our bills and buy the food.”

Abigail blinked as if blinking back tears. “Do we need more?”

“I do.” Kelley looked away. “Yeah, Abby, I do. I’m a goldsmith. I love working with gemstones and metals. I don’t mind giving my neighbors a hand when it’s needed, but I do mind that I can’t do the work I love. Especially now.”

Why now? She knew why. That moment when she’d stopped playing sweet Abigail and lashed out at him had shattered the illusion, had been the moment when his Intuit abilities had kicked in and he realized he’d been played.

“They need someone to take over the jewelry store in Bennett,” Kelley said. “They need someone to evaluate all the jewelry from the houses, do an inventory. In exchange for doing that work, I’ll be given the store, which has a workshop in the back where I can make my own designs again. I told Jesse I’d take the job.”

“What? How could she offer that to you? How could you accept without talking to me?” Play the part. If you don’t let the persona crack, you might still convince him it was just a flash of anger and not a revelation. “When did you tell her?”

“I called her while you were in the washroom.”

Damn it! If she hadn’t lingered in the washroom she could have stopped him from calling, or at least delayed his decision until she could figure out what to do. What she couldn’t do was stay here on her own. Now that Jesse had twigged to her not being what she pretended to be, she couldn’t play sad, sweet Abigail who was bewildered by Kelley leaving her.

For a moment, she considered whether she could hook Tobias Walker and live on the ranch, but making that play would give Jesse even more of a reason to examine everything she said and did from now on. No, she needed to get as far away from Jesse Walker as she could, and now that meant leaving Prairie Gold.

“Can I come with you?” she asked in a small voice.

He hesitated. That wasn’t good. Finally he said, “It’s Bennett, and there will be all kinds of folks there. It’s the sort of place you wanted to avoid before.”

“But everything is different now. A new start for both of us.” She took a step toward him. “An adventure.”

Another hesitation. “I think you should do what’s best for you now, and I’ll do the same.”

Kelley stepped back into his own side of the building and closed the door.

Abigail ran back to the washroom. Clutching the sink, she let the angry tears fall.

Damn Kelley for putting those stones in the candles! If he hadn’t done that, there wouldn’t have been that one revealing moment.

No choice now except to go with him to Bennett. Maybe, once they were away from Prairie Gold, she could reverse the effects of the dissonance at least until she figured out what to do.

CHAPTER 6

Earthday, Sumor 29

Abigail washed the dishes from the evening meal, her mind spinning.

Kelley had barely spoken to her since Firesday, hadn’t touched her when they went to bed, despite her trying to encourage him in the shy way typical of sweet Abigail. He’d spent yesterday packing. Phil Mailer and Shelley Bookman had helped him pack up his shop, which didn’t take long. He had some loose gems as well as the semiprecious stones that were mostly in the bowl he’d kept on the counter near the cash register. He had some gold and silver to create his own pieces. And he had his tools.

In the afternoon, he’d filled a box with the books he enjoyed that didn’t appeal to her. He packed his clothes; even washed what was in the laundry instead of asking her to do it. Not that he didn’t often do the laundry, but every task he did for himself seemed to take him farther away from her.

He wasn’t taking any furniture. Not that they had arrived with much—a bed and dresser, a round kitchen table and two chairs, a bookcase. The pots and pans and box of mismatched dishes they’d used since arriving in Prairie Gold had been purchased at the used-goods store. The loveseat, rocking chair, coffee table, and lamps in the living room had been purchased at house and yard sales in Bennett and carted back to Prairie Gold in Tobias Walker’s pickup truck.

They hadn’t bought anything new except a few books and clothing they had needed to replace when things wore out or they needed to purchase to suit the weather. Sweet Abigail wouldn’t have cared about possessions. Besides, despite the marriage license and the plain gold band she’d tolerated because he was a goldsmith and she’d had to wear something, she’d known this was temporary. That it had lasted three years was the big surprise. She’d been on the run for a week when she’d found Kelley, not the two years she’d told him, so she’d been seventeen when they’d married—under the age to marry without parental consent. So they might not be legally married anyway.

Not something she intended to admit unless it worked in her favor.

She finished the dishes and went into the living room. Kelley sat in the rocking chair, reading. Was it significant that he had chosen the rocker instead of the loveseat, where she could have cuddled up against him?

Perching on the edge of the loveseat, she said, “I’d like to come with you, if you’re still agreeable with me doing that.”

Kelley closed the book but kept his finger between the pages, a sign that this would be a temporary interruption.

Taking care of her was still a habit, but if she didn’t convince him soon that she was still the girl he had rescued, whatever he’d felt for her would break altogether.

“All right,” he finally said. “Tobias is picking me up in the morning, so you’ll need to be ready then if you’re coming with me.”

“So soon?” He’d packed all his possessions and was clearly ready to leave. She just hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly. She hadn’t expected him to want to leave her so quickly.

He nodded. “If you’re not ready then, you can come along the next time someone makes a trip up to Bennett and has the room.”

He wasn’t offering to wait an extra day, wasn’t offering any kind of help. Not good.

“Did you tell them you wanted a house?” she asked. He had mentioned that housing came with the job, either an actual house where they would have to pay for utilities and taxes, or an apartment that included utilities where they would pay rent and telephone.

“Didn’t give them a decision yet. I’ll be staying at the hotel for a few days. I’m told everyone does. The people working to clear out the places have an apartment building clear of goods—or have the goods shoved into a couple of the apartments in order to let residents move in to the rest of the units. And houses are being cleared, but it’s a lot of work. Everyone coming in is expected to help some with the clearing. An hour or two each day, along with whatever job you take.” He paused. “Anyone with a house might have to take in a boarder.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want a stranger in my house,” Abigail said quickly.

“That’s part of the deal.”

Strangers at every turn. Danger at every turn. And Kelley sounding so distant instead of protective.

“I’d better get my packing done.” She went into the bedroom and closed the door as quietly as she could. Then she pulled out the box that held two decks of tarot cards. She’d told Jesse that one deck had belonged to her grandmother. She’d had a grandmother. Everyone did. She’d never met her old granny, but the kindly woman who had taught her a bit about reading the cards had been old enough to be someone’s grandmother.

She’d stolen the cards because the woman had refused to read the cards for Abigail the night before the Blackstone Clan was leaving town, had claimed she’d done a reading about Abigail earlier in the day and the cards had revealed that Abigail wasn’t interested in giving an honest reading, only in knowing enough to make people believe what she was telling them was true.

The bitch had deserved to have her precious deck of cards stolen.

She set the cards aside and opened the velvet bag. She poured the stones out on the bed, then picked them up, one by one. Agates and jasper. Onyx and jet. Stones for power and opportunity. Stones for prosperity and luck. Stones for protection. She’d spent a year gathering this combination of stones that resonated in exactly the right way with her and with each other, forming a veil of safety. The stones had given her that thin window of opportunity to run away before her father gave her to Judd McCall as a “wife,” had brought her the luck of crossing paths with Kelley on the night she’d stupidly gotten shitfaced drunk, had helped things fall into place to bring her to Prairie Gold—a place her father would never think to look for her.

But those dissonant stones Kelley had put into some of the jar candles had torn the veil of safety her stones had created around her. Oh, her stones were still working, were still in resonance with her, but there would be that tear now, that bit of dark energy that would cling to her, that would attract other kinds of darkness.