Desiree had never told anyone, especially not Maia. With Maia’s gifts, she just always assumed her sister knew. She was the one, after all, who had warned Desiree, not against Jeremy specifically but against danger that night in general, told her to watch herself. Never in Desiree’s wildest dreams had she thought that danger would come from the man she had been dating for the last three months.
Obviously, it hadn’t occurred to Maia, either, not even in her visions.
Desiree shook herself again, hated that she was allowing her past to rear its ugly head now, when she was trying to get back on the horse, so to speak.
She made it outside, feeling lost. She didn’t know where to go or what to do. Sure, it was just a walk, but she needed to have some sort of destination in mind, didn’t she?
It was a shame, considering she’d lived here long enough that she should have been better acquainted with the ranch attractions and hot spots.
The Old West town was closed by now, but there was a bar on the premises, not that Desiree was much of a drinker. The two glasses of wine she’d had at dinner still gave her a slight buzz. Compared to most of these cowboys, she was practically a teetotaler.
She saw a few cowboys scattered here and there in various ranch activities but didn’t notice Carson or Sam among them.
Once the animals were taken care of, how did the men spend their time? It wasn’t like they had to babysit the horses their entire shift, was it? The animals had to sleep, after all.
When did a night wrangler’s shift begin, exactly? It was hard to keep up with Carson and Sam. They were up and around the ranch breaking and shoeing horses and participating in the Old West town exhibitions, among other ranch events, during the day as well as the night.
When did they sleep?
Desiree gathered her courage and on impulse headed toward the tree line and the woods beyond it. Carson and Sam had been coming from that direction, wet and shirtless, the night she had had one of her wolf dreams. How could she forget that part? Maia certainly hadn’t let her live it down yet.
What am I doing, what am I doing, what am I doing?
If her wolves did exist, this would certainly be the place to encounter them, wouldn’t it, in the woods, marking their territory? Would they dare venture this close to the ranch, and if they did, wouldn’t someone have noticed them by now?
Desiree paused just beyond the tree line, wondering how far in she dared go. She was a city girl at heart, concrete jungle running through her veins, and she hadn’t yet gotten used to all this surrounding nature. She wondered if she ever would.
Maia, Ms. Nature Girl herself, was in her element, loved all the trees and blue sky and mountains. She said it helped her get more in touch with her spiritual self and closer to her art. The girl had done more sketching and painting in the last several months than she had in years living in New York, where she’d pretty much given up her art for her job at a niche boutique that specialized in everything Wiccan, the closest thing she could get to a “suffocating nine-to-five,” as Maia called it. To which Desiree would always remind her, it paid the bills.
“ Leave it to Ms. Practical to make that observation.”
She and Maia would never see eye to eye on anything, and Desiree had given up trying.
Damn, when she took a chance and followed her impulses, she just went hog wild, didn’t she, roaming around out here all alone, at dusk, in the woods. At least Maria and Maia knew where she had gone, well, a general location. It wasn’t like she was leaving the property.
Still, the property itself was sprawling and the woods were dense, a lot denser than she had thought they would be, and dark, even at this hour. Something could be lurking behind any one of those bushes or trees ahead of her.
She was really acting like a TSTL, Too-Stupid-To-Live, heroine from one of the romance novels she loved to read whenever she
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