They had made a bonfire somewhere on Main Street; firelight spilled between the houses. Arden crept closer, working her way between the houses. It was almost completely dark now, and she didn’t have a flashlight. Her heel still hurt a little in her shoe, reminding her that there were a lot of things to step on. She tried to stifle quiet cursing and mutters of “Ow!” as her jeans legs caught on brambles, and unseen items (old boards, tin cans) shifted underfoot and threatened to give her away.
Finally she found a place where she could look out from a particularly dark pool of shadow and see the whole group sitting around a fire they had built in the middle of the road, the only place that wasn’t covered with long, dry, flammable grass. They were toasting hot dogs on sticks and laughing.
Arden felt suddenly, miserably alone.
This was a bad idea. She wanted to be with a group of people like that, carefree and enjoying a campout under the stars. Not hiding in the shadows, spying on them. What would they say if she just walked out of the shadows and admitted she had been hiding from them all day? What kind of welcome did she expect?
But she couldn’t tear her eyes away.
There was Fern, brilliant hair shining in the firelight, laughing quietly as the person next to her (that dark, moody, slightly scary man, not at all scary right now) helped her spear a hot dog on a stick he had just finished whittling to a point.
There was another woman Arden hadn’t seen yet, tanned and capable-looking, with her brown hair in braids. This must be the one who had been talking to Gray T-Shirt beside the creek.
And therehewas, Gray T-Shirt himself, the man who had come to her cabin twice now, returned her bar of soap, and captivated her completely.
Now she had the opportunity to look at him as much as she liked. His light brown hair glinted in the firelight, catching golden highlights. The tight T-shirt left little to the imagination, from a dusting of curly light brown hair in the cleft of the neck, to the tautly outlined muscles that flexed when he moved. When the shirt rode up slightly as he turned, there was a tantalizing glimpse of soft-looking skin between the hem and the belted waist of his jeans.
His hands looked big, firm, and capable, even when they were doing something so mundane as squirting ketchup from a squeeze bottle onto a hot dog bun.
“Fern tells me you’ve claimed the general store, Baz,” the woman with braids said.
The sandy-brown head turned toward her. Baz, Arden thought; it had to be short for something. Bastian? she thought. Basquale. Bazjamin.
“I think a proper town needs a hangout spot,” Baz said. The deep rumble of his voice did something to Arden, quivering in her chest and making her toes curl. “Do you remember the old country store in Wildcat Forks? It closed when we were kids, but there used to be that corner with the little stove where all the farmers and ranchers would come to drink their coffee in the morning.”
“I do remember that,” the dark-haired man said. Declan was his name, Arden recalled. “Never really saw the point myself.”
Brown Braids, the one person whose name Arden hadn’t learned yet, nudged him with her elbow. “I think you’re gonna have competition, Baz, since Declan’s living in the schoolhouse. We can have coffee in the morning, then lessons on the chalkboard in the afternoon.”
“I am not teaching you idiots anything,” Declan snorted, but he was smiling.
Baz grinned readily, and Arden’s body flooded with a whole new rush of feelings at that expression. She had learned the difference very well between genuine smiles and fake ones in the past few years. That was an easy, real smile, and she wanted to spend more time around people who smiled like that.
“Well, I know I’m going to love being the town blacksmith,” Brown Braids said. “Just find me a few horses to shoe.”
Baz pointed up the street with his hot dog stick. “Look in there. I think that long building next to yours is an old livery stable.”
“Couldwe get some horses?” Fern asked as she transferred her hot dog to a bun.
Arden’s mouth watered at the smell of the roasting hot dogs. Granola bars and freeze-dried camp food were getting less appealing day after day.
“We can figure all of that out later,” Baz said, smoothly switching gears. “We were going to talk about tomorrow’s plans.”
He was the leader; of course he was. Even from here, Arden sensed a quiet, commanding calm surrounding him, an air of competent authority that felt natural, not overbearing.
Apparently, the others didn’t agree.
“Bossing everyone around again, Baz?” asked Brown Braids. Her voice was playful, but Arden sensed that it wasn’t just fun; there was a serious undercurrent to it.
“We already know what we’re doing anyway,” Declan said.
“Do we? I know we need to do a lot of house repair, but there’s also infrastructure to worry about. Getting the electricity up and running again. Fixing the boardwalk and the roads. The paperwork says there’s supposed to be a septic system, so we’d better figure out how much work that’s going to need.”
“What’s next, collecting property taxes?” Brown Braids asked.
Crouching in the shadow, Arden found herself upset on Baz’s behalf. She could see what he was doing, even if his friends could not.Someonehad to be in charge.Someoneneeded to make the decisions.
But all this talk of fixing up the town clarified a few things for her, and she didn’t like the picture that was emerging. She had been right the first time. These people weren’t campers or tourists, planning to move on in a few days. Passing hikers didn’t fix boardwalks and maintain city infrastructure.
