Page 6 of Demon Loved (The Witches of Mingus Mountain #5)

Of course Brianna had noticed the man as soon as he entered the tasting room.

While she tried to avoid eye contact with people when she was playing, that didn’t mean she didn’t take note of the comings and goings in her audience…

or see right away when someone particularly noteworthy sat down to listen to her music.

And this guy was super noteworthy.

Tall, with dark hair that just brushed his shoulders, eyes whose color she couldn’t quite make out because of the dim lighting in the space but were still way too sexy under those strong, level brows…

the kind of cheekbones and jaw that seemed as if they might have been more suitable to the big screen than the Caduceus Cellars tasting room.

In fact, he kind of reminded her of someone, maybe an actor she’d seen in a movie or TV show, although if pressed, she wasn’t sure whether she could say exactly who.

And interestingly, he didn’t carry himself like the sort of man who knew just how good-looking he really was. Something about him seemed almost diffident, as though he wasn’t sure if he knew what he was doing but intended to try his best anyway.

That was why she couldn’t be too irritated when she saw him emerge from the tasting room and glance down the street. From anyone else, she would have thought this was an obvious cover to make it seem as if he hadn’t followed her outside, but in this situation, she couldn’t be quite sure.

She found herself saying, “First time in Jerome?”

He turned back toward her and smiled. There was nothing practiced or flirtatious in his expression.

No, she saw what looked like relief.

Was he glad she’d been the one to open the conversation? In general, she didn’t put herself out there like that — she was far more used to being pursued — but something about the stranger felt almost lost, and that quality about him seemed to have stirred her protective instincts.

“It is,” he said. “I’d read about it, of course, but this was the first time I made the trip.”

His voice was warm and deep, almost velvety, the kind of voice that made her think of hot cocoa and snuggling in a warm blanket on a cold winter night. Never mind that it had been pushing eighty-six degrees today, and even with the sun beginning to go down, the air was still plenty warm enough.

“So, what do you think?” she asked, doing her best to sound casual.

A lot of guys would have given her a significant look and then said something like, Oh, I’m liking the view pretty well from here.

But this man was obviously not the kind of person to play those sorts of games.

“It’s very interesting,” he said, his tone both thoughtful and serious, as if he was answering a question posed to him in class by the teacher and not by someone trying to have a casual conversation. “Older-feeling than I’d thought it would be.”

“Well, we’ve done our best to preserve whatever we could,” she said lightly. “Some buildings have already slid down the hill and couldn’t be saved, but most of them have mostly stayed where they were supposed to be.”

He absorbed her comment without even a blink.

Then again, lots of people did at least some research on Jerome before they came up here, so she supposed it wasn’t too strange that he would have already heard about how unstable parts of Jerome were, thanks to the extensive mining that had stripped away large chunks of the earth on Cleopatra Hill.

You couldn’t see the open mines from the center of town, but if you went up the hill a little way, it was fairly obvious that no one had worked too hard to remediate the mining pits, and they still gaped raw against the hillside.

“I’m glad so much was able to be saved,” the man replied. “I find local history fascinating, so it’s good to see the buildings in much the same shape as they were a hundred years ago.”

If he really was a history buff, Bree was a little surprised that he hadn’t visited Jerome before now.

But then, she had no idea where the guy was even from.

She couldn’t detect a trace of any kind of regional or foreign accent in his voice, although she knew that didn’t mean a whole lot.

Plenty of people worked hard to erase all signs of their origins from their voices, whether out of embarrassment, a need to sound more professional, or any of a score of other reasons.

“Are you from Arizona?” she asked.

A pause. Then he smiled again and said, “No, I’m from Los Angeles.”

Maybe he was an actor. They’d been standing a few paces away from each other, as though he hadn’t wanted to intrude on her personal space, but now she moved a little closer to him and extended a hand. “Brianna McAllister,” she said. “People mostly call me Bree.”

Another of those hesitations, but then he reached over and shook her hand very gently, almost as if he thought it would break. Despite his caution, she could still feel the strength in his fingers…and in his well-muscled arm as well.

Dear Goddess, he was gorgeous.

“Bill Garrett,” he told her. “I’ve been studying old ghost towns, and Jerome came up in my research.”

He stopped there and looked around. Because it was nearly six, a lot of the people who’d come to town for the day had already decamped, but lights still glowed in the shop windows, and the traffic on Main Street never really ceased, thanks to all the people driving to Prescott from the Verde Valley or vice versa.

Sure, there was a way to go around that didn’t involve going up and over Mingus Mountain, and yet plenty of people would still rather brave the twisty highway to save themselves a little time.

“Although I suppose this isn’t really a ghost town,” he observed, expression now almost amused. “Not with so many people living and visiting here.”

“It almost was,” she replied, thinking of how Jerome had begun to dwindle after the mines closed in the early 1950s.

Some brave members of the McAllister clan had hung on and joined forces with the free-spirited civilians who came to squat in the abandoned houses here back in the 1960s.

Together, they’d kept the little mining town from turning into nothing more than a memory.

“But it survived, unlike so many of those other towns.”

“I’m glad it did,” Bill said. “It’s very charming.”

Most of the time, the word “charming” wasn’t something she would have expected to come out of the mouth of a guy who looked like he was in his late twenties, maybe thirty at the most. When Bill Garrett said it, though, there was something about the word that was, well…charming.

“We like to think so.”

His head tilted to one side as he appeared to consider her comment. “Are you from here?”

“Born and bred,” she replied. Her origins weren’t a state secret or anything, so she didn’t mind giving him that small piece of information. “Just like most of the McAllister family.”

Again, not a secret. People found out pretty quickly that the McAllisters had been here for almost a hundred and fifty years.

True, the clan had spread into Prescott and Payson and even down to Wickenburg, nearly to the edges of the de la Paz clan’s territory in Phoenix and beyond, but Jerome would always remain its heart and soul.

Bill looked almost pleased by her response. “It must have been fun to grow up someplace so interesting.”

Now she couldn’t help chuckling. “Well, Jerome is charming, but there’s also not a lot to do here. When I was little, Cottonwood didn’t even have a movie theater yet, so we had to drive into Sedona or Prescott. And we still have to do a lot of driving to go shopping, or whatever.”

His eyebrow lifted, and she could tell he was analyzing her reply. She had to believe that what she’d just described must have sounded utterly alien to someone from a big city like Los Angeles, a place where pretty much everything you wanted or needed was within arm’s reach.

“I suppose I can see why it might have felt…limiting,” he said. “But at the same time, it must also have been comforting to be in a place where you knew everyone and everyone knew you.”

Bree supposed that was one way of putting it.

While growing up, she’d chafed at how little to do there actually was in Jerome, even as she reminded herself that if she’d been born only a few years earlier, her life would have been much more circumscribed.

At least she could go up to Flagstaff or down to Phoenix without too much trouble, whereas in the days before Angela and Connor got together, Flagstaff might as well have been on the moon thanks to the enmity that had existed between the two clans.

Sure, the McAllisters had been friendly enough with the de la Paz clan down in the southern section of the state, but you still couldn’t visit there without clearing your trip with the prima first.

“It’s definitely small-town living,” she said, and decided to leave it there.

Anyway, it was probably time to head back inside and play her final set. She was given free rein to do pretty much what she liked, but the tasting room closed at seven, and she wanted to make sure they got their money’s worth by playing a decently sized final set.

“Time to pick up the guitar again,” she told Bill with a smile. “But it was nice meeting you.”

Disappointment flitted across his handsome features. However, he recovered himself, saying, “Of course. You’re very talented — I don’t want to keep you from your audience.”

Polite and handsome?

Too bad he wasn’t local.

“Well, it’s not like I’m on the clock or anything,” she said. “But I don’t want to cheat everybody of a full set, either.”

“I understand.” Bill paused there, his gaze not quite meeting hers. “Do you have any plans afterward?”

Bree wasn’t sure if she could really call them plans, not when all she was going to do was head back to her apartment, throw together a salad, and then watch some TV.

However, she also couldn’t overlook the implications of the question he’d just asked.

Unless her instincts were all wrong on this one, she was pretty sure he was asking her to dinner.

Her first impulse was to say yes, she was busy, and manufacture some kind of excuse.

But he was good-looking and seemed kind, and it had been way too long since her last date.

Entirely her choice — she had guys hit on her all the time and could have gone out whenever she wanted — and yet something felt different about this situation.

She was fairly certain that if she shot him down, he wouldn’t keep pestering her to change her mind but instead would accept her wishes and go about his business.

She didn’t want to shoot him down, though. No, she wanted to spend time with Bill Garrett and learn more about him. All right, it couldn’t go anywhere, not when he lived hundreds of miles away, but what was wrong with a little distraction now and then?

“No plans,” she said, even as she hoped she wasn’t making a huge mistake. “What did you have in mind?”

“There seems to be a very nice restaurant in the hotel where I’m staying,” he replied, and inclined his head toward the top of the hill where the Grand Hotel was located. “Would you like to have dinner there?”

In general, The Asylum wasn’t the sort of place you’d go for a casual dinner, mainly because it was the most expensive restaurant in Jerome. However, it didn’t seem as if Mr. Garrett was too worried about such things.

“You’re sure we won’t need reservations?

” she asked dubiously. True, it was a Wednesday night and not the weekend, but still, the place was almost always busy, since it tended to be a destination for people celebrating birthdays and anniversaries and any other occasion that required something a little out of the ordinary.

And she absolutely wouldn’t admit to herself that part of her reluctance stemmed from not wanting to be seen by her brother while out on a date.

Logic suggested that, as the chef, Shane rarely emerged from the kitchen which was his realm, but Bree knew as well as anyone else that sometimes life could throw you some serious curveballs.

Even so, she was a grown woman and could do what she liked.

If Shane happened to spy her and Bill together, what difference would it make?

It wasn’t as if she’d been seeing anyone else lately, and because there were a grand total of maybe ten restaurants in all of Jerome, sooner or later, you’d end up in the one fine dining spot the town offered.

“I can check on that,” Bill said. “And if the restaurant doesn’t have any tables available, we can go somewhere else.”

It sounded as if he had all the bases covered. She could stand here and continue to come up with stupid excuses, or she could do what she knew she really wanted.

“Then dinner sounds great,” she said.