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Page 213
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Mariah was surprised how quickly things fell into patterns over the next few days. Mornings, she awakened at dawn, most days without anyone rousing her. Holly rose then, too, and René.
Thorn would already be awake, prowling about the inn's compound with his long rifle cradled in his brawny arms. His stern vigilance always made Mariah feel secure. She wondered whether he ever slept, worried about the tired lines that showed about his shadowed eyes. Wanted to smooth those lines away, tell him despite himself that he wasn't to blame, no matter what the people at the fort seemed to think.
But of course she didn't touch him, not in the slightest, most meaningless gesture that he could misinterpret as caring, since he seemed to be avoiding her.
She kept her silence, too, except for inane pleasantries when they chanced to meet. "Looks like rain," she'd say when the skies were as gray as the pewter flatware and the trees dripped with the previous night's precipitation.
"Pretty day," she'd say when the heaven was as blue as the jays that squawked as they flew overhead.
He was always civil, but no more. The kisses they'd shared were no more than memories fading as fast as those of her life in her own time. Had she really used indoor plumbing and dishwashers and microwave ovens, flown in planes in a sky now devoid of all but birds?
Had she really been kissed so thoroughly, so erotically, by Thorn?
Would she give up the right to return to the former if given the chance to experience the latter again?
She laughed bitterly at herself more than once over the passing days. Her pain at his near ignoring of her was excruciating, but she refused to dwell on it. Her interest in Thorn was strictly physical, after all. She'd never allow herself to care for someone so unreliable.
His work on the palisade continued, and the spiked wooden fence about the inn's compound grew daily. When Mariah could, she watched him as he worked, usually shirtless, his taut muscles rippling beneath a sheen of sweat. He

 
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