Page 8 of Mountain Target

The girl arched an eyebrow, pretending not to know what he meant.

“Just because we exchanged names doesn’t mean I’m any less of a stranger,” he said.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, completely ignoring his last statement. At least she wasn’t crying anymore.

“I live here.”

“No. You don’t. My aunt lives here.” There was a little pause, then she kept going. “I live here.”

And that’s when the missing pieces fell into place.

The doctor doesn’t live alone.

Before Beau could reply, there was another sound behind them. Another person, rushing towards them.

The newcomer placed herself firmly between Beau and the staircase—or rather, between Beau and the girl. She wasn’t much taller, but nobody would mistake this one for a girl. She had curves that made him wish it was dawn instead of dusk, and that she wasn’t wearing a jacket, so he could see all of her.

“What’s going on here?” the newcomer asked, her tone somewhere between wary and hostile.

The hostile part, he understood. But he found the wariness in the woman’s tone, the fear he read in her eyes, bothered him in a more primal way.

Beau sighed, taking another step back, taking a second to look at her while he figured out what to say.

The first thing he noticed was her hair—bright red, and falling to her shoulders in soft waves. It somehow suited her pale complexion. Her hazel eyes, the same color as the girl’s but almond-shaped in her case, rather than round, and blazing with emotion. Young. Way too young to be the girl’s mother.

The girl spoke of an aunt.

A more pressing concern was the way she was looking at him, like she wanted to take him on—apparently unaware of the fact that he was a head taller and over a hundred pounds heavier than she was.

Or maybe she’s aware.

She just doesn’t give a shit.

“It’s okay, Aunt Val, we were just talking,” the girl said.

Val.

Beau committed the name to memory.

Meanwhile, the woman’s eyes blazed hotter. “Just talking? What kind of—“

Fuck.

This isn’t good.

Beau raised his hands in what he hoped was a placating manner.

“Hey. I only stopped because I heard her crying.”

The woman took her eyes off him for a moment—and Beau wanted to tell her not to do that, because if he had wished either of them harm, that would have been the moment he would have chosen to attack—to look at the girl.

“Ren?” she said, and there was so much pain in that single word.

“I was just … thinking, okay? That’s all,” the girl replied, looking down at her feet.

There was a strain around the woman’s eyes that he hadn’t noticed at first, but he definitely noticed it now. Maybe because she wasn’t glaring at him as hard any longer.

A few seconds later, the wariness crept back into her look. “Why were you here in the first place?”