Page 37 of Mistaken

“More than you might think,” Abdul replied. He had also dismounted and now led his horse over to the stream so he could drink from the cool, clear water. “It is part of the reason why I decided to settle at Ghost Ranch. I knew that when the weather was fine, I would be able to find many places of natural beauty to explore.”

“It’s gorgeous.” She’d followed along, and her blood bay mare drank from the water as well, obviously glad of the refreshment after the nearly hour-long climb to get here.

He wanted to say,So are you,and immediately thrust such a foolish notion out of his mind. Yes, she looked very lovely standing there with the dappled shade from the trees casting dark and light on her rich-toned hair, even in those silly hiking boots.

However, he didn’t want to imagine what her reaction might be if he said such a thing, and he knew he had far greater control over himself than that. Some might have said that he had very little control or he would not have allowed him to think such things in the first place, and yet he wanted to believe there was a world of difference between allowing thoughts like those to take up space in his mind and quite another for them to actually leave his lips.

“And thanks for the boots and the jeans,” she added. “It was definitely easier to ride in these clothes.”

He murmured, “You’re welcome,” although he knew deep down that she should not have been in a position to request them at all. No, he should have sent her home immediately and not kept her here; he had acted out of anger and fear, and not because he had any reason to believe she would betray him. From everything that he’d seen over the past two days, she possessed an honorable soul.

And yet he knew he was not much in the habit of trusting others. How could he be, when he had spent all his very long life utterly alone?

“Your singing the other day,” he said, and immediately she stiffened, face going blank and wary. “Excuse me, but even I could tell that yours is a trained voice. Why is it that you do not wish to use it, or even speak of it?”

A second or two passed as she stared back at him. Not, he thought, like a deer frozen by the headlights of an oncoming vehicle, but more like a wary horse who was deciding which way she should bolt.

Then her mouth turned up in a lopsided smile, and she said, “Why do you wear that cloak and hood?”

Now it was his turn to go stiff. “That is a completely different matter.”

“Is it?” she returned. But then she shook her head, and something about her posture softened, as though she’d realized they were not speaking of the same thing at all. “I suppose it’s kind of stupid to be so defensive about it. But I’ve spent all the time since…well, since before…avoiding the whole topic. I guess I just wanted to act as if it had happened to someone else.”

“What happened?” he pressed. For the life of him, he could not think of a single reason why she would want to hide such a glorious talent from the world.

Another of those crooked grins touched her mouth. “How much time do you have?”

“I am a djinn,” Abdul said. Not entirely true, but trying to explain what he truly was would have taken far too much effort. “I have all the time in the world.”

She reached up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then glanced about the canyon where they stood, as though she wanted to be sure no one else was around to hear her story. Somewhat foolish, he thought, since the closest people were far away in Los Alamos and her only audience was himself and the two horses, but he told himself he should be patient.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you.”

Chapter12

They walkedover to a pair of boulders sheltered by a stand of tall oaks. Sarah couldn’t be sure whether those oversized rocks had been there a moment earlier or whether Abdul had conjured them so they’d have a comfortable place to sit, but in the end, she supposed it didn’t matter so much.

She’d feel much better having this conversation sitting down.

To be honest, she didn’t think she wanted to have it all, except…

…except Abdul seemed like the sort of person who would listen to her story without judgment. He was so entirely detached from human affairs that she hoped he would let her tell him what had happened and how she felt about the situation, and wouldn’t interject comments about how she had overreacted to things or deliver saccharine remarks about how she had an amazing talent and shouldn’t be hiding it from the world.

“I studied music for a long time,” she told him. “My father had me take piano at first, but then he realized not too long afterward that I should have a voice coach as well, so I was trained from around the time when I was ten years old.”

“What about your mother?” Abdul asked.

A logical enough question, especially since Sarah knew she’d mentioned her father on several occasions already but had never said anything regarding her mother.

“She died when I was three,” she said. “I guess she had a hard time when she was pregnant with me, and everyone told her she shouldn’t have another child. But she did…and then we lost her and my baby brother at the same time.”

When it had happened, of course, Sarah had been too young to really understand what was going on. She’d known she was going to get a little brother and was excited about that, and even though her mother spent a lot of time in bed and had looked pale and tired for what felt like months on end, she’d never, ever thought that when her father drove her mom to the hospital and left his young daughter with her grandmother to be babysat until they came home, that they wouldn’t come back at all.

Or rather, her father returned the next day, haunted and hollow, and it had taken a while after that for her to understand that there wouldn’t be a baby brother, and there wouldn’t be a mommy anymore, either.

“Anyway,” Sarah pressed on, knowing if she stopped to think about what had happened all those years ago, her throat would seize up with unshed tears and she wouldn’t be able to keep talking. Even now, that shocking sense of loss could hit her at the worst times and take her breath away, despite years of the best therapy money could buy. “It was always just my father and me. He never seemed interested in getting married again, but he wanted to do everything he could to help me develop my talents. Later on, I started getting parts in community theater and even a couple of local TV commercials. Then, right before….”

She stopped there, the words trailing off as she fought that awful betraying tightness in her throat. No way in the world was she going to break down in front of Abdul. Bad enough that she was telling him all this in the first place.

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