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steadiness that never ceased. The wind tugged at her hair and the clouds drifted above her head. She drew up her knees and contemplated the fact that old prophecies should never be passed from generation to generation. That way, one could never be disappointed.

Chapter 4
    SARAH DIDN’T BOTHER to knock politely on the locked door. Damon Wilder was hurt and angry and she didn’t really blame him. She was nearly as confused as he was. Curses on old prophecies that insisted on messing up lives. If they’d been two people meeting casually everything would have been all right. But no, the gate had to stand open in welcome. It was neither of their faults, but how was she going to explain a two-hundred-year-old foretelling? How was she going to tell him her family came from a long line of powerful women who drew power from the universe around them and that prophecies several hundreds of years old always came true?
    Sarah did the only thing any self-respecting woman would do in the middle of the night. She pulled out her small set of tools and picked the front door lock. She made a mental note to install a decent security system in his house and lecture him about at least buying a dead bolt in the interim.
    As a child she had often played in the house and she knew its layout almost as well as she knew her own. Sarah moved swiftly through the living room. She saw very little furniture although Damon had moved in well over a month earlier. No pictures were on the wall, nothing to indicate it was a home, not just a temporary place to dwell.
    Damon lay on his bed staring up at the ceiling. He had started out seething, but there was too much fear to sustain it. Sarah had nearly walked into an ambush. It didn’t matter that she had been sent to be his watchdog, she could have been killed. It didn’t bear thinking about. Sarah. Shrouded in mystery. How could he fixate on a woman so quickly when he rarely noticed anyone? If he closed his eyes he could see her. There was a softness about her, a femininity that appealed to him on every level. She would probably laugh if she knew he had an unreasonable and totally mad desire to protect her.
    Damon bit out another quiet oath, not certain he could force himself to pick up and leave again. Where could he go? This was the end of the earth and yet somehow they had found him after all these months. No one would be safe around him.
    “Do you always lie in the dark on your bed and swear at the ceiling?” Sarah asked quietly. “Because that could become a real issue later on in our relationship.”
    Damon opened his eyes to stare up at her. Sarah. Real. In his bedroom dressed in a skintight black suit that clung to every curve. His mouth watered and every cell in his body leapt to life in reaction. “It happens at those times I’ve been betrayed. I don’t know, really, a knee-jerk reaction I can’t seem to stop.”
    Sarah looked around for a chair, couldn’t find one, and shoved his legs over to make room on the bed. “Betrayal can be painful. In all honesty I haven’t had the experience. My sisters guard my back, so to speak.” She turned the full power of huge blue eyes on him. “Do you believe that having friends insist on your protection is a betrayal?”
    He could hear the sincerity in her voice. “You don’t understand.” How could she? How could anyone? “They had no right to hire you, Sarah. I quit my job, retired, if you want it neat and tidy. I have no intention of ever going back again. I cut all ties with that job and every branch of the military and the private sector.”
    “You tried to keep everyone around you safe by leaving.” It was a statement of fact. He would think she was crazy if she told him he carried Death with him. “What happened, Damon?”
    “Didn’t they give you a three-inch-thick file to read on me before they sent you here?” he demanded, trying to sustain his anger with her.
    Sarah simply waited, allowing the silence to lengthen and stretch