Lover Beware 03 - After Midnight

she couldn't wait the week it would take for a security system to be installed.
    She didn't feel safe. In fact, she felt distinctly unsafe. There wasn't a lot she could do to increase her security, but she had to try. Jess was her main alarm, but it was always possible that Jess could be harmed by an intruder—maybe even poi-soned or shot.
    She had a gun. It wasn't much of a gun, and it was possibly more of a hazard than a help because it could be taken away from her in a confrontation—but she wasn't intending on using 210
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    the weapon for anything other than warning off possible intruders.
    Collecting the key to the reinforced cupboard that Patrick had built in the mudroom, she unlocked first the padlock bolt that secured the door, then the steel bar that locked the gun against the back of the cupboard wall. The gun felt heavy and unwieldy as she set it down on the floor, then collected the bolt, a box of ammunition, and the two magazines that went with the rifle. On impulse, she grabbed a bottle of gun oil and a cloth—she supposed since the gun hadn't been used for so long it would need a clean. She hadn't touched the thing in years, not since Patrick had given her lessons on how to load and shoot it, and made her practice until she could hit a target with reasonable accuracy.
    She carried all the pieces out to the kitchen table and laid them down. The gun looked dark and lethal in her bright, sunny kitchen, and the smell of gun oil was pungent and faintly acrid, already overlaying the gentler scents of the garden floating in the open door. Lifting the weapon, she examined it, then began systematically dismantling and cleaning the ancient twenty-two, using the ritual to refamiliarize herself.
    When she was finished, she reassembled the weapon and fed shells into the two five-shot magazines.
    Minutes later, she walked out into the empty paddock nearest the bush line, with Jess at her heels, and placed a row of empty cans on fence posts. When she was satisfied she had enough targets, she fetched the gun, positioned herself twenty paces back from the tins, and took aim. She decided she didn't have to be too far away from the target, because if anyone attacked her, it was going to be a close-quarters thing; she wouldn't have time to do anything but bring the gun up and shoot, anyway. Apart from that eventuality, she wouldn't be doing anything but firing into the air as a warning.
    The gun bucked gently against her shoulder, and the shot went wide. She altered her stance a little, to allow more flex-ibility when the recoil hit, and this time she managed to wing the tin. The third shot, she blew it off the post. Methodically, she hit two more tins, then changed the magazine. As she lined up the next target, she had a disorienting flash of the way she'd been ten years ago, before she'd hit Tayler's Creek—with a wardrobe of pretty clothes, long nails, high heels, and enough After Midnight
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    makeup to fill a suitcase. Now she was barefoot, her shorts and halter-neck top stuck to her skin with sweat, her hair tangling around her face where it had blown loose from her plait, and her skin tanned and bare of makeup.
    She wasn't the city girl she'd been before, and she wasn't the quiet, empty person she'd been just days ago. She had changed, but she liked the changes in herself.
    She didn't know if she could actually walk in high heels anymore, or where on earth in Tayler's Creek she could even wear high heels, but she decided then and there that she was going to try. Wearing high heels would mean more clothes, because unless she put on weight, she wouldn't fit any of the old ones, and that meant shopping.
    Blankly, she considered what it would be like to once again take part in the utterly female ritual of shopping—to stroll through malls and browse through boutiques, choosing clothes and shoes not because they were practical, but simply because they made her look and feel good.
    She felt dazed at the prospect, and somehow lighter, as if a weight had just slipped from her shoulders. But then the past few days had been filled with change, ever since Michael Rider had intruded back into her world and forced her out of the rut she'd sunk into. The process had been painful, and she'd resisted like crazy, but for the first time in years, she felt free, and despite her tiredness and the grimness of what she was doing, she felt... strong.
    A wry smile curved her mouth. It was scary to think that the moment of