THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

the village if she tagged along with Jaxxson.
    Not going to happen from inside this dome thing surrounding all three of them.
    Jaxxson had walked her through a canopied area where two girls who looked about twelve were making aqua-blue orbs appear and disappear for a group of very young children who ooohhed and awwwed. They were inside a woven pavilion type of enclosure. Sort of like a tent only in ratty shape and held together with vines and patched with leaves, but since the leaves were all different colors it had a kaleidoscope look to it. Different but cool.
    Jaxxson had walked over to a luminous white bubble that hovered on one side of the kiddie area. The bubble looked about the size of a small bedroom. He’d placed his hands on the outside of the dome and murmured words until the opal glow shimmered in front of him and a section opened up that allowed him to enter without bending over.
    He had told Gabby to follow him.
    She hadn’t seen much choice.
    The wall returned to its original form as soon as she’d stepped inside and thankfully found the floor to be flat. She’d tentatively pressed a finger against the dome wall. Her finger sank into the strange surface then stopped as if hitting a solid material.
    That had curtailed any hope of her wandering around and snooping for exit points in the village.
    “Gabby?” Jaxxson drew her attention back to the child who was lying on a pillowy cloud-type of bed that hovered about three feet off the floor.
    She backed up a step. “You know why I don’t want to put my hands on her.”
    The little girl raised a timid, silver-eyed gaze to Gabby. Her tiny bottom lip quivered.
    Turning her guilt-ridden anxiety on Jaxxson, Gabby snapped, “Just great. Look what you made me do.”
    “Nobody’s making you do anything. Refusing to offer comfort is your choice.”
    Now she sounded like an ogre. She inhaled a breath and flexed her fingers, determined to keep the unspoken truce intact between her and Jaxxson, who stared up at her from where he knelt beside the girl. One of his hands had moved from the child’s wrist to above her elbow.
    Gabby stepped back to the bed and squatted down beside Jaxxson. She’d never been able to walk away from a kid in need, not after spending her life being ignored by everyone around her.
    “If you can tell me how to shield thoughts from my mind...I’ll try,” she implored Jaxxson with a soft voice to keep from upsetting the little girl. 
    Maybe a child’s thoughts wouldn’t be as abrasive as an adult’s. Thoughts that could be so negative or hateful they had sent Gabby to her knees in the past, leaving her emotionally shredded.
    Jaxxson answered her in an equally calming voice without looking at her. “Your body is still healing from the vine infection, but the weave I placed on your wrist will also prevent anyone’s thoughts you don’t want to hear from impacting you. Unless the other person is so powerful a telepath that they could force their thoughts on you. I doubt Be’tallia is such a threat.”
    Gabby exhaled a breath, still trying to accept everything in this place. The twinkle in his eyes made it easy for her to joke. “Oh. So I’m wearing the equivalent of a Batman wristwatch for telepaths, huh?”
    He chuckled and said,  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “Never mind. But why didn’t you tell me about this wristband sooner?” Gabby crabbed at him.
    “Because you must learn to trust touch, even when you lack external protection. Place your hand on Be’tallia’s forehead to soothe her.”  He returned to treating the child, moving his palms to cover the girl’s abdomen while smiling at her.
    Gabby lifted her hand and slowly extended it, fingers trembling.
    Be’tallia’s gaze jumped from Jaxxson to Gabby, watching with huge silver-gray eyes, several shades darker than the party dress she wore.
    Breathing hard, Gabby finally lowered her hand to the child’s forehead and braced herself.
    No thoughts came crashing into her mind.
    Jaxxson hadn’t lied. Call her paranoid, but she’d been tricked in the past and hadn’t liked it one bit.
    But here she was, touching another person who actually smiled at her.
    Gabby started laughing, not a loud sound but a private little hot-dang one.
    Jaxxson gave her a way-to-go glance then returned to whatever he was doing to heal the little girl.
    Giddy with having accomplished something she’d been denied for so many years, Gabby used her other hand to