“Damn…damn…damn,” Amy Deluca cursed as yet another box fell out of her hands. How the hell was she supposed to get the door to her shop open if she couldn’t even walk without dropping things. “Do you need some help mam,” Jim Valenti asked from behind the young woman he’d seen struggling with a stack of boxes bigger than she was. He’d been on his way to the Sheriff’s office when he’d seen her, and heard her cursing, so he decided to go make himself useful. It wasn’t like some major crime was going to happen in Willow Oaks in the next five seconds. Jim had a feeling nothing, with the exception of the occasional supernatural occurrence, ever happened in Willow Oaks. “If you could just open and hold the door for me,” Amy replied to the voice she didn’t recognize. She knew she shouldn’t be accepting the help of a perfect stranger, but well…she wasn’t getting any bad vibes off him. Jim nodded and grabbed the door, holding it open while the slender woman walked past him with the tower of boxes. Once she was inside, Jim turned to collect the ones that she had dropped. When he had them all, he entered the shop himself. “Where do you want…” his voice trailed off when he got a look at the woman for the first time. She was beautiful, simply breathtaking. Jim suddenly felt like a teenager again, on his first date, which could explain why the boxes fell from his hands to the floor. “You could have just handed them to me,” Amy said with a grin, “you didn’t have to drop them on the floor.” She laughed and moved to start picking them up. Jim leaned down and helped her. “Amy Deluca,” she said once she had the boxes with the others on the counter. “You must be the new Sheriff. James Valenti right?” “Please,” he said with a charming grin that had Amy’s heart fluttering in a way it hadn’t in years, not since…Amy shook her head, there was no use thinking about that. “Call me Jim. James makes me feel old.” Amy laughed at that. “Please,” she winked at him, “you are no where near old. My daughter would say that you are a fine distinguished ‘man’.” “Jesus,” Jim winced, “make me feel even older why don’t you?” Amy laughed again and shrugged. The door clanged behind them. “Hi Isabel,” she said to the girl she thought of as one of her own. “We got the new shipment in. Why don’t you work at designing some sort of display for them.” “OK Aunt Amy,” Isabel said with a easy grin. “Maria said to tell you that she would be in later to give you a ride home since she has the Jetta today.” Amy nodded, not removing her eyes from Jim. “Hi,” Isabel said with another grin. This was interesting. Maria’s mom was making cow eyes at Kyle’s dad, and he was returning it. Old people were so cute. “I’m Isabel Guerin. You must be the new Sheriff, Kyle’s dad.” “You know Kyle?” Jim asked, still staring intently at Amy, who was now blushing like a teenager. “Mmmhmm,” Isabel said with a grin they didn’t notice. If the two of them were paying any attention to her, she was a gothed out Marilyn Manson fan. “I’ll just go in the back and work at designing that display Aunt Amy,” Isabel said with a grin as she grabbed a sketchbook and her bag and made her way to the back storeroom. Ten minutes later, a knocking at the door interrupted her sketching. Alex stuck his head in the door and grinned at her. “What’s up with Aunt Amy?” He asked as he came to peer at what she was doing. “That’s nice,” he told her as he sat down in the seat in front of her. “Thanks,” she said with a blush. Then she laughed, “Is she still staring at the new Sheriff?” “That’s Kyle’s dad?” Alex asked. Then he whistled, “Wonder how that one’s going to go over with Maria and Kyle?” “You think there’s something there already?” “Please,” Alex snorted. “The two of them are staring at each other the way dieting people stare at chocolate. Kinda freaky actually,” Alex said with a mock shiver. “Everyone around here is starting to get that look – Tess and Kyle, Michael and Maria, and now Amy and the Sheriff.” “Very astute observations Alex,” Isabel said dryly with a wink. Alex shrugged, but blushed; ruining the nonchalance he was trying to show. “Did you see Michael and Maria this morning?” She asked him after a moment of companionable silence. “You mean the two love sick idiots that we all had to each lunch with?” Alex said with a loud laugh. “Yeah, I saw them…so did everyone else. Did you see Courtney’s face?” “Yeah,” Isabel giggled in a way that only a select few ever heard. Alex was one of those few. “It wasn’t a very complimentary shade of green was it?” Alex laughed and again they fell into another easy silence. Both just happy to be with the other, no conversation was needed. Alex quietly got out his Calculus book and began to work on some problems that he hadn’t understood in class, and Isabel returned to her sketch. “Alex,” Isabel said nearly half-an-hour later. Alex looked up at her questionably. “Can I ask you something serious?” “You can ask me anything Izzy,” Alex answered truthfully. “You know that already. What’s up?” He put his pencil down, prepared for anything. “I have a funny feeling about those new kids, Max Evans and Liz Parker,” she spit out quickly. “I mentioned something to Tess about it yesterday, but she shrugged it off, and Maria went off to the Creek last night before I could say anything to her. Do you think I’m being paranoid?” “No,” Alex said firmly, “you aren’t being paranoid. I feel it too. I’m shocked the others don’t. There’s something off about those two. I don’t know what it is, but I sensed it when they first walked into English.” “Thank god,” Isabel said as she looked into his blue eyes. She loved Alex’s eyes. They were so comforting, so loving and honest. “I didn’t want to be the only one.” She took a deep breath. Maybe she could make this feeling they both had work to her advantage. “Maybe we should keep a closer eye on them, the two of us I mean, since the others don’t seem to get it. We haven’t had trouble in a while, and well, we’re probably overdue for some.” Alex tried not to faint in exhilaration. Isabel was asking to spend more time alone with him. He could handle that. “That’s probably a good idea,” he managed to get out in a normal tone of voice. He told himself to calm down. Instantaneously falling at her feet in a dead swoon wouldn’t be too cool. “I don’t necessarily get the danger vibe off of them,” he added seriously, “more like a ‘watch them cause they could cause more trouble than they know’ vibe. They could be Hunters, or they could be connected to them.” Isabel shivered at that. She hated Hunters. “I don’t get the Hunter vibe off of them, but we know how to handle it if they are,” she said with a shake of her head, “but maybe we should follow them around one night.” Isabel glanced at him with a sly look that Alex didn’t catch. If this worked, she’d be killing two birds with one stone. “I think I heard the girl say something today in English about catching a movie this Friday. We could go to, make it look like we’re on a date, sit near them, and scope it out.” “Sounds good to me,” Alex said, trying not to get up and do Maria’s patented happy dance. “We could do that. Plus, what’s better than seeing a movie with my girl?” He asked as he gathered up his things, never letting on that when he called her ‘his girl’ he meant it in an entirely different way than when he said it for Tess and Maria. “I’d better get going. I told my boss I’d come in this afternoon early to work on his security system. Call me tonight with the details of your plan and we’ll work on it ok?” Isabel nodded and smiled at him warmly when he left her alone. “Oh, I’ll give you some of the details Alex,” Isabel said softly to herself as she sketched a heart in the corner of the pad in front of her. “But one simply doesn’t inform the person that she’s trying to seduce that she’s going to seduce him.” It was perfect, Isabel would be able to get a better look at this Max and Liz, they had really bothered her, they had a way of looking at all of them that made shivers of dread flow down her spine. And it was also perfect that she would have alone time in a dark theatre with Alex, who also caused shivers to move down her spine, shivers of awareness. Now if only she could find a way to get him to be as aware of her. For months, ever since the dance at the Prom, she’d been seeing Alex in a whole different light. At first it had only been in her dreams, dreams of her and Alex happy together, bathed in the soft light of perfect harmony…the same light that she always saw around her own parents. But now, it was getting where she saw it every single time she saw him. If something didn’t happen soon, which meant if Alex didn’t come to his senses and realize that she was his, then she was going to do something drastic…like throw him down on the ground and have her way with him until he couldn’t think of anyone but her. It sounded caveman/cavewoman to her own ears, but she was a Guerin…that’s the way they operated. TBC

Part 13