Stone Cold Charade (A Stone Family Novel) by Kathleen Royce

told herself.
    The headache that had started with her
grandfather’s call was now a full-blown migraine. She closed her eyes as she
reclined back on her bed, letting the tears fall unchecked down her cheeks. Why
had she ever let Sam persuade her into coming here? Her brain kept screaming at
her to pack her bags and leave. If I do, Ty will know I’m running away
because of him. That he gets under my skin. He could never find out who she
was. If he discovered her secret, her past would be laid open for him to see.
Everything was in the songs she had composed. The pleasure he would get in
torturing her about her music, and the obvious feelings she had for him back
then, would rip her apart. This time fate was conspiring to bring them full
circle. It was as if they were destined to take up right where they ended so
long ago.

Chapter Two
 
 
    Looking back, she was so naïve. Maybe
that was why she had seen things through rose-colored glasses…then.
    When Ty had come to work for her
grandfather, he had stood out from the very beginning. Being just a kid of
fifteen to Alex’s nine; he was working for extra money to help support his
family.
    Alex would never forget the day she had
first seen him. In her haste to hunt for her grandfather, she forgot about the
dark interior and the horses that lay within the barn. She froze in the cool
corridor; terror seizing hold of her limbs as she suddenly realized where she ventured.
The smell of the hay was overpowering to her senses. The noises from the
livestock nauseated her.
    Her parents’ funeral was like a
kaleidoscope through her mind. She had always been petrified of the dark and of
horses. Those fears had only intensified after their funeral, as their coffins
had been transported to their final resting place by a horse drawn carriage.
Now, she was plagued with the image of being inside of a coffin blanketed in
total darkness, unable to breathe and without even a sliver of light. Trapped
as her parents were, and terrified. Her grandparents struggled to quiet her
panic, striving to explain death to her. Even so, it didn’t stop the nightmares
or her phobia of being engulfed in total nothingness.
    Ty, spying a movement out of the corner
of his eye, glanced up from the mare he was brushing. A small girl with a look
of pure fear on her young face stood terror stricken and trembling in the
center of the barn. Her lost and panicked expression pulled at his heart. He
walked over to her and knelt down beside her in an effort to gain her
attention.
    “What are you doing in here Tidbit?” he
asked softly, noticing how huge her green eyes looked in her frightened, elfin
face.
    “I’m looking for my grandfather,” she
stammered, her young voice cracking on the last word. She never took her
frightened eyes off of the yearling in the stall directly in front of her. The
child seemed to believe it would bolt toward her at any second. She was small
for her age, and scrawny. He knew instantly who the child was. He knew all
about the Stone Girls.
    “The horse won’t hurt you,” he whispered
softly near her ear, his breath stirring the small curls lying against her
cheek.
    So shocked by the tingling on her face,
she completely forgot for a moment about the yearling and turned her head
toward the boy who was kneeling in front of her. When she gazed into his dark
blue eyes, she felt as if she had come home. Smiling impishly at Ty, she
reached out hesitantly with her small hand. She touched his youthful face in wonder.
She started to trace his features with her fingertips as if trying to memorize
the feel and shape of his face. Smiling down at her, he picked her up in his
arms, and took her back to the main house, warning her to stay out of the barn.
    From that point on, Ty became her
champion. He took away her terror. Over the next couple of years he would
always stop by the house on his way to work, or on his way home, to see how she
was getting on. He would bring his sister Jenny, who was