Shane

Markayla watched as her husband's car backed out into the dark night and sighed. Although it was almost midnight and she was tired, she wasn't quite ready to sleep. Remembering that it was Friday night and she had free time until the fundraising party Sunday evening, she realized there was no point in pressuring herself to get to sleep right away. Instead, she would pamper herself with a good read. Turning the lights off in the living room and kitchen, she lowered the thermostat and slipped into bed with her Kindle. The light from it cast strange shadows about the room. It would be so nice to be able to toss the thing on the nightstand when she was ready for sleep, rather than to have to turn lights off like she used to do when she read paper books. She lost herself in the romantic mystery she was currently reading. Fifteen minutes later, she could've sworn she heard something rustling on the front patio just outside the bedroom window. Her pulse sped up, though she figured it was just a cat, skunk or possum lurking about and nothing to worry about. Or maybe she'd just imagined it since she'd only heard it, or thought she did, for a nanosecond. But then she heard it again. Turning the Kindle off, she plunged the room into total darkness and listened intently as every muscle in her body tensed up like piano wires. Nothing. After silently waiting in the darkness for a few more minutes, she picked up her Kindle and resumed reading. But the feeling just wouldn't go away. The kind you get when you sense someone's watching you. Once again, she darkened the Kindle and lay still as a rock and as quietly as her quickened breath would allow. She heard movement again just outside the window. It too, only lasted barely a second, but she knew she'd heard it without a doubt and definitely hadn't imagined it. She turned her head toward the window closest to her. Then she slowly rose from the bed and gently peered through the slat in the blinds at the very side. In doing her best to keep hidden, she prevented herself from seeing much more than the area immediately around the window, but she saw nothing suspicious. Markayla was no longer able to concentrate on her book. Instead, she lay there in the darkness, hoping not to hear it again and for sleep to come and claim her. Other than seeing less and less of Jack, she hadn't cared if he worked third shift or not. Now she cared. She gazed upward at the ceiling. Had the shadow that had swiftly raked across the ceiling been from something other than a tree? It was a relatively calm night out that night. Nothing should move that fast unless it didn't have leaves. She tried to ignore the thumping of her heart, and as more time passed, she realized that if it had been anyone intent on breaking in, then they would've done so by now, triggering the alarm system and summoning the cops to the house. Hopefully, before they had a chance to harm her first, of course. Her mind suddenly swung to Shane as it often did. Had the guy really known which house she lived in, or had she imagined him to be slowing down at the precise moment she had pointed the house out to him? She'd played that moment over and over again in her mind and realized that she really couldn't say for sure if he'd known which house to stop at or not. But whether or not he'd known where she lived before pointing the house out to him, he definitely knew where she lived now. Would he be the type to lurk around her place at night, knowing that her husband was at work? She supposed that while anything was possible, the likelihood of him doing so wasn't very good. She was older and not very pretty. She was no ugly duckling, and she knew that but why waste time on someone over a decade older who was pretty average-looking when you could have younger, hotter and skinnier? Also, he didn't know Jack's schedule. For all he knew, Jack was home that night, or there were others in the household when he wasn't. Shane. Oh, what a body that guy had. Less than ten hours ago, he'd emerged by himself from the exercise room, towel wrapped around his shoulders, head tilted back, guzzling water. She had hoped he'd sit and chat with her, and he did briefly. "How are you doing today, Mizz Markayla?" he asked, accentuating the Mizz. "I'm good, and you?" "Great," he smiled, steel gray eyes with flecks of blue crinkling at the corners as they gazed into her dark orbs. She studied his body, clad in athletic wear. He was strong and lean. He didn't bulk out in a way that she'd never found attractive. He was slim and wiry yet looked just as solid as a professional wrestler. "Just think," she had said. "If anybody messed with me, I'd feel safe with you around." He laughed and drank some more water. Then he rose to his full height, which Markayla guessed to be over six feet. "I'd love to stay and chat, hun, but unfortunately I do gotta run." "The lab work never ends, does it?" At first, he had looked at her with confusion, then he said, "Oh, yeah. I mean no, it never does." She was disappointed with the shortness of the chat, but even so, being called "hun," however innocent it may have been, made her swoon inside like a teenager with the crush from hell. Markayla yawned in the night as she remembered the earlier events and came to the conclusion that yes, he did know where she lived, but no, he wasn't hot for her. And no, he wasn't a stalking psycho either.