I blew out a long breath, trying to chase those unsettled feelings away with it. Where had this come from? The Renaissance Faire had been my happy place since I was eighteen, but I didn’t like the way I was feeling now. Had I outgrown the Faire? Or had it outgrown me?

I took one more glance at the blue backpack before making my way out of the booth. One necklace wasn’t enough retail therapy to keep this melancholy at bay. Thirty percent off . . . I was going to have to come back for that.

I continued to wander the lanes with no conscious destination in mind, trying to get my thoughts in order, when my feet brought me to the Marlowe Stage. The Dueling Kilts’ last set was about to begin. Perfect timing. I slipped into the back of the crowd, between a couple costumed vendors, right as the guys took the stage.

The Dueling Kilts were a trio of brothers—the MacLeans—who played Irish standards mixed with slightly naughty drinking songs, all on a hand drum, guitar, and fiddle. Their instruments were acoustic, their kilts hit just at the knee, and they were all very, very easy on the eyes. My eyes strayed, as they usually did, to the guitar player. Dex MacLean. The best eye candy at Faire. His red kilt was shot through with just enough dark green to keep him from looking like a stoplight, but it was still bright enough to draw attention. As though his powerful legs weren’t doing that well enough on their own. The hem was a little ragged, and he wore it as casually as he’d wear a pair of jeans. Dex carried himself like a man who’d been born with plaid wrapped around his hips.

His off-white linen shirt did nothing to hide his broad, muscled shoulders, and he stomped one booted foot in time with the music he played. He shook his long dark hair out of his eyes as he turned to his compatriots, and his smile made something thud in my chest. Dex MacLean had been my favorite part of Faire for the past two summers. The man had a body like a Hemsworth, and I’d explored just about every inch of it. Just as he’d explored mine. He’d been clear from the start, of course. No strings. Just sex. I was fine with that. I wasn’t looking to settle down anytime soon, and I didn’t like Dex for his conversation. Again, body like a Hemsworth. What kind of fool would I be to pass that up?

After last summer, I’d been looking forward to a repeat of our sexual acrobatics this year, but things had turned out differently. He’d lost his phone over the winter and had apparently gotten a new number as well, so my initial texts had gone unanswered. We’d managed a night or two together, and it had been just as electric as ever. But the urgency hadn’t been there as it had the summer before, and I wasn’t disappointed when he didn’t ask for my number again. I didn’t volunteer it.

No strings, remember? The man wasn’t relationship material.

So now I watched Dex play his last show on the last day of Faire with a curious mix of satisfaction, smugness, and regret. I’ve had that, the smug-and-satisfied side of my brain said. But why hadn’t I gone back for more? I pushed down the latter thought, opting instead to appreciate what—and whom—I’d done.

Next to me, one of the vendors sighed. I recognized her; she sold tarot cards and crystals out of a booth shaped like a traveling wagon. She leaned over to the woman next to her. “So much pretty on one stage.”

Her companion nodded. “Should be illegal, those legs. Thank God for kilts.”

The tarot card seller sighed again. “Too bad he’s such a manwhore.”

“Really.” The word slipped out before I could check it, and the two women turned to me with a conspiratorial grin. There was that feeling again, of being a Faire insider, with access to the best gossip.

“Oh, yeah.” She leaned a little closer to me, and I did the same, as if she were about to share a secret. “I’m pretty sure he’s got a girl at every Faire.”

“Oh, he does,” the other vendor said. “Wonder who it is here.” She glanced around the audience as though she could identify Dex’s Willow Creek hookup by some kind of secret symbol. A really satisfied smile, maybe. I bit hard on the inside of my cheek. If he was discreet enough to not blab about it, then I would be too.

“No idea,” I said, pleased at how noncommittal my voice sounded.

“Lucky girl, though.” The tarot vendor placed her hands on her belly, as if she were quelling butterflies that had gathered there. “I bet she had a hell of a summer.” She snickered, the other vendor joined in, and I forced myself to do the same, even though my laugh was a little hollow.

At the end of the song the two women slipped out of the crowd and back to their booths. As the next song started, there was a touch on my elbow.

“Good morrow, milady Beatrice.”

My attention slid away from Dex and to a different MacLean altogether. Daniel, Dex’s cousin, managed the Dueling Kilts. He usually lingered somewhere in the back of the crowd like this, dressed in his uniform of a black T-shirt and black jeans. How the man managed to not die of heatstroke dressed like that in the middle of August, I’d never know.

“Well met, good sir.” I bobbed a quick curtsy, still in character. Then I dropped the accent. “Faire’s about over, you know. You can call me Stacey now.”

Daniel’s laugh was a quiet exhale. “I’ll try and remember.” He took off his black baseball cap and shook out his hair, and I was surprised anew at how red it was. Just long enough to fall into his eyes, his hair was usually obscured by the hat he wore all the time. “New necklace?” He raked his hair out of his eyes with one hand before settling the cap back on his head, eclipsing that bright hair again.

“Hmm? Oh. Yeah.” My hand went to the dragonfly around my neck, the silver warm now from lying against my skin. “Just picked it up this afternoon.”

“Looks nice.” He raised a hand as though he was going to touch it, but he changed the movement to a gesture in the pendant’s direction instead, shoving his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Means change.”

“What?”

“The dragonfly.” He nodded in the direction of my cleavage, current resting place of said dragonfly. “In a lot of cultures the dragonfly symbolizes change.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t that deep, and for a moment I felt a little ashamed of that. But the hell with it. I shrugged. “To me, it symbolizes pretty.” He laughed, a real laugh this time, and I couldn’t help but remember that frisson of dissatisfaction that had seized me when I’d first picked it up. Time for a change, I’d said to Simon. Huh. Maybe this dragonfly knew what it was talking about.

I opened my mouth to tell Daniel about this, but he’d already turned his attention back to his cousins on the stage. Not for the first time, I contemplated the MacLean DNA. Dex and Daniel were both tall, but that was where the resemblance ended. Dex was dark, solid, and strong-muscled, a man who looked like he was about to rock your world in a dangerous way. Daniel was lean and fair, with bottle-green eyes to go with that red hair, and more of a swimmer’s build than a bodybuilder’s. Daniel looked less like he was about to rock your world and more like he knew exactly how you took your coffee and would bring it to you in bed with a soft smile just for you. While the Kilts played the Faire, Daniel stuck around to man their merchandising booth. It didn’t seem like enough to keep him busy, but maybe Dex and the others required that much supervision.

Daniel was a comfortable, easy presence, but I always felt a little awkward around him, since I was pretty sure he knew all about Dex and me. There’d been that one night this summer when I’d run into Daniel at the hotel ice machine at two in the morning. There’d been no explaining that away.

Sure enough. “You . . . Um.” Daniel cleared his throat, and I glanced over. His eyes were still on the stage, but his mouth twisted as he bit the inside of his cheek. “You know about Dex, right?”

I blinked. “Well, I’m familiar with him.” Very familiar, but he probably wasn’t looking for details.

He shook his head and leaned a shoulder against a tree, hands still shoved in the front pockets of his jeans. “I mean, you know he’s . . .” He sighed and turned those green eyes my way. “You know he’s kind of a player, right?”

“A wench at every Faire?” I raised my eyebrow, and his laugh in response was more of a snort. “I’d heard that.” I sighed a dramatic sigh and looked back at the stage. “Guess I’m not as special as I thought.”

I’d meant that as a joke, but Daniel didn’t respond. I turned my head, expecting a knowing smirk on his face, but instead a flush crept up the back of his neck as he studied the ground. “I didn’t say . . .” He cleared his throat and tried again. “I don’t mean that you . . . I mean, you’re . . .” Finally he sighed in exasperation and looked up at me again. “I don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.”

Oh. That. I waved an unconcerned hand. “Don’t worry. I’m a big girl. I can handle it.” It was my turn to blush at the words I’d just said. Big girl. My hands went to my waist, nipped in to a ridiculous degree by this corset I wore as part of my costume, as though I could push on my ribs and make myself even smaller. I wasn’t one of those people who hated their body, but sometimes I was very conscious of the fact that I wasn’t model-thin. That was one of the many reasons I loved being at Faire. Here, my voluptuousness was an asset: my chest looked incredible all hiked up like this, and the corset gave me an hourglass figure I could never achieve the rest of the year.