" Aidan took her hands and the imagesof a carnival house of horrors let Aidan know why Bethany was sodisturbed.Aidan invoked her healing and it seemed...to work. Bethany's smilereturned and she pulled Aidan into a hug that led to a long kiss. "Iknow it is probably a silly thing, but they used people to grab you bythe arms or legs and then the colored lights would kick in which freakedme out."Aidan was amazed at some of the things the women in his life were afraidof and as a guy would laugh it off. "No. I thought we could keep it. My office is there and I kind of like the idea of having a place away from home to work. I've done that work at home stuff for too long. It tends to blur the lines between working and not working," John answered.There wouldn't be much to do at John's farm during the winter months. He had some ideas for some software products. He could always experiment with making a smart house. It would be kind of fun to work on his ideas occasionally without having to worry. I knew that anytime they were busy with common sense projects the less concern they would have about getting their hair lifted by some rage-addled savage.I went back inside and checked the level of preparedness in the higher ranks and discovered most of the field grade officers seemed content to just sit back and let “General” Custer do all the planning and set the field of battle. He seemed to have only one mission and that was to force a “meeting engagement” as soon as possible and not allow. " Her voice had a peculiar timber, as if she was educated at Oxford or Cambridge, even though that wouldn't be her native accent. It wasn't good, and it wasn't bad. It just was, and I filed that away for future reflection.Rather than drag it out, I said, "If you will wait here, I want to make private phone call to confirm you are who you say and that you are supposed to be here, since I have heard nothing about a pending visit."Jennelle didn't like being made to wait and attempted to intimidate.