Shaker Town (Taryn's Camera Book 4) Read Online Free

almost a month– the longest they’d been apart since starting this new chapter in their relationship.
    Both were proceeding a little cautiously with their new developments, still feeling the other out. They were as good of friends as they'd ever been, but once they'd introduced sex into the picture the ballgame had gotten a lot more interesting. Taryn thought she'd have trouble being naked with a guy who'd once wailed tears of pain after he fell off his bike and landed on the sidewalk in front of half the school. (She still remembered helping him to her house, cleaning the dirt out of his “wound” and applying a Fraggle Rock Band-Aid to his dark skin.) Turned out, nakedness or any of the other stuff wasn't as weird as she'd imagined. It was actually pretty good. The part of his personality that was rigid and controlled in the rest of the world knew how to let loose when it needed to.
    But still...neither knew where they were headed and it made them both nervous.
    Matt sighed, irritation on his breath, and considered their distance. “I don’t know. I planned on it, but we have a bunch of things to clear off the table down here. I’m going to try.”
    Taryn was disappointed, but couldn’t push him, of course. He’d taken off almost two months to spend with her in Georgia in the fall, and he'd almost been killed there, so she didn't blame him for not jumping at the bit to get involved in more of her drama. Besides, she didn't want to be the damsel in distress again. Whatever was happening to her, health-wise and ghost-wise, was for her to deal with. He'd come to her rescue over and over again, almost with more obligation than feeling, and it bothered her. It was time that she learned to maneuver her own life.
    That didn't mean she didn't want to see him. She was human; she got lonely. He was, after all, her best friend.
    “Do you think you could come down here?” he asked hopefully.
    Taryn struggled not to become annoyed. After all, she had just asked him the same thing. Still, historically she'd done the traveling to get to him and sometimes she felt just shy of stalking. “I just started this job. I don’t know if I can leave it. I’ll see how it goes, though.”
    Matt sighed and even in the small noise she could hear disappointment. “So tell me about the Shakers a little,” he suggested. “What did they believe in? Who started them?”
    This was something Taryn could talk about with ease. After all, she'd studied them in college. “Well, think of them like a communist cult, only in a good way,” she began.
    Matt laughed, a nice rich sound that flooded through the phone. She felt better. “Okay.”
    “Seriously. They believed in communal living, confessing their sins, separating themselves from the rest of the world....oh, and celibacy.”
    “How'd they get away with that?”
    “They didn't, really,” Taryn answered. “It's why they all died out.”
    “Geeze. And they were into the religious experiences, seeing things, talking to God–those things?”
    “Yes. Ann Lee, the woman who founded them, was very charismatic. The Shakers thought she embodied the second coming of the Christ spirit as manifested on Earth.”
    “Huh.”
    “I have my own theories about her. It has to do with her losing all her children and being in a weird marriage. But I don't want to get into that.”
    Now they were both silent, either lost in thought or with little else to say. Taryn went ahead and wrapped up the conversation with a hurried “love you” (saying that always made her uncomfortable; she couldn’t help it) and hung up. Feeling slightly depressed now, she bunched up the feather pillow and un-muted the television.
    It was growing dark outside and she’d already had supper in the restaurant. She needed to drive into Harrodsburg, the neighboring town, and stock up on snacks but she was too lazy to move. In Georgia a doctor had finally put all the symptoms that had been plaguing her for years together and