look away from that empty bucket.
Holding her bag of garbage out, a shield against the sight of that shiny metal, Josie backed away. Halfway to her porch she froze as she caught the minute change in the shades of darkness at the edge of the woods.
Bugs swarmed around the bright porch light, banged against the wide bulbs, clustered there until the swarm grew too thick, and heavy bodies fell to the ground.
And then he came out of the woods toward her.
She gasped and the handle of the garbage bag slipped through her fingers. Keeping his lean form in view, Josie took slow steps away from him, her breath rattling in her ears.
She’d misunderstood. She’d thought he meant she would come to his house. Stupid of her. But she’d had that sensation of being drawn, of being almost hypnotized, and so she’d misunderstood.
On one side of the screen door, her mouth going dry with something beyond fear, she faced him, the hook-andeye lock nothing more than the illusion of a barrier.
In a glance, Josie took in his appearance. Ruffled, his hair looked as if he’d dragged his hands through it repeatedly. He hadn’t shaved since she’d seen him that afternoon, and a faint beard shadowed his pale skin. His jeans rode low on his hips, and his black T-shirt was tucked into the waistband. A silver snap caught the light from the floods and sparkled momentarily as he stopped, one foot on the lowest porch step.
He nodded, as if he, too, felt that humming. “May I come in?”
“No.” Josie saw the pinpoints of the candle flames deep in his eyes. “Absolutely not. I’d be crazy to let you in.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Right now I’d have to agree with you. You’d be crazy to let me in.” He took one step more, his sneakers soundless against the wooden step. That must have been how he’d approached her house this morning, soundlessly leaving the capsaicin and disappearing back into the woods.
“Stop,” she said, her voice cracking. “Don’t come any farther. I mean it.”
“I wasn’t going to,” he said mildly, and settled down on the steps, his form a shadow flowing over dark water. “I told you. I needed to talk to you. That’s all. And you’re right to be afraid,” he added, tilting his head to look up to her. “It’s a frightening world we live in,” he said, and his voice sighed away. “I’m afraid, too, Josie Birdsong, if you want to know the truth.”
“What do you mean? Why should you be afraid?” Her voice was too tight. Tight with fear and that humming that strung her tight as a violin waiting for the stroke of the bow to make music. “I don’t understand you, Ryder Hayes,” she said, and realized only as she spoke that she’d called him by his given name.
Some boundary had been crossed.
“I don’t understand myself, lady green eyes.”
The birds had ceased their music and there was a stillness, a waiting that made Josie’s knees tremble. She tugged at the tail of the blouse. “What do you want to tell me?”
“I’m not sure.” Ryder watched the futile twitch of her slim fingers against the edge of her blouse. Sitting on the porch below her, he saw the narrow edge of elastic on her panties. Each movement she made sent a faint drift of roses toward him.
Regardless of what he’d said in the police parking lot about meeting her, he’d tried to stay away from Josie Bird-song.
He’d failed. He should have known he would. Her long, tanned legs were behind him. If he leaned back, all the way back, his head would be against her knees. He wanted to rest against her. He shut his eyes. He was so tired he couldn’t think straight anymore. That was probably why he hadn’t been able to fight the pull that drew him through the woods to her candlelit porch.
Even her legs smelled of tea roses.
He leaned his head against the frame of the screen door.
He thought she’d be less skittish if he weren’t looking at her, but her sudden jump as he moved told him that she was as aware of him as he was of her.
And equally reluctant.
He wondered if she’d laugh at him if he told her she terrified him. He didn’t dare touch her.
Just being near her, even without touching, the feelings, the images were gathering, and he didn’t know what they meant, what was going to happen next. He’d been right. Josie Birdsong held the key.
But unlike her, he hadn’t lied. He was afraid.
Because he didn’t know what door the key would open.
“I didn’t have anything to do with the disappearance of that boy,” he said finally, not expecting her to believe him. “No matter what you think.”
“All right. Fine. You’ve told me. Now leave.”
“I can’t.” He’d been right about that, too. There was loneliness in Josie Birdsong Conrad. It lay underneath the breathiness, underneath the determination not to let him frighten her. He admired her courage, admired it while recognizing that her courage might not be enough to save her. “Can’t leave, Josie. Not yet.”
“Of course you can. It’s easy. You just stand up and walk away. Easiest thing in the world.” Her voice trembled.
The air around her rippled with her movements. He could feel those minute vibrations against his own skin. Even with his back to her, he knew what she was doing. He didn’t have to see her.
“You don’t need your hoe, Josie. I’m not going to breach the sanctity of your porch.” He shifted so that he could look at her now, could rest in the play of candlelight and shadows on her smooth, tanned skin.
She was a woman of sunlight and earth, rooted in the realities of life.
While he—
“I know you’re not. You’re going to leave. And then I’m calling the police.”
Steel in that magnolia voice. He liked that, too.
“Oh, Josie, if I wanted to, I could have already been in your house any night now for the past two months.” He flattened his hand against the screen. It bulged toward her. “You leave your windows open, your locks are a joke and you sit out here on this porch half the night.” He shook his head, and the effort to move was almost too much. “Your locks aren’t even worth my trouble.” He’d mastered locks and tumblers so superior to her pitiful pieces of steel and rusted metal that even if she’d shut her windows and locked them, too, he could have been in her house in the space of a breath.
“You’re a locksmith?”
Ryder almost laughed, but the need pouring through him left him without even the energy to smile. He felt as if he were dying of the need to touch her, to feel just once more that satin skin against his fingertips.
He wouldn’t, though. He didn’t dare. He thought he still had that much control.
But still he lifted his right hand and grasped the scratchy metal door handle. “No,” he said. “Not a locksmith. But I could be. Could have
