the silent sweep of their wings drifting across the white-hot sun.
There was something chilling about the sight of the heavy clump of birds moving as one. Unnerved by their silent passage but not understanding why, she broke into a run. Even Ryder Hayes was preferable to this storm cloud of grackles. Gasping for breath in the heat, she came to the turn in the path that led either to Angel Bay or to the Hayes property.
The sickly-sweet branches of a drought-pinched oleander whipped against her shoulder as she pushed them aside and came to the shell drive leading to the Hayes house. Her breath rasping deep in her lungs, she paused. The edges of the crushed shells were sharp against the sole of her foot as she hesitated.
Tilted closed, the louvers of the wooden shutters gave the house a hostile, secretive appearance. In the smothering heat, the house seemed to shimmer in front of her, illusive.
Someone was watching her.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose.
She spun around.
The grackles had flown away.
Nothing behind her but the path.
No dogs there.
No one, in fact, merely that sense of being observed. She looked around and saw nothing, no one.
To her left, the distant curve of Angel River.
And in front of her, the house.
She hadn’t seen it in years. The paint on the tall white columns flaked to gray underneath, and dead vines crawled like spiderwebs against the blank wall of the right side. Decay, rank and ripe, lay heavily over the house.
Walking slowly up the driveway, Josie kept one hand in her pocket tight around the pepper can. With her other hand, she clutched the hoe like a weapon. Shells popped and cracked under her feet. She kept her eyes moving from left to right, half expecting the pack of dogs to come around the corner of the house, to leap at her from the bushes massed at the edge of the porch that circled the front and sides of the house.
As she made her way up the center of the steps, she thumped each one with her hoe, announcing her presence. The smell of rotting wood and insects filled her nose as the wide steps squeaked and splintered. She watched carefully where she placed her feet and tried not to think of what might have taken root or made its home in the recesses under the raised porch. Once more she wished she’d taken the time to slip into a pair of shoes.
Clutching the hoe like a walking stick, she cursed the stubbornness that kept her moving toward the front door of Ryder Hayes’s house when what she wanted was to turn and run as fast as she could away from the oppressive gloom of this house. Her lungs were constricted, leaving her dizzyingly short of oxygen as she trudged across the warped expanse of porch.
Her stubbornness would be the death of her someday. Anybody with half a brain would know when to quit. But she hadn’t had a choice, not really. Not with those dogs running wild—
She shut off her brain. She wouldn’t think of the children.
A prickling awareness made goose bumps on her skin, stayed with her.
Taking one final step, she swallowed as she paused in front of the huge, heavily carved front door and raised her fist, pounding on the grinning faces, the grimy wreaths and grapes chiseled into the wood, unleashing her frustration and terror and grief against the unyielding mahogany.
The door should have creaked. It should have groaned. There should have been cobwebs hanging from the frame and a humped Igor to open the portal a crack.
Instead, the door swung inward, and a gaunt figure appeared in the dim foyer, shading his eyes against the sunlight. A draft of air coiled around her ankles and up her thighs like the brush of an unseen, cold hand.
The door had been opened so silently that she hadn’t heard it, and her fist, still raised to pound against the door, slid against the cool cotton shirt of the man who leaned against the doorjamb. Her knuckles brushed against the thin black T-shirt, against the cords of his stomach, and she heard his swift intake of breath. His head snapped up and his dark gaze met hers.
Ice and heat burned her fingertips.
Josie jerked back, one heel scraping against a splinter. She couldn’t help her reaction. Power rising toward her, threatening to swamp her and suck her under, sweeping her out beyond safety. Coming from him.
Slumped against the door with his aloof burning gaze meeting hers, he looked too weary to speak, too weary to live, and yet waves of energy came from him, battering against her, and she took another step back, stunned by the force of his presence.
“What do you want?” Exhaustion made his low voice gravelly and he shaded his eyes again, taking a step back.
Josie gripped the hoe and stepped forward. The man looked ill. “Ryder Hayes?”
“Most of the time. Usually.” He sank more heavily against the frame as he glanced at her hoe. Slurred in a rough drawl, his words sounded as if he’d dragged them up from some dark cavern within himself. “Unless that’s a weapon?”
“What?” Josie frowned.
With a barely perceptible movement of a long index finger, he pointed to the hoe she held in a death grip. “Have you come, lady of the moss green eyes, like some medieval villager with torch and hoe, to burn me out?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Confused, Josie reached into her pocket for the cylinder of capsaicin.
“I see. Not a weapon, then.” He shook his head and pulled himself upright, almost disappearing behind the shield of the door. “Sorry, but I’m not interested in buying farm tools.”
“Good. Because I’m not selling anything.”
“Of course you are. Everyone’s selling something.” Cynicism curled the edges of his words.
“I’m not. I’m here to see Mr. Hayes.” Josie thumped the hoe emphatically. “Are you Ryder Hayes?”
“I’m afraid I am.” Slavic cheekbones sloped down to a full, sharply delineated mouth that curved down at the corners. “Not that I seem to have any choice about the matter.”
“Then I’ve come about your dogs, Mr. Hayes.”
“My dogs?” Straight white teeth flashed under the hood of his hand as his mouth stretched in a yawn. “I can’t help you.” He edged the door shut.
“You know good and well what I’m talking about.”
“Do I?” His voice became only a drift of sound.
“The dogs that almost attacked me this morning. Those beasts. Your pack of dogs.”
White lines scored his beautiful mouth, nothing more than a minute pull of muscle. He lowered his hand and his dark eyes met hers again, eyes so tortured that Josie dropped the hoe and stretched her hand to him. Clattering to the porch, the hoe fell between them and she bent down to pick it up as he said, “I have no dogs.”
“I saw you with them,” she insisted, stubborn in the
