“They’re not here,” he said, and his voice was gentle. “I don’t have…pets.”
Odd, Josie thought, the way he echoed her earlier thoughts. Stubbornly she persisted. “I want an explanation.” She tapped the edge of the hoe against the porch boards.
“So do we all.” He smiled at her, a faint stretching of facial muscles that moved like clouds across the gulf. “Want explanations. For something or other, don’t we?” His gaze locked with hers.
“I want your dogs to stay away from me,” she insisted. “Sooner or later, they’re going to hurt someone. I don’t want them anywhere near my property.” As she glared into his hooded eyes, cold waves rolled over her, sapping her strength and dragging her down to darkness. Dismayed by the lethargy sliding through her bones, Josie struggled against the waves of passivity. She banged the hoe again. “Those creatures are as dangerous as a loaded gun. And you know it, Mr. Hayes.”
“I never said they weren’t…dangerous. But I can’t control them.”
“You did earlier.”
“Yes, well, miracles do occur.” His words were ironic and fraught with a meaning she couldn’t interpret.
Josie fought the apathy, fought against the rush of sounds and darkness that enervated her. “Then find another way to make a miracle.”
“I wish I could.” Low and filled with suffering, his drawl wrapped around her, and she felt the beat of his anguish with each beat of her heart. “Believe me, I wish I could.”
His words turned to vapor in front of her, a cool mist surrounding him and brushing against her flushed skin as he continued, his words growing fainter with each syllable. “You need to be careful, Josie Birdsong.” His image blurred.
“Conrad,” she whispered. “Josie Conrad.” He knew her middle name. Her mother’s name. He couldn’t know. But he did. Josie was drowning in cold and darkness and she was terrified, reaching out for his hand. “What’s happening?” she moaned and gripped his fingers, their strength solid in the rolling darkness.
And in that moment as her hand curled around his, from somewhere deep in his house, she heard the cry of a child. Sharp, distinct.
And then gone. Silence.
All rational thought vanished with the sound of that child. Josie yanked her hand free and shoved against the door. Down the dark corridor where she sank, she saw a white flutter, a hand, a face. A shape in the dim hallway of the house. Mellie. Oh, God. “Mellie,” she cried and pushed against the force of Ryder Hayes closing his door in her face. “My daughter’s in there! You have my daughter in your house!”
“No!” he muttered. The hard planes of his face contorted, the angles sharp as a knife, the lines around his mouth white and deep with torment. “No one’s here. No one.”
“Mellie!” she screamed and slapped both fists against the door panels.
His face twisted, and he threw up one hand to shade his eyes, his expression hidden. “For God’s sake, go away!”
In that brief glimpse of his expression as he slammed the door, Josie saw the horror in his eyes. She didn’t understand it, but she knew with absolute, unshakable certainty that his horror was real.
With the slam of his door, cold and darkness vanished. All around her was heat and silence, thick and heavy against the ice that encased her shaking body.
She heard the metallic click, the rattle of a chain, as he shot the bolt.
Motionless on a current of air, a solitary grackle hung in the pale sky.
The house with its shuttered windows and locked door loomed in front of her. Hostile.
“Mellie,” Josie whispered, tears mixing with the dirt on her face.
Bracing his back against the door, Ryder ground his fists against his eyelids and sank to the floor, facing the narrow hallway that led from the front of the house.
He should have stayed away from the woman. Should have stayed away from Josie Conrad. Birdsong came the whisper. Birdsong.
But he’d been drawn to her by a power stronger than his intelligence, stronger than his will. He’d gone that first night and watched her small, strained face float above candle flames through the darkened rooms of her house.
And he’d returned the next night.
The night after that.
“Damn, damn, damn.” Banging his fists against his face, he swore, the stream of curses no relief to the grinding agony inside him.
He should have been able to resist.
But he hadn’t.
No, he should never have gone to Josie Conrad’s house.
Not that first time when he’d watched her from the woods and seen her pacing hour after hour in the candlelit rooms of her house. And especially not today.
It was growing worse.
Something had happened while she stood in the doorway. She’d seen something. She believed she’d seen a child.
He groaned, a raw, animal sound of pain.
He was losing control.
Rising in one jerky motion, Ryder stood and turned around, facing the direction she’d taken. Through one of the louvers in the small window next to the door, he watched her slender figure as she vanished down the path. Her moss green eyes had been unbearably sad. Lost. Underneath her reckless courage, she’d been lost.
As he watched, a long braid of shiny black hair swung like a metronome against the pink of her blouse. The end curl of the braid hung like a comma past the waistband of her baggy shorts. A strip of smooth, tanned skin showed above the waistband and pink blouse edge.
He wanted to run the back of his finger along that small strip of satin skin, wanted to touch his tongue to the tiny dimple at the back of her knee and see if it truly tasted of honey and flowers. He wanted—God in heaven, he wanted—
The wooden louver cracked between his fingers, the sound like a gunshot.
A bead of blood appeared along the side of his palm as he stared down the empty driveway. Ryder leaned his forehead against the shattered strip, pressing hard, reminding himself.
He had to stay away from Josie Conrad. He would make himself leave her alone.
If he could.
Like an echo to the tattoo beat of his heart came that whispering thread of sound.
Birdsong. Birdsong.
CHAPTER TWO
Josie never knew how she returned home. She knew only that she was there, the desperate green line of her garden an oasis in the brown of dead and dying grass. She couldn’t remember walking back down the path at all.
But she remembered very, very clearly the sound of the bolt slamming shut against her. Remembered, too, the suffering in Ryder Hayes’s face, the sense of power that came from him and pulled her beyond resistance. Step by step, she tried to analyze what had happened and couldn’t, no matter how hard she tried. She struggled to make sense from an incident that made no sense. She’d been frightened. Oh, yes, Ryder Hayes had definitely frightened her.
But not