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 been,” he corrected himself. Too late now for that kind of life. “I’m an illusionist. I make my living with tricks.”
“A magician?” she asked in a thin, high voice.
“No. An illusionist. There’s a difference. But possibly only in my mind. At any rate, will you sit down? Please? It tires me to look up at you.”
She stiffened, ready to say something scathing, he was sure.
“Besides, the view from where I am is…well, I appreciate it, lady green eyes. I’m not sure you would, though,” he concluded and leaned against the thick wooden support of the door. “No, don’t go, not yet,” he said as she backed up toward her kitchen door. He knew it had a heavier wooden door, cheap stuff, really, like her front door. No real obstacle.
She stopped.
“Josie, come here, I want to show you something.”
“I’m fine where I am,” she said in a muffled voice. “No, stay there. Outside!” Her voice pitched higher as he rose.
But she needed to understand what was happening, needed to comprehend why he was afraid, and he didn’t know how to make it clear to her except by showing her. He’d told her he wouldn’t open her screen door. He wouldn’t.
But she would.
And so he looked at her, stared deep into her eyes that were the cool, restful gray-green of moss. He saw her eyelids droop, open, droop. “Josie,” he whispered, “open the door. Take a step closer and open the door. I won’t hurt you. I promise,” he whispered, his voice dropping lower and lower until it was only a drift in the air, a touch against her skin, her will.
Just as her movements, her breath, had been against him.
“Another step, Josie, one more. And then unlock your door. Lift the latch, Josie, slowly, sweetheart,” he breathed, coaxing in words that weren’t words, that he wasn’t even sure he spoke aloud, but he knew that she heard.
She lifted the latch and opened the door. Her silky hair swung forward, a curtain over her wide eyes and full mouth as she bent to the latch.
“One more step, Josie. One more,” he urged, luring her with sound and whispers onto the porch step, luring her outside her porch.
The screen door whispered shut behind her. She blinked and her eyes lost the dazed, unfocused look they’d had. He’d wanted only to give her a hint of the power that pulled at him, and now she was standing next to him, but he didn’t touch her.
He wanted to. Wanted to take that last, small step forward and touch her mouth, wanted to bend his mouth to the curve of her neck and savor the scent of roses that lingered there.
He didn’t, though. He reached down inside and dragged up enough control to stay those inches away from her.
“What happened?” Bewildered, she swayed and reached out for his arm.
He stepped back. Too quickly, perhaps, because she jumped and gasped, her eyes growing clearer by the second.
“I asked you to unlatch the door. You did,” Ryder told her. He wasn’t ready to tell her anything else. “I asked you to come off your porch. You did.” He let his voice fall into a lulling rhythm and watched her swaying slowly. “I told you I wouldn’t come onto your porch, Josie. I kept my promise. All right?”
“All right,” she echoed, but her eyes were enormous, focused on him. “You said you wanted to show me something?”
He jammed his hands into his back jeans pockets. “Josie, I heard a child crying when you were at my house yesterday. You heard that sobbing, too. But you saw something. I want to know what.”
“You heard the child?” Her face grew luminous, glowed like the warm candles lined up on her porch, dimmed. “But there was no one there. The police searched your house.”
“What