hollow tapping that came through the screen echoed the pulse pounding in her throat and at her temples. All that sweet innocence only made the broad-shouldered shadowy figure next door all the more surreal, and menacing.
Feeling her confidence wavering, she tossed her brush onto the counter. Back in the bedroom she grabbed her leggings, and shoes, and shot through the doorway. Awful, awful man, she seethed, stomping down the stairs. She wished her bare feet and modest weight created the thunderous acoustics that her annoyance craved. Did he sleep by that confounded computer? Was this what she had to look forward to from having him as a neighbor?
To think she’d been so pleased to have double windows in the master bedroom. It meant she could better enjoy the view of the ancient wisteria that rose from Zachary Denton’s backyard and nearly engulfed everything in its path as it crept over fences and trees in search of sunlight. Bad enough to have missed this year’s blooms; was she going to have to keep everything tightly shut and lose the view altogether? It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair!
Downstairs she dropped her things by her new telephone and angrily stepped into her leggings and shoes, then jerked open the front door. She’d give him credit for one thing, though—he’d raised her blood pressure so much she didn’t need any caffeine to finish waking up!
Outside, she took a welcome, deep breath of fresh air. Yesterday’s rain had soaked everything through and through, and lingering humidity made the air heavy, the grass and shrubbery dew-drenched. The sun peered through the haze, its warmth stirring a potpourri of scents from the countless varieties of wildflowers and trees that flourished in the piney woods of East Texas. Willa let the promising day and the fresh air soothe her. It lasted only until she realized her paper wasn’t on the driveway as she’d hoped.
“Not this, too?” Sighing, she checked on the other side of the van in case the delivery boy’s aim had been way off.
It wasn’t there, either. But as she scanned her yard, she spotted the plastic-bag-enclosed paper tied to her mailbox. Relieved that a black cloud of bad luck wasn’t settling in over her house after all, she went to retrieve it.
Easier said than done, she decided, realizing how well the boy had secured the thing to her mailbox. She had to tug hard to free it, and the force of the move jerked open the aluminum box’s lid. Inside, was a folded sheet of letter-size paper.
“Oh, happy day,” she drawled, almost amused. She hadn’t even finished moving in yet and already she was the recipient of her first piece of junk mail.
Curious to know who had been this ambitious, she drew out the paper and unfolded it.
It wasn’t an advertisement, and for a moment she frowned down at the cut-out, odd-shaped letters from magazines and newspapers that had been glued unevenly to the sheet. Her mind simply refused to make sense of it.
“Too tempting for words.”
What on earth was this? Who would put something so ridiculous and—
The nerve! Oh, yes, she understood now. Did he think she wouldn’t be able to put two and two together? From what she could tell of the few other residents who lived farther down the road, they were either elderly or working people with no children. Hardly the type to indulge in such a tasteless gesture. But she had no such confidence in her nearest neighbor.
What had been his plan? Did he think she was going to be fooled into believing the Vilary stalker had chosen her as his next victim? It would serve him right if she phoned the police this minute and turned him in. Let him explain away his unbalanced behavior to them!
But that would probably bring every reporter in the state upon them like a swarm of those killer bees said to be invading from South America. Willa drew her lower lip between her teeth. No way did she want to cope with something like that. She was no recluse, but the ads and interviews she occasionally did for her store was enough “media” for her. In comparison the press who’d haunted her every step after A.J.’s employer had tried to blame his crash on pilot error had been like being chased by a pack of starving wild dogs.
Her resentment growing, she eyed Zachary Denton’s house. No, she didn’t want to go over there again; however, she would. She could handle this herself, and enjoy it! Let him have a taste of what it was like to be threatened.
She underhanded her newspaper in the direction of her front door, and this time used the street to reach Zachary Denton’s front walk. It wasn’t a much better choice than the tall weeds, though. Maybe she’d avoided the ticks and chiggers this way, but the number of potholes made the trip a different challenge. Thanks to yesterday’s flooding, every one of them was brimming with muddy water. Apparently the county road department didn’t like him, either.
By the time she reached his porch, her once pristine jogging shoes and leggings were splattered with East Texas red clay. Disgusted, she pounded on the screen door.
“Don’t you dare ignore me!” She glared up at the unblinking eye targeted on her. “Open up or this goes to the press.”
She held up the sheet of paper to the camera. Several long seconds later she heard the inside latch give. Telling herself that she had to ignore the responding lurch from her stomach, Willa stormed inside.
He sat where she’d found him yesterday, at the top of the stairs, looking like an exiled dictator of some ragtag country who was in a particularly bad mood. She eyed him with disdain. Whatever the man spent his money on, it certainly wasn’t clothes and razor blades.
Intent on giving him a taste of his own medicine and making him as agitated as he’d made her, she quickly started up the stairs. She knew better than to dwell on the wisdom of the move—or rather, the lack thereof. This had to do with principle.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Although his dark, almost wild gaze had the sharpness of a spear lancing through her, she shot back, “I’ll do the talking this time.”
“Not if I decide to call the police and have you arrested for harassment and trespassing.”
“Good idea. Call them! I can’t wait to hear you explain away this.”
“Let me see that!”
With impressive control and speed, he leaned forward and, before she could stop him, he snatched the paper out of her grasp. Afraid he meant to shred it, Willa considered trying to get it back, but she didn’t want to risk destroying it herself. Checking her impulse, she attempted to ignore her sudden disadvantage by studying her strange neighbor from this closer vantage point.
At least he looked somewhat less unkempt this morning, although he still hadn’t shaved, and his eyes were as bloodshot as ever. Finding that they were gray surprised her. She’d expected the same opaque brown of his hair and beard, a shade that in certain light people was often mistaken for black. Then again, the gray was opaque and nearly black, too. And so was his mood, she noted as he shot her a brief, sharp glare.
What a big, fierce man. He looked perfectly capable of launching himself out of that wheelchair and strangling the life out of her; in fact, his hands weren’t anything close to what she’d pictured for a writer. No long, elegant piano fingers here. Zachary Denton’s hands were closer to paws: huge, thick-fingered and callused like a laborer’s. She knew the latter was from wheeling his chair, but it reminded her of what A.J. used to say about Denton’s work. He writes like a man’s man.
What a crazy thing to remember. She’d never quite understood what A.J. had meant, either. In fact she’d argued to him how silly the comment was, insisting that no woman had ever declared a member of her sex, “a woman’s woman.”
However, as she watched the broken, but still-powerful man before her sweep a hand through his thick wavy mane, her increasingly rebellious imagination kicked into gear and suddenly she understood the macho thing. She could visualize how Zachary Denton’s hands would look caressing a woman’s body…how they would feel.
No, not just any female body. Hers.
She gripped the