Lindsay Longford - Dark Moon

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 face of his denial and confused by the torment she’d glimpsed.

“Did you?”

“Near my house. In the woods,” Josie said.

“Perhaps you imagined you did.” His voice was remote, disinterested, but underneath the polite dismissal she heard a disturbing note that kept her standing on his porch.

“I don’t imagine things. I know what I saw.” She gripped the hoe until her hand hurt.

“Unlike the rest of us, then? How fortunate for you. To know what’s real. What’s not.”

“I saw you. You stopped the dogs from attacking me.”

“Did I? Fascinating.”

Wanting to shake him out of his indifference, needing to make him admit the truth, Josie reached out and grasped his arm. With her movement, the capsaicin cylinder flew out of her pocket and racketed across the porch into the grass. His forearm was all muscle and bone under her fingers.

“Hell.” He doubled over and groaned, yanking his arm free and brushing his hand across his eyes. His hand trembled. “Damn.”

“Are you all right?”

“I suppose it depends on your definition.” He straightened and stepped away from her, putting the edge of the door between them before she could help him.

“Do you want me to call a doctor? Are you sick?” she repeated, concerned about the pallor that swept over his face.

“Sick?” His laugh was humorless and sent a ripple of shivers along her spine. “Spirit-sick, ‘sick almost to dooms-day,’ as the poet put it, but, no, lady green eyes, I don’t believe I need the services of a physician. Thank you for your concern.” Preparing to shut the door, his narrow, long fingers gripped the edge.

Glimpsing the strained white knuckles that tightened as she watched, Josie had the strangest impression that he was falling over the edge of a chasm and holding on with the last of his strength, but she couldn’t let him escape without settling the issue of his animals. “Wait!”

“I thought we were through. Wasn’t that all you wanted to know? About the dogs?” he drawled, his voice bored.

“They’re dangerous. You were there. You saw them start to come after me.”

“So you said.” A flicker of pain stirred in the depths of his eyes. “And I’ve said, they’re not my animals.”

“You controlled them,” she said flatly. “They obeyed you.”

“Ah.” The sound was long, drawn out, a whisper of something disturbing in the heat. “There is that, isn’t there?”

Josie frowned. Standing in front of him, holding her ground against his clear if unexpressed wish that she leave, she had the sense that she was leaning forward into the winds of a hurricane. Pale and gaunt faced, he was like the swirling winds of those storms, the power sweeping out around him, bending everything in its path. “I haven’t seen them since then, but you have to keep them locked up. It’s not safe to let them roam around.” Uneasily she looked over her shoulder and off to the woods behind her and to the left.

“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.