Hard to know. With the moonlight shaded by clouds, I couldn’t even get a good look at his face.
Ryder didn’t say anything. I could see his face thanks to the angle of the porch light and the fact that he was facing the street where I was hidden. He looked controlled, but the clenching of his jaw and something about the angle of his oh-so-relaxed body told me he was furious.
The man turned and I finally got a look at him. Light hair cut high and tight, square face. He was several inches shorter than Ryder, and wore a business suit tailored to his stocky build. I’d put him somewhere in his late forties, maybe early fifties.
From that single wash of light across his face I could tell he was angry too.
I didn’t like him. I don’t know why, but my split-second read on the guy told me he was a jerk.
I’d have guessed he was Ryder’s boss, except Ryder was in business for himself. So maybe this was a big-wig client or an investor? Whoever it was, he got into his fancy sedan and left.
Even though I’d told Myra and Jean that I would stop by and talk to Ryder, now that I was here, I decided it would be better to talk to him tomorrow.
Good thing it was dark and cloudy. He hadn’t noticed me sitting here in the Jeep.
I waited as he watched the man drive away. Then Ryder half turned toward the house.
Just as I was sure he hadn’t spotted me, the cloud cover cleared and shot a beam of neon silver moonlight smack dab down on the Jeep, lighting it up. Lighting me up too.
“Thanks a lot, Thor,” I grumbled.
Ryder noticed the light. Noticed the Jeep. Noticed me.
He paused, his hands clenching into loose fists, as if he were the one who had been spotted instead of the other way around.
I kind of hoped he’d ignore me. I kind of hoped he would just go inside.
He shut the door and jogged down the path to me.
I thought about starting the engine and gunning it out of there.
But that would be unprofessional.
Plus, I hadn’t thought about it until it was too late.
Ryder knocked on the driver’s side window. “Delaney?”
I rolled down the window. “Hey, Ryder.”
“What are you doing out here so late? Something wrong? Need me at the station? Are Myra and Jean okay?”
See, this was the trouble with Ryder. Even though he was the sort of guy who would date ‘em and dump ‘em, he was also the kind of guy who would reach out to people in need and help his neighbors and coworkers without hesitation.
“They’re fine. We don’t need you at the station.”
He made a little “huh” sound then bent a bit lower, his arm draped across the door frame as he inspected the interior of the car. “So what are you doing out here watching my house, Delaney? Are you watching me?”
Yes.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I came here to talk to you, but I saw you had someone over and didn’t want to bother you.”
I wanted to look anywhere than at him, but if I looked away he would see the lie on me. Maybe he saw the lie on me now. Maybe he heard my heart beating for him, wanting him.
The wind ruffled his dark hair softly, the shifting gray and blue of moonlight casting him in velvet-edged marble. He was undeniably handsome, eyebrows thickest at the arch over mossy green eyes, nose straight and upper lip delectably heavier than his lower lip.
He looked tired. Lines at the edges of his eyes, across his forehead seemed deeper, and a full day’s stubble spread dark along his jaw.
I wanted to kiss him. To press against his body and be surrounded by his scent, be filled with his warmth. My mouth went dry thinking about it, and other parts of me didn’t care that he’d dumped me.
Would he take me back? Would he want me if I asked him to?
Maybe some of those questions showed on my face. Maybe my need, or my struggle to push my need away, lock it all up with the hope my traitorous heart would not give up, showed through.
Ryder didn’t want me.
He had tried to apologize for how he handled the break up, or maybe for the break up.
Maybe he wanted me a little. But a little couldn’t be enough.
Could it?
His eyes were soft, and his lips curved in a smile that oddly looked sad. “Come inside,” he said, all warmth and need and home. “I’d like...I need to talk to you too. Please come inside with me.”
I shouldn’t. Well, I should talk to him. Ask him if he murdered Sven. Ask him where he had been in the last forty-eight hours. But I knew if I followed him into his house, I wouldn’t want to talk about murder. I wouldn’t want to know if he was involved with Sven’s death or anything else.
I’d just want him.
“We can do this tomorrow,” I said in a thin voice I barely recognized.
His expression fell and I realized there had been something more than sorrow in his eyes. There had been hope.
This didn’t have to be so hard. We had been friends growing up, friends all our lives before our one date and one night together that had not only ended before it had practically begun, but had also almost ended our friendship.
All those years of friendship deserved something didn’t they? A chance?
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go in. It’s freezing out here.”
He stepped back, looking relieved, but only far enough away to let me open the Jeep door.
“Not exactly the warmest summer we’ve had,” he said.
Weather. We were talking about the weather.
I took it back. Our dating hadn’t destroyed our friendship, it had blown it to smithereens and left behind the dust of conversations suitable for strangers over tea.
“Global warming,” I agreed.
He didn’t know Thor was behind our unseasonable storms, because he not only didn’t know Thor was a god, he didn’t know gods really and truly existed.
But I refused to chat about the weather, because really? We were better than that, even at our worst.
“Everything go okay today?” I asked as we walked up the path. “You sounded kind of...off.”
“It went well enough. Sorry about the call, I was...I don’t know.”
I paused at the door, waited. “You were what, Ryder?”
He winced and gave me a look pleading for something. Maybe forgiveness. Maybe patience.
“I was missing you.” That, said so low and soft, it was like a feather against my spine. “And I thought...and I thought maybe hearing your voice...” He shrugged one shoulder, whatever words he’d been about to say gone.
My heart gathered up those words like a bee did nectar. But my mind was still giving that clear thinking thing a try.
“You asked me if I was naked.”
“You thought I was drunk.”
“Well?”
“It was eight o’clock in the morning.” He reached over and shoved the door, springing it open. “I was not drunk.”
“You could have been.”
“In what time zone?”
“The drunk one.”
He snorted and shut the door behind us. I was standing in Ryder’s house, with Ryder.
Last time we’d been here, one of us had been naked.
That one of us had been him.
My mind wandered over the memory of his body, his hard muscles, the sepia Leonardo da Vinci hand proportion sketch tattooed on his shoulder, the stars and artist’s compass on his hip.