Writing had never become routine for him, but remained a constant surprise. He was always surprised at how much fun it was, once it all got moving. And never failed to be surprised at how bloody hard it was. It was like having an intense, frustrating love affair with a capricious, gorgeous, and often mean-spirited woman.

He loved every moment of it.

Writing had carried him through the worst of his grief when he’d lost his mother. It had given him direction, purpose, and enough aggravation to pull himself out of the mire.

It had given him joy and bitterness, and great personal satisfaction. Beyond that, it had provided him with a kind of financial security he’d never known or really expected to know.

Anyone who said money didn’t matter had never had to count the coins that fell between the cushions of the couch.

He was alone now, with the afterburn of Dana’s words still singeing the air. He couldn’t enjoy the solitude, couldn’t fold himself into it or into his work.

A man was never so lonely, he thought, as when he was surrounded by the past.

There was no point in going out for a walk. Too many people who knew him would stop and speak, have questions, make comments. He couldn’t lose himself in the Valley as he could in New York.

Which was one of the reasons he’d bolted when and how he had. And one of the reasons he’d come back.

So, he would go for a drive, get away from the echoes still bouncing off the walls.

I loved you.

Jesus! Jesus, how could he not have known? Had he been that clueless—or had she been that self-contained?

He walked out and climbed into his Thunderbird, gunned the engine. He felt like speed. A long, fast ride to no particular destination.

He punched in the CD player, cranked it up. He didn’t care what pumped out, as long as it was loud. Clapton’s blistering guitar rode with him out of town.

He had known he’d hurt Dana all those years ago. But he’d assumed the nip had been to her ego, exactly where he thought he’d aimed. He’d known he pissed her off—she made that crystal-clear—but he assumed that was pride.

If he had known she loved him, he’d have found a way to break things off more gently.

Wouldn’t he?

Christ, he hoped so. They’d been friends. Even when they had been consumed with and by each other, they’d been friends. He would never deliberately wound a friend.

He’d been no good for her, that’s what it came down to. He’d been no good for anybody at that time in his life. She was better off that he had ended it.

He headed for the mountains and began the steep, twisty climb.

But she’d loved him. There was little to nothing he could do about that now. He wasn’t at all sure there was anything he could have done at the time. He wasn’t ready for the Big Love then. He wouldn’t have known how to define it, what to think about it.

Hell, he hadn’t been able to think at all when it came to Dana. After one look at her when he’d come home from college, every single thought of her had shot straight to his glands.

It had terrified him.

He could smile over that now. His initial shock at his own reaction to her, his overwhelming guilt that he was fantasizing about the sister of his closest friend.

He’d been horrified, and fascinated, and ultimately obsessed.

Tall, curvy, sharp-tongued Dana Steele, with her big, full bodied laugh, her questing mind, her punch-first temper.

Everything about her had pulled at him.

Damn if it still didn’t.

When he’d seen her again on this trip back, when she yanked open the door of Flynn’s house and stood there snarling at him, the sheer want for her had blown straight through him.

Just as her sheer dislike for him had all but taken off his head.

If they could work their way around to being friends again, to finding that connection, that affection that had always been between them, maybe they could work their way forward to something more.

To what, he couldn’t say. But he wanted Dana back in his life.

And, there was no point in denying it, he wanted her back in his bed.

They’d made progress toward friendship during that shopping stint. They’d been easy with each other for a while, as if the years between hadn’t happened.

But, of course, they had. And as soon as he and Dana had remembered those years, the progress had taken an abrupt turn and stomped away in a huff.

So now he had a mission, Jordan decided. He had to find a way to win her back. Friend and lover—in whatever order suited them both best.

The search for the key had, among other things, given him an opening. He intended to use it.

When he realized that he’d driven to Warrior’s Peak, he stopped, pulled to the side of the road.

He remembered climbing that high stone wall as a teenager with Brad and Flynn. They had camped in the woods, with a hijacked six-pack that none of them was old enough to drink.

The Peak was untenanted then, a big, fanciful, spooky place. The perfect place to fascinate a trio of boys with a couple of beers in them.

A high, full moon, he recalled as he climbed out of the car. A black-glass sky and just enough wind, just a hint of wind, to stir the leaves and whisper.

He could see it all now, as clearly as he’d seen it then. Maybe more clearly, he thought, amused at himself. He was older, and stone-cold sober, and he had—admittedly—added a few flourishes to the memory.

He liked to think of the scene with a layer of fog drifting over the ground, and a moon so round and white it looked carved into the glass of the sky. Stars sharp as the points of darts. The low, haunting call of an owl, and the rustle of night prey in the high grass. In the distance, with an echo that rolled through the night, the baying of a dog.

He’d added those beats when he used that house and that night in his first major book.

But for Phantom Watch there’d been one element of that night he hadn’t had to imagine. Because it had happened. Because he’d seen it.

Even now, as a man past thirty with none of the naïveté of the boy left in him, he believed it.

She’d walked along the parapet, under the hard, white moon, sliding in and out of shadows like a ghost, with her hair flying, her cape—surely it had been a cape—billowing.

She’d owned the night. He’d thought that then and he thought it now. She had been the night.

She’d looked at him, Jordan remembered as he wandered to the iron gates, as he stared through them at the great stone house on the rise. He hadn’t been able to see her face, but he’d known she looked down, straight into his eyes.