Hell, he hadnt been able to think at all when it came to Dana. After one look at her when hed 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.
Hed 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 didnt.
When hed seen her again on this trip back, when she yanked open the door of Flynns 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 couldnt say. But he wanted Dana back in his life.
And, there was no point in denying it, he wanted her back in his bed. Theyd made progress toward friendship during that shopping stint. Theyd been easy with each other for a while, as if the years between hadnt 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 hed driven to Warriors 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 hed 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.
Hed added those beats when he used that house and that night in his first major book.
But for Phantom Watch thered been one element of that night he hadnt had to imagine. Because it had happened. Because hed seen it.
Even now, as a man past thirty with none of the na?vet? of the boy left in him, he believed it.
Shed 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.
Shed owned the night. Hed thought that then and he thought it now. She had been the night.
Shed 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 hadnt been able to see her face, but hed known she looked down, straight into his eyes. Hed felt the punch of it, the power, like a blow meant to awaken rather than to harm.
His mind had sizzled from it, and nothing—not the beer, not his youth, not even the shock—had been able to dull the thrill.
Shed looked at him, Jordan remembered again as he scanned the parapet. And shed known him.
Flynn and Brad hadnt seen her. By the time his mind had clicked back into gear and he shouted them over, she was gone.