Maybe I should have brought him with me. That feeling of eyes watching me was stronger than ever, making me falter every few steps. Music in my ears didn’t seem to help at all and by the time I reached the cemetery, I was a wreck. My palms were sweating, my heart was pounding, I was gasping for breath; but it wasn’t from the exercise.

“Damn it,” I whispered under my breath as I paused at the peak of a rolling hill.

The river rushed by on my left, swollen and frothing over wicked rapids. The thought came, unbidden, that it wouldn’t take much to kill me here. A little shove, and it would all be over. Wind whistled through the cemetery to my right, accentuating the grim fantasy. I should have gone in there. I needed the inspiration, didn’t I? But the headstones rose high over the tangled undergrowth, and all I could see were hundreds of places for a stalker to hide.

“All right, that’s it,” I muttered as I turned on my heel and ran back toward the house. “I’m hexing Lacey and Jude and Tyler, in that order, for making me paranoid.”

The boldness in my tone was a complete lie. Adrenaline filled my veins and I flew, fleeing the invisible terror at my back.

There’s nobody there, I told myself. You’re running from nothing. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t slow down, couldn’t catch an easy breath, not until I skidded to a stop in front of my house. My brain screamed that monsters were grabbing at my ankles as I leapt up the front steps. One last burst of speed and I was inside, locking the door against the nothing.

My attention was caught by the very-much-not-nothing happening in the foyer. Tyler stood frozen on the top step of a ladder, staring at me like a kid who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He held a camera in his left hand, which he was screwing to the wall with his right. A camera?

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He licked his lips nervously and slowly backed down the ladder. “Problem with heights,” he said with an embarrassed little laugh. “I was trying to hang the security camera. There are way too many points of entry around here. We need more eyes on the doors.”

Eyes. I shuddered.

“Good thinking,” I said with relief. “I’m glad you’re here, Tyler.”

“Happy to be here,” he said with a smile. “I’m steadier now, let me finish this. How was your run?”

“Oh…it was fine. I didn’t go all the way, but it was good.”

“Why not?” he asked, climbing back up the ladder with barely a tremble.

Nothing like a woman to bring the man out, I thought. It was actually kind of funny that he was pretending to be fine now after I caught him frozen in terror.

“Just wasn’t feeling it today,” I said.

It was the truth, sort of. I just didn’t want him to think I was crazy right away and disappear on me.

I watched him put the camera in place and climb down, noticing how his muscles rippled under the thin white undershirt he wore. It was almost a picture frame, accentuating the tattoos on his arms. Now that I really had a chance to look at them, I noticed so many intricate little details that I never would have imagined.

He caught me staring. “Like the ink?” he asked with a grin.

My fingers reached out to trace a purple line from the apex of his shoulder down to his wrist, snaking this way and that around the clustered illustrations.

“I really do,” I said, fascinated as the picture changed with his goosebumps. “These flowers…are they made of skulls?”

“Yeah,” he said with a little deprecating laugh. “The angst was strong.”

I glanced up at those intense green eyes, hazy with nostalgia. They cleared as he met my gaze with a defensive little smile. “What?”

“You intrigue me,” I told him, resting my hand on his arm.

His lips quirked as he hooded his eyes suggestively. Warmth spread across my body from my blushing cheeks to my hips and between, and I snatched my hand back before I did something incredibly stupid.

“So… Is the security all in place?” I winced at the thin breathiness of my own tone.

“Yep, everything’s locked down tight. What’s next? Writing?”

I nodded. That’s definitely what I needed to do.

What I really wanted to do, though, was see how far those tattoos spread across his chest. Trace the images with my fingers and eyes and tongue. With a jolt, I realized that he was going to be living here, for a while at least. If I didn’t get myself under control, I was going to be in serious trouble.

“I usually write alone,” I told him. “But I really doubt that I’ll get anything usable done today anyway, so feel free to come hang out if you get bored.” The words came out too fast, giving me away.

I didn’t give him the chance to dissect the moment. Walking away into the piano room, I found myself hoping that he would follow. Just to give me something to look at, I told myself.

I felt him behind me as I sat at the piano, and I turned around.

“Sorry,” he said, stepping back. “Did you not actually want me in here?”

“Oh, I do,” I said quickly. “I’m just a little jumpy right now, that’s all.”

“You can’t get creative if you’re that tense,” he said, resting his hands on my shoulders. “You gotta relax.”

He began rubbing my shoulders, working the knots out. His strong hands turned my tight muscles to warm butter, and a gentle moan escaped my throat as the vertebrae along my spine cracked and popped.

Pressing a little harder, sinking a little deeper, he ignited my nerves. Tension released, pleasure flowed through me from my head to the curling tips of my toes, and I tilted my head back against him.

“There you go,” he said energetically, clapping his hands against my shoulders. “Now you can work.”

I blinked in surprise, trying to shift back to reality without a clutch. He plopped himself in a chair and kicked his feet up on the ottoman, examining his hands. After a long, confused moment, he looked up at me.

“Did you need something?”

“Uh… Nope.”

I shook out my hands and trickled them over the keys, looking for the chord to reflect the warm, semi-erotic frustration swirling through my body. It wasn’t unpleasant; quite the contrary.

I found a friendly chord, paired it with an upbeat tune, and got to work. Tyler sat there quietly, watching me work, until he seemed to fade into the background. Just another piece of furniture in the room, until he moved, and then he was like an explosion of flavor through the air.

“Are you doing that on purpose?” he asked suddenly.

I paused, my fingers hovering over the keys. “Doing what?”

“That… That! Whatever it is you’re doing.” He gestured at the piano sharply.

“Depends…what are you feeling?” I asked. He raised a brow at me, and I rolled my eyes. “With regard to the music, macho man.”

“Blue-balled,” he said shortly. “I keep expecting there to be another beat or something, and then you move on to something else that’s also nice, but then there isn’t that…finishing beat.”

I laughed, clapping my hands. “Then yes, that is deliberate,” I told him with a grin. “I’m glad it’s working.”

“What are you trying to do, frustrate all of your fans?”

“Yes, for three minutes. And then I’m going to satisfy those frustrated needs.”

A flicker of carnal interest crossed his face, and I kept an innocent mask firmly in place. I wrote down what I had developed, satisfied with the opening. I moved on to the chorus, leaving that expected beat off, laughing as Tyler started pacing agitatedly.

“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to,” I giggled. “It’s going to be like this all day, probably. I need to frustrate myself until I know exactly how to finish it.”

He shot me an inquisitive look, then sidled over to lean against the piano.

“It’s bothering you? I thought you were just taking sadistic pleasure in torturing me.”

“Oh, well, that too,” I admitted with a wicked grin. “But yeah. I have to grind myself against the music, crawl inside it so I know it. I’ve spent days swimming in a tune that’s just barely not right, just to feel how uncomfortable it is and figure out why.

“This one is uncomfortable because, like you said, it’s not finished. There’s no resolution; it just keeps you hanging. That’s an easy one. Other things, like minor keys interrupting a major flow, those are a little harder to pin down. Or stair steps that go down-down-down-up instead of up-up-up-down.” I demonstrated on the piano as I talked, and he seemed to be captivated.

“Man. I always figured you just sort of played around and came up with stuff. I didn’t know you were a genius.”

“Oh, I’m not a genius,” I laughed. “I just understand how it works, you know?”

He glanced dubiously at the piano, then whipped his body around and slid onto the bench beside me.

“All right. I taught you, you teach me.”

“You barely taught me,” I objected.

“So barely teach me! Come on, show me how it works.” He was intensely interested, like a little kid. It was endearing, in a surprising sort of way.

“Okay. The basics are super simple. That side is low, this side is high. It’s an even gradient, so every key,” I pressed one. “Is the same distance from the keys above and below. Distance isn’t quite right. It’s like…frequencies.”

“Okay, okay,” he said impatiently. “So how do you get it to sing?”

I laughed and began to play.

“What’s with the foot?”

“If I hit this pedal, it’ll keep the note going even when I’m moving on. See?” I demonstrated harmonizing with myself, and he soaked it up.

“How long have you been playing?” he asked.

“Since I was six,” I said, smiling at the memory. “My grandma bought us this little tiny box piano. I fell in love with it, and drove everybody crazy with terrible music until I figured out how to use it.”

“Self-taught, huh?” he asked, tentatively pressing a key.

“Essentially. I mean, I took some lessons to polish up my technique in high school, but mostly I just figured it out. It’s not like the piano is trying to keep secrets…it wants to be played. If you’re gentle with it and you pay attention, you can figure out how to stroke it just right to make it sing.”

His breath caught in his throat, and I smiled to myself. At least I knew I still had the wit; now if I could just arrange it into lyrics, that would be great.

“Did you play any instruments as a kid?” I asked him.

A shadow crossed his face, darkening his eyes. Anxious that I had stumbled upon a sensitive spot, I focused my gaze on the keys.

“No,” he said. “I wanted to. My friend had a guitar he would never let me touch, and my other buddy played the saxophone. My dad wasn’t into all that, though.”

“All what?” I asked, confused.

“Sissy stuff,” he said with an ironic twist of his lips. “Music, art, you know… Chick stuff.”

“Ah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “He’s one of those.”

“Yep.”

“My mom was like that,” I confessed after a moment. “The other way around. My sister and I were constantly in trouble for building or digging or rough-housing. Not that it affected me poorly or anything. I managed to make a living out of ‘chick stuff’… Still irritates me that I can’t fight or change my oil, though.”

He shook his head with a laugh. “If it makes you feel better, I was twenty-five before I knew how to change oil.”

“Really?”

He shrugged and twisted his lips at me. “Took me that long to get a car. Couldn’t afford one growing up.”

“Didn’t your dad work?”

I wished the words back as soon as they passed my lips. There were all kinds of reasons why someone wouldn’t have a car, I admonished myself.

Tyler shook his head, playing around on the keys. “He worked when he wanted to. Odd jobs and stuff. Gets bored easy, you know.” There was a softness in Tyler’s eyes, which surprised me. I wondered how much of that restlessness he had inherited.

“And your mom?” I asked tentatively, my desperate curiosity battling with my sense of propriety.

“Eh, non-issue. So, what’s the difference between the black keys and the white keys?”

He was trying to change the subject. I knew I should drop it, but there was something about his evasion which touched me.

“I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” Tyler hit two keys randomly, one right after the other. “Sounds off. Like the piano is disappointed.” Flashing me a shielding grin, he thundered across the keys. “I’m not angry, just disappointed,” he sang, amusing himself.

I rolled my eyes and let it drop. “Yeah, that’s kind of the feeling it’s going for,” I told him. “Disappointment, sadness, quiet, pensive… All those heavy emotions.”

“Hm,” Tyler said thoughtfully. “I guess those are heavy. I don’t know, I always kind of felt…floaty with those.”

“Like a balloon?”

“Not really. Maybe a buoy, that’s closer. Still not quite right, though.” He turned those incredible eyes at me again, stirring my soul. “It’s like getting slapped around and sucked under by the water, only to surface just when you’ve accepted death.”

He had an artist’s soul, and a whole lot of pain to pull from. I could see it, shining in his eyes, pouring out from the tips of his agile fingers to wash over the tinkling keys. Swallowing hard, I nudged him with my shoulder.

“You’re going to learn how to play Chopsticks,” I told him. “It’s one of the foundation pieces.”

We spent the rest of the evening playing at the piano and talking. Tyler was a quick study, and so much fun that I didn’t even notice when dinner time came and went. By the time we said goodnight and went to our bedrooms, I had managed to develop a Texas-sized crush.