“I came to check on the job.” Which wasn’t necessary, he admitted. In any case, why should it matter to him if she was careless enough to hurt her hand? She was just a woman who had touched down in his territory and would be gone again before the leaves were full-blown with summer. He was going to have to remember that, and the fact that she didn’t interest him personally. Shifting, he picked up the screen he’d dropped when he’d taken her hand. “I found this outside.”

It wasn’t often her voice took on that regal tone. He seemed to nudge it out of her. “Thank you.” She took the screen and leaned it against the stove.

“Your road’ll be blocked most of the day. I hope you weren’t planning on going anywhere.”

Maggie gave him a level look that held a hint of challenge. “I’m not going anywhere, Mr. Delaney.”

He inclined his head. “Fine.” The music on the tape player changed tempo. It was more hard-driving, more primitive. It seemed something to be played on hot, moonless nights. It drew him, pulled at him. “What is that?” Cliff demanded. “I’ve never heard it before.”

Maggie glanced up at the recorder. “It’s a movie score I’m composing. That’s the melody for the title song.” Because it had given her a great deal of trouble, she frowned at the revolving tape. “Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

It was the most simple and most direct answer he’d given her thus far. It wasn’t enough for Maggie.

“Why?”

He paused a moment, still listening, hardly aware that they were both still on the floor, close enough to touch. “It goes straight to the blood, straight to the imagination. Isn’t that what a song’s supposed to do?”

He could have said nothing more perfect. Her smile flashed, a quick, stunning smile that left him staring at her as though he’d been struck by lightning. “Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what it’s supposed to do.” In her enthusiasm she shifted. Their knees brushed. “I’m trying for something very basic with this. It has to set the mood for a film about a passionate relationship—an intensely passionate relationship between two people who seem to have nothing in common but an uncontrollable desire for each other. One of them will kill because of it.”

She trailed off, lost in the music and the mood. She could see it in vivid colors—scarlets, purples. She could feel it, like the close, sultry air on a hot summer night. Then she frowned, and as if on cue, the music stopped. From the tape came a sharp, pungent curse, then silence.

“I lost something in those last two bars,” she muttered. “It was like—” she gestured with both hands, bringing them up, turning them over, then dropping them again “—something came unmeshed. It has to build to desperation, but it has to be more subtle than that. Passion at the very edge of control.”

“Do you always write like that?” Cliff was studying her when she focused on him again, studying her as he had her land—thoroughly, with an eye both for detail and an overview.