The August air lay heavy over Townsend Elementary, the kind of heat that clung to skin and made the freshly waxed vinyl floors inside smell sharp as turpentine. Isobel bent over a cardboard box, unpacking jars of paintbrushes and folded swaths of paper, sunlight sliding across her auburn-streaked hair like fire caught in motion.
Ryder came in, broad-shouldered and slow-footed in boots that clicked against the tile, carrying her last box as though it weighed nothing. He set it down on the table, then stepped behind her, looping his arms around her waist and turning her with the easy authority of a man who’d tamed rank bulls but still marveled at the wildness in her eyes.
“Hello, Miss Wright,” he drawled, voice thick with Southern smoke yet sharpened by twenty years of Manhattan boardrooms
