Vision in White ordering information at LittleBrown.co.uk

On January first, Mac rolled over to smack her alarm clock, and ended up facedown on the floor of her studio.

“Shit. Happy New Year.”

She lay, groggy and baffled, until she remembered she’d never made it upstairs into bed – and the alarm was from her computer, set to wake her at noon.

She pushed herself up to stagger to the kitchen and the coffeemaker.

Why did people want to get married on New Year’s Eve? Why would they make a formal ritual out of a holiday designed for marathon drinking and probably inappropriate sex? And they just had to drag family and friends into it, not to mention wedding photographers.

Of course, when the reception had finally ended at two a.m., she could’ve gone to bed like a sane person instead of uploading the shots, reviewing them – spending nearly three more hours on the Hines- Myers wedding photos.

But, boy, she’d gotten some good ones. A few great ones.

Or they were all crap and she’d judged them in a euphoric blur.

No, they were good shots.

She added three spoons of sugar to the black coffee and drank it while standing at the window, looking out at the snow blanketing the gardens and lawns of the Brown Estate.

They’d done a good job on the wedding, she thought. And maybe Bob Hines and Vicky Myers would take a clue from that and do a good job on the marriage.

Either way, the memories of the day wouldn’t fade. The moments, big and small, were captured. She’d refine them, finesse them, print them. Bob and Vicky could revisit the day through those images next week or sixty years from next week.

That, she thought, was as potent as sweet, black coffee on a cold winter day.

Opening a cupboard, she pulled out a box of Pop-Tarts and, eating one where she stood, went over her schedule for the day.

Clay-McFearson (Rod and Alison) wedding at six. Which meant the bride and her party would arrive by three, groom and his by four. That gave her until two for the pre-event summit meeting at the main house.

Time enough to shower, dress, go over her notes, check and recheck her equipment. Her last check of the day’s weather called for sunny skies, high of thirty- two. She should be able to get some nice preparation shots using natural light and maybe talk Alison – if she was game – into a bridal portrait on the balcony with the snow in the background.

Mother of the bride, Mac remembered – Dorothy (call me Dottie) – was on the pushy and demanding side, but she’d be dealt with. If Mac couldn’t handle her personally, God knew Parker would. Parker could and did handle anyone and anything.

Parker’s drive and determination had turned Vows into one of the top wedding and event planning companies in the state in a five- year period. It had turned the tragedy of her parents’ deaths into hope, and the gorgeous Victorian home and the stunning grounds of the Brown Estate into a thriving and unique business.

And, Mac thought as she swallowed the last of the Pop-Tart, she herself was one of the reasons.

She moved through the studio toward the stairs to her upstairs bed and bath, stopped at one of her favorite photos. The glowing, ecstatic bride with her face lifted, her arms stretched, palms up, caught in a shower of pink rose petals.

Cover of Today’s Bride, Mac thought. Because I’m just that good.

In her thick socks, flannel pants, and sweatshirt she climbed the stairs to transform herself from tired, pj-clad, Pop-Tart addict into sophisticated wedding photojournalist.

She ignored her unmade bed – why make it when you were just going to mess it up again? – and the bedroom clutter. The hot shower worked with the sugar and caffeine to clear out any remaining cobwebs so she could put her mind seriously to today’s job.

She had a bride who was interested in trying the creative, a passive-aggressive MOB who thought she knew best, a groom so dazzling in love he’d do anything to make his bride happy. And both her B and G were seriously photogenic.

The last fact made the job both pleasure and challenge. Just how could she give her clients a photo journey of their day that was spectacular, and uniquely theirs?

Bride’s colors, she thought, flipping through her mental files as she washed her short, shaggy crop of red hair. Silver and gold. Elegant, glamorous.

She’d had a look at the flowers and the cake – both getting their finishing touches today – the favors and linens, attendants’ wardrobes, headdresses. She had a copy of the playlist from the band with the first dance, mother- son, father- daughter dances highlighted.

So, she thought, for the next several hours, her world would revolve around Rod and Alison.

She chose her suit, her jewelry, her makeup with nearly the same care as she chose her equipment. Loaded, she went out to make the short trek from the pool house that held her studio and little apartment to the main house.

The snow sparkled, crushed diamonds over ermine, and the air was cold and clean as mountain ice. She definitely had to get some outside shots, daylight and eve ning. Winter wedding, white wedding, snow on the ground, ice glistening on the trees, just dripping from the denuded willows over the pond. And there the fanciful old Victorian with its myriad rooflines, the arched and porthole windows, rising and spreading, soft blue against the hard shell of sky. Its terraces and generous portico heralded the season with their festoons of lights and greenery.

She studied it as she often did as she walked the shoveled paths. She loved the lines of it, the angles of it, with its subtle touches of pale yellow, creamy white picked out in that soft, subtle blue.

It had been as much home to her as her own growing up. Often more so, she admitted, as her own had run on her mother’s capricious whims. Parker’s parents had been warm, welcoming, loving and – Mac thought now – steady. They’d given her a calm port in the storm of her own childhood.

She’d grieved as much as her friend at their loss nearly seven years before.

Now the Brown Estate was her home. Her business. Her life. And a good one on every level. What could be better than doing something you loved, and doing it with the best friends you’d ever had?

She went in through the mudroom to hang up her outdoor gear, then circled around to peek into Laurel’s domain.

Her friend and partner stood on a step stool, meticulously adding silver calla lilies to the five tiers of a wedding cake. Each flower bloomed at the base of a gold acanthus leaf to glimmering, elegant effect.

“That’s a winner, McBane.”

Laurel’s hand was steady as a surgeon’s as she added the next lily. Her sunny hair was twisted at the back of her head into a messy knot that somehow suited the angular triangle of her face. As she worked, her eyes, bright as bluebells, held narrowed concentration.

“I’m so glad she went for the lily centerpiece instead of the bride and groom topper. It makes this design. Wait until we get to the ballroom and add it.”

Mac pulled out a camera. “It’s a good shot for the website. Okay?”

“Sure. Get any sleep?”

“Didn’t hit until about five, but I stayed down till noon. You?”

“Down by two thirty. Up at seven to finish the groom’s cake, the desserts – and this. I’m so damn glad we have two weeks before the next wedding.” She glanced over. “Don’t tell Parker I said that.”

“She’s up, I assume.”

“She’s been in here twice. She’s probably been everywhere twice. I think I heard Emma come in. They may be up in the office by now.”

“I’m heading up. Are you coming?”

“Ten minutes. I’ll be on time.”

“On time is late in Parker’s world.” Mac grinned. “I’ll try to distract her.”

“Just tell her some things can’t be rushed. And that the MOB’s going to get so many compliments on this cake she’ll stay offour backs.”

“That one could work.”

Mac started out, winding through to check the entrance foyer and the massive drawing room where the ceremony itself would take place. Emmaline and her elves had already been at work, she noted, undressing from the last wedding, redressing for the new. Every bride had her own vision, and this one wanted lots of gold and silver ribbon and swag as opposed to the lavender and cream voile of New Year’s Eve.

The fire was set in the drawing room and would be lit before the guests began to arrive. White- draped chairs sparkling with silver bows formed row after row. Emma had already dressed the mantel with gold candles in silver holders, and the bride’s favorite white calla lilies massed in tall, thin glass vases.

Mac circled the room, considered angles, lighting, composition – and made more notes as she walked out and took the stairs to the third floor.

As she expected, she found Parker in the conference room of their office, surrounded by her laptop, BlackBerry, folders, cell phone, and headset. Her dense brown hair hung in a long tail – sleek and simple. It worked with the suit – a quiet dove gray – that would blend in and complement the bride’s colors.

Parker missed no tricks.

She didn’t look up but circled a finger in the air as she continued to work on the laptop. Knowing the signal, Mac crossed to the coffee counter and filled mugs for both of them. She sat, laid down her own file, opened her own notebook.

Parker sat back, smiled, and picked up her mug. “It’s going to be a good one.”

“No doubt.”

“Roads are clear, weather’s good. The bride’s up, had breakfast and a massage. The groom’s had a workout and a swim. Caterers are on schedule. All attendants are accounted for.” She checked her watch. “Where are Emma and Laurel?”

“Laurel’s putting the finishing touches on the cake, which is stupendous. I haven’t seen Emma, but she’s started dressing the event areas. Pretty. I want some outdoor shots. Before and after.”

“Don’t keep the bride outside for too long before. We don’t want her red- nosed and sniffling.”

“You may have to keep the MOB off my back.”

“Already noted.”

Emma rushed in, a Diet Coke in one hand, a file in the other. “Tink’s hungover and a no-show, so I’m one short. Let’s keep this brief, okay?” She dropped down at the table. Her curling black hair bounced over the shoulders of her sweatshirt. “The Bride’s Suite and the Drawing Room are dressed. Foyer and stairway, nearly finished. The bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres checked. We’ve started on the Grand Hall and the Ballroom. I need to get back to that.”

“Flower girl?”

“White rose pomander, silver and gold ribbon. I have her halo – roses and baby’s breath – ready for the hairdresser. It’s adorable. Mac, I need some pictures of the arrangements if you can fit it in. If not, I’ll get them.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks. The MOB – ”

“I’m on it,” Parker said.

“I need to – ” Emma broke offas Laurel walked in.

“I’m not late,” Laurel announced.

“Tink’s a no- show,” Parker told her. “Emma’s short.”

“I can fill in. I’ll need to set the centerpiece of the cake and arrange the desserts, but I’ve got time now.”

“Let’s go over the timetable.”

“Wait.” Emma lifted her can of Diet Coke. “Toast first. Happy New Year to us, to four amazing, stupendous, and very hot women. Best pals ever.”

“Also smart and kick- ass.” Laurel raised her bottle of water. “To pals and partners.”

“To us. Friendship and brains in four parts,” Mac added, “and the sheer coolness of the whole we’ve made with Vows.”

“And to 2009.” Parker lifted her coffee mug. “The amazing, stupendous, hot, smart, kick- ass best pals are going to have their best year ever.”

“Damn right.” Mac clinked her mug to the rest. “To Wedding Day, then, now, and always.”

“Then, now, and always,” Parker repeated. “And now. Timetable?”

“I’m on the bride,” Mac began, “from her arrival, switch to groom at his. Candids during dressing event, posed as applies. Formal portraits in and out. I’ll get the shots of the cake, the arrangements now, do my setup. All family and wedding party shots separate prior to the ceremony. Post-ceremony I should only need forty-five minutes for the family shots, full wedding party, and the bride and groom.”

“Floral dressing in bride and groom suites complete by three. Floral dressing in foyer, Parlor, staircase, Grand Hall, and Ballroom by five.” Parker glanced at Emma.

“We’ll be done.”

“Videographer arrives at five thirty. Guest arrivals from five thirty to six. Wedding musicians – string quartet – to begin at five forty. The band will be set up in the Ballroom by six thirty. MOG, attended by son, escorted at five fifty, MOB, escorted by son-in-law, directly after. Groom and groomsmen in place at six.” Parker read off the schedule. “FOB, bride, and party in place at six. Descent and pro cession. Ceremony duration twentythree minutes, recession, family moments. Guests escorted to Grand Hall at six twenty- five.”

“Bar opens,” Laurel said, “music, passed food.”

“Six twenty- five to seven ten, photographs. Announcement of family, wedding party, and the new Mr. and Mrs. seven fifteen.”

“Dinner, toasts,” Emma continued. “We’ve got it, Parks.”

“I want to make sure we move to the Ballroom and have the first dance by eight fifteen,” Parker continued. “The bride especially wants her grandmother there for the first dance, and after the father-daughter, mother-son dance, for her father and his mother to dance. She’s ninety, and may fade early. If we can have the cake cutting at nine thirty, the grandmother should make that, too.”

“She’s a sweetheart,” Mac put in. “I got some nice shots of her and Alison at the rehearsal. I’ve got it in my notes to get some of them today. Personally, I think she’ll stay for the whole deal.”

“I hope she does. Cake and desserts served while dancing continues. Bouquet toss at ten fifteen.”

“Tossing bouquet is set,” Emma added.

“Garter toss, dancing continues. Last dance at ten fifty, bubble blowing, bride and groom depart. Event end, eleven.” Parker checked her watch again. “Let’s get it done. Emma and Laurel need to change. Everyone remember their headsets.”

Parker’s phone vibrated, and she glanced at the readout. “MOB. Again. Fourth call this morning.”

“Have fun with that,” Mac said and escaped.

She scouted room by room, staying out of the way of Emma and her crew as they swarmed over the house with flowers, ribbons, voile. She took shots of Laurel’s cake, Emma’s arrangements, framed others in her head.

It was a routine she never allowed to become routine. She knew once it became rote, she’d miss shots, opportunities, bog down on fresh angles and ideas. And whenever she felt herself dulling, she thought of a blue butterfly landing on a dandelion.

The air smelled of roses and lilies and rang with voices and footfalls. Light streamed through the tall windows in lovely beams and shafts, and glittered on the gold and silver ribbons. “Headset, Mac!” Parker rushed down the main staircase.

“The bride’s arriving.”

As Parker hurried down to meet the bride, Mac jogged up. She swung out on the front terrace, ignoring the cold as the white limo sailed down the drive. As it eased to a stop she shifted her angle, set, and waited.

Maid of honor, mother of the bride. “Move, move, just a little,” she muttered. Alison stepped out. The bride wore jeans, Uggs, a battered suede jacket and a bright red scarf. Mac zoomed in, changed stops. “Hey! Alison!”

The bride looked up. Surprise turned to amused delight, and to Mac’s pleasure, Alison threw up both arms, tossed back her head, and laughed.

And there, Mac thought as she caught the moment, was the beginning of the journey.

Within ten minutes, the Bride’s Suite – once Parker’s own bedroom – bustled with people and confusion. Two hairdressers plied their tools and talents, curling, straightening, styling, while others wielded paints and pots.

Utterly female, Mac thought as she moved through the room unobtrusively, the scents, the motions, the sounds. The bride remained the focus – no nerves on this one, Mac determined. Alison was confident, beaming, and currently chattering like a magpie.

The MOB, however, was a different story.

“But you have such beautiful hair! Don’t you think you should leave it down? At least some of it. Maybe – ”

“An updo suits the headdress better. Relax, Mom.”

“It’s too warm in here. I think it’s too warm in here. And Mandy should take a quick nap. She’s going to act up, I just know it.”

“She’ll be fine.” Alison glanced toward the flower girl.

“I really think – ”

“Ladies!” Parker wheeled in a cart of champagne, with a pretty fruit and cheese tray. “The men are on their way. Alison, your hair’s gorgeous. Absolutely regal.” She poured a flute, offered it to the bride.

“I really don’t think she should drink before the ceremony. She barely ate today, and – ”

“Oh, Mrs. McFearson, I’m so glad you’re dressed and ready. You look fabulous. If I could just steal you for a few minutes? I’d love for you to take a look at the Drawing Room before the ceremony. We want to make sure it’s perfect, don’t we? I’ll have her back in no time.” Parker pushed champagne into the MOB’s hand, and steered her out of the room.

Alison said, “Whew!” and laughed.

For the next hour, Mac split herself between the bride’s and groom’s suites. Between perfume and tulle, cufflinks and cummerbunds. She eased back into the bride’s domain, circled around the attendants as they dressed and helped one another dress. And found Alison alone, standing in front of her wedding dress.

It was all there, Mac thought as she quietly framed the shot. The wonder, the joy – with just that tiny tug of sorrow. She snapped the image as Alison reached out to brush her fingers over the sparkle of the bodice.

Decisive moment, Mac knew, when everything the woman felt reflected on her face.

Then it passed, and Alison glanced over.

“I didn’t expect to feel this way. I’m so happy. I’m so in love with Rod, so ready to marry him. But there’s this little clutch right here.” She rubbed her fingers just above her heart. “It’s not nerves.”

“Sadness. Just a touch. One phase of your life ends today. You’re allowed to be sad to say good- bye. I know what you need. Wait here.”

A moment later, Mac led Alison’s grandmother over. And once again stepped back.

Youth and age, she thought. Beginnings and endings, connections and constancy. And, love.

She snapped the embrace, but that wasn’t it. She snapped the glitter of tears, and still, no. Then Alison lowered her forehead to her grandmother’s, and even as her lips curved, a single tear slid down her cheek while the dress glowed and glittered behind them.

Perfect. The blue butterfly.

She took candids of the ritual while the bride dressed, then the formal portraits with exquisite natural light. As she’d expected, Alison was game to brave the cold on the terrace.

And Mac ignored Parker’s voice through her headset as she rushed to the Groom’s Suite to repeat the pro cess with Rod. She passed Parker in the hallway as she strode back to the bride. “I need the groom and party downstairs, Mac. We’re running two minutes behind.”

“Oh my God!” Mac said in mock horror and ducked into the Bride’s Suite.

“Guests are seated,” Parker announced in her ear moments later. “Groom and groomsmen taking position. Emma, gather the bridal party.”

“On it.”

Mac slipped out to take her stand at the bottom of the stairs as Emma or ga nized the bridesmaids.

“Party ready. Cue the music.”

“Cuing music,” Parker said, “start the procession.”

The flower girl would clearly be fine without the nap, Mac decided as the child nearly danced her way down the staircase. She paused like a vet at Laurel’s signal, then continued at a dignified pace in her fairy dress across the foyer, into the enormous parlor, and down the aisle formed by the chairs.

The attendants followed, shimmering silver, and at last, the maid of honor in gold.

Mac crouched to aim up as the bride and her father stood at the top of the stairs, holding hands. As the bride’s music swelled, he lifted his daughter’s hand to his lips, then to his cheek. Even as she took the shot, Mac’s eyes stung.

Where was her own father? she wondered. Jamaica? Switzerland? Cairo?

She pushed the thought and the ache that came with it aside, and did her job.

Using Emma’s candlelight, she captured joy and tears. The memories. And stayed invisible and separate.

Related posts:

1. Montana Sky Chapter Four
2. Sanctuary Chapter Three
3. Sanctuary Chapter Six

Tribute ordering information at LittleBrown.co.uk

According to legend, Steve McQueen once swam buck-naked among the cattails and lily pads in the pond at the little farm. If true, and Cilla liked to think it was, the King Of Cool had stripped off and dove in post The Magnificent Seven and prior to The Great Escape.

In some versions of the legend, Steve had done more than cool off on that muggy summer night in Virginia – and he’d done the more with Cilla’s grandmother. Though they’d both been married to other people at the time, the legend carried more cheer than disdain. And since both parties were long dead, neither could confirm or deny.

Then again, Cilla thought as she studied the murky water of the lily-choked pond, neither had bothered – as far as she could ascertain – to confirm or deny while they’d had the chance.

True or false, she imagined Janet Hardy, the glamorous, the tragic, the brilliant, the troubled, had enjoyed the buzz. Even icons had to get their kicks somewhere.

Standing in the yellow glare of sun with the dulling bite of March chilling her face, Cilla could see it perfectly. The steamy summer night, the blue wash from the spotlight moon. The gardens would’ve been at their magnificent peak and stunning the air with fragrance. The water would’ve been so cool and silky on the skin, and the color of chamomile tea with pink and white blossoms strung over it like glossy pearls.

Janet would have been at her stunning peak as well, Cilla mused. The spun-gold of her hair tumbling free, spilling over white shoulders … No, those would have been spun-gold, too, from her summer tan. Gilded shoulders in the tea-colored water, and her Arctic blue eyes bright with laughter – and most likely a heroic consumption of liquor.

Music darting and sparkling through the dark, like the fireflies that flashed over the fertile fields, the velvet lawns, Cilla imagined. The voices from the weekend guests who wandered over the lawns, the porches and patios as bright as the music. Stars as luminous as the ones that gleamed overhead like little jewels scattered away from that spotlight moon.

Dark pockets of shadows, streaming colored lights from lanterns.

Yes, it would’ve been like that. Janet’s world had been one of brilliant light and utter dark. Always.

Cilla hoped she dove into that pond unapologetically naked, drunk and foolish and happy. And utterly unaware her crowded, desperate, glorious life would end barely a decade later.

Before turning away from the pond, Cilla listed it in her thick notebook. It would need to be cleaned, tested and ecologically balanced. She made another note to read up on pond management and maintenance before she attempted to do so, or hired an expert.

Then the gardens. Or what was left of them, she thought as she crossed through the high, lumpy grass. Weeds, literal blankets of vines, overgrown shrubs with branches poking through the blankets like brown bones, marred what had once been simply stupendous. Another metaphor, she supposed, for the bright and beautiful choked off and buried in the grasping.

She’d need help with this part, she decided. Considerable help. However much she wanted to put her back into this project, get her hands into it, she couldn’t possibly clear and hack, slash and burn, and redesign on her own.

The budget would have to include a landscaping crew. She noted down the need to study old photographs of the gardens, to buy some books on landscaping to educate herself, and to contact local landscapers for bids.

Standing, she scanned the ruined lawns, the sagging fences, the sad old barn that stood soot-gray and scarred from weather. There had been chickens once – or so she’d been told – a couple of pretty horses, tidy fields of crops, a small, thriving grove of fruit trees. She wanted to believe – maybe needed to believe – she could bring all that back. That by the next spring, and all the
springs after, she could stand here and look at all the budding, the blooming, the business of what had been her grandmother’s.

Of what was now hers.

She saw how it was, and how it once had been through her own Arctic blue eyes shaded by the bill of a Rock the House ball cap. Her hair, more honey than gold dust, threaded through the back of the cap in a long, messy tail. She wore a thick hooded sweatshirt over strong shoulders and a long torso, faded jeans over long legs, and boots she’d bought years before for a hiking trip through the Blue Ridge Mountains. The same mountains that rolled up against the sky now.

Years ago, she thought. The last time she’d come east, come here. And when, she supposed, the seeds for what she would do now had been planted.

Didn’t that make the last four – or was it five – years of neglect at least partially her doing? She could’ve pushed sooner, could have demanded. She could have done something.

“Doing it now,” she reminded herself. She wouldn’t regret the delay any more than she would regret the manipulation and bitter arguments she’d used to force her mother to sign over the property.

“Yours now, Cilla,” she told herself. “Don’t screw it up.”

She turned, braced herself, then made her way through the high grass and brambles to the old farmhouse where Janet Hardy had hosted sparkling parties, or had escaped to between roles. And where, in 1973, on another steamy summer night, she took her own life.

So claimed the legend.

There were ghosts. Sensing them was nearly as exhausting as evaluating the ramshackle three stories, facing the grime, the dust, the disheartening disrepair. Ghosts, Cilla supposed, had kept the vandalism and squatting to a minimum. Legends, she thought, had their uses.

She’d had the electricity turned back on, and had brought plenty of light bulbs along with what she hoped would be enough cleaning supplies to get her started. She’d applied for her permits and researched local contractors.

Now, it was time to start something.

Lining up her priorities, she tackled the first of the four bathrooms that hadn’t seen a scrub brush in the last six years.

And she suspected the last tenants hadn’t bothered overmuch with such niceties during their stint.

“Could be more disgusting,” she muttered as she scraped and scrubbed. “Could be snakes and rats. And God, shut up. You’re asking for them.”

After two sweaty hours and emptying countless buckets of filthy water, she thought she could risk using the facilities without being inoculated first. Chugging bottled water, she headed down the back stairs to have a whack at the big farmhouse kitchen next. And eyeing the baby blue on white laminate on the stubby counters, she wondered whose idea that update had been, and why they’d assumed it would suit the marvelous old O’Keefe & Merritt range and Coldspot refrigerator.

Aesthetically, the room was over the line of hideous, but sanitary had to take precedence.

She braced the back door open for ventilation, tugged rubber gloves back on and very gingerly opened the oven door.

“Oh, crap.”

While the best part of a can of oven cleaner went to work, she tackled the oven racks, the burners, the stove top and hood. A photograph flitted through her memory. Janet, a frilly apron over a wasp-waisted dress, sunlight hair pulled back in a sassy tail, stirring something in a big pot on the stove. Smiling at the camera while her two children looked on adoringly.

Publicity shoot, Cilla remembered. For one of the women’s magazines. Redbook or McCall’s. The old farmhouse stove, with its center grill, had sparkled like new hope. It would again, she vowed. One day, she’d stir a pot on that same stove with probably as much faked competence as her grandmother.

She started to squat down to check the oven cleaner, then yipped in surprise when she heard her name.

He stood in the open doorway, with sunlight haloing his silvered blond hair. His smile deepened the creases in his face, still so handsome, and warmed those quiet hazel eyes.

Her heart took a bound from surprise to pleasure, and another into embarrassment.

“Dad.”

When he stepped forward, arms opening for a hug, she tossed up her hands, wheeled back. “No, don’t. I’m absolutely disgusting. Covered with … I don’t even want to know.” She swiped the back of her wrist over her forehead, then fumbled off the protective gloves. “Dad,” she repeated.

“I see a clean spot.” He lifted her chin with his hand, kissed her cheek. “Look at you.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.” But she laughed as most of the initial wkwardness passed. “What are you doing here?”

“Somebody recognized you in town when you stopped for supplies and said something to Patty. And Patty,” he continued, referring to his wife, “called me. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“I was going to. I mean I was going to call you.” At some point. Eventually.When I figured out what to say. “I just wanted to get here first, then I …” She glanced back at the oven. “I got caught up.”

“So I see. When did you get in?”

Guilt pricked her conscience. “Listen, let’s go out on the front porch. It’s not too bad out front, and I have a cooler sitting out there holding a coldcut sub with our names on it. Just let me wash up, then we’ll catch up.”

It wasn’t as bad in front, Cilla thought when she settled on the sagging steps with her father, but it was bad enough. The overgrown, weedy lawn and gardens, the trio of misshaped Bradford pears, a wild tangle of what she thought might be wisteria could all be dealt with. Would be. But the wonderful old magnolia rose, dense with its deep, glossy leaves, and stubborn daffodils shoved up through the thorny armor of climbing roses along the stone walls.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” Cilla began as she handed her father a bottle of iced tea to go with half the sub. “I’m sorry I haven’t called.”

He patted her knee, opened her bottle, then his own.

It was so like him, she thought. Gavin McGowan took things as they came – the good, the bad, the mediocre. How he’d ever fallen for the emotional morass that was her mother eluded her. But that was long ago, Cilla mused, and far away.

She bit into her portion of the sub. “I’m a bad daughter.”

“The worst,” he said, and made her laugh.

“Lizzy Bordon.”

“Second worst. How’s your mother?”

Cilla bit into her sub, rolled her eyes. “Lizzy’s definitely running behind me on Mom’s scale at the moment. Otherwise, she’s okay. Number Five’s putting together a cabaret act for her.” At her father’s quiet look, Cilla shrugged. “I think when your marriages average a three-year lifespan, assigning numbers to husbands is practical and efficient. He’s okay. Better than Numbers Four and Two, and considerably smarter than Number Three. And he’s the reason I’m sitting here sharing a sub with the never-to-be-matched Number One.”

“How’s that?”

“Putting the song and dance together requires money. I had some money.”

“Cilla.”

“Wait, wait. I had some money, and she had something I wanted. I wanted this place, Dad. I’ve wanted it for a while now.”

“You – ”

“Yeah, I bought the farm.” Cilla tossed back her head and laughed. “And she’s so pissed at me. She didn’t want it, God knows. I mean, look at it. She hasn’t been out here in years, in decades, and she fired every manager, every overseer, every custodian. She wouldn’t give it to me, and it was my mistake to ask her for it a couple years ago. She wouldn’t sell it to me then, either.”

She took another bite of the sub, enjoying it now. “I got the tragedy face, the spiel about Janet. But now she needed seed money and wanted me to invest. Big no on that followed by big fight, much drama. I told her, and Number Five, I’d buy this place, named an amount and made it clear that was firm.”

“She sold it to you. She sold you the little farm.”

“After much gnashing of teeth, much weeping, various sorrowful opinions on my daughterly behavior since the day I was born. And so on. It doesn’t matter.” Or hardly mattered, Cilla thought. “She didn’t want it; I did. She’d have sold it long before this if it hadn’t been tied up in trusts. It could only be sold and transferred to family until, what, 2012? Anyway, Number Five calmed her down, and everyone got what they wanted.”

“What are you going to do with it, Cilla?”

Live, she thought. Breathe. “Do you remember it, Dad? I’ve only seen the pictures and old home movies, but you were here when it was in its prime. When the grounds were gorgeous and the porches gleaming. When it had character and grace. That’s what I’m going to do with it. I’m going to bring it back.”

“Why?”

She heard the unspoken how? and told herself it didn’t matter that he didn’t know what she could do. Or hardly mattered.

“Because it deserves better than this. Because I think Janet Hardy deserves better than this. And, because I can. I’ve been flipping houses for almost five years now. Two years pretty much on my own. I know none of them was on the scale of this, but I have a knack for it. I’ve made a solid profit on my projects.”

“Are you doing this for profit?”

“I may change my mind in the next four years, but for now? No. I never knew Janet, but she’s influenced almost every area of my life. Something about this place pulled her here, even at the end. Something about it pulls me.”

“It’a a long way from what you’ve known,” Gavin said. “Not just the miles, but the atmosphere. The culture. The Shenandoah Valley, this part of it, is still fairly rural. Skyline Village boasts a few thousand people, and even the larger cities like Front Royal and Culpepper, it’s far and away from LA.”

“I guess I want to explore that, and I want to spend more time with my East Coast roots.” She wished he’d be pleased instead of concerned that she’d fail or give up. Again.

“I’m tired of California, I’m tired of all of it, Dad. I never wanted what Mom wanted, for me or for herself.”

“I know, sweetie.”

“So I’ll live here for a while.”

“Here?” Shock covered his face. “Live here? At the Little Farm?”

“I know, crazy. But I’ve done plenty of camping, which is what this’ll be for a few days anyway. Then I can rough it inside for a while longer. It’ll take about nine, ten months, maybe a year to do the rehab, to do it right. At the end of that, I’ll know if I want to stay or move on. If it’s moving on, I’ll figure out what to do about it then. But right now, Dad, I’m tired of moving on.”

Gavin said nothing for a moment, then draped his arm around Cilla’s shoulder. Did he have any idea, she wondered, what that casual show of support meant to her? How could he?

“It was beautiful here, beautiful and hopeful and happy,” he told her. “Horses grazing, her dog napping in the sun. The flowers were lovely. Janet did some of the gardening herself when she was here, I think. She came here to relax, she said. And she would, for short stretches. But then she needed people – that’s my take on it. She needed the noise and the laughter, the light. But now and again, she came out alone. No friends, no family, no press. I always wondered what she did during those solo visits.”

“You met Mom here.”

“I did. We were just children, and Janet had a party for Dilly and Johnnie. She invited a lot of local children. Janet took to me, so I was invited back whenever they were here. Johnnie and I played together, and stayed friends when we hit our teens, though he began to run with a different sort of crowd. Then Johnnie died. He died, and everything went dark. Janet came here alone more often after that. I’d climb the wall to see if she was here, if Dilly was with her, when I was home from college. I’d see her walking alone, or see the lights on. I spoke to her a few times, three or four times, after Johnnie died. Then she was gone. Nothing here’s been the same since.

“It does deserve better,” he said with a sigh. “And so does she. You’re the one who should try to give it to them. You may be the only one who can.”

“Thanks.”

“Patty and I will help. You should come stay with us until this place is habitable.”

“I’ll take you up on the help, but I want to stay here. Get a feel for the place. I’ve done some research on it, but I could use some recommendations for local labor – skilled and not. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, landscapers. And just people with strong backs who can follow directions.”

“Get your notebook.”

She pushed to her feet, started inside, then turned back. “Dad, if things had worked out between you and Mom, would you have stayed in the business? Stayed in LA?”

“Maybe. But I was never happy there. Or I wasn’t happy there for long. And I wasn’t a comfortable actor.”

“You were good.”

“Good enough,” he said with a smile. “But I didn’t want what Dilly wanted, for herself or for me. So I understand what you meant when you said the same. It’s not her fault, Cilla, that we wanted something else.”

“You found what you wanted here.”

“Yes, but – ”

“That doesn’t mean I will, too,” she said. “I know. But I just might.”

First, Cilla supposed, she had to figure out what it was she did want. For more than half her life she’d done what she was told, and accepted what she had as what she should want. And most of the remainder, she admitted, she’d spent escaping from or ignoring all of that, or sectioning it off as if it had happened to someone else.

She’d been an actor before she could talk because it was what her mother wanted. She’d spent her childhood playing another child – one who was so much cuter, smarter, sweeter than she was herself. When that went away, she’d struggled through what the agents and producers considered the awkward years, where the work was lean. She cut a disastrous motherdaughter album with Dilly, and did a handful of teen slasher films in which she considered herself lucky to have been gruesomely murdered.

She’d been washed up before her eighteenth birthday, Cilla thought as she flopped down on the bed in her motel room. A has-been, a whatever-happened-to who copped a scattering of guest roles on TV and voice-overs for commercials.

But the long-running TV series and a few forgettable B-movies provided a nest egg. She’d been clever about feathering that nest, and using those eggs to allow her to poke her fingers into various pies to see if she liked the flavor.

Her mother called it wasting her God-given, and her therapist termed it avoidance.

Cilla called it a learning curve.

Whatever you called it, it brought her here to a fairly crappy hotel in Virginia, with the prospect of hard, sweaty and expensive work over the next several months. She couldn’t wait to get started.

She flipped on the TV, intending to use it as background noise while she sat on the lumpy bed to make another pass through her notes. She heard a couple of cans thud out of the vending machine a few feet outside her door. Behind her head, the ghost sounds of the TV in the next room wafted through the wall.

While the local news droned on her set, she made her priority list for the next day. Working bathroom, number one. Camping out wasn’t a problem for her, but moving out of the motel meant she required the basic facilities. Sweaty work necessitated working shower. Plumbing, first priority.

Halfway through her list her eyes began to droop. Reminding herself she wanted to be checked out and on site by eight, she switched off the TV, then the light.

As she dropped into sleep, the ghosts from the next room drifted through the wall. She heard Janet Hardy’s glorious voice lift into a song designed to break hearts.

“Perfect,” Cilla murmured as the song followed her into sleep.

She sat on the lovely patio with the view full of the pretty pond and the green hills that rolled back to the blue mountains. Roses and lilies stunned the air with perfume that had the bees buzzing drunkenly and a hummingbird, bold as an emerald, darting for nectar. The sun poured strong and bright out of cloudless skies to wash everything in the golden light of fairy tales. Birds sang their hearts out in Disneyesque harmony.

“I expect to see Bambi frolicking with Thumper any minute,” Cilla commented.

“It’s how I saw it. In the good times.” Young, beautiful in a delicate white sundress, Janet sipped sparkling lemonade. “Perfect as a stage set, and ready for me to make my entrance.”

“And in the bad times?”

“An escape, a prison, a mistake, a lie.” Janet shrugged her lovely shoulders.

“But always a world away.”

“You brought that world with you. Why?”

“I needed it. I couldn’t be alone. There’s too much space when you’re alone. How do you fill it? Friends, men, sex, drugs, parties, music. Still, I could be calm here for a while. I could pretend here, pretend I was Gertrude Hamilton again. Though she died when I was six and Janet Hardy was born.”

“Did you want to be Gertrude again?”

“Of course not.” A laugh, bright and bold as the day, danced through the air. “But I liked to pretend I did. Gertrude would have been a better mother, a better wife, probably a better woman. But Gertrude wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting as Janet. Who’d remember her? And Janet? No one will ever forget her.” With her head tilted, Janet gave her signature smile – humor and knowledge with sex shimmering at the edges. “Aren’t you proof of that?”

“Maybe I am. But I see what happened to you, and what’s happened to this place, as a terrible waste. I can’t bring you back, or even know you. But I can do this.”

“Are you doing this for you or for me?”

“Both, I think.” She saw the grove, all pink and white blossoms, all fragrance and potential. And the horses grazing in green fields, gold and white etched against hills. “I don’t see it as a perfect set. I don’t need perfect. I see it as your legacy to me and, if I can bring it back, as my tribute to you. I come from you, and through my father, from this place. I want to know that, and feel it.”

“Dilly hated it here.”

“I don’t know if she did, always. But she does now.”

“She wanted Hollywood – in big, shiny letters. She was born wanting it, and lacking the talent or the grit to get it and hold it. You’re not like her, or me. Maybe …” Janet smiled as she sipped again. “Maybe you’re more like Gertrude. More like Trudy.”

“Who did you kill that night? Janet or Gertrude?”

“That’s a question.” With a smile, Janet tipped back her head and closed her eyes.

But what was the answer? Cilla wondered about that as she drove back to the farm in the morning. And why did it matter? Why ask questions of a dream anyway?

Dead was dead, after all. The project wasn’t about death, but about life. About making something for herself out of what had been left to ruin.

As she stopped to unlock the old iron gates that blocked the drive she debated having them removed. Would that be a symbol to throwing open again what had been closed off, or would it be a monumentally stupid move that left her, and the property, vulnerable? They protested when she walked them open, and left rust on her hands.

Screw symbols and stupidity, she decided. They should come down because they were a pain in the ass. After the project, she could put them back up.

Once she’d parked in front of the house, she strode up to unlock the front door, and left it wide to the morning air. She drew on her work gloves. She’d finish tackling the kitchen, she thought. And hope the plumber her father had recommended showed up.

Either way, she’d be staying. Even if she had to pitch a damn tent in the front yard.

She’d worked up her first sweat of the day when the plumber, a grizzle-cheeked man named Buddy, showed up. He made the rounds with her, listened to her plans, scratched his chin a lot. When he gave her what she thought of as a pull-it-out-of-his-ass estimate for the projected work, she countered with a bland stare.

He grinned at that, scratched some more. “I could work up something a little more formal for you. It’d be considerable less if you’re buying the fixtures and such.”

“I will be.”

“Okay then. I’ll work up an estimate for you, and we’ll see what’s what.”

“That’s fine. Meanwhile, how much to snake out the tub in the first bath upstairs? It’s not draining right.”

“Why don’t I take a look-see? Estimate’s free and I’m here for that anyway.”

She hovered, not so much because she didn’t trust him but because you could never be sure what you might learn. She learned he didn’t dawdle, and that his fee for the small task – and a quick check of the sink and john – meant he wanted the job enough that his estimate would probably come into line.

By the time Buddy climbed back into his truck, she hoped the carpenter and electrician she’d lined up for estimates worked out as well.

She dug out her notebook to tick her meeting with Buddy off her day’s to-do list. Then she hefted her sledgehammer. She was in the mood for some demo, and the rotted boards on the front porch were just the place to start.

Related posts:

1. Montana Sky Chapter Two
2. Sanctuary Chapter Three
3. High Noon Chapter Five

Order a copy of Sanctuary.

ON his third day on Desire, Nathan woke in a panic. His heart was booming, his breath short and strangled, his skin iced with sweat. He shot up in bed with fists clenched, his eyes searching the murky shadows of the room. Weak sunlight filtered through the slats of the blinds and built a cage on the thin gray carpet.

His mind stayed blank for an agonizing moment, trapped behind the images that crowded it. Moonlit trees, fingers of fog, a woman’s naked body, her fanning dark hair, wide, glassy eyes. Ghosts, he told himself as he rubbed his face hard with his hands. He’d expected them, and they hadn’t disappointed him. They clung to Desire like the moss clung to the live oaks.

He swung out of bed and deliberately — like a child daring sidewalk cracks—walked through the sun bars. In the narrow bathroom he stepped into the white tub, yanked the cheerfully striped curtain closed, and ran the shower hot. He washed the sweat away, imagined the panic as a dark red haze that circled and slid down the drain. The room was thick with steam when he dried off. But his mind was clear again.

He dressed in a tattered short-sleeved sweatshirt and ancient gym shorts, then with his face unshaven and his hair dripping headed into the kitchen to heat water for instant coffee. He looked around, scowled again at the carafe and drip cone the owners had provided. Even if he could have figured out the proper measuring formula, he hadn’t thought to bring coffee filters.

At that moment he would have paid a thousand dollars for a coffeemaker. He set the kettle on the front burner of a stove that was older than he was, then walked over to the living room section of the large multipurpose room to flip on the early news.

The reception was miserable, and the pickings slim. No coffeemaker, no pay-per-view, Nathan mused as he tuned in the sunrise news on one of the three available channels. He remembered how he and Kyle had whined over the lack of televised entertainment.

How are we supposed to watch The Six Million Dollar Man on this stupid thing? It’s a gyp.

It seemed to him the color scheme was different now. He had a vague recollection of soft pastels on the wide, deep chairs and straight-backed sofa. Now they were covered in bold geometric prints, deep greens and blues, sunny yellows.

The fan that dropped from the center pitch of the ceiling had squeaked. He knew, because he’d been compelled to tug on the cord, that it ran now with only a quiet hiss of blades. But it was the same long yellow-pine dining table separating the rooms — the table he and his family had gathered around to eat, to play board games, to put together eye-crossingly complex jigsaw puzzles during that summer. The same table he and Kyle had been assigned to clear after dinner. The table where his father had lingered some mornings over coffee.

He remembered when their father had shown him and Kyle how to punch holes in the lid of a jar and catch lightning bugs. The evening had been warm and soft, the hunt and chase giddy. Nathan remembered watching the jar he’d put beside his bed wink and glow, wink and glow, lulling him to sleep. But in the morning all the lightning bugs in his jar had been dead, smothered, as the book atop the lid had plugged all the holes. He still couldn’t remember putting it there, that battered copy of Johnny Tremain. The dark corpses in the bottom of the jar had left him feeling sick and guilty. He’d snuck out of the house and dumped them in the river. He chased no more lightning bugs that summer.

Irritated at the memory, Nathan turned away from the TV, went back to the stove to pour the steaming water over a spoonful of coffee. He carried the mug out onto the screened porch to look at the river.

Memories were bound to surface now that he was here, he reminded himself. That was why he’d come. To remember that summer, step by step, day by day. And to figure out what to do about the Hathaways.

He sipped coffee, winced a little at its false and bitter taste. He’d discovered that a great deal of life was false and bitter, so he drank again.

Jo Ellen Hathaway. He remembered her as a skinny, sharpelbowed girl with a sloppy ponytail and a lightning temper. He hadn’t had much use for girls at ten, so he’d paid her little attention. She’d simply been one of Brian’s little sisters. Still was, Nathan thought. And she was still skinny. Apparently her temper was still in place as well. The streaming ponytail was gone. The shorter, choppy cut suited her personality if not her face, he decided. The carelessness of it, the nod to fashion. The color of it was like the pelt of a wild deer.

He wondered why she looked so pale and tired. She didn’t seem the type to pine away over a shattered affair or relationship, but something was hurting. Her eyes were full of sorrow and secrets.

And that was the problem, Nathan thought with a half laugh. He had a weakness for sad-eyed women. Better to resist it, he told himself. Wondering what was going on behind those big, sad, bluebell eyes was bound to interfere with his purpose. What he needed was time and objectivity before he took the next step.

He sipped more coffee, told himself he’d get dressed shortly and walk to Sanctuary for a decent cup and some breakfast. It was time to go back, to observe and to plan. Time to stir more ghosts.

But for now he just wanted to stand here, look through the thin mesh of screen, feel the damp air, watch the sun slowly burn away the pearly mists that clung to the ground and skimmed like fairy wings over the river.

He could hear the ocean if he listened for it, a low, constant rumble off to the east. Closer he could identify the chirp of birds, the monotonous drumming of a woodpecker hunting insects somewhere in the shadows of the forest. Dew glistened like shards of glass on the leaves of cabbage palms and palmettos, and there was no wind to stir them and make them rattle. Whoever chose this spot for the cottage chose well, he thought. It sang of solitude, offered view and privacy. The structure itself was simple and functional. A weathered cedar box on stilts with a generous screened porch on the west end, a narrow open deck on the east. Inside, the main room had a pitched ceiling to add space and an open feel. On each end were two bedrooms and a bath.

He and Kyle had each had a room in one half. As the elder, he laid claim to the larger room. The double bed made him feel very grown-up and superior. He made a sign for the door: Please Knock Before Entering. He liked to stay up late, reading his books, thinking his thoughts, listening to the murmur of his parents’ voices or the drone of the TV. He liked to hear them laugh at something they were watching. His mother’s quick chuckle, his father’s deep belly laugh. He’d heard those sounds often throughout his childhood. It grieved him that he would never hear them again.

A movement caught his eye. Nathan turned his head, and where he’d expected a deer he saw a man, slipping along the river bank like the mist. He was tall and lanky, his hair dark as soot. Because his throat had gone dry, Nathan forced himself to lift his mug and drink again. He continued to watch as the man walked closer, as the strengthening sun slanted over his face.

Not Sam Hathaway, Nathan realized as the beginnings of a smile tugged at his lips. Brian. Twenty years had made them both men.

Brian glanced up, squinted, focused on the figure behind the screen. He’d forgotten the cottage was occupied now and made a note to himself to remember to take his walks on the opposite side of the river. Now, he supposed, he would have to make some attempt at conversation.

He lifted a hand. “Morning. Didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“You didn’t. I was just drinking bad coffee and watching the river.”

The Yankee, Brian remembered, a six-month rental. He could all but hear Kate telling him to be polite, to be sociable. “It’s a nice spot.” Brian stuck his hands in his pockets, annoyed that he’d inadvertently sabotaged his own solitude. “You settling in all right?”

“Yeah, I’m settled.” Nathan hesitated, then took the next step. “Are you still hunting the Ghost Stallion?”

Brian blinked, cocked his head. The Ghost Stallion was a legend that stretched back to the days when wild horses had roamed the island. It was said that the greatest of these, a huge black stallion of unparalleled speed, ran the woods. Whoever caught him, leaped onto his back, and rode would have all his wishes granted. Throughout childhood it had been Brian’s deepest ambition to be the one to catch and ride the Ghost Stallion.

“I keep an eye out for him,” Brian murmured and stepped closer. “Do I know you?”

“We camped out one night, across the river, in a patched pup tent. We had a rope halter, a couple of flashlights, and a bag of Fritos. Once we thought we heard hooves pounding, and a high, wild whinny.” Nathan smiled. “Maybe we did.”

Brian’s eyes widened and the shadows in them cleared away.

“Nate? Nate Delaney? Son of a bitch!”

The screen door squeaked in welcome when Nathan pushed it open. “Come on up, Bri. I’ll fix you a cup of lousy coffee.”

Grinning, Brian climbed up the stairs. “You should have let me know you were coming, that you were here.” Brian shot out a hand, gripped Nathan’s. “My cousin Kate handles the cottages. Jesus, Nate, you look like a derelict.”

With a rueful smile, Nathan rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin. “I’m on vacation.”

“Well, ain’t this a kick in the ass. Nate Delaney.” Brian shook his head. “What the hell have you been doing all these years? How’s Kyle, your parents?”

The smile faltered. “I’ll tell you about it.” Pieces of it, Nathan thought. “Let me make that lousy coffee first.”

“Hell, no. Come on up to the house. I’ll fix you a decent cup. Some breakfast.”

“All right. Let me get some pants and shoes on.”

“I can’t believe you’re our Yankee,” Brian commented as Nathan started inside. “Goddamn, this takes me back.”

Nathan turned back briefly. “Yeah, me too.”

A short time later Nathan was sitting at the kitchen counter of Sanctuary, breathing in the heavenly scents of coffee brewing and bacon frying. He watched Brian deftly chopping mushrooms and peppers for an omelette.

“Looks like you know what you’re doing.”

“Didn’t you read your pamphlet? My kitchen has a five-star rating.” Brian slid a mug of coffee under Nathan’s nose. “Drink, then grovel.”

Nathan sipped, closed his eyes in grateful pleasure. “I’ve been drinking sand for the last two days and that may be influencing me, but I’d say this is the best cup of coffee ever brewed in the civilized world.”

“Damn right it is. Why haven’t you come up before this?”

“I’ve been getting my bearings, being lazy.” Getting acquainted with ghosts, Nathan thought. “Now that I’ve sampled this, I’ll be a regular.”

Brian tossed his chopped vegetables into a skillet to sauté, then began grating cheese. “Wait till you get a load of my omelette. So what are you, independently wealthy that you can take six months off to sit on the beach?”

“I brought work with me. I’m an architect. As long as I have my computer and my drawing board, I can work anywhere.”

“An architect.” Whisking eggs, Brian leaned against the counter. “You any good?”

“I’d put my buildings against your coffee any day.”

“Well, then.” Chuckling, Brian turned back to the stove. With the ease of experience he poured the egg mixture, set bacon to drain, checked the biscuits he had browning in the oven. “So what’s Kyle up to? He ever get rich and famous like he wanted?”

It was a stab, hard and fast in the center of the heart. Nathan put the mug down and waited for his hands and voice to steady.

“He was working on it. He’s dead, Brian. He died a couple of months ago.”

“Jesus, Nathan.” Shocked, Brian swung around. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”

“He was in Europe. He’d been more or less living there the last couple of years. He was on a yacht, some party. Kyle liked to party,” Nathan murmured, rubbing his temple. “They were tooling around the Med. The verdict was he must have had too much to drink and fallen overboard. Maybe he hit his head. But he was gone.”

“That’s rough. I’m sorry.” Brian turned back to his skillet. “Losing family takes a chunk out of you.”

“Yeah, it does.” Nathan drew a deep breath, braced himself. “It happened just a few weeks after my parents were killed. Train wreck in South America. Dad was on assignment, and ever since Kyle and I hit college age, Mom traveled with him. She used to say it made them feel like newlyweds all the time.”

“Christ, Nate, I don’t know what to say.”

“Nothing.” Nathan lifted his shoulders. “You get through. I figure Mom would have been lost without Dad, and I don’t know how either one of them would have handled losing Kyle. You’ve got to figure everything happens for a reason, and you get through.”

“Sometimes the reason stinks,” Brian said quietly.

“A whole hell of a lot of the time the reason stinks. Doesn’t change anything. It’s good to be back here. It’s good to see you.”

“We had some fine times that summer.”

“Some of the best of my life.” Nathan worked up a smile. “Are you going to give me that omelette, or are you going to make me beg for it?”

“No begging necessary.” Brian arranged the food on a plate. “Genuflecting afterward is encouraged.”

Nathan picked up a fork and dug in. “So, fill me in on the last two decades of the adventures of Brian Hathaway.”

“Not much of an adventure. Running the inn takes a lot of time. We get guests year-round now. Seems the more crowded and busy life in the outside world gets, the more people want to get the hell away from it. For weekends, anyhow. And when they do, we house them, feed them, entertain them.”

“It sounds like a twenty-four/seven proposition.”

“Would be, on the outside. Life still moves slower around here.”

“Wife, kids?”

“Nope. You?”

“I had a wife,” Nathan said dryly. “We gave each other up. No kids. You know, your sister checked me in. Jo Ellen.”

“Did she?” Brian brought the pot over to top off Nathan’s cup. “She just got here herself about a week ago. Lex is here, too. We’re one big happy family.”

As Brian turned away, Nathan lifted his eyebrows at the tone.

“Your dad?”

“You couldn’t dynamite him off Desire. He doesn’t even go over to the mainland for supplies anymore. You’ll see him wandering around.” He glanced over as Lexy swung through the door.

“We’ve got a couple of early birds panting for coffee,” she began. Then, spotting Nathan, she paused. Automatically she flipped back her hair, angled her head, and aimed a flirtatious smile.

“Well, kitchen company.” She strolled closer to pose against the counter and give him a whiff of the Eternity she’d rubbed on her throat from a magazine sample that morning. “You must be special if Brian’s let you into his domain.”

Nathan’s hormones did the quick, instinctive dance that made him want to laugh at both of them. A gorgeous piece of fluff was his first impression, but he revised it when he took a good look into her eyes. They were sharp and very self-aware. “He took pity on an old friend,” Nathan told her.

“Really.” She liked the rough-edged look of him, and pleased herself by basking in the easy male approval on his face. “Well, then, Brian, introduce me to your old friend. I didn’t know you had any.”

“Nathan Delaney,” Brian said shortly, going over to fetch the second pot of freshly brewed coffee. “My kid sister, Lexy.”

“Nathan.” Lexy offered a hand she’d manicured in Flame Red. “Brian still sees me in pigtails.”

“Big brother’s privilege.” It surprised Nathan to find the siren’s hand firm and capable. “Actually, I remember you in pigtails myself.”

“Do you?” Mildly disappointed that he hadn’t lingered over her hand, Lexy folded her elbows on the bar and leaned toward him. “I can’t believe I’ve forgotten you. I make it a policy to remember all the attractive men who’ve come into my life. However briefly.”

“You were barely out of diapers,” Brian put in, his voice dripping sarcasm, “and hadn’t polished your femme-fatale routine yet. Cheese and mushroom omelettes are the breakfast special,” he told her, ignoring the vicious look she shot in his direction.

She caught herself before she snarled, made her lips curve up. “Thanks, sugar.” She purred it as she took the coffeepot he thrust at her, then she fluttered her lashes at Nathan. “Don’t be a stranger. We get so few interesting men on Desire.”

Because it seemed foolish to resist the treat, and she seemed so obviously to expect it, Nathan watched her sashay out, then turned back to Brian with a slow grin. “That’s some baby sister you’ve got there, Bri.”

“She needs a good walloping. Coming on to strange men that way.”

“It was a nice side dish with my omelette.” But Nathan held up a hand as Brian’s eyes went hot. “Don’t worry about me, pal. That kind of heartthrob means major headaches. I’ve got enough problems. You can bet your ass I’ll look, but I don’t plan to touch.”

“None of my business,” Brian muttered. “She’s bound and determined not just to look for trouble but to find it.”

“Women who look like that usually slide their way out of it too.” He swiveled when the door opened again. This time it was Jo who walked through it. And women who look like that, Nathan thought, don’t slide out of trouble. They punch their way out.

He wondered why he preferred that kind of woman, and that kind of method.

Jo stopped when she saw him. Her brows drew together before she deliberately smoothed her forehead. “You look right at home, Mr. Delaney.”

“Feeling that way, Miss Hathaway.”

“Well, that’s pretty formal,” Brian commented as he reached for a clean mug, “for a guy who pushed her into the river, then got a bloody lip for his trouble when he tried to fish her out again.”

“I didn’t push her in.” Nathan smiled slowly as he watched Jo’s brows knit again. “She slipped. But she did bloody my lip and call me a Yankee pig bastard, as I recall.”

The memory circled around her mind, nearly skipped away, then popped clear. Hot summer afternoon, the shock of cool water, head going under. And coming up swinging. “You’re Mr. David’s boy.” The warmth spread in her stomach and up to her heart. For a moment her eyes reflected it and made his pulse trip.

“Which one?”

“Nathan, the older.”

“Of course.” She skimmed her hair back, not with the studied seductiveness of her sister but with absentminded impatience. “And you did push me. I never fell in the river unless I wanted to or was helped along.”

“You slipped,” Nathan corrected, “then I helped you along.”

She laughed, a quick, rich chuckle, then took the mug Brian offered. “I suppose I can let bygones be, since I gave you a fat lip—and your father gave me the world.”

Nathan’s head began to throb, fast and vicious. “My father?”

“I dogged him like a shadow, pestered him mercilessly about how he took pictures, why he took the ones he did, how the camera worked. He was so patient with me. I must have been driving him crazy, interrupting his work that way, but he never shooed me away. He taught me so much, not just the basics but how to look and how to see. I suppose I owe him for every photograph I’ve ever taken.”

The breakfast he’d just eaten churned greasily in his stomach.

“You’re a professional photographer?”

“Jo’s a big-deal photographer,” Lexy said with a bite in her voice as she came back in. “The globe-trotting J. E. Hathaway, snapping her pictures of other people’s lives as she goes. Two omelettes, Brian, two sides of hash browns, one bacon, one sausage. Room 201’s having breakfast, Miss World Traveler. You’ve got beds to strip.”

“Exit, stage left,” Jo murmured when Lexy strode out again.

“Yes,” she said, turning back to Nathan. “Thanks in large part to David Delaney, I’m a photographer. If it hadn’t been for Mr. David, I might be as frustrated and pissed off at the world as Lexy. How is your father?”

“He’s dead,” Nathan said shortly and pushed himself up from the stool. “I’ve got to get back. Thanks for breakfast, Brian.”

He went out fast, letting the screen door slam behind him.

“Dead? Bri?”

“An accident,” Brian told her. “About three months ago. Both his parents. And he lost his brother about a month later.”

“Oh, God.” Jo ran a hand over her face. “I put my foot in that. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She set the mug down and raced out the door to chase Nathan down. “Nathan! Nathan, wait a minute.” She caught him on the shell path that wound through the garden toward the trees. “I’m sorry.” She put a hand on his arm to stop him. “I’m so sorry I went on that way.”

He pulled himself in, fought to think clearly over the pounding in his temples. “It’s all right. I’m still a little raw there.”

“If I’d known—” She broke off, shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

She’d likely have put her foot in it anyway, she decided. She’d always been socially clumsy.

“You didn’t.” Nathan clamped down on his own nerves and gave the hand still on his arm a light squeeze. She looked so distressed, he thought. And she’d done nothing more than accidentally scrape an open wound. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I wish I’d managed to keep in touch with him.” Her voice went wistful now. “I wish I’d made more of an effort so I could have thanked him for everything he did for me.”

“Don’t.” He bit the word off, swung around to her with his eyes fierce and cold. “Thanking someone for where your life ended up is the same as blaming them for it. We’re all responsible for ourselves.”

Uneasy, she backed off a step. “True enough, but some people influence what roads we take.”

“Funny, then, that we’re both back here, isn’t it?” He stared beyond her to Sanctuary, where the windows glinted in the sun. “Why are you back here, Jo?”

“It’s my home.”

He looked back at her, pale cheeks, bruised eyes. “And that’s where you come when you feel beat up and lost and unhappy?”

She folded her arms across her chest as if chilled. She, usually the observer, didn’t care to be observed quite so clear-sightedly.

“It’s just where you go.”

“It seems we decided to come here at almost the same time. Fate? I wonder—or luck.” He smiled a little because he was going to go with the latter.

“Coincidence.” She preferred it. “Why are you back here?”

“Damned if I know.” He exhaled between his teeth, then looked at her again. He wanted to soothe that sorrow and worry from her eyes, hear that laugh again. He was suddenly very certain it would ease his soul as much as hers. “But since I am, why don’t you walk me back to the cottage?”

“You know the way.”

“It’d be a nicer walk with company. With you.”

“I told you I’m not interested.”

“I’m telling you I am.” His smile deepened as he reached up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “It’ll be fun seeing who nudges who to the other side.”

Men didn’t flirt with her. Ever. Or not that she had ever noticed. The fact that he was doing just that, and she noticed, only irritated her. The inherent Pendleton Fault Line dug between her brows. “I’ve got work to do.”

“Right. Bed stripping in 201. See you around, Jo Ellen.”

Because he turned away first, she had the opportunity to watch him walk into the trees. Deliberately she shook her hair so that it fell over her ears again. Then she rolled her shoulders as if shrugging off an unwelcome touch. But she was forced to admit she was already more interested than she wanted to be.

Copyright © Nora Roberts

Related posts:

1. Sanctuary Chapter Five
2. Sanctuary Chapter Two
3. Sanctuary Chapter Three

Order a copy of Sanctuary.

THE ferry steamed across Pelican Sound, heading east to Lost Desire. Nathan Delaney stood at the starboard rail as he had once before as a ten-year-old boy. It wasn’t the same ferry, and he was no longer a boy, but he wanted to re-create the moment as closely as possible.

It was cool with the breeze off the water, and the scent of it was raw and mysterious. It had been warmer before, but then it had been late May rather than mid-April.

Close enough, he thought, remembering how he and his parents and his young brother had all crowded together at the starboard rail of another ferry, eager for their first glimpse of Desire and the start of their island summer.

He could see little difference. Spearing up from the land were the majestic live oaks with their lacy moss, cabbage palms, and glossy-leaved magnolias not yet in bloom.

Had they been blooming then? A young boy eager for adventure paid little attention to flowers.

He lifted the binoculars that hung around his neck. His father had helped him aim and focus on that long-ago morning so that he could catch the quick dart of a woodpecker. The expected tussle had followed because Kyle had demanded the binoculars and Nathan hadn’t wanted to give them up.

He remembered his mother laughing at them, and his father bending down to tickle Kyle to distract him. In his mind, Nathan could see the picture they had made. The pretty woman with her hair blowing, her dark eyes sparkling with amusement and excitement. The two young boys, sturdy and scrubbed, squabbling. And the man, tall and dark, long of leg and rangy of build.

Now, Nathan thought, he was the only one left. Somehow he had grown up into his father’s body, had gone from sturdy boy to a man with long legs and narrow hips. He could look in a mirror and see reflections of his father’s face in the hollow cheeks and dark gray eyes. But he had his mother’s mouth, firmly ridged, and her deep brown hair with hints of gold and red. His father had said it was like aged mahogany. Nathan wondered if children were really just montages of their parents. And he shuddered.

Without the binoculars he watched the island take shape. He could see the wash of color from wildflowers—pinks and violets from lupine and wood sorrel. A scatter of houses was visible, a few straight or winding roads, the flash of a creek that disappeared into the trees. Mystery was added by the dark shadows of the forest where feral pigs and horses had once lived, the gleam of the marshes and the blades of waving grasses gold and green in the streaming morning sunlight.

It was all hazed with distance, like a dream.

Then he saw the gleam of white on a rise, the quick wink that was sun shooting off glass. Sanctuary, he thought, and kept it in his sights until the ferry turned toward the dock and the house was lost from view.

Nathan turned from the rail and walked back to his Jeep. When he was settled inside with only the hum of the ferry’s engines for company, he wondered if he was crazy coming back here, exploring the past, in some ways repeating it. He’d left New York, packed everything that mattered into the Jeep. It was surprisingly little. Then again, he’d never had a deepseated need for things. That had made his life simpler through the divorce two years before. Maureen had been the collector, and it saved them both a great deal of time and temper when he offered to let her strip the West Side apartment. Christ knew she’d taken him up on it and had left him with little more than his own clothes and a mattress. That chapter of his life was over, and for nearly two years now he’d devoted himself to his work. Designing buildings was as much a passion as a career for him, and with New York as no more than a home base, he had traveled, studying sites, working wherever he could set up his drawing board and computer.

He’d given himself the gift of time to study other buildings, explore the art of them, from the great cathedrals in Italy and France to the streamlined desert homes in the American Southwest.

He’d been free, his work the only demand on his time and on his heart. Then he had lost his parents, suddenly, irrevocably. And had lost himself. He wondered why he felt he could find the pieces on Desire.

But he was committed to staying at least six months. Nathan took it as a good sign that he’d been able to book the same cottage his family had lived in during that summer. He knew he would listen for the echo of their voices and would hear them with a man’s ear. He would see their ghosts with a man’s eyes. And he would return to Sanctuary with a man’s purpose.

Would they remember him? The children of Annabelle? He would soon find out, he decided, when the ferry bumped up to the dock.

He waited his turn, watching as the blocks were removed from the tires of the pickup ahead of him. A family of five, he noted, and from the gear he could see that they would be camping at the facility the island provided. Nathan shook his head, wondering why anyone would choose to sleep in a tent on the ground and consider it a vacation.

The light dimmed as clouds rolled over the sun. Frowning, he noted that they were coming in fast, flying in from the east. Rain could come quickly to barrier islands, he knew. He remembered it falling in torrents for three endless days when he’d been there before. By day two he and Kyle had been at each other’s throats like young wolves.

It made him smile now and wonder how in God’s name his mother had tolerated it.

He drove slowly off the ferry, then up the bumpy, pitted road leading away from the dock. With his windows open he could hear the cheerfully blaring rock and roll screaming out of the truck’s radio. Camper Family, he thought, was already having a great time, impending rain or not. He was determined to follow their example and enjoy the morning.

He would have to face Sanctuary, of course, but he would approach it as an architect. He remembered that its heart was a glorious example of the Colonial style—wide verandas, stately columns, tall, narrow windows. Even as a child he’d been interested enough to note some of the details.

Gargoyle rainspouts, he recalled, that personalized rather than detracted from the grand style. He’d scared the piss out of Kyle by telling him they came alive at night and prowled. There was a turret, with a widow’s walk circling it. Balconies jutting out with ornate railings of stone or iron. The chimneys were soft-hued stones mined from the mainland, the house itself fashioned of local cypress and oak.

There was a smokehouse that had still been in use, and slave quarters that had been falling to ruin, where he and Brian and Kyle had found a rattler curled in a dark corner.

There were deer in the forest and alligators in the marshes. Whispers of pirates and ghosts filled the air. It was a fine place for young boys and grand adventures. And for dark and dangerous secrets.

He passed the western marshlands with their busy mud and thin islands of trees. The wind had picked up, sending the cordgrass rippling. Along the edge two egrets were on patrol, their long legs like stilts in the shallow water.

Then the forest took over, lush and exotic. Nathan slowed, letting the truck ahead of him rattle out of sight. Here was stillness, and those dark secrets. His heart began to pound uncomfortably, and his hands tightened on the wheel. This was something he’d come to face, to dissect, and eventually to understand.

The shadows were thick, and the moss dripped from the trees like webs of monstrous spiders. To test himself he turned off the engine. He could hear nothing but his own heartbeat and the voice of the wind.

Ghosts, he thought. He would have to look for them there. And when he found them, what then? Would he leave them where they drifted, night after night, or would they continue to haunt him, muttering to him in his sleep?

Would he see his mother’s face, or Annabelle’s? And which one would cry out the loudest?

He let out a long breath, caught himself reaching for the cigarettes he’d given up over a year before. Annoyed, he turned the ignition key but got only a straining rumble in return. He pumped the gas, tried it again with the same results.

“Well, shit,” he muttered. “That’s perfect.”

Sitting back, he tapped his fingers restlessly on the wheel. The thing to do, of course, was to get out and look under the hood.

He knew what he would see. An engine. Wires and tubes and belts. Nathan figured he knew as much about engines and wires and tubes as he did about brain surgery. And being broken down on a deserted road was exactly what he deserved for letting himself be talked into buying a friend’s secondhand Jeep.

Resigned, he climbed out and popped the hood. Yep, he thought, just as he’d suspected. An engine. He leaned in, poked at it, and felt the first fat drop of rain hit his back.

“Now it’s even more perfect.” He shoved his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and scowled, continued to scowl while the rain pattered on his head.

He should have known something was up when his friend had cheerfully tossed in a box of tools along with the Jeep.

Nathan considered hauling them out and beating on the engine with a wrench. It was unlikely to work, but it would at least be satisfying.

He stepped back, then froze as the ghost stepped out of the forest shadows and watched him.

Annabelle.

The name swam through his mind, and his gut clenched in defense. She stood in the rain, still as a doe, her smoky red hair damp and tangled, those big blue eyes quiet and sad. His knees threatened to give way, and he braced a hand on the fender.

Then she moved, pushed back her wet hair. And started toward him. He saw then that it was no ghost, but a woman. It was not Annabelle, but, he was sure, it was Annabelle’s daughter.

He let out the breath he’d been holding until his heart settled again.

“Car trouble?” Jo tried to keep her voice light. The way he was staring at her made her wish she’d stayed in the trees and let him fend for himself. “I take it you’re not standing here in the rain taking in the sights.”

“No.” It pleased him that his voice was normal. If there was an edge to it, the situation was cause enough to explain it. “It won’t start.”

“Well, that’s a problem.” He looked vaguely familiar, she thought. A good face, strong and bony and male. Interesting eyes as well, she mused, pure gray and very direct. If she were inclined to portrait photography, he’d have been a fine subject.

“Did you find the trouble?”

Her voice was honey over cream, gorgeously southern. It helped him relax. “I found the engine,” he said and smiled. “Just where I suspected it would be.”

“Uh-huh. And now?”

“I’m deciding how long I should look at it and pretend I know what I’m looking at before I get back in out of the rain.”

“You don’t know how to fix your car?” she asked, with such obvious surprise that he bristled.

“No, I don’t. I also own shoes and don’t have a clue how to tan leather.” He started to yank down the hood, but she raised a hand to hold it open.

“I’ll take a look.”

“What are you, a mechanic?”

“No, but I know the basics.” Elbowing him aside, she checked the battery connections first. “These look all right, but you’re going to want to keep an eye on them for corrosion if you’re spending any time on Desire.”

“Six months or so.” He leaned in with her. “What am I keeping my eye on?”

“These. Moisture can play hell with engines around here. You’re crowding me.”

“Sorry.” He shifted his position. Obviously she didn’t remember him, and he decided to pretend he didn’t remember her. “You live on the island?”

“Not anymore.” To keep from bumping it on the Jeep, Jo moved the camera slung around her neck to her back. Nate stared at it, felt the low jolt. It was a high-end Nikon. Compact, quieter and more rugged than other designs, it was often a professional’s choice. His father had had one. He had one himself.

“Been out taking pictures in the rain?”

“Wasn’t raining when I left,” she said absently. “Your fan belt’s going to need replacing before long, but that’s not your problem now.” She straightened, and though the skies had opened wide, seemed oblivious to the downpour. “Get in and try it so I can hear what she sounds like.”

“You’re the boss.”

Her lips twitched as he turned and climbed back into the Jeep. No doubt his male ego was dented, she decided. She cocked her head as the engine groaned. Lips pursed, she leaned back under the hood. “Again!” she called out to him, muttering to herself.

“Carburetor.”

“What?”

“Carburetor,” she repeated and opened the little metal door with her thumb. “Turn her over again.”

This time the engine roared to life. With a satisfied nod, she shut the hood and walked around to the driver’s side window.

“It’s sticking closed, that’s all. You’re going to want to have it looked at. From the sound of it, you need a tune-up anyway. When’s the last time you had it in?”

“I just bought it a couple of weeks ago. From a former friend.”

“Ah. Always a mistake. Well, it should get you where you’re going now.”

When she started to step back, he reached through the window for her hand. It was narrow, he noted, long, both elegant and competent. “Listen, let me give you a lift. It’s pouring, and it’s the least I can do.”

“It’s not necessary. I can—”

“I could break down again.” He shot her a smile, charming, easy, persuasive. “Who’ll fix my carburetor?”

It was foolish to refuse, she knew. More foolish to feel trapped just because he had her hand. She shrugged. “All right, then.”

She gave her hand a little tug, was relieved when he immediately released it. She jogged around the Jeep and climbed dripping into the passenger seat.

“Well, the interior’s in good shape.”

“My former friend knows me too well.” Nathan turned on the wipers and looked at Jo. “Where to?”

“Up this road, then bear right at the first fork. Sanctuary isn’t far—but then nothing is on Desire.”

“That’s handy. I’m heading to Sanctuary myself.”

“Oh?” The air in the cab was thick and heavy. The driving rain seemed to cut them off from everything, misting out the trees, muffling all the sound. Reason enough to be uncomfortable, she told herself, but she was sufficiently annoyed with her reaction to angle her head and meet his eyes directly. “Are you staying at the big house?”

“No, just picking up keys for the cottage I’m renting.”

“For six months, you said?” It relieved her when he began to drive, turned those intense gray eyes away from her face and focused on the road. “That’s a long vacation.”

“I brought work with me. I wanted a change of scene for a while.”

“Desire’s a long way from home,” she said, then smiled a little when he glanced at her. “Anyone from Georgia can spot a Yankee. Even if you keep your mouth shut, you move differently.”

She pushed her wet hair back. If she’d walked, Jo thought, she’d have been spared making conversation. But talk was better than the heavy, rain-drenched silence. “You’ve got Little Desire Cottage, by the river.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, everybody knows everything around here. But my family rents the cottages, runs them and the inn, the restaurant. As it happens I was assigned Little Desire, stocked the linens and so forth just yesterday for the Yankee who’s coming to stay for six months.”

“So you’re my mechanic, landlord, and housekeeper. I’m a lucky man. Who exactly do I call if my sink backs up?”

“You open the closet and take out the plunger. If you need instructions for use, I’ll write them down for you. Here’s the fork.”

Nathan bore right and climbed. “Let’s try that again. If I wanted to grill a couple of steaks, chill a bottle of wine, and invite you to dinner, who would I call?”

Jo turned her head and gave him a cool look. “You’d have better luck with my sister. Her name is Alexa.”

“Does she fix carburetors?”

With a half laugh, Jo shook her head. “No, but she’s very decorative and enjoys invitations from men.”

“And you don’t?”

“Let’s just say I’m more selective than Lexy.”

“Ouch.” Whistling, Nathan rubbed a hand over his heart. “Di-rect hit.”

“Just saving us both some time. There’s Sanctuary,” she murmured. He watched it appear through the curtain of rain, swim out of the thin mists that curled at its base. It was old and grand, as elegant as a Southern Belle dressed for company. Definitely feminine, Nate thought, with those fluid lines all in virginal white. Tall windows were softened by arched trim, and pretty ironwork adorned balconies where flowers bloomed out of clay pots of soft red. Her gardens glowed, the blooms heavy-headed with rain, like bowing fairies at her feet.

“Stunning,” Nathan said, half to himself. “The more recent additions blend perfectly with the original structure. Accent rather than modernize. It’s a masterful harmony of styles, classically southern without being typical. It couldn’t be more perfect if the island had been designed for it rather than it being designed for the island.”

Nathan stopped at the end of the drive before he noticed that Jo was staring at him. For the first time there was curiosity in her eyes.

“I’m an architect,” he explained. “Buildings like this grab me right by the throat.”

“Well, then, you’ll probably want a tour of the inside.”

“I’d love one, and I’d owe you at least one steak dinner for that.”

“You’ll want my cousin Kate to show you around. She’s a Pendleton,” Jo added as she opened her door.
“Sanctuary came down through the Pendletons. She knows it best. Come inside. You can dry off some and pick up the keys.”

She hurried up the steps, paused on the veranda to shake her head and scatter rain from her hair. She waited until he stepped up beside her.

“Jesus, look at this door.” Reverently, Nathan ran his fingertips over the rich, carved wood. Odd that he’d forgotten it, he thought. But then, he had usually raced in through the screened porch and through the kitchen.

“Honduran mahogany,” Jo told him. “Imported in the early eighteen-hundreds, long before anyone worried about depleting the rain forests. But it is beautiful.” She turned the heavy brass handle and stepped with him into Sanctuary.

“The floors are heart of pine,” she began and blocked out an unbidden image of her mother patiently paste-waxing them. “As are the main stairs, and the banister is oak carved and constructed here on Desire when it was a plantation, dealing mostly in Sea Island cotton. The chandelier is more recent, an addition purchased in France by the wife of Stewart Pendleton, the shipping tycoon who rebuilt the main house and added the wings. A great deal of the furniture was lost during the War Between the States, but Stewart and his wife traveled extensively and selected antiques that suited them and Sanctuary.”

“He had a good eye,” Nathan commented, scanning the wide, high-ceilinged foyer with its fluid sweep of glossy stairs, its glittering fountain of crystal light.

“And a deep pocket,” Jo put in. Telling herself to be patient, she stood where she was and let him wander.

The walls were a soft, pale yellow that would give the illusion of cool during those viciously hot summer afternoons. They were trimmed in dark wood that added richness with carved moldings framing the high plaster ceiling.

The furnishings here were heavy and large in scale, as befitted a grand entranceway. A pair of George II armchairs with shellshaped backs flanked a hexagonal credence table that held a towering brass urn filled with sweetly scented lilies and wild grasses.

Though he didn’t collect antiques himself—or anything else, for that matter—he was a man who studied all aspects of buildings, including what went inside them. He recognized the Flemish cabinet-on-stand in carved oak, the giltwood pier mirror over a marquetry candle stand, the delicacy of Queen Anne and the flash of Louis XIV. And he found the mix of periods and styles inspired.

“Incredible.” His hands tucked in his back pockets, he turned back to Jo. “Hell of a place to live, I’d say.”

“In more ways than one.” Her voice was dry, and just a little bitter. It had him lifting a brow in question, but she added nothing more. “We do registration in the front parlor.”

She turned down the hallway, stepped into the first room on the right. Someone had started a fire, she observed, probably in anticipation of the Yankee, and to keep the guests at the inn cheerful on a rainy day if they wandered through.

She went to the huge old Chippendale writing desk and opened the top side drawer, flipped through the paperwork for the rental cottages. Upstairs in the family wing was an office with a workaday file cabinet and a computer Kate was still struggling to learn about. But guests were never subjected to such drearily ordinary details.

“Little Desire Cottage,” Jo announced, sliding the contract free. She noted it had already been stamped to indicate receipt of the deposit and signed by both Kate and one Nathan Delaney. Jo laid the paperwork aside and opened another drawer to take out the keys jingling from a metal clip that held the cottage name. “This one is for both the front and the rear doors, and the smaller one is for the storage room under the cottage. I wouldn’t store anything important in there if I were you. Flooding is a hazard that near the river.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“I took care of setting up the telephone yesterday. All calls will be billed directly to the cottage and added to your bill monthly.”

She opened another drawer and took out a slim folder. “You’ll find the usual information and answers in this packet. The ferry schedule, tide information, how to rent fishing or boating gear if you want it. There’s a pamphlet that describes the island—history, flora and fauna— Why are you staring at me like that?” she demanded.

“You’ve got gorgeous eyes. It’s hard not to look at them.”

She shoved the folder into his hands. “You’d be better off looking at what’s in here.”

“All right.” Nathan opened it, began to page through. “Are you always this jittery, or do I bring that out in you?”

“I’m not jittery, I’m impatient. Not all of us are on vacation. Do you have any questions—that pertain to the cottage or the island?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“Directions to your cottage are in the folder. If you’d just initial the contract here, to confirm receipt of the keys and information, you can be on your way.”

He smiled again, intrigued at how rapidly her southern hospitality was thinning. “I wouldn’t want to wear out my welcome,” he said, taking the pen she offered him. “Since I intend to come back.”

“Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served in the inn’s dining room. The service hours are also listed in your folder. Box lunches are available for picnics.”

The more she talked, the more he enjoyed hearing her voice. She smelled of rain and nothing else and looked—when you looked into those lovely blue eyes—as sad as a bird with a broken wing.

“Do you like picnics?” he asked her.

She let out a long sigh, snatched the pen back from him, and scrawled her initials under his. “You’re wasting your time flirting with me, Mr. Delaney. I’m just not interested.”

“Any sensible woman knows that a statement like that only presents a challenge.” He bent down to read her initials, “J.E.H.”

“Jo Ellen Hathaway,” she told him in hopes of hurrying him along.

“It’s been a pleasure being rescued by you, Jo Ellen.” He offered a hand, amused when she hesitated before clasping it with hers.

“Try Zeke Fitzsimmons about that tune-up. He’ll get the Jeep running smoothly for you. Enjoy your stay on Desire.”

“It’s already started on a higher note than I’d expected.”

“Then your expectations must have been very low.” She slid her hand free and led the way back to the front door. “The rain’s let up,” she commented, as she opened the door to moist air and mist. “You shouldn’t have any trouble finding the cottage.”

“No.” He remembered the way perfectly. “I’m sure I won’t. I’ll see you again, Jo Ellen.” Will have to, he thought, for a number of reasons.

She inclined her head, shut the door quietly, and left him standing on the veranda wondering what to do next.

Copyright © Nora Roberts

Related posts:

1. Sanctuary Chapter Three
2. Sanctuary Chapter Four
3. Sanctuary Chapter Two

Order a copy of Sanctuary.

Brian stood in the doorway of the west terrace and studied his sister. She looked frail, he noted, skittish. Lost somehow, he thought, amid the sunlight and flowers. She still wore the baggy trousers and oversized lightweight sweater that she’d arrived in, and had added a pair of round wire-framed sunglasses. Brian imagined that Jo wore just such a uniform when she hunted her photographs, but at the moment it served only to add to the overall impression of an invalid.

Yet she’d always been the tough one, he remembered. Even as a child she’d insisted on doing everything herself, on finding the answers, solving the puzzles, fighting the fights. She’d been fearless, climbing higher in any tree, swimming farther beyond the waves, running faster through the forest. Just to prove she could, Brian mused. It seemed to him Jo Ellen had always had something to prove.

And after their mother had gone, Jo had seemed hell-bent on proving she needed no one and nothing but herself.

Well, Brian decided, she needed something now. He stepped out, saying nothing as she turned her head and looked at him from behind the tinted lenses. Then he sat down on the glider beside her and put the plate he’d brought out in her lap.

“Eat,” was all he said.

Jo looked down at the fried chicken, the fresh slaw, the golden biscuit. “Is this the lunch special?”

“Most of the guests went for the box lunch today. Too nice to eat inside.”

“Cousin Kate said you’ve been busy.”

“Busy enough.” Out of habit, he pushed off with his foot and set the glider in motion. “What are you doing here, Jo?”

“Seemed like the thing to do at the time.” She lifted a drumstick, bit in. Her stomach did a quick pitch and roll as if debating whether to accept food. Jo persisted and swallowed. “I’ll do my share, and I won’t get in your way.”

Brian listened to the squeak of the glider for a moment, thought about oiling the hinges. “I haven’t said you were in my way, as I recollect,” he said mildly.

“In Lexy’s way, then.” Jo took another bite of chicken, scowled at the soft-pink ivy geraniums spilling over the edges of a concrete jardiniere carved with chubby cherubs. “You can tell her I’m not here to cramp her style.”

“Tell her yourself.” Brian opened the thermos he’d brought along and poured freshly squeezed lemonade into the lid. “I’m not stepping between the two of you so I can get my ass kicked from both sides.”

“Fine, stay out of it, then.” Her head was beginning to ache, but she took the cup and sipped. “I don’t know why the hell she resents me so much.”

“Can’t imagine.” Brian drawled it before he lifted the thermos and drank straight from the lip. “You’re successful, famous, financially independent, a rising star in your field. All the things she wants for herself.” He picked up the biscuit and broke it in half, handing a portion to Jo as the steam burst out. “I can’t think why that’d put her nose out of joint.”

“I did it by myself for myself. I didn’t work my butt off to get to this point to show her up.”Without thinking, she stuffed a bite of biscuit in her mouth. “It’s not my fault she’s got some childish fantasy about seeing her name in lights and having people throw roses at her feet.”

“Your seeing it as childish doesn’t make the desire any less real for her.” He held up a hand before Jo could speak. “And I’m not getting in the middle. The two of you are welcome to rip the hide off each other in your own good time. But I’d say right now she could take you without breaking a sweat.”

“I don’t want to fight with her,” Jo said wearily. She could smell the wisteria that rioted over the nearby arched iron trellis — another vivid memory of childhood. “I didn’t come here to fight with anyone.”

“That’ll be a change.”

That lured a ghost of a smile to her lips. “Maybe I’ve mellowed.”

“Miracles happen. Eat your slaw.”

“I don’t remember you being so bossy.”

“I’ve cut back on mellow.”

With what passed as a chuckle, Jo picked up her fork and poked at the slaw. “Tell me what’s new around here, Bri, and what’s the same.” Bring me home, she thought, but couldn’t say it. Bring me back.

“Let’s see, Giff Verdon built on another room to the Verdon cottage.”

“Stop the presses.” Then Jo’s brow furrowed. “Young Giff, the scrawny kid with the cowlick. The one who was always mooning over Lex?”

“That’s the one. Filled out some, Giff has, and he’s right handy with a hammer and saw. Does all our repair work now. Still moons over Lexy, but I’d say he knows what he wants to do about it now.”

Jo snorted and, without thinking, shoveled in more slaw.

“She’ll eat him alive.”

Brian shrugged. “Maybe, but I think she’ll find him tougher to chew up than she might expect. The Sanders girl, Rachel, she got herself engaged to some college boy in Atlanta. Going to move there come September.”

“Rachel Sanders.” Jo tried to conjure up a mental image. “Was she the one with the lisp or the one with the giggle?”

“The giggle—sharp enough to make the ears bleed.” Satisfied that Jo was eating, Brian stretched an arm over the back of the glider and relaxed. “Old Mrs. Fitzsimmons passed on more than a year back.”

“Old Mrs. Fitzsimmons,” Jo murmured. “She used to shuck oysters on her porch, with that lazy hound of hers sleeping at her feet beside the rocker.”

“The hound passed, too, right after. Guess he didn’t see much point in living without her.”

“She let me take pictures of her,” Jo remembered. “When I was a kid, just learning. I still have them. A couple weren’t bad. Mr. David helped me develop them. I must have been such a pest, but she just sat there in her rocker and let me practice on her.”

Sitting back, Jo fell into the rhythm of the glider, as slow and monotonous as the rhythm of the island. “I hope it was quick and painless.”

“She died in her sleep at the ripe old age of ninety-six. Can’t do much better than that.”

“No.” Jo closed her eyes, the food forgotten. “What was done with her cottage?”

“Passed down. The Pendletons bought most of the Fitzsimmons land back in 1923, but she owned her house and the little spit of land it sits on. Went to her granddaughter.”

Brian lifted the thermos again, drank deeply this time. “A doctor. She’s set up a practice here on the island.”

“We have a doctor on Desire?” Jo opened her eyes, lifted her brows. “Well, well. How civilized. Are people actually going to her?”

“Seems they are, little by little, anyway. She’s dug her toes in.”

“She must be the first new permanent resident here in what, ten years?”

“Thereabouts.”

“I can’t imagine why . . .” Jo trailed off as it struck her. “It’s not Kirby, is it? Kirby Fitzsimmons? She spent summers here a couple of years running when we were kids.”

“I guess she liked it well enough to come back.”

“I’ll be damned. Kirby Fitzsimmons, and a doctor, of all things.” Pleasure bloomed, a surprising sensation she nearly didn’t recognize. “We used to pal around together some. I remember the summer Mr. David came to take photographs of the island and brought his family.”

It cheered her to think of it, the young friend with the quick northern voice, the adventures they’d shared or imagined together. “You would run off with his boys and wouldn’t give me the time of day,” Jo continued. “When I wasn’t pestering Mr. David to let me take pictures with his camera, I’d go off with Kirby and look for trouble. Christ, that was twenty years ago if it was a day. It was the summer that . . .”

Brian nodded, then finished the thought. “The summer that Mama left.”

“It’s all out of focus,” Jo murmured, and the pleasure died out of her voice. “Hot sun, long days, steamy nights so full of sound. All the faces.” She slipped her fingers under her glasses to rub at her eyes. “Getting up at sunrise so I could follow Mr. David around. Bolting down cold ham sandwiches and cooling off in the river. Mama dug out that old camera for me—that ancient box Brownie—and I would run over to the Fitzsimmons cottage and take pictures until Mrs. Fitzsimmons told Kirby and me to scoot. There were hours and hours, so many hours, until the sun went down and Mama called us home for supper.”

She closed her eyes tight. “So much, so many images, yet I can’t bring any one of them really clear. Then she was gone. One morning I woke up ready to do all the things a long summer day called for, and she was just gone. And there was nothing to do at all.”

“Summer was over,” Brian said quietly. “For all of us.”

“Yeah.” Her hands had gone trembly again. Jo reached in her pockets for cigarettes. “Do you ever think about her?”

“Why would I?”

“Don’t you ever wonder where she went? What she did?” Jo took a jerky drag. In her mind she saw long-lidded eyes empty of life. “Or why?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with me.” Brian rose, took the plate. “Or you. Or any of us anymore. It’s twenty years past that summer, Jo Ellen, and a little late to worry about it now.”

She opened her mouth, then shut it again when Brian turned and walked back into the house. But she was worried about it, she thought. And she was terrified.

LEXY was still steaming as she climbed over the dunes toward the beach. Jo had come back, she was sure, to flaunt her success and her snazzy life. And the fact that she’d arrived at Sanctuary hard on
the heels of Lexy’s own failure didn’t strike Lexy as coincidence. Jo would flap her wings and crow in triumph, while Lexy would have to settle for eating crow. The thought of it made her blood boil as she raced along the tramped-down sand through the dunes, sending sand flying from her sandals. Not this time, she promised herself. This time she would hold her head up, refuse to be cast as inferior in the face of Jo’s latest triumph, latest trip, latest wonder. She wasn’t going to play the hotshot’s baby sister any longer. She’d outgrown that role, Lexy assured herself. And it was high time everyone realized it.

There was a scattering of people on the wide crescent of beach. They had staked their claims with their blankets and colorful umbrellas. She noted several with the brightly striped box lunches from Sanctuary.

The scents of sea and lotions and fried chicken assaulted her nostrils. A toddler shoveled sand into a red bucket while his mother read a paperback novel in the shade of a portable awning. A man was slowly turning into a lobster under the merciless sun.

Two couples she had served that morning were sharing a picnic and laughing together over the clever voice of Annie Lennox on their portable stereo.

She didn’t want them—any of them—to be there. On her beach, in her personal crisis. To dismiss them, she turned and walked away from the temporary development, down the curve of beach.

She saw the figure out in the water, the gleam of tanned, wet shoulders, the glint of sun-bleached hair. Giff was a reliable creature of habit, she thought, and he was just exactly what the doctor called for. He invariably took a quick swim during his afternoon break. And, Lexy knew, he had his eye on her.
He hadn’t made a secret of it, she mused, and she wasn’t one to resent the attentions of an attractive man. Particularly when she needed her ego soothed. She thought a little flirtation, and the possibility of mindless sex, might put the day back on track.

People said her mother had been a flirt. Lexy hadn’t been old enough to remember anything more than vague images and soft scents when it came to Annabelle, but she believed she’d come by her skill at flirtation naturally. Her mother had enjoyed looking her best, smiling at men. And if the theory of a secret lover was fact, Annabelle had done more than smile at at least one man.

In any case, that’s what the police had concluded after months of investigation.

Lexy thought she was good at sex; she had been told so often enough to consider it a fine personal skill. As far as she was concerned, there was little else that compared to it for shouldering
away tension and being the focus of someone’s complete attention.

And she liked it, all the hot, slick sensations that went with it. It hardly mattered that most men didn’t have a clue whether a woman was thinking about them or the latest Hollywood pretty boy while it was going on. As long as she performed well and remembered the right lines. Lexy considered herself born to perform. And she decided it was time to open that velvet curtain for Giff Verdon.

She dropped the towel she’d brought with her onto the packed sand. She didn’t have a doubt that he was watching her. Men did. As if onstage, Lexy put her heart into the performance. Standing near the edge of the water, she slipped off her sunglasses, let them fall heedlessly onto the towel. Slowly, she stepped out of her sandals, then, taking the hem of the shortskirted sundress she wore, she lifted it, making the movements a lazy striptease. The bikini underneath covered little more than a stripper’s G-string and pasties would have.

Dropping the thin cotton, she shook her head, skimmed her hair back with both hands, then walked with a siren’s swagger of hips into the sea.

Giff let the next wave roll over him. He knew that every movement, every gesture Lexy made was deliberate. It didn’t seem to make any difference. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, couldn’t prevent his body from going tight and hard and needy as she stood there, all luscious curves and pale gold skin, with her hair spiraling down like sun-kissed flames.

As she walked into the water, and it moved up her body, he imagined what it would be like to rock himself inside her to the rhythm of the waves. She was watching him too, he noted, her eyes picking up the green of the sea, and laughing.

She dipped down, rose up again with her hair shiny and wet, water sliding off her skin. And she laughed out loud.

“Water’s cold today,” she called out. “And a little rough.”

“You don’t usually come in till June.”

“Maybe I wanted it cold today.” She let the wave carry her closer. “And rough.”

“It’ll be colder and rougher tomorrow,” he told her. “Rain’s coming.”

“Mmm.” She floated on her back a moment, studying the pale blue sky. “Maybe I’ll come back.” Letting her feet sink, she began to tread water as she watched him. She’d grown accustomed to his dark brown eyes watching her like a puppy when they were teenagers. They were the same age, had grown up all but shoulder to shoulder, but she noticed there had been a few changes in him during her year in New York. His face had fined down, and his mouth seemed firmer and more confident. The long lashes that had caused the boys to tease him mercilessly in his youth no longer seemed feminine. His light brown hair was needle-straight and streaked from the sun. When he smiled at her, dimples—another curse of his youth—dented his cheeks.

“See something interesting?” he asked her.

“I might.” His voice matched his face, she decided. All grownup and male. The flutter in her stomach was satisfying, and unexpectedly strong. “I just might.”

“I figure you had a reason for swimming out here mostly naked. Not that I didn’t enjoy the view, but you want to tell me what it is? Or do you want me to guess?”

She laughed, kicking against the current to keep a teasing distance between them. “Maybe I just wanted to cool off.”

“I imagine so.” He smiled back, satisfied that he understood her better than she could ever imagine. “I heard Jo came in on the morning ferry.”

The smile slid away from her face and left her eyes cold. “So what?”

“So, you want to blow off some steam? Want to use me to do it?” When she hissed at him and started to kick out to swim back to shore, he merely nipped her by the waist. “I’ll oblige you,” he said as she tried to wiggle free. “I’ve been wanting to anyway.”

“Get your hands—” The end of her demand was lost in a surprised grunt against his mouth. She’d never expected reliable Giff Verdon to move so quickly, or so decisively. She hadn’t realized his hands were so big, or so hard, or that his mouth would be so . . . sexy as it crushed down on hers with the
cool tang of the sea clinging to it. For form’s sake she shoved against him, but ruined it with a throaty little moan as her lips parted and invited more.

She tasted exactly as he’d imagined—hot and ready, the sex kitten mouth slippery and wet. The fantasies he’d woven for over ten years simply fell apart and reformed in fresh, wild colors threaded with helpless love and desperate need.

When she wrapped her legs around his waist, rocked her body against his, he was lost.

“I want you.” He tore his mouth from hers to race it along her throat while the waves tossed them about and into a tangle of limbs. “Damn you, Lex, you know I’ve always wanted you.”

Water flowed over her head, filled it with roaring. The sea sucked her down, made her giddy. Then she was in the dazzling sunlight again with his mouth fused to hers.

“Now, then. Right now.” She panted it out, amazed at how real the need was, that tight, hot little ball of it. “Right here.”

He’d wanted her like this as long as he could remember. Ready and willing and eager. His body pulsed toward pain with the need to be in her, and of her. And he knew if he let that need rule, he would take her and lose her in one flash.

Instead he slid his hands down from her waist to cup and knead her bottom, used his thumbs to torment her until her eyes went dark and blind. “I’ve waited, Lex.” And let her go. “So can you.”

She struggled to stay above the waves, sputtered out water as she gaped at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m not interested in scratching your itch and then watching you walk off purring.” He lifted a hand to push back his dripping hair. “When you’re ready for more than that, you know where to find me.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“You go work off your mad, honey. We’ll talk when you’ve had time to think it through calm.” His hand shot out, grabbed her arm. “When I make love with you, that’s going to be it for both of us. You’ll want to think about that too.”

She shoved his hand away. “Don’t you touch me again, Giff Verdon.”

“I’m going to do more than touch you,” he told her as she dove under to swim toward shore. “I’m going to marry you,” he said, only loud enough for his own ears. He let out a long breath as he watched her stride out of the water. “Unless I kill myself first.”

To ease the throbbing in his system, he sank under the water. But as the taste of her continued to cling to his mouth, he decided he was either the smartest man on Desire or the stupidest.

JO had just drummed up the energy to take a walk and had reached the edges of the garden when Lexy stormed up the path.

She hadn’t bothered to towel off, so the little sundress was plastered against her like skin. Jo straightened her shoulders, lifted an eyebrow.

“Well, how’s the water?”

“Go to hell.” Breath heaving, humiliation still stinging, Lexy planted her feet. “Just go straight to hell.”

“I’m beginning to think I’ve already arrived. And so far my welcome’s been pretty much as expected.”

“Why should you expect anything? This place means nothing to you and neither do we.”

“How do you know what means anything to me, Lexy?”

“I don’t see you changing sheets, clearing tables. When’s the last time you scrubbed a toilet or mopped a damn floor?”

“Is that what you’ve been doing this afternoon?” Jo skimmed her gaze up Lexy’s damp and sandy legs to her dripping hair. “Must have been some toilet.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Same goes, Lex.” When Jo started to move past, Lexy grabbed her arm and jerked.

“Why did you come back here?”

Weariness swamped her suddenly, made her want to weep. “I don’t know. But it wasn’t to hurt you. It wasn’t to hurt anybody. And I’m too tired to fight with you now.”

Baffled, Lexy stared at her. The sister she knew would have waded in with words, scraped flesh with sarcasm. She’d never known Jo to tremble and back off. “What happened to you?”

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.” Jo shook off the hand blocking her. “Leave me alone, and I’ll do the same for you.”

She walked quickly down the path, took its curve toward the sea. She barely glanced at the dune swale with its glistening grasses, never looked up to follow the flight of the gull that called stridently. She needed to think, she told herself. Just an hour or two of quiet thought. She would figure out what to do, how to tell them. If she should tell them at all.

Could she tell them about her breakdown? Could she tell anyone that she’d spent two weeks in the hospital because her nerves had snapped and something in her mind had tilted? Would they be sympathetic, ambivalent, or hostile?

And what did it matter?

How could she tell them about the photograph? No matter how often she was at sword’s point with them, they were her family. How could she put them through that, dredging up the pain and the past? And if any of them demanded to see it, she would have to tell them it was gone. Just like Annabelle.

Or it had never existed.

They would think her mad. Poor Jo Ellen, mad as a hatter.

Could she tell them she’d spent days trembling inside her apartment, doors locked, after she’d left the hospital? That she would catch herself searching mindlessly, frantically, for the print that would prove she wasn’t really ill?

And that she had come home, because she’d finally had to accept that she was ill. That if she had stayed locked in that apartment alone for another day, she would never have found the courage to leave it again.

Still, the print was so clear in her mind. The texture, the tones, the composition. Her mother had been young in the photograph. And wasn’t that the way Jo remembered her—young?

The long waving hair, the smooth skin? If she was going to hallucinate about her mother, wouldn’t she have snapped to just that age?

Nearly the same age she herself was now, Jo thought. That was probably another reason for all the dreams, the fears, the nerves. Had Annabelle been as restless and as edgy as her daughter was?

Had there been a lover after all? There had been whispers of that, even a child had been able to hear them. There’d been no hint of one, no suspicion of infidelity before the desertion. But afterward the rumors had been rife, and tongues had clucked and wagged.

But then, Annabelle would have been discreet, and clever. She had given no hint of her plans to leave, yet she had left.

Wouldn’t Daddy have known? Jo wondered. Surely a man knew if his wife was restless and dissatisfied and unhappy. She knew they had argued over the island. Had that been enough to do it, to make Annabelle so unhappy that she would turn her back on her home, her husband, her children? Hadn’t he seen it, or had he even then been oblivious to the feelings of the people around him?

It was so hard to remember if it had ever been different. But surely there had once been laughter in that house. Echoes of it still lingered in her mind. Quick snapshots of her parents embracing in the kitchen, of her mother laughing, of walking on the beach with her father’s hand holding hers. They were dim pictures, faded with time as if improperly fixed, but they were there. And they were real. If she had managed to block so many memories of her mother out of her mind, then she could also bring them back. And maybe she would begin to understand.

Then she would decide what to do.

The crunch of a footstep made her look up quickly. The sun was behind him, casting him in shadow. A cap shielded his eyes. His stride was loose and leggy. Another long-forgotten picture snapped into her mind. She saw herself as a little girl with flyaway hair racing down the path, giggling, calling, then leaping high. And his arms had reached out to catch her, to toss her high, then hug her close.

Jo blinked the picture away and the tears that wanted to come with it. He didn’t smile, and she knew that no matter how she worked to negate it, he saw Annabelle in her.

She lifted her chin and met his eyes. “Hello, Daddy.”

“Jo Ellen.” He stopped a foot away and took her measure. He saw that Kate had been right. The girl looked ill, pale, and strained. Because he didn’t know how to touch her, didn’t believe she would welcome the touch in any case, he dipped his hands into his pockets. “Kate told me you were here.”

“I came in on the morning ferry,” she said, knowing the information was unnecessary.

For a difficult moment they stood there, more awkward than strangers. Sam shifted his feet. “You in trouble?”

“I’m just taking some time off.”

“You look peaked.”

“I’ve been working too hard.”

Frowning, he looked deliberately at the camera hanging from a strap around her neck. “Doesn’t look like you’re taking time off to me.” In an absent gesture, she cupped a hand under the camera.

“Old habits are hard to break.”

“They are that.” He huffed out a breath. “There’s a pretty light on the water today, and the waves are up. Guess it’d make a nice picture.”

“I’ll check it out. Thanks.”

“Take a hat next time. You’ll likely burn.”

“Yes, you’re right. I’ll remember.”

He could think of nothing else, so he nodded and started up the path, moving past her. “Mind the sun.”

“I will.” She turned away quickly, walking blindly now because she had smelled the island on him, the rich, dark scent of it, and it broke her heart.

MILES away in the hot red glow of the darkroom light, he slipped paper, emulsion side up, into a tray of developing fluid. It pleased him to re-create the moment from so many years before, to watch it form on the paper, shadow by shadow and line by line.

He was nearly done with this phase and wanted to linger, to draw out all the pleasure before he moved on.

He had driven her back to Sanctuary. The idea made him chuckle and preen. Nothing could have been more perfect. It was there that he wanted her. Otherwise he would have taken her before, half a dozen times before. But it had to be perfect. He knew the beauty of perfection and the satisfaction of working carefully toward creating it.

Not Annabelle, but Annabelle’s daughter. A perfect circle closing.

She would be his triumph, his masterpiece.

Claiming her, taking her, killing her.

And every stage of it would be captured on film. Oh, how Jo would appreciate that. He could barely wait to explain it all to her, the one person he was certain would understand his ambition and his art.

Her work drew him, and his understanding of it made him feel intimate with her already. And they would become more intimate yet.

Smiling, he shifted the print from the developing tray to the stop bath, swishing it through before lifting it into the fixer. Carefully, he checked the temperature of the wash, waiting patiently until the timer rang and he could switch on the white light and examine the print.

Beautiful, just beautiful. Lovely composition. Dramatic lighting—such a perfect halo over the hair, such lovely shadows to outline the body and highlight skin tones. And the subject, he thought. Perfection.

When the print was fully fixed, he lifted it out of the tray and into the running water of the wash. Now he could allow himself to dream of what was to come.

He was closer to her than ever, linked to her through the photographs that reflected each of their lives. He could barely wait to send her the next. But he knew he must choose the time with great care.

On the worktable beside him a battered journal lay open, its precisely written words faded from time. The decisive moment is the ultimate goal in my work. Capturing that short, passing event where all the elements, all the dynamics of a subject reach a peak. What more decisive moment can there be than death? And how much more control can the photographer have over this moment, over the capturing of it on film, than to plan and stage and cause that death? That single act joins subject and artist, makes him part of the art, and the image created.

Since I will kill only one woman, manipulate only one decisive moment, I have chosen her with great care.

Her name is Annabelle.

With a quiet sigh, he hung the print to dry and turned on the white light to better study it.

“Annabelle,” he murmured. “So beautiful. And your daughter is the image of you.”

He left Annabelle there, staring, staring, and went out to complete his plans for his stay on Desire.

Copyright © Nora Roberts

Related posts:

1. Sanctuary Chapter Two
2. Sanctuary Chapter Three
3. Sanctuary Chapter One

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Jo stood at the window in the bedroom of her childhood. The view was the same. Pretty gardens patiently waiting to be weeded and fed. Mounds of alyssum were already golden and bluebells were waving. Violas were sunning their sassy little faces, guarded by the tall spears of purple iris and cheerful yellow tulips. Impatiens and dianthus bloomed reliably.

There were the palms, cabbage and saw, and beyond them the shady oaks where lacy ferns and indifferent wildflowers thrived.

The light was so lovely, gilded and pearly as the clouds drifted, casting soft shadows. The image was one of peace, solitude, and storybook perfection. If she’d had the energy, she’d have gone out now, captured it on film and made it her own.

She’d missed it. How odd, she thought, to realize only now that she’d missed the view from the window of the room where she’d spent nearly every night of the first eighteen years of her life. She’d whiled away many hours gardening with her mother, learning the names of the flowers, their needs and habits, enjoying the feel of soil under her fingers and the sun on her back. Birds and butterflies, the tinkle of wind chimes, the drift of puffy clouds overhead in a soft blue sky were treasured memories from her early childhood.

Apparently she’d forgotten to hold on to them, Jo decided, as she turned wearily from the window. Any pictures she’d taken of the scene, with her mind or with her camera, had been tucked away for a very long time.

Her room had changed little as well. The family wing in Sanctuary still glowed with Annabelle’s style and taste. For her older daughter she’d chosen a gleaming brass half-tester bed with a lacy canopy and a complex and fluid design of cornices and knobs. The spread was antique Irish lace, a Pendleton heirloom that Jo had always loved because of its pattern and texture. And because it seemed so sturdy and ageless.

On the wallpaper, bluebells bloomed in cheerful riot over the ivory background, and the trim was honey-toned and warm. Annabelle had selected the antiques—the globe lamps and maple tables, the dainty chairs and vases that had always held fresh flowers. She’d wanted her children to learn early to live with the precious and care for it. On the mantel over the little marble fireplace were candles and seashells. On the shelves on the opposite wall were books rather than dolls. Even as a child, Jo had had little use for dolls.

Annabelle was dead. No matter how much of her stubbornly remained in this room, in this house, on this island, she was dead. Sometime in the last twenty years she had died, made her desertion complete and irrevocable.

Dear God, why had someone immortalized that death on film? Jo wondered, as she buried her face in her hands. And why had they sent that immortalization to Annabelle’s daughter?

DEATH OF AN ANGEL

Those words had been printed on the back of the photograph. Jo remembered them vividly. Now she rubbed the heel of her hand hard between her breasts to try to calm her heart. What kind of sickness was that? she asked herself. What kind of threat? And how much of it was aimed at herself?

It had been there, it had been real. It didn’t matter that when she got out of the hospital and returned to her apartment, the print was gone. She couldn’t let it matter. If she admitted she’d imagined it, that she’d been hallucinating, she would have to admit that she’d lost her mind. How could she face that?

But the print hadn’t been there when she returned. All the others were, all those everyday images of herself, still scattered on the darkroom floor where she’d dropped them in shock and panic. But though she searched, spent hours going over every inch of the apartment, she didn’t find the print that had broken her. If it had never been there . . . Closing her eyes, she rested her forehead on the window glass. If she’d fabricated it, if she’d somehow wanted that terrible image to be fact, for her mother to be exposed that way, and dead—what did that make her?

Which could she accept? Her own mental instability, or her mother’s death?

Don’t think about it now. She pressed a hand to her mouth as her breath began to catch in her throat. Put it away, just like you put the photographs away. Lock it up until you’re stronger.

Don’t break down again, Jo Ellen, she ordered herself. You’ll end up back in the hospital, with doctors poking into both body and mind.

Handle it. She drew a deep, steadying breath. Handle it until you can ask whatever questions have to be asked, find whatever answers there are to be found.

She would do something practical, she decided, something ordinary, attempt the pretense, at least, of a normal visit home.

She’d already lowered the front of the slant-top desk and set one of her cameras on it. But as she stared at it she realized that was as much unpacking as she could handle. Jo looked at the suitcases lying on the lovely bedspread. The thought of opening them, of taking clothes out and hanging them in the armoire, folding them into drawers was simply overwhelming. Instead she sat down in a chair and closed her eyes.

What she needed to do was think and plan. She worked best with a list of goals and tasks, recorded in the order that would be the most practical and efficient. Coming home had been the only solution, so it was practical and efficient. It was, she promised herself, the first step. She just had to clear her mind, somehow—clear it and latch on to the next step.

But she drifted, nearly dreaming.

It seemed like only seconds had passed when someone knocked, but Jo found herself jerked awake and disoriented. She sprang to her feet, feeling ridiculously embarrassed to have nearly been caught napping in the middle of the day. Before she could reach the door, it opened and Cousin Kate poked her head in.

“Well, there you are. Goodness, Jo, you look like three days of death. Sit down and drink this tea and tell me what’s going on with you.”

It was so Kate, Jo thought, that frank, no-nonsense, bossy attitude. She found herself smiling as she watched Kate march in with the tea tray. “You look wonderful.”

“I take care of myself.” Kate set the tray on the low table in the sitting area and waved one hand at a chair. “Which, from the looks of you, you haven’t been doing. You’re too thin, too pale, and your hair’s a disaster of major proportions. But we’ll fix that.”

Briskly she poured tea from a porcelain teapot decked with sprigs of ivy into two matching cups. “Now, then.” She sat back, sipped, then angled her head.

“I’m taking some time off,” Jo told her. She’d driven down from Charlotte for the express purpose of giving herself time to rehearse her reasons and excuses for coming home. “A few weeks.”

“Jo Ellen, you can’t snow me.”

They’d never been able to, Jo thought, not any of them, not from the moment Kate had set foot in Sanctuary. She’d come days after Annabelle’s desertion to spend a week and was still there twenty years later.

They’d needed her, God knew, Jo thought, as she tried to calculate just how little she could get away with telling Katherine Pendleton. She sipped her tea, stalling. Kate was Annabelle’s cousin, and the family resemblance was marked in the eyes, the coloring, the physical build. But where Annabelle, in Jo’s memory, had always seemed soft and innately feminine, Kate was sharp-angled and precise.

Yes, Kate did take care of herself, Jo agreed. She wore her hair boyishly short, a russet cap that suited her fox-at-alert face and practical style. Her wardrobe leaned toward the casual but never the sloppy. Jeans were always pressed, cotton shirts crisp. Her nails were neat and short and never without three coats of clear polish. Though she was fifty, she kept herself trim and from the back could have been mistaken for a teenage boy.

She had come into their lives at their lowest ebb and had never faltered. Had simply been there, managing details, pushing each of them to do whatever needed to be done next, and, in her no-nonsense way, bullying and loving them into at least an illusion of normality.

“I’ve missed you, Kate,” Jo murmured. “I really have.”

Kate stared at her a moment, and something flickered over her face. “You won’t soften me up, Jo Ellen. You’re in trouble, and you can choose to tell me or you can make me pry it out of you. Either way, I’ll have it.”

“I needed some time off.”

That, Kate mused, was undoubtedly true; she could tell just from the looks of the girl. Knowing Jo, she doubted very much if it was a man who’d put that wounded look in her eyes. So that left work. Work that took Jo to strange and faraway places, Kate thought. Often dangerous places of war and disaster. Work that she knew her young cousin had deliberately put ahead of a life and a family.

Little girl, Kate thought, my poor, sweet little girl. What have you done to yourself?

Kate tightened her fingers on the handle of her cup to keep them from trembling. “Were you hurt?”

“No. No,” Jo repeated and set her tea down to press her fingers to her aching eyes. “Just overwork, stress. I guess I overextended myself in the last couple of months. The pressure, that’s all.”

The photographs. Mama.

Kate drew her brows together. The line that formed between them was known, not so affectionately, as the Pendleton Fault Line. “What kind of pressure eats the weight off of you, Jo Ellen, and makes your hands shake?”

Defensively, Jo clasped those unsteady hands together in her lap. “I guess you could say I haven’t been taking care of myself.”

Jo smiled a little. “I’m going to do better.”

Tapping her fingers on the arm of the chair, Kate studied Jo’s face. The trouble there went too deep to be only professional concerns. “Have you been sick?”

“No.” The lie slid off her tongue nearly as smoothly as planned. Very deliberately she blocked out the thought of a hospital room, almost certain that Kate would be able to see it in her mind. “Just a little run-down. I haven’t been sleeping well lately.” Edgy under Kate’s steady gaze, Jo rose to dig cigarettes out of the pocket of the jacket she’d tossed over a chair. “I’ve got that book deal—I wrote you about it. I guess it’s got me stressed out.” She flicked on her lighter. “It’s new territory for me.”

“You should be proud of yourself, not making yourself sick over it.”

“You’re right. Absolutely.” Jo blew out smoke and fought back the image of Annabelle, the photographs. “I’m taking some time off.”

It wasn’t all, Kate calculated, but it was enough for now. “It’s good you’ve come home. A couple of weeks of Brian’s cooking will put some meat on you again. And God knows we could use some help around here. Most of the rooms, and the cottages, are booked straight through the summer.”

“So business is good?” Jo asked without much interest.

“People need to get away from their own routines and pick up someone else’s. Most that come here are looking for quiet and solitude or they’d be in Hilton Head or on Jekyll. Still, they want clean linen and fresh towels.”

Kate tapped her fingers, thinking briefly of the work stretched out before her that afternoon. “Lexy’s been lending a hand,” she continued, “but she’s no more dependable than she ever was. Just as likely to run off for the day as to do what chores need doing. She’s dealing with some disappointments herself, and some growing-up pains.”

“Lex is twenty-four, Kate. She should be grown up by now.”

“Some take longer than others. It’s not a fault, it’s a fact.” Kate rose, always ready to defend one of her chicks, even if it was against the pecks of another.

“And some never learn to face reality,” Jo put in. “And spend their lives blaming everyone else for their failures and disappointments.”

“Alexa is not a failure. You were never patient enough with her—any more than she was with you. That’s a fact as well.”

“I never asked her to be patient with me.” Old resentments surfaced like hot grease on tainted water. “I never asked her, or any of them, for anything.”

“No, you never asked, Jo,” Kate said evenly. “You might have to give something back if you ask. You might have to admit you need them if you let them need you. Well, it’s time you all faced up to a few things. It’s been two years since the three of you have been in this house together.”

“I know how long it’s been,” Jo said bitterly. “And I didn’t get any more of a welcome from Brian and Lexy than I’d expected.”

“Maybe you’d have gotten more if you’d expected more.”

Kate set her jaw. “You haven’t even asked about your father.”

Annoyed, Jo stabbed out her cigarette. “What would you like me to ask?”

“Don’t take that snippy tone with me, young lady. If you’re going to be under this roof, you’ll show some respect for those who provide it. And you’ll do your part while you’re here. Your brother’s had too much of the running of this place on his shoulders these last few years. It’s time the family pitched in. It’s time you were a family.”

“I’m not an innkeeper, Kate, and I can’t imagine that Brian wants me poking my fingers into his business.”

“You don’t have to be an innkeeper to do laundry or polish furniture or sweep the sand off the veranda.”

At the ice in her tone, Jo responded in defense and defiance.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t do my part, I just meant—”

“I know exactly what you meant, and I’m telling you, young lady, I’m sick to death of that kind of attitude. Every one of you children would rather sink over your heads in the marsh than ask one of your siblings for a helping hand. And you’d strangle on your tongue before you asked your daddy. I don’t know whether you’re competing or just being ornery, but I want you to put it aside while you’re here. This is home. By God, it’s time it felt like one.”

“Kate,” Jo began as Kate headed for the door.

“No, I’m too mad to talk to you now.”

“I only meant . . .” When the door shut smartly, Jo let the air out of her lungs on a long sigh.

Her head was achy, her stomach knotted, and guilt was smothering her like a soaked blanket.

Kate was wrong, she decided. It felt exactly like home.

From the fringes of the marsh, Sam Hathaway watched a hawk soar over its hunting ground. Sam had hiked over to the landward side of the island that morning, leaving the house just before dawn. He knew Brian had gone out at nearly the same hour, but they hadn’t spoken. Each had his own way, and his own route. Sometimes Sam took a Jeep, but more often he walked. Some days he would head to the dunes and watch the sun rise over the water, turning it bloody red, then golden, then blue. When the beach was all space and light and brilliance, he might walk for miles, his eyes keenly judging erosion, looking for any fresh buildup of sand.

He left shells where the water had tossed them. He rarely ventured onto the interdune meadows. They were fragile, and every footfall caused damage and change. Sam fought bitterly against change.

There were days he preferred to wander to the edge of the forest, behind the dunes, where the lakes and sloughs were full of life and music. There were mornings he needed the stillness and dim light there rather than the thunder of waves and the rising sun. He could, like the patient heron waiting for a careless fish, stand motionless as minutes ticked by.

There were times among the ponds and stands of willow and thick film of duckweed that he could forget that any world existed beyond this, his own. Here, the alligator hidden in the reeds while it digested its last meal and the turtle sunning on the log, likely to become gator bait itself, were more real to him than people. But it was a rare, rare thing for Sam to go beyond the ponds and into the shadows of the forest. Annabelle had loved the forest best.

Other days he was drawn here, to the marsh and its mysteries. Here was a cycle he could understand—growth and decay, life and death. This was nature and could be accepted. No man caused this or—as long as Sam was in control—would interfere with it.

At the edges he could watch the fiddler crabs scurrying, so busy in the mud that they made quiet popping sounds, like soapsuds.

Sam knew that when he left, raccoons and other predators would creep along the mud, scrape out those busy crabs, and feast.

That was all part of the cycle.

Now, as spring came brilliantly into its own, the waving cordgrass was turning from tawny gold to green and the turf was beginning to bloom with the colors of sea lavender and oxeye. He had seen more than thirty springs come to Desire, and he never tired of it.

The land had been his wife’s, passed through her family from generation to generation. But it had become his the moment he’d set foot on it. Just as Annabelle had become his the moment he’d set eyes on her.

He hadn’t kept the woman, but through her desertion he had kept the land. Sam was a fatalist—or had become one. There was no avoiding destiny.

The land had come to him from Annabelle, and he tended it carefully, protected it fiercely, and left it never.

Though it had been years since he’d turned in the night reaching out for the ghost of his wife, he could find her anywhere and everywhere he looked on Desire. It was both his pain and his comfort.

Sam could see the exposed roots of trees where the river was eating away at the fringe of the marsh. Some said it was best to take steps to protect those fringes. But Sam believed that nature found its way. If man, whether with good intent or ill, set his own hand to changing that river’s course, what repercussions would it have in other areas?

No, he would leave it be and let the land and the sea, the wind and the rain fight it out.

From a few feet away, Kate studied him. He was a tall, wiry man with skin tanned and ruddy and dark hair silvering. His firm mouth was slow to smile, and slower yet were those changeable hazel eyes. Lines fanned out from those eyes, deeply scored and, in that oddity of masculinity, only enhancing his face. He had large hands and feet, both of which he’d passed on to his son. Yet Kate knew Sam could move with an uncanny and soundless grace that no city dweller could ever master.

In twenty years he had never welcomed her nor expected her to leave. She had simply come and stayed and fulfilled a purpose.

In weak moments, Kate allowed herself to wonder what he would think or do or say if she simply packed up and left.

But she didn’t leave, doubted she ever would.

She’d been in love with Sam Hathaway nearly every moment of those twenty years.

Kate squared her shoulders, set her chin. Though she suspected he already knew she was there, she knew he wouldn’t speak to her unless she spoke first.

“Jo Ellen came in on the morning ferry.”

Sam continued to watch the hawk circle. Yes, he’d known Kate was there, just as he’d known she had some reason she thought important that would have brought her to the marsh. Kate wasn’t one for mud and gators.

“Why?” was all he said, and extracted an impatient sigh from Kate.

“It’s her home, isn’t it?”

His voice was slow, as if the words were formed reluctantly. “Don’t figure she thinks of it that way. Hasn’t for a long time.”

“Whatever she thinks, it is her home. You’re her father and you’ll want to welcome her back.”

He got a picture of his older daughter in his mind. And saw his wife with a clarity that brought both despair and outrage. But only disinterest showed in his voice. “I’ll be up to the house later on.”

“It’s been nearly two years since she’s been home, Sam. For Lord’s sake, go see your daughter.”

He shifted, annoyed and uncomfortable. Kate had a way of drawing out those reactions in him. “There’s time, unless she’s planning on taking the ferry back to the mainland this afternoon. Never could stay in one place for long, as I recall. And she couldn’t wait to get shed of Desire.”

“Going off to college and making a career and a life for herself isn’t desertion.”

Though he didn’t move or make a sound, Kate knew the shaft had hit home, and was sorry she’d felt it necessary to hurl it.

“She’s back now, Sam. I don’t think she’s up to going anywhere for a while, and that’s not the point.”

Kate marched up, took a firm hold on his arm, and turned him to face her. There were times you had to shove an obvious point in Sam’s face to make him see it, she thought. And that was just what she intended to do now.

“She’s hurting. She doesn’t look well, Sam. She’s lost weight and she’s pale as a sheet. She says she hasn’t been ill, but she’s lying. She looks like you could knock her down with a hard thought.”

For the first time a shadow of worry moved into his eyes.

“Did she get hurt on her job?”

There, finally, Kate thought, but was careful not to show the satisfaction. “It’s not that kind of hurt,” she said more gently.

“It’s an inside hurt. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s there. She needs her home, her family. She needs her father.”

“If Jo’s got a problem, she’ll deal with it. She always has.”

“You mean she’s always had to,” Kate tossed back. She wanted to shake him until she’d loosened the lock he had snapped on his heart. “Damn it, Sam, be there for her.”

He looked beyond Kate, to the marshes. “She’s past the point where she needs me to bandage up her bumps and scratches.”

“No, she’s not.” Kate dropped her hand from his arm. “She’s still your daughter. She always will be. Belle wasn’t the only one who went away, Sam.” She watched his face close in as she said it and shook her head fiercely. “Brian and Jo and Lexy lost her, too. But they shouldn’t have had to lose you.”

His chest had tightened, and he turned away to stare out over the marsh, knowing that the pressure inside him would ease again if he was left alone. “I said I’d be up to the house later on. Jo Ellen has something to say to me, she can say it then.”

“One of these days you’re going to realize you’ve got something to say to her, to all of them.”

She left him alone, hoping he would realize it soon.

Copyright © Nora Roberts

Related posts:

1. Sanctuary Chapter One
2. Sanctuary Chapter Two
3. High Noon Chapter Five

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At first light the air was misty, like a dream just about to vanish. Beams of light stabbed through the canopy of live oaks and glittered on the dew. The warblers and buntings that nested in the sprays of moss were waking, chirping out a morning song. A cock cardinal, a red bullet of color, shot through the trees without a sound.

It was his favorite time of day. At dawn, when the demands on his time and energy were still to come, he could be alone, he could think his thoughts. Or simply be.

Brian Hathaway had never lived anywhere but Desire. He’d never wanted to. He’d seen the mainland and visited big cities. He’d even taken an impulsive vacation to Mexico once, so it could be said he’d visited a foreign land.

But Desire, with all its virtues and flaws, was his. He’d been born there on a gale-tossed night in September thirty years before. Born in the big oak tester bed he now slept in, delivered by his own father and an old black woman who had smoked a corncob pipe and whose parents had been house slaves, owned by his ancestors.

The old woman’s name was Miss Effie, and when he was very young she often told him the story of his birth. How the wind had howled and the seas had tossed, and inside the great house, in that grand bed, his mother had borne down like a warrior and shot him out of her womb and into his father’s waiting arms with a laugh.

It was a good story. Brian had once been able to imagine his mother laughing and his father waiting, wanting to catch him.

Now his mother was long gone and old Miss Effie long dead. It had been a long, long time since his father had wanted to catch him.

Brian walked through the thinning mists, through huge trees with lichen vivid in pinks and red on their trunks, through the cool, shady light that fostered the ferns and shrubby palmettos. He was a tall, lanky man, very much his father’s son in build. His hair was dark and shaggy, his skin tawny, and his eyes cool blue. He had a long face that women found melancholy and appealing. His mouth was firm and tended to brood more than smile. That was something else women found appealing—the challenge of making those lips curve.

The slight change of light signaled him that it was time to start back to Sanctuary. He had to prepare the morning meal for the guests.

Brian was as contented in the kitchen as he was in the forest. That was something else his father found odd about him. And Brian knew—with some amusement—that Sam Hathaway wondered if his son might be gay. After all, if a man liked to cook for a living, there must be something wrong with him.

If they’d been the type to discuss such matters openly, Brian would have told him that he could enjoy creating a perfect meringue and still prefer women for sex. He simply wasn’t inclined toward intimacy.

And wasn’t that tendency toward distance from others a Hathaway family trait?

Brian moved through the forest, as quietly as the deer that walked there. Suiting himself, he took the long way around, detouring by Half Moon Creek, where the mists were rising up from the water like white smoke and a trio of does sipped contentedly in the shimmering and utter silence.

There was time yet, Brian thought. There was always time on Desire. He indulged himself by taking a seat on a fallen log to watch the morning bloom.

The island was only two miles across at its widest, less than thirteen from point to point. Brian knew every inch of it, the sun-bleached sand of the beaches, the cool, shady marshes with their ancient and patient alligators. He loved the dune swales, the wonderful wet, undulating grassy meadows banked by young pines and majestic live oaks.

But most of all, he loved the forest, with its dark pockets and its mysteries.

He knew the history of his home, that once cotton and indigo had been grown there, worked by slaves. Fortunes had been reaped by his ancestors. The rich had come to play in this isolated little paradise, hunting the deer and the feral hogs, gathering shells, fishing both river and surf.

They’d held lively dances in the ballroom under the candle glow of crystal chandeliers, gambled carelessly at cards in the game room while drinking good southern bourbon and smoking fat Cuban cigars. They had lazed on the veranda on hot summer afternoons while slaves brought them cold glasses of lemonade.

Sanctuary had been an enclave for privilege, and a testament to a way of life that was doomed to failure.

More fortunes still had gone in and out of the hands of the steel and shipping magnate who had turned Sanctuary into his private retreat. Though the money wasn’t what it had been, Sanctuary still stood. And the island was still in the hands of the descendants of those cotton kings and emperors of steel. The cottages that were scattered over it, rising up behind the dunes, tucked into the shade of the trees, facing the wide swath of Pelican Sound, passed from generation to generation, ensuring that only a handful of families could claim Desire as home.

So it would remain.

His father fought developers and environmentalists with equal fervor. There would be no resorts on Desire, and no wellmeaning government would convince Sam Hathaway to make his island a national preserve.

It was, Brian thought, his father’s monument to a faithless wife. His blessing and his curse. Visitors came now, despite the solitude, or perhaps because of it. To keep the house, the island, the trust, the Hathaways had turned part of their home into an inn. Brian knew Sam detested it, resented every footfall on the island from an outsider. It was the only thing he could remember his parents arguing over. Annabelle had wanted to open the island to more tourists, to draw people to it, to establish the kind of social whirl her ancestors had once enjoyed. Sam had insisted on keeping it unchanged, untouched, monitoring the number of visitors and overnight guests like a miser doling out pennies. It was, in the end, what Brian believed had driven his mother away—that need for people, for faces, for voices.

But however much his father tried, he couldn’t hold off change any more than the island could hold back the sea.

Adjustments, Brian thought as the deer turned as a unit and bounded into the concealing trees. He didn’t care for adjustments himself, but in the case of the inn they had been necessary. And the fact was, he enjoyed the running of it, the planning, the implementing, the routine. He liked the visitors, the voices of strangers, observing their varying habits and expectations, listening to the occasional stories of their worlds.

He didn’t mind people in his life—as long as they didn’t intend to stay. In any case, he didn’t believe people stayed in the long run.

Annabelle hadn’t.

Brian rose, vaguely irritated that a twenty-year-old scar had unexpectedly throbbed. Ignoring it, he turned away and took the winding upward path toward Sanctuary.

When he came out of the trees, the light was dazzling. It struck the spray of a fountain and turned each individual drop into a rainbow. He looked at the back end of the garden. The tulips were rioting dependably. The sea pinks looked a little shaggy, and the . . . what the hell was that purple thing anyway? he asked himself. He was a mediocre gardener at best, struggling constantly to keep up the grounds. Paying guests expected tended gardens as much as they expected gleaming antiques and fine meals.

Sanctuary had to be kept in tip-top shape to lure them, and that meant endless hours of work. Without paying guests, there would be no means for upkeep on Sanctuary at all. So, Brian thought, scowling down at the flowers, it was an endless cycle, a snake swallowing its own tail. A trap without a key.

“Ageratum.”

Brian’s head came up. He had to squint against the sunlight to bring the woman into focus. But he recognized the voice. It irritated him that she’d been able to walk up behind him that way. Then again, he always viewed Dr. Kirby Fitzsimmons as a minor irritation.

“Ageratum,” she repeated, and smiled. She knew she annoyed him, and considered it progress. It had taken nearly a year before she’d been able to get even that much of a reaction from him.

“The flower you’re glaring at. Your gardens need some work, Brian.”

“I’ll get to it,” he said and fell back on his best weapon. Silence. He never felt completely easy around Kirby. It wasn’t just her looks, though she was attractive enough if you went for the delicate blond type. Brian figured it was her manner, which was the direct opposite of delicate. She was efficient, competent, and seemed to know a little about every damn thing.

Her voice carried what he thought of as high-society New England. Or, when he was feeling less charitable, damn Yankee. She had those Yankee cheekbones, too. They set off sea-green eyes and a slightly turned-up nose. Her mouth was full—not too wide, not too small. It was just one more irritatingly perfect thing about her.

He kept expecting to hear that she’d gone back to the mainland, closed up the little cottage she’d inherited from her granny and given up on the notion of running a clinic on the island. But month after month she stayed, slowly weaving herself into the fabric of the place.

And getting under his skin.

She kept smiling at him, with that mocking look in her eyes, as she pushed back a soft wave of the wheat-colored hair that fell smoothly to her shoulders. “Beautiful morning.”

“It’s early.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. He never knew quite what to do with them around her.

“Not too early for you.” She angled her head. Lord, he was fun to look at. She’d been hoping to do more than look for months, but Brian Hathaway was one of the natives of this little spit of land that she was having trouble winning over. “I guess breakfast isn’t ready yet.”

“We don’t serve till eight.” He figured she knew that as well as he did. She came around often enough.

“I suppose I can wait. What’s the special this morning?”

“Haven’t decided.” Since there was no shaking her off, he resigned himself when she fell into step beside him.

“My vote’s for your cinnamon waffles. I could eat a dozen.” She stretched, linking her fingers as she lifted her arms overhead. He did his best not to notice the way her cotton shirt strained over small, firm breasts. Not noticing Kirby Fitzsimmons had become a full-time job.

He wound around the side of the house, through the spring blooms that lined the path of crushed shells.

“You can wait in the guest parlor, or the dining room.”

“I’d rather sit in the kitchen. I like watching you cook.”

Before he could think of a way around it, she’d stepped up into the rear screened porch and through the kitchen door. As usual, it was neat as a pin. Kirby appreciated tidiness in a man, the same way she appreciated good muscle tone and a wellexercised brain. Brian had all three qualities, which was why she was interested in what kind of lover he’d make. She figured she would find out eventually. Kirby always worked her way toward a goal. All she had to do was keep chipping away at that armor of his.

It wasn’t disinterest. She’d seen the way he watched her on the rare occasions when his guard was down. It was sheer stubbornness. She appreciated that as well. And the contrasts of him were such fun.

She knew as she settled on a stool at the breakfast bar that he would have little to say unless she prodded. That was the distance he kept between himself and others. And she knew he would pour her a cup of his really remarkable coffee, and remember that she drank it light. That was his innate hospitality.

Kirby let him have his quiet for a moment as she sipped the coffee from the steaming mug he’d set before her. She hadn’t been teasing when she’d said she liked to watch him cook.

A kitchen might have been a traditionally female domain, but this kitchen was all male. Just like its overseer, Kirby thought, with his big hands, shaggy hair, and tough face.

She knew—because there was little that one person on the island didn’t know about the others—that Brian had had the kitchen redone about eight years before. And he’d created the design, chosen the colors and materials. Had made it a working man’s room, with long granite-colored counters and glittering stainless steel.

There were three wide windows, framed only by curved and carved wood trim. A banquette in smoky gray was tucked under them for family meals, though, as far as she knew, the Hathaways rarely ate as a family. The floor was creamy white tile, the walls white and unadorned. No fancy work for Brian.

Yet there were homey touches in the gleam of copper pots that hung from hooks, the hanks of dried peppers and garlic, the shelf holding antique kitchen tools. She imagined he thought of them as practical rather than homey, but they warmed the room. He’d left the old brick hearth alone, and it brought back reminders of a time when the kitchen had been the core of this house, a place for gathering, for lingering. She liked it in the winter when he lighted a fire there and the scent of wood burning mixed pleasurably with that of spicy stews or soups bubbling.

To her, the huge commercial range looked like something that required an engineering degree to operate. Then again, her idea of cooking was taking a package from the freezer and nuking it in the microwave.

“I love this room,” she said. He was whipping something in a large blue bowl and only grunted. Taking that as a response, Kirby slid off the stool to help herself to a second cup of coffee.

She leaned in, just brushing his arm, and grinned at the batter in the bowl. “Waffles?”

He shifted slightly. Her scent was in his way. “That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Lifting her cup, she smiled at him over the rim. “It’s nice to get what you want. Don’t you think?”

She had the damnedest eyes, he thought. He’d believed in mermaids as a child. All of them had had eyes like Kirby’s. “It’s easy enough to get it if all you want is waffles.”

He stepped back, around her, and took a waffle iron out of a lower cabinet. After he’d plugged it in, he turned, and bumped into her. Automatically he lifted a hand to her arm to steady her. And left it there.

“You’re underfoot.”

She eased forward, just a little, pleased by the quick flutter in her stomach. “I thought I could help.”

“With what?”

She smiled, let her gaze wander down to his mouth, then back. “With whatever.” What the hell, she thought, and laid her free hand on his chest. “Need anything?”

His blood began to pump faster. His fingers tightened on her arm before he could prevent it. He thought about it, oh, he thought about it. What would it be like to push her back against the counter and take what she kept insisting on putting under his nose? That would wipe the smirk off her face.

“You’re in my way, Kirby.”

He had yet to let her go. That, she thought, was definite progress. Beneath her hand his heartbeat was accelerated. “I’ve been in your way the best part of a year, Brian. When are you going to do something about it?”

She saw his eyes flicker before they narrowed. Her breathing took on an anticipatory hitch. Finally, she thought and leaned toward him.

He dropped her arm and stepped back, the move so unexpected and abrupt that this time she did nearly stumble. “Drink your coffee,” he said. “I’ve got work to do here.”

He had the satisfaction of seeing that he’d pushed one of her buttons for a change. The smirk was gone, all right. Her delicate brows were knit, and under them her eyes had gone dark and hot.

“Damn it, Brian. What’s the problem?”

Deftly, he ladled batter onto the heated waffle iron. “I don’t have a problem.” He slanted a look at her as he closed the lid. Her color was up and her mouth was thinned. Spitting mad, he thought. Good.

“What do I have to do?” She slammed her coffee cup down, sloshing the hot liquid onto his spotless counter. “Do I have to stroll in here naked?”

His lips twitched. “Well, now, that’s a thought, isn’t it? I could raise the rates around here after that.” He cocked his head. “That is, if you look good naked.”

“I look great naked, and I’ve given you numerous opportunities to find that out for yourself.”

“I guess I like to make my own opportunities.” He opened the refrigerator. “You want eggs with those waffles?”

Kirby clenched her fists, reminded herself that she’d taken a vow to heal, not harm, then spun on her heel. “Oh, stuff your waffles,” she muttered and stalked out the back door.

Brian waited until he heard the door slam before he grinned. He figured he had come out on top of that little tussle of wills and decided to treat himself to her waffles. He was just flipping them onto a plate when the door swung open.

Lexy posed for a moment, which both she and Brian knew was out of habit rather than an attempt to impress her brother. Her hair was a tousled mass of spiraling curls that flowed over her shoulders in her current favorite shade, Renaissance Red. She liked the Titian influence and considered it an improvement over the Bombshell Blonde she’d worn the last few years. That was, she’d discovered, a bitch to maintain.

The color was only a few shades lighter and brighter than what God had given her, and it suited her skin tones, which were milky with a hint of rose beneath. She’d inherited her father’s changeable hazel eyes. This morning they were heavy, the color of cloudy seas, and already carefully accented with mascara and liner.

“Waffles,” she said. Her voice was a feline purr she’d practiced religiously and made her own. “Yum.”

Unimpressed, Brian cut the first bite as he stood, and shoveled it into his mouth. “Mine.”

Lexy tossed back her gypsy mane of hair, strolled over to the breakfast bar and pouted prettily. She fluttered her lashes and smiled when Brian set the plate in front of her. “Thanks, sweetie.” She laid a hand on his cheek and kissed the other.

Lexy had the very un-Hathaway-like habit of touching, kissing, hugging. Brian remembered that after their mother had left, Lexy had been like a puppy, always leaping into someone’s arms, looking for a snuggle. Hell, he thought, she’d only been four. He gave her hair a tug and handed her the syrup.

“Anyone else up?”

“Mmm. The couple in the blue room are stirring. Cousin Kate was in the shower.”

“I thought you were handling the breakfast shift this morning.”

“I am,” she told him with her mouth full.

He lifted a brow, skimmed his gaze over her short, thin, wildly patterned robe. “Is that your new waitress uniform?”

She crossed long legs and slipped another bite of waffle between her lips. “Like it?”

“You’ll be able to retire on the tips.”

“Yeah.” She gave a half laugh and pushed at the waffles on her plate. “That’s been my lifelong dream—serving food to strangers and clearing away their dirty plates, saving the pocket change they give me so I can retire in splendor.”

“We all have our little fantasies,” Brian said lightly and set a cup of coffee, loaded with cream and sugar, beside her. He
understood her bitterness and disappointment, even if he didn’t agree with it. Because he loved her, he cocked his head and said,

“Want to hear mine?”

“Probably has something to do with winning the Betty Crocker recipe contest.”

“Hey, it could happen.”

“I was going to be somebody, Bri.”

“You are somebody. Alexa Hathaway, Island Princess.”

She rolled her eyes before she picked up her coffee. “I didn’t last a year in New York. Not a damn year.”

“Who wants to?” The very idea gave him the creeps. Crowded streets, crowded smells, crowded air.

“It’s a little tough to be an actress on Desire.”

“Honey, you ask me, you’re doing a hell of a job of it. And if you’re going to sulk, take the waffles up to your room. You’re spoiling my mood.”

“It’s easy for you.” She shoved the waffles away. Brian nabbed the plate before it slid off the counter. “You’ve got what you want. Living in nowhere day after day, year after year. Doing the same thing over and over again. Daddy’s practically given the house over to you so he can tromp around the island all day to make sure nobody moves so much as one grain of his precious sand.”

She pushed herself up from the stool, flung out her arms.

“And Jo’s got what she wants. Big-fucking-deal photographer, traveling all over the world to snap her pictures. But what do I have? Just what do I have? A pathetic résumé with a couple of commercials, a handful of walk-ons, and a lead in a three-act play that closed in Pittsburgh on opening night. Now I’m stuck here again, waiting tables, changing other people’s sheets. And I hate it.”

He waited a moment, then applauded. “Hell of a speech, Lex. And you know just what words to punch. You might want to work on the staging, though. The gestures lean toward grandiose.”

Her lips trembled, then firmed. “Damn you, Bri.” She jerked her chin up before stalking out.

Brian picked up her fork. Looked like he was two for two that morning, he thought, and decided to finish off her breakfast as well.

WITHIN an hour Lexy was all smiles and southern sugared charm. She was a skilled waitress—which had saved her from total poverty during her stint in New York—and served her tables with every appearance of pleasure and unhurried grace.

She wore a trim skirt just short enough to irritate Brian, which had been her intention, and a cap-sleeved sweater that she thought showed off her figure to best advantage. She had a good one and worked hard to keep it that way. It was a tool of the trade whether waitressing or acting. As was her quick, sunny smile.

“Why don’t I warm that coffee up for you, Mr. Benson? How’s your omelette? Brian’s an absolute wonder in the kitchen, isn’t he?”

Since Mr. Benson seemed so appreciative of her breasts, she leaned over a bit further to give him full bang for his buck before moving to the next table.

“You’re leaving us today, aren’t you?” She beamed at the newlyweds cuddling at a corner table. “I hope y’all come back and see us again.”

She sailed through the room, gauging when a customer wanted to chat, when another wanted to be left alone. As usual on a weekday morning, business was light and she had plenty of opportunity to play the room.

What she wanted to play was packed houses, those grand theaters of New York. Instead, she thought, keeping that summer-sun smile firmly in place, she was cast in the role of waitress in a house that never changed, on an island that never changed.

It had all been the same for hundreds of years, she thought. Lexy wasn’t a woman who appreciated history. As far as she was concerned, the past was boring and as tediously carved in stone as Desire and its scattering of families. Pendletons married Fitzsimmonses or Brodies or Verdons. The island’s Main Four. Occasionally one of the sons or daughters took a detour and married a mainlander. Some even moved away, but almost invariably they remained, living in the same cottages generation after generation, sprinkling a few more names among the permanent residents. It was all so . . . predictable, she thought, as she flipped her order pad brightly and beamed down at her next table.

Her mother had married a mainlander, and now the Hathaways reigned over Sanctuary. It was the Hathaways who had lived there, worked there, sweated time and blood over the keeping of the house and the protection of the island for more than thirty years now.

But Sanctuary still was, and always would be, the Pendleton house, high on the hill. And there seemed to be no escaping from it.

She stuffed tips into her pocket and carried dirty plates away. The minute she stepped into the kitchen, her eyes went frigid. She shed her charm like a snake sheds its skin. It only infuriated her more that Brian was impervious to the cold shoulder she jammed in his face.

She dumped the dishes, snagged the fresh pot of coffee, then swung back into the dining room.

For two hours she served and cleared and replaced setups— and dreamed of where she wanted to be.

Broadway. She’d been so sure she could make it. Everyone had told her she had a natural talent. Of course, that was before she went to New York and found herself up against hundreds of other young women who’d been told the same thing.

She wanted to be a serious actress, not some airheaded bimbo who posed for lingerie ads and billed herself as an actress-model.

She’d fully expected to start at the top. After all, she had brains and looks and talent.

Her first sight of Manhattan had filled her with a sense of purpose and energy. It was as if it had been waiting for her, she thought, as she calculated the tab for table six. All those people, and that noise and vitality. And, oh, the stores with those gorgeous clothes, the sophisticated restaurants, and the overwhelming sense that everyone had something to do, somewhere to go in a hurry.

She had something to do and somewhere to go too. Of course, she’d rented an apartment that had cost far too much. But she hadn’t been willing to settle for some cramped little room. She treated herself to new clothes at Bendel’s, and a full day at Elizabeth Arden. That ate a large chunk out of her budget, but she considered it an investment. She wanted to look her best when she answered casting calls.

Her first month was one rude awakening after another. She’d never expected so much competition, or such desperation on the faces of those who lined up with her to audition for part after part.

And she did get a few offers—but most of them involved her auditioning on her back. She had too much pride and too much self-confidence for that.

Now that pride and self-confidence and, she was forced to admit, her own naïveté, had brought her full circle. But it was only temporary, Lexy reminded herself. In a little less than a year she would turn twenty-five and then she’d come into her inheritance. What there was of it. She was going to take it back to New York, and this time she’d be smarter, more cautious, and more clever.

She wasn’t beaten, she decided. She was taking a sabbatical. One day she would stand onstage and feel all that love and admiration from the audience roll over her. Then she would be someone. Someone other than Annabelle’s younger daughter.

She carried the last of the plates into the kitchen. Brian was already putting the place back into shape. No dirty pots and pans
cluttered his sink, no spills and smears spoiled his counter. Knowing it was nasty, Lexy turned her wrist so that the cup stacked on top of the plates tipped, spilling the dregs of coffee before it shattered on the tile.

“Oops,” she said and grinned wickedly when Brian turned his head.

“You must enjoy being a fool, Lex,” he said coolly. “You’re so good at it.”

“Really?” Before she could stop herself, she let the rest of the dishes drop. They hit with a crash, scattering food and fragments of stoneware all over. “How’s that?”

“Goddamn it, what are you trying to prove? That you’re as destructive as ever? That somebody will always come behind you to clean up your mess?” He stomped to a closet, pulled out a broom. “Do it yourself.” He shoved the broom at her.

“I won’t.” Though she already regretted the impulsive act, she shoved the broom back at him. The colorful Fiestaware was like a ruined carnival at their feet. “They’re your precious dishes. You clean them up.”

“You’re going to clean it up, or I swear I’ll use this broom on your backside.”

“Just try it, Bri.” She went toe-to-toe with him. Knowing she’d been wrong was only a catalyst for standing her ground.

“Just try it and I’ll scratch your damn eyes out. I’m sick to death of you telling me what to do. This is my house as much as it is yours.”

“Well, I see nothing’s changed around here.”

Their faces still dark with temper, both Brian and Lexy turned—and stared. Jo stood at the back door, her two suitcases at her feet and exhaustion in her eyes.

“I knew I was home when I heard the crash followed by the happy voices.”

In an abrupt and deliberate shift of mood, Lexy slid her arm through Brian’s, uniting them. “Look here, Brian, another prodigal’s returned. I hope we have some of that fatted calf left.”

“I’ll settle for coffee,” Jo said, and closed the door behind her.

Copyright © Nora Roberts

Related posts:

1. Sanctuary Chapter One
2. High Noon Chapter Two
3. Montana Sky Chapter Four