by Nora Roberts
“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.
SEVEN
NATHAN took a camera with him. He felt compelled to retrace some of his father’s footsteps on Desire—or perhaps to eradicate them. He chose the heavy old medium-range Pentax, one of his father’s favorites and surely, he thought, one that David Delaney had brought to the island with him that summer.
He would have brought the bulky Hasselblad view camera as well, and the clever Nikon, along with a collection of lenses and filters and a mountain of film. Nathan had brought them all, and they were neatly stored, as his father had taught him, back at the cottage.
But when his father hiked out to hunt a shot, he would most usually take the Pentax.
Nathan chose the beach, with its foaming waves and diamond sand. He slipped on dark glasses against the fierce brilliance of the sun and climbed onto the marked path between the shifting dunes, with their garden of sea oats and tangle of railroad vines. The wind kicked in from the sea and sent his hair flying. He stood at the crest of the path, listening to the beat of the water, the smug squeal of gulls that wheeled and dipped above it.
Shells the tide had left behind were scattered like pretty toys along the sand. Tiny dunes whisked up by the wind were already forming behind them. The busy sanderlings were rushing back and forth in the spume, like businessmen hustling to the next meeting. And there, just behind the first roll of water, a trio of pelicans flew in military formation, climbing and wheeling as a unit. One would abruptly drop, a dizzying headfirst dive into the sea, and the others would follow. A trio of splashes, then they were up again, breakfast in their beaks.
With the ease of experience, Nathan lifted his camera, widened the aperture, increased the shutter speed to catch the motion, then homed in on the pelicans, following, following as they skimmed the wave crests, rose into their climb. And capturing them on the next bombing dive.
He lowered the camera, smiled a little. Over the years he’d gone long stretches of time without indulging in his hobby. He planned to make up for it now, spending at least an hour a day reacquainting himself with the pleasure and improving his eye.
He couldn’t have asked for a more perfect beginning. The beach was inhabited only by birds and shells. His footprints were the only ones to mar the sand. That was a miracle in itself, he thought. Where else could a man be so entirely alone, borrow for a while this kind of beauty, along with peace and solitude?
