Sanctuary

by Nora Roberts

  black liquid in his mug. “I’m sorry.”

  Brian stopped drying his hands and gaped. “What?”

  “Damned if I’m going to keep repeating myself.” Sam jerked his head up, and his eyes were filled with frustration. “I’m giving you an apology, and you ought to be big enough to take it.”

  Brian held up a hand before it all descended into an argument again. “You caught me off guard. Knocked me flat,” Brian corrected, and went to the refrigerator for breakfast meats and eggs. “Maybe I could accept it if I knew what you were apologizing for.”

  “For not being there when you were twelve and getting pounded on. When you were fifteen and sicking up your first beer. When you were seventeen and too stupid to know how to make love to a girl without becoming a father.”

  More than a little shaky, Brian took out a skillet. “Kate took me over to Savannah and bought me condoms.”

  “She did not.” If the boy had slapped him over the head with the sausage meat, he’d have been less shocked. “Kate bought you rubbers?”

  “She did.” Brian found himself smiling over the memory as he heated the skillet. “Lectured me up one side and down the other about responsibility and restraint, abstinence. Then she bought me a pack of Trojans and told me if I couldn’t control the urge, I’d do a damn sight better to wear protection.”

  “Sweet Jesus.” The chuckle escaped as Sam leaned back on the counter. “I just can’t picture it.” Then he straightened, cleared his throat. “It should have been me telling you.”

  “Yes, it should have been you.” As if the arrangement were vital, Brian set sausages in the skillet. “Why wasn’t it?”

  “I didn’t have your mother telling me that I’d better go talk to that boy, something was on his mind. Or that Lexy had new dress shoes and wanted to show them off. I saw those things for myself, but I got used to her prodding me on them. Then when I didn’t have her, I let it all go.” He set the coffee down, shot his hands in his pockets. “I’m not used to explaining myself. I don’t like it.”

  Brian took out another bowl, broke the first egg for pancake batter. “Your choice.”

  “I loved her.” It seared his throat, and Sam was grateful that Brian continued to focus on his work. “It’s not easy for me to say that. Maybe I didn’t tell her enough—the feeling came a lot easier than the words. I needed her. Serious Sam, she’d call me, and wouldn’t let me stay that way for long. She loved being around new people, talking about everything under the sun. She loved this house, this island. And for a while, she loved me.”

  Brian didn’t think he’d ever heard a longer speech from Sam Hathaway. Not wanting to break the flow, he poured the butter he’d melted into the bowl and said nothing.

  “We had our problems. I’m not going to pretend we didn’t. But we always got through them. The night you were born ... Jesus, I was scared. Piss-yourself scared, but Belle wasn’t. It was all a big adventure to her. And when it was over and she had you cuddled right up in her arms and nursing, she laid back against the pillows, smiling. ‘Look what a beautiful baby we made ourselves, Sam. We’ll have to make lots more.’ A man’s got to love a woman like that,” Sam murmured. “He doesn’t even have a choice.”

  “I didn’t think you did. Love her.”

  “I did.” Sam picked up his coffee again. All the talk had dried out his throat. “It took me a lot of years of being without her to stop loving her. Maybe I did push her away, but I don’t know how. The not knowing ate at me bad for a lot of years.”

  “I’m sorry.” He saw the flicker of surprise in his father’s eyes. “I didn’t think it mattered to you. I didn’t think any of it really mattered.”

  “It mattered. But after a while you learn to live with what you’ve got.”

  “And you had the island.”

  “It was what I could depend on, what I could tend to. And it kept me from losing my mind.” He took a deep breath. “But a better man would have been around to hold his son’s head when he puked up too much Budweiser.”

  “Löwenbräu.”

  “Christ, an import? No wonder I don’t understand you.”

  Sam sighed and took a long look at the man his son had become. A man who wore an apron to work and baked pies. A man, he corrected, with cool and steady eyes, and shoulders strong and broad enough to carry more than his own load.

  “We’ve both had our say, and I don’t know as it’ll make any difference. But I’m glad we said it.” Sam held out a hand and hoped it was the right thing.

  Jo walked in on the surprising tableau of her father and brother shaking hands in front of the stove. They both looked at her, identical flickers of embarrassment on their faces. Just then she was too damn tired and irritable to analyze it.

  “Lex isn’t feeling well. I’ll be taking her breakfast shift.”

  Brian grabbed a kitchen fork and hurriedly scooted the sausage around before it burned. “You’re going to wait tables?”

  “That’s what I said.” She grabbed a short apron from a peg and tied it on.

  “When’s the last time you waited tables?” Brian demanded.

  “The last time I was here and you were short-staffed.”

  “You’re a lousy waitress.”

  “Well, I’m all you’ve got, pal. Lexy’s got a crying jag headache, and Kate’s heading over to the campground to straighten out the mess there. So live with it.”

  Sam picked up his cap and edged toward the door. Dealing with his son was one thing, and that had been hard enough. He wasn’t about to take on a daughter in the same day. “I’ve got things to do,” he muttered and nearly winced when Jo shot him a killing look.

  “Well, so do I, but I’m waiting tables because the two of you decided to go at each other and Kate and I had to spend half the damn night listening to Lexy cry and carry on. Now the two of you, I see, have shaken hands like real men, so everything’s fine and dandy. Where are the damn order pads?”

  “Top drawer, under the cash register.” Out of the corner of his eye, Brian saw his father slip out the door. Typical, he thought grimly, and drained the sausage. “The computer’s new,” he told Jo. “You ever work a cash register computer?”

  “Why the hell would I? I’m not a sales clerk, I’m not a waitress. I’m a goddamn photographer.”

  Brian rubbed the back of his neck. It was going to be a long morning. “Go up and pour some aspirin down Lexy’s throat and get her down here.”

  “You want her, you get her. I’ve had more than my fill of Lexy and her drama queen routine. She was wallowing in it.” Jo slapped the pad down on the counter and stalked to the coffeepot. “Center of attention, as always.”

  “She was upset.”

  “Maybe she was, until she began to enjoy the role, but it wasn’t my fault. And I’m the one who was stuck with her. It was after two before Kate and I got her calmed down and out of my room. Now she’s the one who claims to have a headache.” Jo rubbed hard at the center of her forehead. “Any aspirin down here?”

  Brian took a bottle from a cupboard and set it on the counter. “Take the pot in and make the first rounds. Blueberry pancakes are the special. If you have to scowl, scowl in here. Out there you smile. Tell the customers your name and pretend you can be personable. It should offset the slow service.”

  “Kiss my ass,” she snarled but grabbed the pot and the pad and swung through the door.

  It didn’t get any better.

  Brian was slicing a grapefruit and grinding his teeth at the two orders that had been sitting under the warming light for a full five minutes. Another two, he thought, and he’d have to dump them and start again.

  Where the hell was Jo?

  “Busy morning.” Nathan breezed in the back door. “I got a glimpse of the dining room through the windows. Looks like a pretty full house.”

  “Sunday morning.” Brian flipped what he thought must have been the millionth pancake of the day. “People like a big breakfast on Sundays.”

  “Me
, too.” Nathan grinned at the grill. “Blueberry pancakes sound perfect.”

  “Get in line. Goddamn it, what’s she doing out there, building the pyramids? You know computers?”

  “I’m the proud owner of three. Why?”

  “You’re now manning the cash register.” Brian jerked a thumb behind him. “Go over there and figure it out. I can’t keep stopping what I’m doing to fix it every time she fucks up a bill.”

  “You want me to work the cash register?”

  “You want to eat?”

  “Why don’t I work the cash register?” Nathan decided, and walked over to study it.

  Jo rushed in, her face pink and harassed, her arms loaded down with dishes. “She had to know. She had to know what it would be like today. I’m going to kill her if I live through this. What the hell are you doing here?” she shot at Nathan.

  “Apparently I’ve been put on the payroll.” He eyed her as she dumped the dishes in the sink and grabbed the waiting orders. “You look real cute today, Jo Ellen.”

  “Bite me,” she muttered and shouldered out the door.

  “I imagine she’s been just that pleasant to the customers.”

  “Don’t spoil my fantasy,” Nathan told him. “I like to believe she saves those ass kicks just for me.”

  “Going to push her in the river again?”

  “She slipped. And I’ve got something ... else in mind for me and Jo.”

  Brian scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want that particular image in my head either.”

  “I just figured you should know what direction I’m planning to take.” To illustrate, Nathan grabbed her when she swung back through the door. Hauling her against him, he kissed her scowling and surprised mouth.

  “Are you crazy?” She shoved an elbow in his gut to free herself, then pushed orders and cash and credit cards into his hands. “Here, figure it out.” She darted over to snag a fresh pot of coffee and tossed scribbled orders on the counter. “Two specials, eggs, scrambled, side of bacon, whole wheat toast. One I don’t remember, but it’s written down there, and we’re running low on biscuits and cream. And if that monster kid at table three spills his juice one more time, I’m going to strangle him and his idiot parents.”

  Nathan grinned as she stalked out again. “Bri, I think it could be love.”

  “More likely insanity. Now keep your hands off my sister and ring up those orders or I’m not feeding you.”

  AT ten-thirty, Jo staggered into her room and fell facedown on the bed. Everything hurt. Her back, her feet, her head, her shoulders. Nobody, she thought, nobody who hadn’t been there could possibly know how hard waitressing was. She’d hiked up mountains, waded through rivers, spent sweltering days in the desert—and would do so again for the right shot.

  But she would slit her wrists with a smile on her face if she ever had to wait another table.

  And she hated having to admit that Lexy not only wasn’t a lazy malingerer, but she made the job look easy.

  Still, if it hadn’t been for Lexy, Jo wouldn’t have missed that glorious, watery, after-the-rain light that morning. She wouldn’t be gritty-eyed from three hours’ sleep. And her feet wouldn’t be screaming.

  She set her teeth when she felt the mattress give under someone’s weight. “Get out, Lexy, or I might find the energy to kill you.”

  “Don’t bother. She’s not here.”

  She turned her head, narrowed her eyes at Nathan. “What are you doing here?”

  “You keep asking me that.” He reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear and clear his view of her face. “Right now, I’m checking on you. Tough morning, huh?”

  She groaned, closed her eyes. “Go away.”

  “Ten seconds into the foot rub and you’re going to beg me to stay.”

  “Foot rub?”

  She pulled her leg back, but he closed his fingers around her ankle, holding it steady as he pried off her shoe. “Ten, nine, eight ...”

  And when he ran the heel of his hand firmly up her arch, sheer pleasure shivered through her system and made her groan.

  “See, I told you. Just relax. Happy feet are the key to the universe.”

  “Galileo?”

  “Carl Sagan,” he said with a grin. “Did you get anything to eat down there?”

  “If I so much as look at another pancake, I’ll throw up.”

  “I thought not. I brought you something else.”

  She blinked one eye open. “What?”

  “Hmm. You’ve got very attractive feet. Long, narrow, an elegantly high instep. One of these days I’m going to start nibbling on them and work my way up. Oh, you meant what did I bring you to eat.” He pressed his fingers against the ball of her foot, worked them down to the heel. “Strawberries and cream, one of Brian’s miraculous biscuits with homemade jam, and some bacon for protein.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you need to eat.” He glanced back at her. “Or did you mean why am I going to nibble on your feet?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Okay. Why don’t you roll over, sit up, and eat? Then I can do this right.”

  She started to say she wasn’t hungry—an automatic response. But she remembered Kirby’s orders to eat. And the idea of strawberries had some appeal. She sat up, trying not to feel foolish when Nathan settled down cross-legged with her foot cradled in his lap. She took the bowl of strawberries and picked one out with her fingers.

  She studied him in silence a moment. He hadn’t bothered to shave that morning, and his hair was in need of a trim. But the just a bit unkempt style suited him, as did the gold the island sun was teasing out of his thick brown hair.

  “You don’t have to go to all this trouble,” she told him. “I’m thinking about sleeping with you.”

  “Well, that’s a load off my mind.”

  She took a bite of a strawberry, and the taste was so sweet and unexpectedly bright, she smiled. “I guess I’m a little out of sorts this morning.”

  “Are you?” He gripped her toes, worked them gently back and forth. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Which is your sly Yankee way of saying I’m always bitchy.”

  “Not always. And I think the word I’d have chosen would have been ‘troubled.’ ”

  “A Hathaway legacy.” Because the strawberries had stirred an appetite, she picked up a slice of bacon and bit in. “We had a family brawl last night, which was why Lexy was in bed with her head under the covers and I was waiting tables.”

  “Do you always pick up the slack?”

  Surprised, she shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t say I pick up much of anything. I’m rarely here.”

  “And when you are, you’re waiting tables, changing linen, scrubbing toilets.”

  “How did you hear about that?”

  Her voice had gone sharp, puzzling him. “You told me. You were on housecleaning detail here at the inn.”

  “Oh, that.” Feeling foolish, she reached for the biscuit, broke it in half.

  “What else?”

  “Nothing.” She jerked a shoulder. “Just some kids playing a prank a couple of days ago. They locked me in the men’s showers over at the campground. I got a little freaked.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “No, at the time I didn’t find it amusing.”

  “Did you catch them?”

  “No, they were long gone by the time my father came along and got me out. It wasn’t a big deal, just annoying.”

  “So we can add cleaning the men’s showers to the list of slack you don’t pick up. And in between all that, you’re putting a photography book together and finding time to work on new pictures. What about fun?”

  “Photography is fun for me.” When he only lifted a brow, she sampled another strawberry. “I went to the bonfire.”

  “And stayed till nearly midnight. You wild woman.”