by Nora Roberts
“Was Bobby on assignment with you there? On Hatteras?”
“No. I worked alone.”
“But there’s a lot of people on Hatteras, compared to Desire. You might not have noticed him. Especially if he wore a disguise.”
“A disguise. Oh, Lexy. Don’t you think I’d have clued in if I saw some guy walking around in Groucho glasses and a funny nose?”
“With the right makeup, a wig, different body language, I could walk right up to you on the street and you wouldn’t recognize me. It’s not that hard to be someone else.” She smiled. “I do it all the time. It could have been this intern of yours or half a dozen people you know. Dye the hair, wear a hat, sunglasses. Put facial hair on or take it off. All we know for sure is that he was there, and he was here.”
Jo nodded slowly. “And he could be back.”
“Yeah.” Lexy put a hand over Jo’s. “But now we’re all going to be watching out for him.”
Jo looked at the hand covering hers. It shouldn’t have surprised her, she realized, to find it there, to find it firm and warm. “I should have told both of you before. I should have told all of you before. I wanted to handle it myself.”
“Now there’s news,” Lexy said lightly. “Cousin Kate, Jo says she wanted to handle something herself. Can you imagine that, the original ‘Get out of my way I’ll do it myself’ girl wanted to handle something on her own.”
“Very clever,” Jo muttered. “I didn’t give you enough credit either, for being willing to be there.”
“More news, Kate.” Lexy kept her eyes on Jo’s. “Why, the bulletins just keep pouring in. Jo didn’t give me enough credit for being an intelligent human being with a little compassion. Not that she or anyone else ever has, but that’s the latest flash coming off the wire.”
“I’d forgotten how good you are at sarcasm—and since I probably deserved both those withering remarks, I won’t ruin it by proving I’m better at sarcasm than you can ever hope to be.”
Before Lexy could speak, Jo turned her hand over and linked her fingers with Lexy’s. “I was ashamed. Almost as much as I was scared, I was ashamed that I’d had a breakdown. The last people I wanted to know about that were my family.”
Sympathy flooded Lexy. Still, she kept a smirk on her face and in her voice. “Why, that’s just foolish, Jo Ellen. We’re southerners. We admire little else more than we admire our family lunatics. Hiding crazy relations in the attic’s a Yankee trait. Isn’t that so, Cousin Kate?”
Amused, and bursting with pride in her youngest chick, Kate glanced back over her shoulder. “It is indeed, Lexy. A good southern family props up its crazies and puts them on display in the front parlor along with the best china.”
Her own quick laugh made Jo Ellen blink in surprise. “I’m not a lunatic.”
“Not yet.” Lexy gave her hand a friendly squeeze. “But if you keep going you could be right on up there with Great-granny Lida. She’s the one, as I recollect, wore the spangled evening dress day and night and claimed Fred Astaire was coming by to take her dancing. Put a little effort into it, you could aspire to that.”
Jo laughed again, and this time it was long and rich. “Maybe we’ll go shopping after all, and I’ll see if I can find a spangled evening dress, just in case.”
“Blue’s your color.” And because she knew it was easier for her than for Jo, Lexy wrapped her arms around her sister and hugged hard. “I forgot to tell you something, Jo Ellen.”
“What’s that?”
“Welcome home.”
IT was after six before they got back to Sanctuary. They’d gone shopping after all and were loaded down with the bags and boxes to prove it. Kate was still asking herself how she’d let Lexy talk her into that frantic ninety-minute shopping spree. But she already knew the answer.
After the hour spent in the police station, they’d all needed to do something foolish.
When they came in through the kitchen, she was already prepared for Brian’s tirade. He took one look at them, the evidence of their betrayal heaped in their arms, and snarled.
“Well, that’s just dandy, isn’t it? That’s just fine. I’ve got six tables already filled in the dining room, I’m up to my elbows in cooking, and the three of you go off shopping. I had to drag Sissy Brodie in here to wait tables, and she hasn’t got any more than a spoonful of sense. Daddy’s mixing drinks—which we’re giving them the hell away to make up for the poor service—and I just burned two orders of chicken because I had to go in there and mop up after that pea-brained Sissy dumped a plate of shrimp fettuccine Alfredo on Becky Fitzsimmons’s lap.”
“Becky Fitzsimmons is in there, and you got Sissy waiting on her?” Tickled down to her toes, Lexy set her bags aside. “Don’t you know anything, Brian Hathaway? Sissy and Becky are desperate enemies since they tangled over Jesse Pendleton, who was sleeping with them both nearly at the same time for six months. Then Sissy found out and she marched right up to Becky outside church after Easter services and called her a no-good toad-faced whore. Took three strong men to pull them apart.”
Reliving the scene with gusto, Lexy pulled the scarf loose and shook her hair free. “Why, a plate of shrimp fettuccine’s nothing. You’re lucky Sissy didn’t take up one of your carving knives there and go after Becky good and proper.”
Brian drew a breath for patience. “I’m counting my blessings right now. Get your pad and get your butt in there. You’re already an hour late for your shift.”
“It’s my fault, Brian,” Jo began and braced herself for the attack when he whirled on her. “I needed Lexy, and I suppose we lost track of time.”
“I don’t have the luxury of losing track of anything, and I don’t need you standing in my kitchen taking up for her when she’s too irresponsible to do what she’s supposed to.” He rattled the lid off the chicken breast he was sautéing and flipped the meat. “And I don’t want you trying to smooth it all over,” he said to Kate. “I don’t have time to listen to excuses.”
“I wouldn’t dream of offering any,” Kate said stiffly. “In fact, I wouldn’t dream of wasting my breath on someone who speaks to me in that manner.” She jerked her chin up and sailed into the dining room to help Sam with bartending duties.
“It was my fault, Brian,” Jo said again. “Kate and Lexy—”
“Don’t bother.” Lexy waved a hand breezily to mask her simmering temper. “He isn’t about to listen—he knows all there is to know, anyway.” She snatched up a pad and stomped through the door.
“Flighty, irresponsible bubblehead,” Brian muttered.
“Don’t talk about her that way. She’s none of those things.”
“What is this? Suddenly the two of you have bonded over the discount rack at the department store? Women buy shoes together and all at once they’re soul mates?”
“You don’t think much of the species, do you? Well, it was women I needed, and women who were there for me. If we were a little later getting back than suits you—”
“Suits me?” He flipped the chicken onto a plate, clenching his teeth as he concentrated on adding side dishes and garnishes. Damned if he’d have women destroying his presentation. “This isn’t about what suits me. It’s about running a business, holding on to the reputation we’ve been building up here for twenty-five years. It’s about being left in the lurch with close to twenty people wanting a good meal served in a pleasant and efficient manner. It’s about keeping your word.”
“All right, you’ve every right to be angry, but be angry with me. I’m the one who dragged them off today.”
“Don’t worry.” He filled a basket with fresh, steaming hush puppies. “I’m plenty angry with you.”
She looked at the pots steaming on the stove, the vegetables already chopped on the cutting board. Dishes were piling up in the sink, and Brian was working awkwardly, hampered by his injured hand.
Left in the lurch was exactly right, she decided. And it had been poorly done by all of them.
“What can I
do to help? I could get these dishes—”
“You can stay out of my way,” he said without looking at her. “That’s what you’re best at, isn’t it?”
She absorbed the hit, accepted the guilt. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
She slipped quietly out the back door. Sanctuary wasn’t barred to her, she thought, not as it had been in her dreams. But the road to and away from it was forever rocky and full of potholes.
And Brian was right. She’d always been expert at staying away, at leaving the pleasures and the problems that brewed in that house to others.
She wasn’t even sure she wanted it to be otherwise.
She cut through the forest. If someone was watching her, let him watch, let him snap his goddamn pictures until his fingers went numb. She wasn’t going to live her life afraid. She hoped he was there. She hoped he was close, that he would show himself. Now. This minute.
She stopped, turned in a slow circle, her face grim as she scanned the deep green shadows. A confrontation would suit her mood perfectly. There was nothing she would enjoy better than a good, sweaty physical fight.
“I’m stronger than you think,” she said aloud and listened to the furious tone of her own voice echo back. “Why don’t you come out, face-to-face, and find out? You bastard.” She grabbed a stick, thudded it against her palm. “You son of a bitch. You think you can scare me with a bunch of second-rate photographs?”
She whipped the stick against a tree, pleased by the way the shock wave sang up her arm. A woodpecker sprang from the trunk above her and bulleted away.
“Your composition sucked, your lighting was awful. What you know about capturing mood and texture wouldn’t fill a thimble. I’ve seen better work from a ten-year-old with a disposable Kodak.”
Her jaw set, she waited, eager to see someone, anyone, step out onto the path. She wanted him to charge. She wanted to make him pay. But there was nothing but the whisper of wind through the leaves, the clicking of palmetto fronds. The light shifted, dimming degree by degree.
“Now I’m talking to myself,” she murmured. “I’ll be as loony as Great-granny Lida before I’m thirty at this rate.” She tossed the stick, watched it fly end over end, arcing up, then landing with a quiet thump in the thick brush.
She didn’t see the worn sneaker inches from where it landed, or the frayed cuffs of faded jeans. When she walked deeper into the forest, she didn’t hear the strained sound of breathing struggling to even out, or the harsh whisper that shook with raw emotion.
“Not yet, Jo Ellen. Not yet. Not until I’m ready. But now I’m going to have to hurt you. Now I’m going to have to make you sorry.”
He straightened slowly, considered himself in full control. He didn’t even notice the blood that welled in his palms as he clenched his fists.
He thought he knew where she was going and, familiar with the forest, he cut through the trees to beat her there.
PART THREE
Love is strong as death;
jealousy is cruel as the grave.
—Song of Solomon
TWENTY
JO didn’t realize she’d made up her mind to go to Nathan’s until she was nearly there. Even as she stopped, considered changing direction, she heard the pad of footsteps. Adrenaline surged, her fists clenched, her muscles tensed. She whirled, more than ready to attack.
Dusk settled around her, dimming the light, thickening the air. Overhead a slice of twilight moon hung in a sky caught between light and dark. Water lapped slyly at the high grass along the banks of the river. With a rush of wind, a heron rose, soaring away from her and its post.
And Nathan stepped out of the shadows.
He broke stride when he saw her, then stopped a foot away. His shoes and the frayed hem of his jeans were damp from the water grasses, his hair tousled from the quickening breeze. Noting her balls-of-the-feet fighting stance, he raised an eyebrow.
“Looking for a fight?”
She ordered her fingers to uncurl, one by one. “I might be.”
He stepped forward, then tapped his fist lightly on her chin. “I say I could take you in two rounds. Want to go for it?”
“Maybe some other time.” The blood that was singing in her ears began to quiet. He had broad shoulders, she mused. A nice place to lay your head—if you were the leaning sort. “Brian kicked me out,” she said and tucked her hands in her pockets. “I was just out walking.”
“Me, too. I’m done walking for a while.” The hand he’d fisted uncurled, and the fingers of it brushed over her hair. “How about you?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“Why don’t you come inside . . .” He took her hand, toyed with her fingers. “Think about it.”
Her gaze shifted from their hands to his eyes, held steady there. “You don’t want me to come inside and think, Nathan.”
“Come in anyway. Had any dinner?”
“No.”
“I’ve still got those steaks.” He gripped her hand more firmly and led her toward the house. “Why did Brian kick you out?”
“Kitchen crisis. My fault.”
“Well, I guess I won’t ask you to help grill the steaks.” He stepped inside, switched on the lights to cut the gloom. “About all I have to go with them are some frozen fries and a white Bordeaux.”
“Sounds perfect to me. Can I use your phone? I should call, let them know I won’t be back for . . . a little bit.”
“Help yourself.” Nathan walked to the fridge, got the steaks out of the freezer. She was jumpy as a spring, he thought, taking the meat to the microwave to defrost it. Angry on top, unhappy underneath.
He wondered why he had such a relentless need to find the reason for all three. He listened to the murmur of her voice as he puzzled over the buttons on the microwave. He was about to make an executive decision and hope for the best when she hung up the phone and came over.
“This part I know,” she said and punched a series of buttons. “I’m an expert nuker.”
“I do better when the package comes with directions. I’ll start the grill. I’ve got some CDs over there if you want music.”
She wandered over to the stack of CDs beside the clever little compact stereo on the end table beside the sofa. It seemed he preferred straight, no-frills rock with a mix of those early rebels Mozart and Beethoven.
She couldn’t make up her mind, couldn’t seem to concentrate on the simple act of choosing between “Moonlight Sonata” and “Sympathy for the Devil.”
Romance or heat, she asked herself impatiently. What do you want? Make up your damn mind what it is you want and just take it.
“The fire shouldn’t take long,” Nathan began as he stepped back in, wiping his hands on his jeans. “If you—”
“I had a breakdown,” she blurted out.
He lowered his hands slowly. “Okay.”
“I figure you should know before this goes any farther than it already has. I was in the hospital back in Charlotte. I had a collapse, a mental collapse, before I came back here. I may be crazy.”
Her eyes were eloquent, her lips pressed tight together. Nathan decided he had about five seconds to choose how to handle it. “How crazy? Like running-down-the-street-naked-and-warning-people-torepent crazy? Or I-was-abducted-by-aliens crazy? Because I’m not entirely convinced all those abducted-by-aliens types are actually crazy.”
Her mouth didn’t exactly relax, but it did fall open. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Yeah, I heard you. I’m just asking for clarification. Do you want a drink?”
She closed her eyes. Maybe lunatics were attracted to lunatics. “I haven’t run naked in the streets yet.”
“That’s good. I’d have to think twice about this if you had.” Because she started to pace, he decided touching her wasn’t the best next move. He went back to the refrigerator to take out the wine and uncork it. “So, were you abducted by aliens, and if so, do they really look like Ross Perot?”
“I don’t understand you,” she
muttered. “I don’t understand you at all. I spent two weeks under psychiatric evaluation. I wasn’t functioning.”
He poured two glasses. “You seem to be functioning all right now,” he said mildly and handed her the wine.
“A lot you know.” She gestured with the glass before drinking. “I came within an inch of having another breakdown today.”
“Are you bragging or complaining?”
“Then I went shopping.” She whirled away, stalking around the room. “It’s not a sign of stability to teeter on the brink of an emotional crisis, then go out and buy underwear.”
“What kind of underwear?”
Eyes narrowed, she glared at him. “I’m trying to explain myself to you.”
“I’m listening.” He took a chance, raising his hand to skim his fingers over her cheek. “Jo, did you really think I’d react to this by backing off and telling you to go away?”
“Maybe.” She let out the air clogging her lungs. “Yes.”
He pressed his lips to her brow and made her eyes sting. “Then you are crazy. Sit down and tell me what happened.”
“I can’t sit.”
“Okay.” He leaned back against the kitchen table. “We’ll stand. What happened to you?”
“I—it was ... a lot of things. Work-related stress. But that doesn’t really bother me. You can use stress. It keeps you motivated, focused. Pressures and deadlines, I’ve always used them. I like having my time designated, my routine set out and followed. I want to know when I’m getting up in the morning, what I’m doing first and second and last.”
“We’ll say spontaneity isn’t your strong suit, then.”
“One spontaneous act and everything else shifts. How can you get a handle on it?”
“One spontaneous act,” he commented, “and life’s a surprise, more complicated but often more interesting.”
“That may be true, but I haven’t been looking for an interesting life.” She turned away. “I just wanted a normal one. My world exploded once, and I’ve never been able to pick up the pieces. So I built another world. I had to.”