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.”
