She would handle it better, she thought, rolling her aching head on her aching shoulders, if everyone would just leave her alone to do what she did best.
Completed prints hung drying on the wet side of her darkroom. Her last batch of negatives had been developed and, sitting on a stool at her work counter, she slid a contact sheet onto her light board, then studied it, frame by frame, through her loupe.
For a moment she felt a flash of panic and despair. Every print she looked at was out of focus, blurry. Goddamn it, goddamn it, how could that be? Was it the whole roll? She shifted, blinked, and watched the magnified image of rising dunes and oat grass pop clear.
With a sound somewhere between a grunt and a laugh she sat back, rolled her tensed shoulders. “It’s not the prints that are blurry and out of focus, you idiot,” she muttered aloud. “It’s you.”
She set the loupe aside and closed her eyes to rest them. She lacked the energy to get up and make more coffee. She knew she should go eat, get something solid into her system. And she knew she should sleep. Stretch out on the bed, close everything off and crash.
But she was afraid to. In sleep she would lose even this shaky control.
She was beginning to think she should see a doctor, get something for her nerves before they frayed beyond repair. But that idea made her think of psychiatrists. Undoubtedly they would want to poke and pry inside her brain and dig up matters she was determined to forget.
She would handle it. She was good at handling herself. Or, as Brian had always said, she was good at elbowing everyone out of her way so she could handle everything herself.
What choice had she had—had any of them had when they’d been left alone to flounder on that damned spit of land miles from nowhere?
The rage that erupted inside her jolted her, it was so sudden, so powerful. She trembled with it, clenched her fists in her lap, and had to bite back the hot words she wanted to spit out at the brother who wasn’t even there.
Tired, she told herself. She was just tired, that was all. She needed to put work aside, take one of those over-the-counter sleeping aids she’d bought and had yet to try, turn off the phone and get some sleep. She would be steadier then, stronger.
When a hand fell on her shoulder, she ripped off a scream and sent her coffee mug flying.
“Jesus! Jesus, Jo!” Bobby Banes scrambled back, scattering the mail he carried on the floor.
“What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?” She bolted off the stool and sent it crashing, as he gaped at her.
“I—you said you wanted to get started at eight. I’m only a few minutes late.”
Jo fought for breath, gripped the edge of her worktable to keep herself upright. “Eight?”
Her student assistant nodded cautiously. He swallowed hard and kept his distance. To his eye she still looked wild and ready to attack. It was his second semester working with her, and he thought he’d learned how to anticipate her orders, gauge her moods, and avoid her temper. But he didn’t have a clue how to handle that hot fear in her eyes.
“Why the hell didn’t you knock?” she snapped at him.
“I did. When you didn’t answer, I figured you must be in here, so I used the key you gave me when you went on the last assignment.”
“Give it back. Now.”
“Sure. Okay, Jo.” Keeping his eyes on hers, he dug into the front pocket of his fashionably faded jeans. “I didn’t mean to spook you.”
Jo bit down on control and took the key he held out. There was as much embarrassment now, she realized, as fear. To give herself a moment, she bent down and righted her stool. “Sorry, Bobby. You did spook me. I didn’t hear you knock.”
“It’s okay. Want me to get you another cup of coffee?”
She shook her head and gave in to her knocking knees. As she slid onto the stool, she worked up a smile for him. He was a good student, she thought—a little pompous about his work yet, but he was only twenty-one.
She thought he was going for the artist-as-college-student look, with his dark blond hair in a shoulder-length ponytail, the single gold hoop earring accenting his long, narrow face. His teeth were perfect. His parents had believed in braces, she thought, running her tongue over her own slight overbite.
He had a good eye, she mused. And a great deal of potential. That was why he was here, after all. Jo was always willing to pay back what had been given to her.
Because his big brown eyes were still watching her warily, she put more effort into the smile. “I had a rough night.”
“You look like it.” He tried a smile of his own when she lifted a brow. “The art is in seeing what’s really there, right? And you look whipped. Couldn’t sleep, huh?”
Vain was one thing Jo wasn’t. She shrugged her shoulders and rubbed her tired eyes. “Not much.”
“You ought to try that melatonin. My mother swears by it.” He crouched to pick up the broken shards of the mug. “And maybe you could cut back on the coffee.”
