Sanctuary

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