Sanctuary

he comes back.”
    “ ’Course he’ll come back. You’re smart, you’ll make him pay just a little for going off.”
    Jo scooped up a handful of sand, let it drift through her fingers. “I’m in love with him.”
    “Of course you are. Why wouldn’t you be?”
    “In love with him, Lexy.” Jo frowned at the glittering grains of sand that clung to her hand.
    “Oh.” Lexy sat up, crossed her pretty legs, and grinned. “That’s nice. You sure took your time falling, but you picked a winner.”
    “I hate it.” Jo grabbed more sand and squeezed it into her fist. “I hate feeling this way, being this way. It ties my stomach up in knots.”
    “It’s supposed to. I’ve had mine tied up dozens of times. It was always real easy to loosen it up again.” Her mouth went into a pout as she looked out to sea. “Until now. I’m having a harder time of that with Giff.”
    “He loves you. He always has. It’s different for you.”
    “It’s different for everybody. We’re all built different inside. That’s what makes it so interesting.”
    Jo tilted her head. “You know, Lex, sometimes you’re absolutely sensible. I never expect it, then there it is. I guess I need to tell you what I told Brian last night.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I love you, Lexy.” She bent over and touched her lips to her sister’s cheek. “I really do.”
    “I know that, Jo. You’re ornery about it, but you always loved us.” She let out a breath as she decided to make her own confession. “I guess that’s why I got so mad at you when you went away. And I was jealous.”
    “You? Of me?”
    “Because you weren’t afraid to go.”
    “Yes, I was.” Jo rested her chin on her knee and watched the waves batter the shore. “I was terrified. Sometimes I’m still scared of being out there, of not being able to do what I need to do. Or doing it but failing at it.”
    “Well, I failed, and I can tell you, it sucks.”
    “You didn’t fail, Lexy. You just didn’t finish.” She turned her head. “Will you go back?”
    “I don’t know. I was sure I would.” Her eyes clouded, misted between gray and green. “Trouble is, it gets easy to stay here, let time go by. Then I’ll just get old and wrinkled and fat. Oh, what are we talking about this for?”
    Annoyed with herself, Lexy shook her head, picked out a cold can of Pepsi from the little cooler beside her. “We should be talking about something interesting. Like, I was wondering . . .”
    She popped the top, took a long, cooling sip. Then ran her tongue lazily over her top lip. “Just how is sex with Nathan?”
    Jo snorted out a laugh. “No,” she said definitely and rolled over to lie on her stomach.
    “On a scale of one to ten.” Lexy poked Jo’s shoulder. “Or if you had to pick one adjective to describe it.”
    “No,” Jo said again.
    “Just one little bitty adjective. I mean, would it be ‘incredible’?” she asked, leaning down close to Jo’s ear. “Or would it be ‘fabulous’? Maybe ‘memorable’?”
    Jo let out a small sigh. “ ‘Stupendous,’ ” she said without opening her eyes. “It’s stupendous.”
    “Oh, stupendous.” Lexy waved a hand in front of her face. “Oh, I like that. Stupendous. Does he keep his eyes open or closed when he kisses you?”
    “Depends.”
    “He does both? That gives me the shivers. You’d never know which. I just love that. So, how about when he—”
    “Lexy.” Though a giggle escaped, Jo kept her eyes tightly closed. “I’m not going to describe Nathan’s lovemaking technique for you. I’m going to take a nap. Wake me up in a bit.”
    And to her surprise, she dropped like a stone into sleep.

TWENTY-FIVE
    N ATHAN paced the aging Turkish carpet in the soaring two-level library of Dr. Jonah Kauffman’s brownstone. Outside, and two dozen stories down, New York was sweltering under a massive heat wave. Here in the dignified penthouse all was cool and polished and worlds away from the bump and grind of the streets.
    It never felt like New York inside Kauffman’s realm. Whenever Nathan walked into the grand foyer with its golden woods and quiet colors, he thought of English squires and country houses.
    One of Nathan’s earliest commissions had been to design the library, to shift walls and ceilings to accommodate Kauffman’s enormous collection of books in the understated and traditional style that suited one of the top neurologists in the country. The warm chestnut wood, the wide, intricately