Sanctuary

courtesy to listen to what I need to say.”
    “Courtesy? Courtesy? What does a snake oil New York hotshot know about courtesy?” In the confines of the stairway, her struggles only resulted in her rapping her head against the wall. “I hate you.” Her ears rang from both the blow and the humiliation.
    “I’ve prepared myself for that.” Grim and determined, he hauled her into the kitchen. Both Lexy and Brian froze and gaped. “Excuse me,” he said shortly, and carried her outside while she left a trail of threats and curses behind them.
    “Oh.” Lexy sighed, long and deep, holding a hand to her heart. “Wasn’t that the most romantic thing you’ve ever seen in all your life?”
    “Shit.” Brian set down the pie he’d just taken out of the oven. “She’ll rip his face off first chance she gets.”
    “A lot you know about romance.” Lexy leaned against the counter. “Twenty dollars says he’s got her in bed, fully willing, within an hour.”
    Brian heard Jo scream out something about castrating a certain Yankee son of a bitch and nodded. “You’re on, darling.”

TWENTY-SIX
    J O sat in simmering silence as Nathan drove the Jeep hissing across Shell Road. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of leaping out of a moving vehicle, or of running away once he stopped it. She would simply tear his skin into bloody shreds when they were no longer in danger of running off the road.
    “This isn’t the way I wanted to go about this,” Nathan muttered. “I need to talk to you. It’s important. A hell of a time you pick to pull some lame female cold-shoulder routine.”
    Ignoring her low, purring sound of warning, he dug a deeper hole for himself. “I don’t mind a fight. Under any reasonable circumstances I don’t mind a good kick-ass fight. Clears the air. But these aren’t reasonable circumstances, and you having your nose out of joint is only complicating an already painful situation.”
    “So it’s my fault.” She sucked in her breath as he jerked the Jeep to a halt at the cottage. “This is my fault?”
    “It’s not a matter of fault, Jo. That’s the whole—” He broke off abruptly, too busy defending himself to bother with more words.
    She didn’t go at him with teeth and nails and heated accusations. She waded in with balled-up fists, and the first several blew right past his guard.
    “Jesus! Jesus Christ!” He wished he could laugh at them. He wished to God he could just drag her close, pin those surprisingly well-toned arms with his and just howl at the pair of them.
    He tasted blood in his mouth, wasn’t entirely sure his jaw wouldn’t turn out to be broken, and finally managed to hold her down on the seat while both of them panted for breath.
    “Would you stop it? Would you pull out some modicum of control and stop trying to beat my brains—which I’m assured are in perfect working order—to a bloody pulp?” He tightened his grip, shifting fast as she tried to bring her knee up and render him helpless. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
    “Well, that’s too bad because I want to hurt you. I want to send you off limping for treating me this way.”
    “I’m sorry.” He lowered his brow to hers and tried to catch his breath. “I’m sorry, Jo.”
    She refused to soften, refused to acknowledge the little trip her heart experienced at the utter despair in his voice. “You don’t even know what you’re sorry for.”
    “For more than you know.” He eased back, met her eyes. “Please come inside. I have things to tell you. Things I wish I didn’t have to tell you. After I do, you can beat me black and blue and I won’t lift a hand to stop you. I swear it.”
    Something was wrong, horribly wrong. The anger dropped away into fear. She kept her voice cool before her imagination ran wild. “That’s quite an arrangement. I’ll come in, and you can say what you have to say. Then we’re finished, Nathan.”
    She shoved him away and pushed open her car door. “Because nobody walks away from me,” she said in a low, vibrant voice. “Nobody ever again.”
    His heart sank, but he led the way inside, switched on the lights. “I’d like you to sit down.”
    “I don’t need to sit down, and what you’d like doesn’t interest me. How could you go that way?” Even as she rounded on him, she wrapped her arms around herself in defense. “How could you leave my bed and just go, without a word? And stay away when you had to know how it would make me feel. If you