Sanctuary

the dark guilt that his deepest hope was to confirm that his own brother was dead.
    He looked up as he heard footsteps mounting his stairs. Working up a smile when he saw Giff behind the screen, he waved him in as he completed the call.
    “Didn’t mean to interrupt you,” Giff said.
    “No problem. I’m finished, for now.”
    “I was heading out to do a little work on Live Oak Cottage and thought I’d drop off these plans. You said how you wouldn’t mind taking a look at the design I’ve been working up for the solarium at Sanctuary.”
    “I’d love to see it.” Grateful for the diversion, Nathan walked over to take the plans and unroll them on the kitchen table. “I had some ideas on that myself, then I got distracted.”
    “Well.” Giff tucked his tongue in his cheek as Jo walked out from the bedroom. “Understandable enough. Morning, Jo Ellen.”
    She could only hope she didn’t flush like a beet and compound the embarrassment as both men stared at her. She’d pulled on one of Nathan’s T-shirts and nothing else. Though the bottom of it skimmed her thighs, she imagined it was obvious that she wore nothing under it.
    This would teach her, she supposed, to follow the scent of coffee like a rat to the tune of the pipe. “Morning, Giff.”
    “I was just dropping something off here.”
    “Oh, well, I was just . . . going to get some coffee.” She decided to brazen it out and walked to the counter to pour a mug. “I’ll just take it with me.”
    Giff couldn’t help himself. It was such a situation. And since he was dead sure Lexy would want all the details, he tried for more. “You might want to take a look yourself. Kate’s got that bee in her bonnet about this sunroom add-on. You always had a good eye for things.”
    Manners or dignity. It was an impossible decision for a woman raised on southern traditions. Jo did her best to combine both and stepped over to study the drawing. She puzzled over what appeared to be a side view of a long, graduated curve with a lot of neatly printed numbers and odd lines.
    Nathan ordered himself to shift his attention from Jo’s legs back to the drawing. “It’s a good concept. You do the survey?”
    “Yeah, me and Bill. He does survey work over to the mainland, had the equipment.”
    “You know, if you came out at an angle”—he used his finger to draw the line—“rather than straight, you could avoid excavating over here, and you’d gain the benefit of using the gardens as part of the structure.”
    “If you did that, wouldn’t you cut off this corner, here? Wouldn’t it make it tight and awkward coming out from the main house? Miss Kate’d go into conniptions if I started talking about moving doorways or windows.”
    “You don’t have to move any of the existing structure.” Nathan slid the side view over to reveal Giff’s full view. “Nice work,” he murmured. “Really nice. Jo, get me a sheet of that drawing paper over there.” Nathan gestured absently. “I’ve got men in my firm who don’t have the skill to do freehand work like this.”
    “No shit?” Giff forgot Jo completely and goggled at the back of Nathan’s head.
    “You ever decide to go back for that degree and want to apprentice, you let me know.”
    He picked up a pencil and began to sketch on the paper Jo had put in front of him. “See, if you hitch it over this way, not so much of an angle as a flow. It’s a female house, you don’t want sharp points. You keep it all in the same tone as the curve of the roof, then instead of lining out into the gardens, it pours through them.”
    “Yeah, I see it.” He realized that his working drawing seemed stiff and amateurish beside the artist’s. “I couldn’t think of something like that, draw like that, in a million years.”
    “Sure you could. You’d already done the hard part. It’s a hell of a lot easier for somebody to look at good, detailed work and shift a couple of things around to enhance it than it is to come up with the basic concept in the first place.”
    Nathan straightened, contemplated his quick sketch through narrowed eyes. He could see it, complete and perfect. “Your way might suit the client better. It’s more cost-effective and more traditional.”
    “Your way’s more artistic.”
    “It isn’t always artistic that the client wants.” Nathan put his pencil down. “Anyway, you think about it, or show the works to Kate and let her think about it. Whichever choice, we can do some refining