Sanctuary

reaction to him. That physical, gut-level click any woman recognized as basic lust. It was normal enough to be almost soothing.
    She might be losing her mind, but her body was still functioning on all the elemental circuits.
    She hadn’t felt the click often enough in her life to take it for granted. And when it was so obviously echoed in the man who caused it . . . that was something to think about.
    For now, at least, this was something she could control, something she could understand, analyze, and list clear choices about. But she suspected that the trouble with clicks was that they caused itches. And the trouble with itches was that they nagged until she just gave the hell up and scratched.
    “We’ll have to make this quick,” she told Nathan and headed toward the side door.
    “I know. You’re on bed-making detail. I won’t keep you long. I’m planning on sniffing around Brian until he feeds me.”
    “If you’re not busy, you might talk him into getting out afterward. Going to the beach, doing some fishing. He spends too much time here.”
    “He loves it here.”
    “I know.” She turned into a long hallway where a mural of forest and river flowed over the wall. “That doesn’t mean he has to serve Sanctuary every hour of every day.” She pressed a hinge, and a section of the mural opened.
    “That’s an odd way to put it,” Nathan commented, following her through the opening and up the stairs into what had once been the servants’ quarters and was now the private entrance to the family wing. “Serving Sanctuary.”
    “It’s what he does. I suppose it’s what all of us do when we’re here.”
    She turned left at the top of the stairs. As she passed the first open door, she glanced into Lexy’s room. The huge old canopy bed was empty. Unmade, naturally. Clothes were scattered everywhere—on the Aubusson carpet, the polished floor, the dainty Queen Anne chairs. The scents of lotions and perfumes and powders hung on the air in female celebration.
    “Well, maybe not all of us,” Jo muttered and kept walking.
    Taking a key out of her pocket, she unlocked a narrow door. Nathan’s brows lifted in surprise when he walked in. It was a fully equipped and ruthlessly organized darkroom.
    An ancient and threadbare rug protected the random-width-pine floor; thick shades were drawn down and snugly fastened to stay that way over twin windows. Shelves of practical gray metal were lined with bottles of chemicals, plastic tubs. On others were boxes of thick black cardboard, which he assumed held her paper, contact sheets, and prints. There was a long wooden worktable, a high stool.
    “I didn’t realize you had a darkroom here.”
    “It used to be a bath and dressing room.” Jo hit the white light, then moved around the prints she’d developed the night before that were still hanging on the drying line. “I hounded Cousin Kate until she let me take out the wall and the fixtures and turn it into my darkroom. I’d been saving for three years so I could buy the equipment.”
    She ran a hand over the enlarger, remembering how carefully she’d priced them, counted her pennies. “Kate bought this for me for my sixteenth birthday. Brian gave me the shelves and the workbench. Lex got me paper and developing fluid. They surprised me with them before I could spend my savings. It was the best birthday I’ve ever had.”
    “Family comes through,” Nathan said, and noted she hadn’t mentioned her father.
    “Yes, sometimes they do.” She inclined her head at his unspoken question. “He gave me the room. After all, it wasn’t easy for my father to give up a wall.” She turned away to reach up for a box above her matting machine. “I’m compiling prints for a book I’m contracted for. These are probably the best of the lot, though I still have some culling to do.”
    “You’re doing a book? That’s great.”
    “That remains to be seen. Right now it’s just something to be worried about.” She stepped back as he walked up to the box, then tucked her thumbs in her back pockets.
    It took only the first print for him to see that she was well beyond competent. His father had been competent, Nathan mused, at times inspired. But if she considered herself David Delaney’s pupil, she had far outreached her mentor.
    The black-and-white print shimmered with drama, the lines so clean, so crisp they might have been carved with a scalpel. It was a study of a bridge soaring over churning water—the white