Sanctuary

see her smiling at him. “You tasted like peaches.”
    “I’d just had a bubble bath before you came around to ravish me.”
    “Good timing on my part.”
    She reached up to brush the hair back from his face—a casually affectionate gesture that intrigued them both. “As it turned out, I suppose it was. You looked very dangerous and exciting when you walked in here.”
    “I was feeling dangerous. We had a family scene at Sanctuary.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Not your problem. I could use that wine now.” He shifted, slid off the table, and went to the refrigerator.
    Kirby allowed herself to enjoy the view. As a doctor she could give him high marks for keeping in shape. As his lover, she could be grateful for that long, hard body. “Wineglasses are in the second cabinet to the left,” she told him. “I’ll get a robe.”
    “Don’t bother,” he said as she hitched herself off the table.
    “I’m not going to stand around the kitchen naked.”
    “Yes, you are.” He poured two generous glasses before his gaze slid in her direction, roamed over her. “And you won’t be standing for all that long, anyway.”
    Amused, she arched a brow. “I won’t?”
    “No.” He turned, handed her a glass, then tapped his against it. “I figure the counter there will put you at about the right height.”
    She was grateful she’d yet to sip her wine. “The kitchen counter ?”
    “Yeah. Then there’s the floor.”
    Kirby looked down at the shiny white linoleum her grandmother had been proud to have installed three years before. “The floor.”
    “I figure we might make it to the bed—if you’re set on being traditional—in a couple, three hours.” He glanced at the clock on the stove. “Plenty of time. We don’t serve breakfast until eight.”
    She didn’t know whether to laugh or gulp. “Awfully confident of your staying power, aren’t you?”
    “Confident enough. How’s yours?”
    The thrill of challenge made her smile. “I’ll match you, Brian—and more, I’ll make sure we live through it.” Her eyes laughed at his over the rim of her glass. “After all, I’m a doctor.”
    “Well, then.” He set his glass aside. She squealed when he nipped her around the waist—then yelped when her butt hit the Formica. “Hey, it’s cold.”
    “So’s this.” Brian dipped a finger into his wine, then let it drip onto her nipple. He bent forward, licked it delicately away. “We’ll just have to warm things up.”

FIFTEEN
    S AM supposed it was a bad sign when a man had to pump up his courage just to speak to his own son. And it was worse when you’d worked yourself up to it, then couldn’t find the boy.
    The kitchen was empty, with no sign of coffee on the brew or biscuits on the rise. Sam stood there a moment, feeling outsized and awkward, as he always did in what he persisted in thinking of as a woman’s area.
    He knew Brian habitually took a walk in the morning, but he also knew Brian just as habitually started the coffee and the biscuit or fancy bread dough first. In any case, Brian was usually back by this time. Another half hour, forty minutes, people would be wandering into the dining room and wanting their grits.
    Just because Sam didn’t spend much time around the house, and as little as possible around the guests, didn’t mean he didn’t know what went on there.
    Sam ran his cap around in his hands, hating the fact that worry was beginning to stir in his gut. He’d woken up on another morning and found a member of his family gone. No preparation then, either. No warning. Just no coffee brewing in the pot and no biscuit dough rising in the big blue bowl under a thick white cloth.
    Had he driven the boy off? And would he have more years now to wonder if he was responsible for pushing another out of Sanctuary and away from himself?
    He closed his eyes a moment until he could tuck that ugly guilt away. Damned if he’d hang himself for it. Brian was a full-grown man just as Annabelle had been a full-grown woman. The decisions they made were their own. He tugged his cap onto his head, started toward the door.
    And felt twin trickles of relief and anxiety when he heard the whistling heading down the garden path.
    Brian stopped whistling—and stopped walking—when he saw his father step through the door on the screened porch. He resented having his mood shoved so abruptly from light to dismal, resented having his last few moments of solitude interrupted.
    Brian nodded briefly, then moved