“I did it by myself for myself. I didn't work my butt off to get to this point to show her up.” Without thinking, she stuffed a bite of biscuit in her mouth. “It's not my fault she's got some childish fantasy about seeing her name in lights and having people throw roses at her feet.”
“Your seeing it as childish doesn't make the desire any less real for her.” He held up a hand before Jo could speak. “And I'm not getting in the middle. The two of you are welcome to rip the hide off each other in your own good time. But I'd say right now she could take you without breaking a sweat.”
“I don't want to fight with her,” Jo said wearily. She could smell the wisteria that rioted over the nearby arched iron trellisâanother vivid memory of childhood. “I didn't come here to fight with anyone.”
“That'll be a change.”
That lured a ghost of a smile to her lips. “Maybe I've mellowed.”
“Miracles happen. Eat your slaw.”
“I don't remember you being so bossy.”
“I've cut back on mellow.”
With what passed as a chuckle, Jo picked up her fork and poked at the slaw. “Tell me what's new around here, Bri, and what's the same.” Bring me home, she thought, but couldn't say it. Bring me back.
“Let's see, Giff Verdon built on another room to the Verdon cottage.”
“Stop the presses.” Then Jo's brow furrowed. “Young Giff, the scrawny kid with the cowlick. The one who was always mooning over Lex?”
“That's the one. Filled out some, Giff has, and he's right handy with a hammer and saw. Does all our repair work now. Still moons over Lexy, but I'd say he knows what he wants to do about it now.”
Jo snorted and, without thinking, shoveled in more slaw. “She'll eat him alive.”
Brian shrugged. “Maybe, but I think she'll find him tougher to chew up than she might expect. The Sanders girl, Rachel, she got herself engaged to some college boy in Atlanta. Going to move there come September.”
“Rachel Sanders.” Jo tried to conjure up a mental image. “Was she the one with the lisp or the one with the giggle?”
“The giggleâsharp enough to make the ears bleed.” Satisfied that Jo was eating, Brian stretched an arm over the back of the glider and relaxed. “Old Mrs. Fitzsimmons passed on more than a year back.”
“Old Mrs. Fitzsimmons,” Jo murmured. “She used to shuck oysters on her porch, with that lazy hound of hers sleeping at her feet beside the rocker.”
“The hound passed, too, right after. Guess he didn't see much point in living without her.”
“She let me take pictures of her,” Jo remembered. “When I was a kid, just learning. I still have them. A couple weren't bad. Mr. David helped me develop them. I must have been such a pest, but she just sat there in her rocker and let me practice on her.”
Sitting back, Jo fell into the rhythm of the glider, as slow and monotonous as the rhythm of the island. “I hope it was quick and painless.”
“She died in her sleep at the ripe old age of ninety-six. Can't do much better than that.”
“No.” Jo closed her eyes, the food forgotten. “What was done with her cottage?”
“Passed down. The Pendletons bought most of the Fitzsimmons land back in 1923, but she owned her house and the little spit of land it sits on. Went to her granddaughter.” Brian lifted the thermos again, drank deeply this time. “A doctor. She's set up a practice here on the island.”
“We have a doctor on Desire?” Jo opened her eyes, lifted her brows. “Well, well. How civilized. Are people actually going to her?”
“Seems they are, little by little, anyway. She's dug her toes in.”
“She must be the first new permanent resident here in what, ten years?”
“Thereabouts.”
“I can't imagine why ...” Jo trailed off as it struck her. “It's not Kirby, is it? Kirby Fitzsimmons? She spent summers here a couple of years running when we were kids.”
“I guess she liked it well enough to come back.”
“I'll be damned. Kirby Fitzsimmons, and a doctor, of all things.” Pleasure bloomed, a surprising sensation she nearly didn't recognize. “We used to pal around together some. I remember the summer Mr. David came to take photographs of the island and brought his family.”
It cheered her to think of it, the young friend with the quick northern voice, the adventures they'd shared or imagined together. “You would run off with his boys and wouldn't give me the time of day,” Jo continued. “When I wasn't pestering Mr. David to let me take pictures with his camera, I'd go off with Kirby and look for trouble. Christ, that was twenty years ago if it was a day. It was the summer that . . .”
Brian nodded, then finished the thought. “The summer that Mama left.”
“It's all out of focus,” Jo murmured, and the pleasure died out of her voice. “Hot sun, long days, steamy nights so full of sound. All the faces.” She slipped her fingers under her glasses to rub at her eyes. “Getting up at sunrise so I could follow Mr. David around. Bolting down cold ham sandwiches and cooling off in the river. Mama dug out that old camera for meâthat ancient box Brownieâand I would run over to the Fitzsimmons cottage and take pictures until Mrs. Fitzsimmons told Kirby and me to scoot. There were hours and hours, so many hours, until the sun went down and Mama called us home for supper.”
She closed her eyes tight. “So much, so many images, yet I can't bring any one of them really clear. Then she was gone. One morning I woke up ready to do all the things a long summer day called for, and she was just gone. And there was nothing to do at all.”
“Summer was over,” Brian said quietly. “For all of us.”
“Yeah.” Her hands had gone trembly again. Jo reached in her pockets for cigarettes. “Do you ever think about her?”
“Why would I?”
“Don't you ever wonder where she went? What she did?” Jo took a jerky drag. In her mind she saw long-lidded eyes empty of life. “Or why?”
“It doesn't have anything to do with me.” Brian rose, took the plate. “Or you. Or any of us anymore. It's twenty years past that summer, Jo Ellen, and a little late to worry about it now.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it again when Brian turned and walked back into the house. But she was worried about it, she thought. And she was terrified.
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LEXY was still steaming as she climbed over the dunes toward the beach. Jo had come back, she was sure, to flaunt her success and her snazzy life. And the fact that she'd arrived at Sanctuary hard on the heels of Lexy's own failure didn't strike Lexy as coincidence.
Jo would flap her wings and crow in triumph, while Lexy would have to settle for eating crow. The thought of it made her blood boil as she raced along the tramped-down sand through the dunes, sending sand flying from her sandals.
Not this time, she promised herself. This time she would hold her head up, refuse to be cast as inferior in the face of Jo's latest triumph, latest trip, latest wonder. She wasn't going to play the hotshot's baby sister any longer. She'd outgrown that role, Lexy assured herself. And it was high time everyone realized it.
There was a scattering of people on the wide crescent of beach. They had staked their claims with their blankets and colorful umbrellas. She noted several with the brightly striped box lunches from Sanctuary.
The scents of sea and lotions and fried chicken assaulted her nostrils. A toddler shoveled sand into a red bucket while his mother read a paperback novel in the shade of a portable awning. A man was slowly turning into a lobster under the merciless sun. Two couples she had served that morning were sharing a picnic and laughing together over the clever voice of Annie Lennox on their portable stereo.
She didn't want themâany of themâto be there. On her beach, in her personal crisis. To dismiss them, she turned and walked away from the temporary development, down the curve of beach.
She saw the figure out in the water, the gleam of tanned, wet shoulders, the glint of sun-bleached hair. Giff was a reliable creature of habit, she thought, and he was just exactly what the doctor called for. He invariably took a quick swim during his afternoon break. And, Lexy knew, he had his eye on her.
He hadn't made a secret of it, she mused, and she wasn't one to resent the attentions of an attractive man. Particularly when she needed her ego soothed. She thought a little flirtation, and the possibility of mindless sex, might put the day back on track.
People said her mother had been a flirt. Lexy hadn't been old enough to remember anything more than vague images and soft scents when it came to Annabelle, but she believed she'd come by her skill at flirtation naturally. Her mother had enjoyed looking her best, smiling at men. And if the theory of a secret lover was fact, Annabelle had done more than smile at at least one man.
In any case, that's what the police had concluded after months of investigation.
Lexy thought she was good at sex; she had been told so often enough to consider it a fine personal skill. As far as she was concerned, there was little else that compared to it for shouldering away tension and being the focus of someone's complete attention.
And she liked it, all the hot, slick sensations that went with it. It hardly mattered that most men didn't have a clue whether a woman was thinking about them or the latest Hollywood pretty boy while it was going on. As long as she performed well and remembered the right lines.
Lexy considered herself born to perform.
And she decided it was time to open that velvet curtain for Giff Verdon.
She dropped the towel she'd brought with her onto the packed sand. She didn't have a doubt that he was watching her. Men did. As if onstage, Lexy put her heart into the performance. Standing near the edge of the water, she slipped off her sunglasses, let them fall heedlessly onto the towel. Slowly, she stepped out of her sandals, then, taking the hem of the short-skirted sundress she wore, she lifted it, making the movements a lazy striptease. The bikini underneath covered little more than a stripper's G-string and pasties would have.
Dropping the thin cotton, she shook her head, skimmed her hair back with both hands, then walked with a siren's swagger of hips into the sea.
Giff let the next wave roll over him. He knew that every movement, every gesture Lexy made was deliberate. It didn't seem to make any difference. He couldn't take his eyes off her, couldn't prevent his body from going tight and hard and needy as she stood there, all luscious curves and pale gold skin, with her hair spiraling down like sun-kissed flames.
As she walked into the water, and it moved up her body, he imagined what it would be like to rock himself inside her to the rhythm of the waves. She was watching him too, he noted, her eyes picking up the green of the sea, and laughing.
She dipped down, rose up again with her hair shiny and wet, water sliding off her skin. And she laughed out loud.
“Water's cold today,” she called out. “And a little rough.”
“You don't usually come in till June.”
“Maybe I wanted it cold today.” She let the wave carry her closer. “And rough.”
“It'll be colder and rougher tomorrow,” he told her. “Rain's coming.”
“Mmm.” She floated on her back a moment, studying the pale blue sky. “Maybe I'll come back.” Letting her feet sink, she began to tread water as she watched him.
She'd grown accustomed to his dark brown eyes watching her like a puppy when they were teenagers. They were the same age, had grown up all but shoulder to shoulder, but she noticed there had been a few changes in him during her year in New York.
His face had fined down, and his mouth seemed firmer and more confident. The long lashes that had caused the boys to tease him mercilessly in his youth no longer seemed feminine. His light brown hair was needle-straight and streaked from the sun. When he smiled at her, dimplesâanother curse of his youthâdented his cheeks.
“See something interesting?” he asked her.
“I might.” His voice matched his face, she decided. All grown-up and male. The flutter in her stomach was satisfying, and unexpectedly strong. “I just might.”
“I figure you had a reason for swimming out here mostly naked. Not that I didn't enjoy the view, but you want to tell me what it is? Or do you want me to guess?”
She laughed, kicking against the current to keep a teasing distance between them. “Maybe I just wanted to cool off.”
“I imagine so.” He smiled back, satisfied that he understood her better than she could ever imagine. “I heard Jo came in on the morning ferry.”
The smile slid away from her face and left her eyes cold. “So what?”
“So, you want to blow off some steam? Want to use me to do it?” When she hissed at him and started to kick out to swim back to shore, he merely nipped her by the waist. “I'll oblige you,” he said as she tried to wiggle free. “I've been wanting to anyway.”
“Get your handsâ” The end of her demand was lost in a surprised grunt against his mouth. She'd never expected reliable Giff Verdon to move so quickly, or so decisively.
She hadn't realized his hands were so big, or so hard, or that his mouth would be so ... sexy as it crushed down on hers with the cool tang of the sea clinging to it. For form's sake she shoved against him, but ruined it with a throaty little moan as her lips parted and invited more.
She tasted exactly as he'd imaginedâhot and ready, the sex kitten mouth slippery and wet. The fantasies he'd woven for over ten years simply fell apart and reformed in fresh, wild colors threaded with helpless love and desperate need.