Chapter Two
TWO
AT first light the air was misty, like a dream just about to vanish.
Beams of light stabbed through the canopy of live oaks and glittered on the dew.
The warblers and buntings that nested in the sprays of moss were waking, chirping out a morning song.
A cock cardinal, a red bullet of color, shot through the trees without a sound.
It was his favorite time of day. At dawn, when the demands on his time and energy were still to come, he could be alone, he could think his thoughts. Or simply be.
Brian Hathaway had never lived anywhere but Desire. He’d never wanted to. He’d seen the mainland and visited big cities. He’d even taken an impulsive vacation to Mexico once, so it could be said he’d visited a foreign land.
But Desire, with all its virtues and flaws, was his.
He’d been born there on a gale-tossed night in September thirty years before.
Born in the big oak tester bed he now slept in, delivered by his own father and an old black woman who had smoked a corncob pipe and whose parents had been house slaves, owned by his ancestors.
The old woman’s name was Miss Effie, and when he was very young she often told him the story of his birth.
How the wind had howled and the seas had tossed, and inside the great house, in that grand bed, his mother had borne down like a warrior and shot him out of her womb and into his father’s waiting arms with a laugh.
It was a good story. Brian had once been able to imagine his mother laughing and his father waiting, wanting to catch him.
Now his mother was long gone and old Miss Effie long dead. It had been a long, long time since his father had wanted to catch him.
Brian walked through the thinning mists, through huge trees with lichen vivid in pinks and red on their trunks, through the cool, shady light that fostered the ferns and shrubby palmettos.
He was a tall, lanky man, very much his father’s son in build.
His hair was dark and shaggy, his skin tawny, and his eyes cool blue.
He had a long face that women found melancholy and appealing.
His mouth was firm and tended to brood more than smile.
That was something else women found appealing—the challenge of making those lips curve.
The slight change of light signaled him that it was time to start back to Sanctuary. He had to prepare the morning meal for the guests.
Brian was as contented in the kitchen as he was in the forest. That was something else his father found odd about him. And Brian knew—with some amusement—that Sam Hathaway wondered if his son might be gay. After all, if a man liked to cook for a living, there must be something wrong with him.
If they’d been the type to discuss such matters openly, Brian would have told him that he could enjoy creating a perfect meringue and still prefer women for sex. He simply wasn’t inclined toward intimacy.
And wasn’t that tendency toward distance from others a Hathaway family trait?
Brian moved through the forest, as quietly as the deer that walked there. Suiting himself, he took the long way around, detouring by Half Moon Creek, where the mists were rising up from the water like white smoke and a trio of does sipped contentedly in the shimmering and utter silence.
There was time yet, Brian thought. There was always time on Desire. He indulged himself by taking a seat on a fallen log to watch the morning bloom.
The island was only two miles across at its widest, less than thirteen from point to point.
Brian knew every inch of it, the sun-bleached sand of the beaches, the cool, shady marshes with their ancient and patient alligators.
He loved the dune swales, the wonderful wet, undulating grassy meadows banked by young pines and majestic live oaks.
But most of all, he loved the forest, with its dark pockets and its mysteries.
He knew the history of his home, that once cotton and indigo had been grown there, worked by slaves. Fortunes had been reaped by his ancestors. The rich had come to play in this isolated little paradise, hunting the deer and the feral hogs, gathering shells, fishing both river and surf.
They’d held lively dances in the ballroom under the candle glow of crystal chandeliers, gambled carelessly at cards in the game room while drinking good southern bourbon and smoking fat Cuban cigars.
They had lazed on the veranda on hot summer afternoons while slaves brought them cold glasses of lemonade.
Sanctuary had been an enclave for privilege, and a testament to a way of life that was doomed to failure.
More fortunes still had gone in and out of the hands of the steel and shipping magnate who had turned Sanctuary into his private retreat.
Though the money wasn’t what it had been, Sanctuary still stood.
And the island was still in the hands of the descendants of those cotton kings and emperors of steel.
The cottages that were scattered over it, rising up behind the dunes, tucked into the shade of the trees, facing the wide swath of Pelican Sound, passed from generation to generation, ensuring that only a handful of families could claim Desire as home.
So it would remain.
His father fought developers and environmentalists with equal fervor. There would be no resorts on Desire, and no well-meaning government would convince Sam Hathaway to make his island a national preserve.
It was, Brian thought, his father’s monument to a faithless wife. His blessing and his curse.
Visitors came now, despite the solitude, or perhaps because of it. To keep the house, the island, the trust, the Hathaways had turned part of their home into an inn.
Brian knew Sam detested it, resented every footfall on the island from an outsider.
It was the only thing he could remember his parents arguing over.
Annabelle had wanted to open the island to more tourists, to draw people to it, to establish the kind of social whirl her ancestors had once enjoyed.
Sam had insisted on keeping it unchanged, untouched, monitoring the number of visitors and overnight guests like a miser doling out pennies.
It was, in the end, what Brian believed had driven his mother away—that need for people, for faces, for voices.
But however much his father tried, he couldn’t hold off change any more than the island could hold back the sea.
Adjustments, Brian thought as the deer turned as a unit and bounded into the concealing trees.
He didn’t care for adjustments himself, but in the case of the inn they had been necessary.
And the fact was, he enjoyed the running of it, the planning, the implementing, the routine.
He liked the visitors, the voices of strangers, observing their varying habits and expectations, listening to the occasional stories of their worlds.
He didn’t mind people in his life—as long as they didn’t intend to stay. In any case, he didn’t believe people stayed in the long run.
Annabelle hadn’t.
Brian rose, vaguely irritated that a twenty-year-old scar had unexpectedly throbbed. Ignoring it, he turned away and took the winding upward path toward Sanctuary.
When he came out of the trees, the light was dazzling.
It struck the spray of a fountain and turned each individual drop into a rainbow.
He looked at the back end of the garden.
The tulips were rioting dependably. The sea pinks looked a little shaggy, and the .
.. what the hell was that purple thing anyway?
he asked himself. He was a mediocre gardener at best, struggling constantly to keep up the grounds.
Paying guests expected tended gardens as much as they expected gleaming antiques and fine meals.
Sanctuary had to be kept in tip-top shape to lure them, and that meant endless hours of work.
Without paying guests, there would be no means for upkeep on Sanctuary at all.
So, Brian thought, scowling down at the flowers, it was an endless cycle, a snake swallowing its own tail. A trap without a key.
“Ageratum.”
Brian’s head came up. He had to squint against the sunlight to bring the woman into focus. But he recognized the voice. It irritated him that she’d been able to walk up behind him that way. Then again, he always viewed Dr. Kirby Fitzsimmons as a minor irritation.
“Ageratum,” she repeated, and smiled. She knew she annoyed him, and considered it progress. It had taken nearly a year before she’d been able to get even that much of a reaction from him. “The flower you’re glaring at. Your gardens need some work, Brian.”
“I’ll get to it,” he said and fell back on his best weapon. Silence.
He never felt completely easy around Kirby.
It wasn’t just her looks, though she was attractive enough if you went for the delicate blond type.
Brian figured it was her manner, which was the direct opposite of delicate.
She was efficient, competent, and seemed to know a little about every damn thing.
Her voice carried what he thought of as high-society New England.
Or, when he was feeling less charitable, damn Yankee.
She had those Yankee cheekbones, too. They set off sea-green eyes and a slightly turned-up nose.
Her mouth was full—not too wide, not too small.
It was just one more irritatingly perfect thing about her.
He kept expecting to hear that she’d gone back to the mainland, closed up the little cottage she’d inherited from her granny and given up on the notion of running a clinic on the island. But month after month she stayed, slowly weaving herself into the fabric of the place.
And getting under his skin.
She kept smiling at him, with that mocking look in her eyes, as she pushed back a soft wave of the wheat-colored hair that fell smoothly to her shoulders. “Beautiful morning.”
“It’s early.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. He never knew quite what to do with them around her.