Sanctuary(78)

"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."

am supposed it was a bad sign when a man had to pump up his couragejust to speak to his own I son. And it was worse when you'd worked your self up to it, then couldn't find the boy.

,,tow 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 himselip.

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 past Sam into the kitchen. Sam stood where lie was for a minute, debating. It wasn't hard for one man to spot when another had spent the night rolling around with a woman on hot, tangled sheets. Seeing that relaxed, satisfied look on his son's face had made him feel foolish-and envious. And he thought of how easier It would be all around for him to keep walking and just leave things where they lay.

With a grunt, he pulled off his cap again and went back inside.

"Need to have a word with you."

Brian glanced over. He'd already donned a butcher's apron and was pouring coffee beans into the grinder. "I'm busy here."

Sam planted his feet. "I need a word with you just the same."

"Then you'll have to talk while I work." Brian flicked the switch on the grinder and filled the kitchen with noise and scent. "I'm running a little behind this morning."

"Uh-hLih." Sam twisted his cap in his hands and decided to wait

"the grinder was finished rather than trying to take over 't. He watched Brian measure out coffee, measure out water, then set the big Omatic on to brew. "I, ali, was surprised you weren't already in here at this."

Brian took out a large bowl and began to gather the basics for his biscuits. "I don't punch a time clock for anybody but myself."

"No, no, you don't." He hadn't meant it that way, and wished to God he knew how to talk to a man wearing an apron and scooping into flour and lard. "What I wanted to say was about yesterday-last night.

Brian poured milk, eyeballing the amount. "I said all I had to say, and I don't see the point in rehashing it."

"So, you figure you can say your piece, but I'm not entitled to say mine."

Brian snatched up a wooden spoon, cradled the bowl in his arm out of habit and began to beat. The dreamy afterglow of all-night sex had dulled to lead. "What I figure is you've had a lifetime to say yours, and I've got work to do."

"You're a hard man, Brian."

"I learned by example."

It was a neat and well-aimed little dart. Sam acknowledged it, accepted it. Then, weary of playing the supplicant, he tossed his cap aside. "You'll listen to what I have to say, then we'll be done with it."

"Say it, then." He dumped the dough on a floured board and plunged his hands into it to knead violently. "And let's be done with it."

"You were right." Sam felt the click in his throat and swallowed it. "Everything you said was right, and true."