Read Online Sanctuary by Nora Roberts - Free Book Online

taking the ferry back to the mainland this afternoon. Never could stay in one place for long, as I recall. And she couldn’t wait to get shed of Desire.”
    â€œGoing off to college and making a career and a life for herself isn’t desertion.”
    Though he didn’t move or make a sound, Kate knew the shaft had hit home, and was sorry she’d felt it necessary to hurl it. “She’s back now, Sam. I don’t think she’s up to going anywhere for a while, and that’s not the point.”
    Kate marched up, took a firm hold on his arm, and turned him to face her. There were times you had to shove an obvious point in Sam’s face to make him see it, she thought. And that was just what she intended to do now.
    â€œShe’s hurting. She doesn’t look well, Sam. She’s lost weight and she’s pale as a sheet. She says she hasn’t been ill, but she’s lying. She looks like you could knock her down with a hard thought.”
    For the first time a shadow of worry moved into his eyes. “Did she get hurt on her job?”
    There, finally, Kate thought, but was careful not to show the satisfaction. “It’s not that kind of hurt,” she said more gently. “It’s an inside hurt. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s there. She needs her home, her family. She needs her father.”
    â€œIf Jo’s got a problem, she’ll deal with it. She always has.”
    â€œYou mean she’s always had to,” Kate tossed back. She wanted to shake him until she’d loosened the lock he had snapped on his heart. “Damn it, Sam, be there for her.”
    He looked beyond Kate, to the marshes. “She’s past the point where she needs me to bandage up her bumps and scratches.”
    â€œNo, she’s not.” Kate dropped her hand from his arm. “She’s still your daughter. She always will be. Belle wasn’t the only one who went away, Sam.” She watched his face close in as she said it and shook her head fiercely. “Brian and Jo and Lexy lost her, too. But they shouldn’t have had to lose you.”
    His chest had tightened, and he turned away to stare out over the marsh, knowing that the pressure inside him would ease again if he was left alone. “I said I’d be up to the house later on. Jo Ellen has something to say to me, she can say it then.”
    â€œOne of these days you’re going to realize you’ve got something to say to her, to all of them.”
    She left him alone, hoping he would realize it soon.

FOUR
    B RIAN stood in the doorway of the west terrace and studied his sister. She looked frail, he noted, skittish. Lost somehow, he thought, amid the sunlight and flowers. She still wore the baggy trousers and oversized lightweight sweater that she’d arrived in, and had added a pair of round wire-framed sunglasses. Brian imagined that Jo wore just such a uniform when she hunted her photographs, but at the moment it served only to add to the overall impression of an invalid.
    Yet she’d always been the tough one, he remembered. Even as a child she’d insisted on doing everything herself, on finding the answers, solving the puzzles, fighting the fights.
    She’d been fearless, climbing higher in any tree, swimming farther beyond the waves, running faster through the forest. Just to prove she could, Brian mused. It seemed to him Jo Ellen had always had something to prove.
    And after their mother had gone, Jo had seemed hell-bent on proving she needed no one and nothing but herself.
    Well, Brian decided, she needed something now. He stepped out, saying nothing as she turned her head and looked at him from behind the tinted lenses. Then he sat down on the glider beside her and put the plate he’d brought out in her lap.
    â€œEat,” was all he said.
    Jo looked down at the fried chicken, the fresh slaw, the golden biscuit. “Is this the lunch