by Nora Roberts
“I heard,” was Ethan’s only comment
Now she drew a bolstering breath. “About what happened, Ethan, I mean afterward—”
“I’ve got something to say about that.” He’d worked it out carefully, word by word. “I shouldn’t have been mad at you. You were scared and I spent more time yelling at you than making sure you were all right.”
“I knew you weren’t really mad at me. It was just—”
“I’ve got to finish this,” he said, but waited until he’d turned into her driveway. “I had no business touching you that way. I’d promised myself I never would.”
“I wanted you to.”
Though the quiet words caused his stomach to clench, he shook his head. “It’s not going to happen again. I’ve got reasons, Grace, good ones. You don’t know, and you wouldn’t understand.”
“I can’t understand if you don’t tell me what they are.”
He wasn’t going to tell her what he’d done, or what had been done to him. And what he was afraid still lurked inside him ready to spring out if he didn’t keep that cage locked. “They’re my reasons.” He shifted to look at her because it was only right to say what he had to say facing her. “I could have hurt you, and I nearly did. That’s not going to happen again.”
“I’m not afraid of you.” She reached out to touch, to stroke his cheek, but he grabbed her hand and held her off.
“You’re never going to have to be. You matter to me.” He gave her hand a quick squeeze, then released it. “You always have.”
“I’m not a child anymore, and I won’t break if you touch me. I want you to touch me.”
Full, shapely, unpainted lips. Phillip’s words echoed in his head. And now Ethan knew, God help him, exactly how tasty they were. “I know you think you do, and that’s why we’re going to try to forget that the other night happened.”
“I’m not going to forget it,” she murmured, and the way she looked at him, her eyes soft and full of need, made his head swim.
“It’s not going to happen again. So you stay clear of me for a while.” Desperation tinged his voice as he leaned across and shoved open her door. “I mean it, Grace, you just stay clear of me for a while. I’ve got enough to worry about.”
“All right, Ethan.” She wouldn’t beg. “If that’s what you want.”
“That’s exactly what I want.”
This time he didn’t wait until she was in the house but backed out of the drive the minute she closed the truck’s door.
For the first time in more years than he could count, he thought seriously about getting blind drunk.
EIGHT
Seth kept watch for them. His excuse for being in the front yard as the shadows grew long was the dogs. Not that it was an excuse, exactly, he thought. He was trying to teach Foolish not just to chase the battered, well-chewed tennis ball but to bring it back the way Simon did. The trouble was that Foolish would race back to you with the ball, then expect you to play tug-of-war for it.
Not that Seth minded. He had a supply of balls and sticks and an old hunk of rope that Ethan had given him. He could toss and tug as long as the dogs were willing to run. Which was, as far as he could tell, just about forever.
But while he played with the dogs, he kept his ears tuned for the sound of an approaching car.
He knew they were on their way home because Cam had called from the plane. Which was just about the coolest thing Seth could think of. He couldn’t wait to tell Danny and Will how he’d talked to Cam while Cam had been flying over the Atlantic Ocean.
He’d already looked up Italy in the atlas and found Rome. Had traced his finger back and forth, back and forth across that wide ocean from Rome to the Chesapeake Bay, to the little smudge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that was St. Christopher’s.
For a little while he’d been afraid they wouldn’t come back. He imagined Cam calling and saying they’d decided to stay over there so he could race again.
He knew Cam had lived all over the place, racing boats and cars and motorcycles. Ray had told him all about it, and there was a thick scrapbook in the den that was filled with all kinds of newspaper and magazine pictures and articles about how many races Cam had won. And how many women he’d fooled around with.
And he knew that Cam had won this big-deal race in his hydrofoil—which Seth wished he could ride in just once—right before Ray had run into the telephone pole and died.
Phillip had finally tracked him down in Monte Carlo. Seth had found that place in the atlas, too, and it didn’t look all that much bigger than St. Chris. But they had a palace there and fancy casinos and even a prince.
Cam had come home in time to see Ray die. Seth knew he hadn’t planned to stay very long. But he had stayed. After they’d had sort of a fight, he’d told Seth he wasn’t going anywhere. That they were stuck with each other and he was staying put.
Still, that was before he’d gotten married and everything, before he’d gone back to Italy. Before Seth had started to worry that both Cam and Anna would forget about him and the promises they’d made.
But they hadn’t. They were coming back.
He didn’t want them to know he was waiting for them or that he was excited that they would be home any minute. But he was. He couldn’t understand why he was all pumped up about it. They’d only been gone a couple of weeks, and Cam was a pain in the ass most of the time anyway.
And once Anna was living there, everybody would say how he had to watch his language because there was a woman in the house.
A part of him worried that Anna would change things. Even though she was his caseworker, she might get tired of having a kid around. She had the power to send him away. More power now, he thought, because she was doing it with Cam all the time.
He reminded himself that she’d played it straight with him, from the minute she’d pulled him out of class and sat down with him in the school cafeteria to talk.
But working on a case and living in the same house with that case was different, wasn’t it?
And maybe, just maybe, she’d played straight with him, she’d been nice to him, because she’d liked having Cam poke at her. She’d wanted to get married to him. Now that she was, she wouldn’t have to be nice anymore. She could even write in one of her reports that he’d be better off somewhere else.
Well, he was going to watch, and he was going to see. He could still run if things got sticky. Though the idea of running made his stomach hurt in a way it had never done before.
He wanted to be here. He wanted to run in the yard, throwing sticks to the dogs. To crawl out of bed when it was still dark and eat breakfast with Ethan and go out on the water crabbing. To work in the boatyard or go down to Danny and Will’s.
To eat real food whenever he was hungry and sleep in a bed that didn’t smell like somebody else’s sweat.
Ray had promised him all of that, and though Seth had never trusted anyone, he’d trusted Ray. Maybe Ray had been his father, maybe he hadn’t. But Seth knew he’d paid Gloria a lot of money. He thought of her as Gloria now and not as his mother. It helped to add more distance.
Now Ray was dead, but he’d made each of his sons promise to keep Seth in the house by the water. Seth figured they probably hadn’t liked the idea, but they’d promised anyway. He’d discovered that the Quinns kept their word. It was a new and wonderful concept to him, a promise kept.
If they broke it now, he knew it would hurt more than anything had hurt him before.
So he waited, and when he heard the car—the not-quite-tamed roar of the Corvette—his stomach jittered with excitement and nerves.
Simon woofed twice in greeting, but Foolish set up a din of wild, half-terrified barking. When the sleek white car pulled into the drive, both dogs raced toward it, tails waving like flags. Seth stuck hands that had gone sweaty into his pockets and strolled over casually.
“Hi!” Anna shot him a brilliant smile.
Seth could see why Cam had gone for her, all right. He himself h
ad sketched her face a number of times in secret. He liked to draw above all else. His fledgling artist’s eye appreciated the sheer beauty of that face—the dark, almond-shaped eyes, the clear, pale-gold skin, the full mouth, and the exotic hint of cheekbones. Her hair was windblown, a dark, curling mass. Her wedding ring set glinted, diamonds and gold, as she stepped out of the car.
And caught him unprepared in a laughing, bone-crushing hug. “What a terrific welcome party!”
Though the embrace had surprised him into wanting to linger there, he wiggled free. “I was just out fooling with the dogs.” He looked over at Cam, shrugged. “Hey.”
“Hey, kid.” Lean and dark, and just a little dangerous to the eye, Cam unfolded his length from the low-riding car. His grin was quicker than Ethan’s, sharper than Phillip’s. “Just in time to help me unload.”
“Yeah, sure.” Seth glanced up, noted the small mountain of luggage strapped to the roof of the car. “You didn’t take all that crap with you.”
“We picked up some Italian crap while we were there.”
“I couldn’t stop myself,” Anna said with a laugh. “We had to buy another suitcase.”
“Two,” Cam corrected.
“One’s just a tote—it doesn’t count.”
“Okay.” Cam popped the trunk, pulled out a generous dark-green suitcase. “You carry the one that doesn’t count.”
“Putting your bride to work already?” Phillip crossed to the car, waded through the dogs. “I’ll take that, Anna,” he said and kissed her with an enthusiasm that had Seth rolling his eyes at Cam.
“Turn her loose, Phil,” Ethan said mildly. “I’d hate for Cam to have to kill you before he even gets in the house. Welcome home,” he added and smiled when Anna turned to give him as enthusiastic a kiss as Phillip had given her.
“It’s good to be home.”
The tote, it turned out, contained gifts, which Anna immediately began to dispense, along with stories of each one. Seth only stared down at the bright-blue-and-white soccer shirt she’d given him. No one had ever gone on a trip and brought him back a present. The fact was, if he thought about it, he could count the gifts he’d been given—something for nothing—on the fingers of one hand.
“Soccer’s big over in Europe,” Anna told him. “They call it football, but it’s not like our football.” She dug deeper, then pulled out an oversized book with a glossy cover. “And I thought you might like this. It’s not as good as seeing the paintings. It really grabs you by the throat to see them in person, but you’ll get the idea.”
The book was filled with paintings, glorious colors and shapes that dazzled his eyes. An art book. She’d remembered that he liked to draw and had thought of him.
“It’s cool.” He muttered it because he couldn’t trust his voice.
“She wanted to buy everyone shoes,” Cam commented. “I had to stop her.”
“So I only bought myself a half a dozen pair.”
“I thought it was four.”
She smiled. “Six. I snuck two by you. Phillip, I stumbled across Maglis. I could have wept.”
“Armani?”
She sighed lustily. “Oh, yeah.”
“Now I’m going to cry.”
“You can sob over fashion later,” Cam told them. “I’m starving.”
“Grace was here.” Seth wanted to try on his shirt right away but thought it would be too lame. “She cleaned everything—made us wash up in the Bay—and she fried chicken.”
“Grace made fried chicken?”
“And potato salad.”
“There’s no place like home,” Cam murmured and headed for the kitchen. Seth waited a few seconds, then followed.
“I guess I could eat another piece,” he said casually.
“Get in line.” Cam pulled the platter and bowl out of the fridge.
“Don’t they give you stuff to eat on the plane?”
“That was then, this is now.” Cam heaped a plate with food, then leaned back against the counter. The kid looked tanned and healthy, he noted. The eyes were still wary, but his face had lost that rabbit-about-to-run look. He wondered if it would surprise Seth as much as it had himself to know he’d missed the smart-mouthed brat. “So, how’s it been going?”
“Okay. School’s done, and I’ve been helping Ethan out on the boat a lot. Pays me slave’s wages there and at the boatyard.”
“Anna’s going to want to know what you got on your report card.”
“A’s,” Seth muttered around a mouthful of drumstick, and Cam choked.
“All?”
“Yeah—so what?”
“She’s going to love that. Want to make more points with her?”
Seth jerked a shoulder again, narrowing his eyes as he considered what he would be asked to do to please the woman of the house. “Maybe.”
“Put the soccer shirt on. It took her damn near half an hour to pick out the right one. Major points if you wear it the same night she gives it to you.”
“Yeah?” As easy as that? Seth thought and relaxed into a grin. “I guess I can give her a thrill.”
“He really liked his shirt,” Anna said as she meticulously tucked away the contents of one suitcase. “And the book. I’m so glad we thought of the book.”
“Yeah, he liked them.” Cam figured the next day, even next year, was soon enough to unpack. Besides, he liked stretching out on the bed and watching her—watching his wife, he thought with an odd little thrill—fuss around the room.
“He didn’t freeze up when I hugged him. That’s a good sign. And his interaction with Ethan and Phillip is easier, more natural, than it was even a couple of weeks ago. He was anxious to see you again. He’s feeling a little threatened by me. I change the dynamics around here just at the point where he was getting used to how things worked. So he’s waiting, and he’s watching for what’ll happen next. But that’s good. It means he considers this his home. I’m the intruder.”
“Miz Spinelli?”
She turned her head, arched a brow. “That’s Mrs. Quinn to you, buster.”
“Why don’t you turn off the social worker until Monday?”
“Can’t.” She slipped one of her new shoes out of its bag and nearly cooed at it in delight. “The social worker is very pleased with the status of this particular case. And Mrs. Quinn, the brand-new sister-in-law, is determined to win Seth’s trust, and maybe even his affection.”
She slipped the shoe back into the bag and wondered how long she should wait before asking Cam to customize their closet. She knew just what she had in mind, and he was good with his hands. Considering, she studied him. Very, very good with his hands.
“I suppose I could finish unpacking tomorrow.”
He smiled slowly. “I suppose you could.”
“I feel guilty about it. Grace has this place so spotless.”
“Why don’t you come over here. We’ll work on that guilt.”
“Why don’t I?” She tossed the shoe over her shoulder and, with a laugh, jumped him.
“She’s coming along.”
Cam studied the boat. It was barely seven in the morning, but his internal clock was still set to Rome. Since he’d awakened early, he hadn’t seen the point in letting his brothers sleep the day away.
So the Quinns stood, under the hard, bright lights of the boatyard, contemplating the job at hand. Seth mimicked their stance—hands in pockets, legs spread and braced, face sober.
It would be the first time the four of them had worked on the boat together. He was wildly thrilled.
“I figured you could start belowdecks,” Ethan began. “Phillip estimates four hundred hours to finish the cabin.”
Cam snorted. “I can do it in less.”
“Doing it right,” Phillip put in, “is more important than doing it fast.”
“I can do it fast and right. The client’ll have this baby under sail and the galley stocked with champagne and caviar in less than four hundred hours.”
Ethan nodded. Since
Cam had come through with another client, who wanted a sport fishing boat, he dearly hoped that was true. “Then let’s get to work.”
And work kept his mind off things his mind had no business being on. The brain had to be focused to use the lathe—if you were fond of your hands. Ethan turned the wood slowly, carefully, forming the mast. Ear protectors turned the hum of the motor and the hot rock blasting from the radio into a muffled echo.
He imagined there was conversation going on behind him, too. And the occasional ripe curse. He could smell the sweet scent of wood, the sting of epoxy, the stench of tar used to coat bolts.
Years ago, the three of them had built his workboat. She wasn’t fancy, and he couldn’t claim she had a pretty face, but she was sound and she was game. They’d built his skipjack as well because he’d been determined to dredge oysters in the traditional craft. Now the oysters were nearly gone, and his boat joined the other handful in the Bay, pulling in extra money during the summer by giving tours.
He rented it to Jim’s brother during tourist season, because it helped them both and was the practical thing to do. But it bothered him some to see the fine old vessel used that way. Just as it bothered him some to know other people lived and slept in the house that was his.
But when push came to shove, money mattered. Seth’s laugh snuck through his ear protectors and reminded him why it mattered now more than ever.
When his hands cramped from the work, he turned off the lathe to give them a rest. Noise filled his ears when he took off the protectors.
He could hear the pounding of Cam’s hammer echoing from belowdecks. Seth was coating the centerboard with Rust-Oleum so the steel plate gleamed with wet. Phillip had the nastier job of soaking the inside of the centerboard case with creosote. It was good old-growth red cedar, which should discourage any marine borers, but they’d decided not to take chances.
A boat by Quinn was built to last.
He felt a stir of pride watching them and could almost imagine his father standing beside him, big hands fisted on his hips, a wide grin on his face.