by Nora Roberts
“It makes a picture,” Ray said. “The kind your mother and I loved to study. We had plenty of them put aside, to take out and look over again once you all grew up and went off your own ways. We never really had the chance because she left first.”
“I still miss her.”
“I know you do. She was the glue that kept us all together. But she did a good job of it, Ethan. You’re still stuck.”
“I guess I’d have died without her, without you. Without them.”
“No.” Ray laid a hand on Ethan’s shoulder, shook his head. “You were always strong, heart and mind. You came out the other side of hell as much because of what’s inside you as what we did. You should remember that more often. Just look at Seth. He handles things differently than you did, but he’s got a lot of the same qualities inside him. He cares, deeper than he wants to. He thinks deeper than he lets on. And his wants go deeper than he’ll admit even to himself.”
“I see you in him.” It was the first time Ethan had allowed himself to say it, even to himself. “I don’t know how to feel about it.”
“Funny, I see each one of you in him. The eye of the beholder, Ethan.” Then he gave Ethan a quick slap on the back. “That’s a damn fine boat coming along there. Your mother would have gotten a kick out of this.”
“Quinns build to last,” Ethan murmured.
“Who’re you talking to?” Seth demanded.
Ethan blinked, felt his head go light, filled with thoughts thin as strands of cotton. “What?” He pushed a hand up his forehead, into his hair, knocking his cap back. “What?”
“Man, you look weird.” Seth cocked his head, fascinated. “How come you’re standing here talking to yourself?”
“I was . . .” Asleep on my feet? he wondered. “Thinking,” he said. “Just thinking out loud.” Suddenly the noise and smells seemed to roar into his dizzy brain. “I need some air,” he muttered and hurried out through the cargo doors.
“Weird,” Seth said again. He started to say something to Phillip, then was distracted as Anna came through the front door carrying an enormous hamper.
“Anybody interested in lunch?”
“Yeah!” Always interested, Seth made a beeline. “Did you bring the chicken?”
“What’s left of it,” she told him. “And ham sandwiches thick as bricks. There’s a cooler of iced tea in the car. Why don’t you go haul it in?”
“My hero,” Phillip said, wiping his hands on his jeans before relieving her of the hamper. “Hey, Cam! There’s a gorgeous woman out here with food.”
The hammering stopped instantly. Seconds later, Cam’s head popped up through the cabin roof. “My woman. I get first dibs on the food.”
“There’s plenty to go around. Grace isn’t the only one who can put meals together for a bunch of hungry men. Though her fried chicken’s a gift from the gods.”
“She’s got a way with it.” Phillip agreed. He set the hamper down on a makeshift table fashioned out of a sheet of plywood laid over two sawhorses. “She cooked for Ethan regularly when you two were away.” He dug out a ham sandwich. “I get the feeling something’s happening there.”
“Happening where?” Cam wanted to know as he jumped down to explore the hamper.
“With Ethan and Grace.”
“No shit?”
“Mmm.” The first bite made Phillip close his eyes in pleasure. He might have preferred French cuisine served on fine china, but he could appreciate a well-built sandwich balanced on a paper plate. “My deathless observation skills have homed in on certain signs. He watches her when she’s not looking. She watches him when he’s not looking. And I got some interesting gossip from Marsha Tuttle. She works down at the pub with Grace,” he explained to Anna. “Shiney’s adding a security system and has a new policy that none of the waitresses are to close up alone.”
“Did something happen?” Anna asked.
“Yeah.” He looked over to be certain Seth hadn’t come back in. “A few nights ago some bastard came in after closing. Grace was alone. He put his hands on her and, according to Marsha, would have done more. But it just so happened Ethan was outside. Interesting coincidence if you ask me, when we’re talking of our early-to-bed, early-to-rise brother. Anyway, he put some dents in the guy.” He took another healthy bite.
Cam thought of slender, fine-boned Grace. Thought of Anna. “I hope they were nice deep dents.”
“I think we can assume the guy didn’t walk off whistling. Of course, in typical Ethan style, he doesn’t mention it, so I have to hear it from Marsha over the fresh produce at the market Friday night.”
“Was Grace hurt?” Anna knew all too well what it was to be trapped, to be helpless, to be faced with what a certain kind of man would do to a woman. Or a child.
“No. Must have shaken her up, but she’s like Ethan there. Never mentioned it. But there were several long, silent looks between them yesterday. And after Ethan ran her home, he came back sizzling.” Remembering, Phillip chuckled to himself. “Which for Ethan is saying something. Got himself a couple of beers and went out in the sloop for an hour.”
“Grace and Ethan.” Cam considered it. “They’d fit.” He saw Seth come in and decided to give the topic a rest. “Where is Ethan, anyway?”
“He went outside.” With a grunt, Seth set the cooler down and nodded toward the cargo doors. “He said he needed some air, and I guess he did. He was standing there talking to himself.” Thrilled with the bounty, Seth dived into the hamper. “He was, like, carrying on a conversation with someone who wasn’t there. He looked weird.”
The back of Cam’s neck prickled. Still, he moved casually, dumping food on a plate. “I could use some air myself. I’ll just take him a sandwich.”
He saw Ethan standing out on the end of the pier, staring out at the water. The shore of St. Chris with all its pretty houses and yards was on either side, but Ethan looked straight out, over the light chop to the horizon.
“Anna brought some food out.”
Ethan folded up his thoughts and glanced down at the plate. “Nice of her. You hit lucky with her, Cam.”
“Don’t I know it.” What he was about to do made him a little nervous. But, after all, he was a man who lived for risks. “I still remember the first day I saw her. I was pissed off at the world. Dad was hardly buried, and everything I wanted seemed to be somewhere else. The kid had given me plenty of grief that morning, and it occurred to me that the next part of my life wasn’t going to be racing, it wasn’t going to be Europe. It was going to be right here.”
“You gave up the most. Coming back here.”
“It seemed like it at the time. Then Anna Spinelli walked across the yard while I was fixing the back steps. She gave me my second jolt of the day.”
Since the food was there, and Cam seemed inclined to talk, Ethan took the plate and sat on the edge of the dock. An egret flew by, silent as a ghost. “A face like hers is bound to give a man a jolt.”
“Yeah. And I was already feeling a little edgy. Not an hour before, I’d had this conversation with Dad. He was sitting in the back porch rocker.”
Ethan nodded. “He always liked sitting there.”
“I don’t mean I remembered him sitting there. I mean I saw him there. Just like I’m seeing you now.”
Slowly, Ethan turned his head, looked into Cam’s eyes. “You saw him, sitting in the rocker on the porch.”
“Talked to him, too. He talked to me.” Cam shrugged, gazed out over the water. “So, I figure I’m hallucinating. It’s the stress, the worry, maybe the anger. I’ve got things to say to him, questions I want answered, so my mind puts him there. Only that’s not what it was.”
Ethan stepped carefully onto boggy ground. “What do you figure it was?”
“He was there, that first time and the others.”
“Other times?”
“Yeah, the last was the morning before the wedding. He said it would be the last because I’d figured out what I needed to figure out for now.�
�� Cam rubbed his hands over his face. “I had to let him go again. It was a little easier. I didn’t get all the questions answered, but I guess the ones that mattered most were.”
He sighed, feeling better, and helped himself to one of the chips on Ethan’s plate. “Now you’ll either tell me I’m crazy or that you know what I’m talking about.”
Thoughtfully, Ethan tore one of the sandwiches in half, handed a share to Cam. “When you follow the water, you get to know there’s more to things than you can see or touch. Mermaids and serpents.” He smiled a little. “Sailors know about them, whether they’ve ever seen them or not. I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“Are you going to tell me the rest?”
“I’ve had some dreams. I thought they were dreams,” he corrected himself, “but lately I’ve had a couple when I was awake. I guess I have questions, too, but I have a hard time pushing somebody into answers. It’s good to hear his voice, to see his face. We didn’t have enough time to really say good-bye before he died.”
“Maybe that’s part of it. It’s not all of it.”
“No. But I don’t know what he wants me to do that I’m not doing.”
“I imagine he’ll stick around until you figure it out.” Cam bit into the sandwich and felt amazingly content. “So, what does he think of the boat?”
“He thinks it’s a damn fine boat.”
“He’s right.”
Ethan studied his sandwich. “Are we going to tell Phil about this?”
“Nope. But I can’t wait until it happens to him. What do you bet he’ll think about heading to some fancy shrink? He’ll want one with lots of initials after his name and an office on the right side of town.”
“Her name,” Ethan corrected and began to smile. “He’ll want a good-looking female if he’s going to lie down on a couch. It’s a pretty day,” he added, suddenly appreciating the warm breeze and the flash of sun.
“You’ve got another ten minutes to enjoy it,” Cam told him. “Then your ass goes back to work.”
“Yeah. Your wife makes a damn good sandwich.” He angled his head. “How do you think she’d do at sanding wood?”
Cam considered, liked the image. “Let’s go talk her into letting us find out.”
NINE
Anna was thrilled to have the afternoon off. She loved her job, had both affection and respect for the people she worked with. She believed absolutely in the function and the goals of social work. And she had the satisfaction of knowing she made a difference.
She helped people. The young single mother with nowhere to turn, the unwanted child, the displaced elderly person. Inside her burned a deep and bright desire to help them find their way. She knew what it was to be lost, to be desperate, and what one person who offered a hand, who refused to snatch that hand back even when it was slapped or snapped at, could change.
And because she had been determined to help Seth DeLauter, she’d found Cam. A new life, a new home. New beginnings.
Sometimes, she thought, rewards came back to you a hundredfold.
Everything she’d ever wanted—even when she hadn’t known she wanted it—was tied up in that lovely old house on the water. A white house with blue trim. Rockers on the porch, flowers in the yard. She remembered the first day she’d seen it. She’d traveled along this same road, with the radio blaring. Of course, the top had been up then, so the wind wouldn’t tug her hair free of its pins.
That had been a business call, and Anna had been determined to be all business.
The house had charmed her, the simplicity of it, the stability. Then she walked around the pretty two-story house by the water and saw an angry, uncooperative, and sexy man repairing the back porch steps.
Nothing had been quite the same for her since.
Thank God.
It was her house now, she thought with a smug grin as she drove fast along the road flanked by wide, flat fields. Her house in the country, with the garden she’d imagined . . . and the angry, uncooperative, sexy man? He was hers, too, and so much more than she’d ever imagined.
She drove along that long, straight road with Warren Zevon howling about werewolves in London. But this time, she didn’t care if the wind tugged at her once tidily pinned hair. She was going home, so the top was down and her mood was light.
She had work to do, but the reports she needed to complete could be done on her laptop at home. While her red sauce simmered on the stove, she decided. They’d have linguini—to remind Cam of their honeymoon.
Not that this particular event seemed to be over, even if they were back on the Shore rather than in Rome. She wondered if this wild and wicked passion they had for each other would ever ease.
And hoped not.
Laughing at herself, she zipped into the drive. And nearly rammed her pretty little convertible into the rear of a dull gray sedan with a rusted bumper. Once her heart had bumped back down into its proper place, she puzzled over it.
It certainly wasn’t Cam’s kind of car, she decided. He might like to tinker with engines, but he preferred the fast and the sleek body to go around them. This aged and sturdy body looked anything but fast.
Phillip? She let out a snort. The fastidious Phillip Quinn wouldn’t have placed his Italian-loafer-shod foot on the worn floorboard of such a vehicle.
Ethan, then. But she found herself frowning. Pickups and Jeeps were Ethan’s style, not compact sedans that had fenders still painted with gray primer.
They were being robbed, she thought with a jolt that turned her heartbeat into a jackhammer. In broad daylight. No one ever thought to lock the doors around here, and the house was sheltered from its neighbors by trees and the marsh.
Someone was inside, picking through their things, right now. Eyes narrowed, she slammed out of the car. They weren’t getting away with it. It was her house now, damn it, and her things, and if any half-baked burglar thought he could . . .
She trailed off as she looked into the sedan and saw the big pink rabbit. And the car seat. A house burglar with a toddler in tow?
Grace, she realized with a sigh. It was one of Grace Monroe’s cleaning days.
City girl, she chided herself. Put the city instincts away. You’re in another place now. Feeling monumentally foolish, she returned to her own car and hefted her briefcase and the bag of fresh produce she’d picked up on the way home.
As she stepped onto the porch, she heard the monotonous hum of the vacuum, underscored by the bright tinkle of a commercial on TV. Good domestic sounds, Anna thought. And she was more than delighted that she wasn’t the one running the vacuum.
Grace nearly dropped the wand when Anna came through the door. Obviously flustered, she stepped back, tripping the foot switch to turn the machine off. “I’m sorry. I thought I’d be finished before anyone got home.”
“I’m early.” Though her arms were full, Anna crouched in front of the chair where Aubrey sat manically scribbling purple crayon on a picture of an elephant in her coloring book. “That’s beautiful.”
“It’s a phant.”
“It’s a terrific phant. Prettiest phant I’ve seen all day.” Because Aubrey’s nose just seemed to demand it, Anna gave it a quick kiss.
“I’m nearly done.” Nerves danced down Grace’s spine. Anna looked so professional in her business suit. The fact that her hair was tumbling out of its pins only made her seem . . . professionally sexy, Grace decided. “I finished upstairs, and in the kitchen. I didn’t know . . . I wasn’t sure what you’d like, but I made up a casserole—scalloped potatoes and ham. It’s in the freezer.”
“Sounds great. I’m cooking tonight.” Anna rose and jiggled her bag cheerfully. She nearly stepped out of her shoes but then stopped herself. It didn’t seem right to start cluttering things up when Grace was still in the middle of cleaning.
She’d wait until later.
“But I won’t get off early tomorrow,” she continued. “So it’ll come in handy.”
“Well, I . . .” Grace knew she was a
little sweaty, a little grimy, and she felt miserably outclassed by Anna’s crisp blouse and tailored suit. And oh, those shoes, she thought, doing her best not to make her survey obvious. They were so pretty, so classic, and the leather looked soft enough to sleep on.
Her toes curled in shame inside her frayed white sneakers. “The laundry’s nearly done, too. There’s a load of towels in the dryer. I didn’t know where you wanted me to put your things, so I folded everything and left it on the bed in your room.”
“I appreciate it. Catching up after a couple of weeks away takes forever.” Anna caught herself before she squirmed. She’d never had a housekeeper in her life, and she wasn’t quite sure of the proper procedure. “I should put these away. You want something cold to drink?”
“No, thanks. No. I should finish up and get out of your way.”
Curious, Anna thought. Grace had never seemed cool or nervous before. Though they didn’t know each other well, Anna had felt they were friendly. One way or the other, she decided, they had to come to terms. “I’d really like to talk to you if you have the time.”
“Oh.” Grace ran her hand up and down the metal wand of the vacuum. “Sure. Aubrey, I’m going in the kitchen with Mrs. Quinn.”
“Me, too!” Aubrey scrambled up and raced ahead. By the time her mother caught up, she was sprawled on the floor, intently creating a purple giraffe.
“That’s her color this week,” Grace commented. Automatically she went to the refrigerator and took out the pitcher of lemonade she’d made. “She tends to settle on one until she wears the crayon down to a nub, then she picks another.”
Her hand froze on the glass she’d been about to take from a cupboard. “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I wasn’t thinking.”
Anna set her bag down. “About what?”
“Making myself at home in your kitchen.”
Aha, Anna thought, there was the problem. Two women, one house. They were both a little uneasy about the situation. She took a plump tomato from the bag, examined it, then set it on the counter. Next year she was going to try to grow her own.