by Nora Roberts
while she slept deep and still beside him.
Chapter Eighteen
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it was barely light when Phillip crawled out of bed. He didn't bother to moan. What good would it do? Just because he'd barely slept, his mind was fogged with fatigue and worry, and he had an entire day of backbreaking manual labor ahead of him was no reason to complain.
The fact that there was no coffee was a damn good reason to complain.
Sybill stirred as he started to dress. "You have to go to the boatyard?"
"Yeah." He rolled his tongue over his teeth as he jerked up his slacks. Christ, he didn't even have a toothbrush with him.
"Do you want me to order up some breakfast? Coffee?"
Coffee. The word alone was like a siren's song in his blood.
But he grabbed his shirt. If she ordered coffee, he would have to talk to her. He didn't think it was a smart move to have a conversation when he was in such a foul mood. And why was he in a foul mood? he asked himself. Because he hadn't slept and she'd managed to sneak through his legendary defenses while he wasn't looking and make him fall in love with her.
"I'll get some at home." His voice was clipped and edgy. "I have to go back and change anyway." Which was why he was up so damn early.
The sheets rustled as she sat up. He watched her out of the corner of his eye and reached for his socks. She looked tousled and tumbled and temptingly soft.
Yeah, she was sneaky all right. Hitting him over the head like that with her vulnerability, sobbing in his arms that way and looking so damned hurt and defenseless. Then waking up in the middle of the night and turning into some sort of a sex-fantasy goddess.
Now she was offering him coffee. She had a hell of a nerve.
"I appreciate you staying last night. It helped."
"I'm here to serve," he said shortly.
"I…" She gnawed on her bottom lip, alerted and confused by his tone. "It was a difficult day for both of us. I suppose I'd have been wiser to stay away. I was already a little off balance after Gloria's call, and then—"
His head shot up. "What? Gloria called you?"
"Yes." And now, Sybill thought, she'd only proven why that was information best kept to herself. He was upset. Everyone was going to be upset.
"She called you? Yesterday?" With his temper simmering, he picked up his shoe, examined it. "And you didn't think that it was worth mentioning before this?"
"I didn't see any point in it." Because her hands couldn't seem to keep still, she pushed at her hair, tugged at the sheet. "I wasn't going to mention it at all, actually."
"Weren't you? Maybe you forgot, momentarily, that Seth is my family's responsibility. That we have a right to know if your sister's going to cause more trouble. A need to know," he said, rising as his anger rapidly approached flash point. "So that we can protect him."
"She won't do anything to—"
"How the hell do you know?" He exploded with it, rounding on her so that she clutched the sheets in white-knuckled fingers. "How can you know? By observing from ten paces back. Goddamn it, Sybill, this isn't a fucking exercise. This is life. What the hell did she want?"
She wanted to shrink, as she always did from anger. She coated her heart and her voice with ice, as she always did to face it. "She wanted money, of course. She wanted me to demand it from you, to give her more myself. She shouted at me, too, and swore at me, just as you are. It appears that staying ten paces back has put me directly in the middle."
"I want to know if and when she contacts you again. What did you tell her?"
Sybill reached for her robe, and her hand was steady. "I told her that your family would not give her anything. And neither would I. That I had spoken with your lawyer. That I had added, and would continue to add, my weight and influence to see that Seth remains a permanent part of your family."
"That's something, then," he muttered, frowning at her as she pulled on her robe.
"It's the least I can do, isn't it?" Her tone was frigid, distant and final. "Excuse me." She strode into the bathroom, shut the door.
From where he stood, Phillip heard the deliberate click of the lock. "Well, fine, that's just fine." He snarled at the door, grabbed his jacket, then got the hell out before he made matters any worse than they already were.
they didn't get any better when he arrived home to find less than half a cup of coffee left in the pot. When he discovered midway through his shower that Cam had obviously used most of the hot water, he decided that just made it all perfect.
Then he stepped into his room, a towel slung around his hips, and found Seth sitting on the side of his bed.
Definitely perfect.
"Hey." Seth eyed him steadily.
"You're up early."
"I thought I'd maybe go in with you for a couple of hours."
Phillip turned to pull underwear and jeans out of his dresser. "You aren't working today. You've got your friends coming over later for the party."
"That's not till this afternoon." Seth lifted a shoulder. "There's time."
"Suit yourself."
He'd expected Phillip to be steamed. He had a thing for Sybill, didn't he? Seth reminded himself. It had been tough to come in here, to wait, to know he'd have to say something.
So he said the single thing that was most on his mind. "I didn't mean to make her cry."
Shit, was all Phillip could think. He yanked on his Jockeys. He wasn't going to get out of this. "You didn't. She was just due for a cry, that's all."
"I guess she's pretty pissed off."
"No, she's not." Resigned to it now, Phillip pulled on his jeans. "Look, women are hard to understand under the best of circumstances. These circumstances pretty much suck."
"I guess." Maybe he wasn't so steamed after all. "I just sort of remembered some stuff." Seth stared at the scars on Phillip's chest because it was easier than looking into his eyes. And because, well, the scars were so cool. "Then she got so whacked out about it and everything."
"Some people don't know what to do with feelings." He sighed, sat on the bed beside Seth, and was bitterly ashamed of himself. He'd blasted Sybill right between the eyes because he hadn't known what to do with his feelings. "So they cry, or they yell, or they go off and sulk in a corner. She cares about you, but she doesn't know exactly what to do about it. Or what you want her to do about it."
"I don't know. She's… she's not like Gloria." His voice rose a pitch. "She's decent. Ray was decent, too, and I've got—they're like relatives, right? So I've got…"
Understanding came quickly and squeezed his heart. "You've got Ray's eyes." Phillip kept his voice matter-of-fact, knowing Seth would believe him if he said it right. "The color and the shape, but that something that was behind them, too. The something that was decent. You've got a sharp brain, just like Sybill. It thinks, it analyzes, it wonders. And under all that, it tries to do what's right. What's decent. You've got both of them in you." He nudged Seth's shoulder with his own. "Pretty cool, huh?"
"Yeah." The smile bloomed. "It's cool."
"Okay, scram, or we're never going to get out of here."
he arrived at the boatyard nearly forty-five minutes behind Cam and expected to get grief for it. Cam was already at the shaper, rabbeting the next run of planks. Bruce Springsteen shouted from the radio about his glory days. In defense, Phillip turned the volume down. Instantly Cam's head came up.
"I can't hear it over the tool unless it's loud."
"None of us will be able to hear if you keep blasting our ears for hours every day."
"What? Did you say something?"
"Ha-ha."
"Well, we're cheerful, aren't we?" Cam reached over and switched off the power. "So, how's Sybill?"
"Don't start on me."
Cam angled his head while Seth shifted his gaze from man to man and anticipated the entertainment value of a Quinn battle. "I asked a simple question."
"She'll survive." Phillip snatched up a tool belt. "I rea
lize you'd prefer to see her run out of town on a rail, but you'll have to make do with the fact that I gave her a verbal bashing this morning rather than a physical one."
"Why the hell did you do that?"
"Because she pissed me off!" Phillip shouted. "Because it all pisses me off. Especially you."
"Fine, you want to try for a physical bashing, I'm available. But I asked a goddamn simple question." Cam pulled the board off the shaper and heaved it toward the stack, where it landed with a clatter. "She already took a punch in the gut yesterday. Why the hell would you add to it this morning?"
"You're defending her?" Phillip stepped forward until they were nose to nose. "You're defending her, after all the shit you've handed me over her?"
"I've got eyes, don't I? I saw her face last night. What the hell do you take me for?" He jabbed a finger into Phillip's chest. "Anybody who'd kick a woman when she's that torn up ought to have his neck snapped."
"You son of a—" Phillip's fist was clenched and halfway through the swing before he stopped himself. He would have enjoyed a few bloody rounds, especially since Ethan wasn't there to break it up. But not when he was the one who deserved to be bloodied.
He unclenched his fist, spreading his fingers as he turned away to try to find some control. He saw Seth watching him with dark, interested eyes and snarled. "Don't you start."
"I didn't say a word."
"Look, I took care of her, okay?" He dragged a hand through his hair and aimed his rationalization at both of them. "I let her cry it out, patted her hand. I dumped her into a hot tub, tucked her into bed. I stayed with her. Maybe I got an hour's sleep out of the deal, so I'm feeling just a little testy right now."
"Why'd you yell at her?" Seth wanted to know.
"Okay." He took a steadying breath, pressed his fingers to his tired eyes. "This morning she told me that Gloria had called her. Yesterday. Maybe I overreacted, but damn it, she should have told us."
"What did she want?" Seth's lips had gone white. Instinctively, Cam stepped over and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't let her spook you, kid. You're beyond that now. What's the deal?" he demanded of Phillip.
"I didn't get details. I was too busy blasting Sybill for not telling me sooner. The gist of it was money." Phillip shifted his gaze to Seth, spoke directly to him. "She told Gloria to kiss ass. No money, no nothing, no how. She told her she'd been to the lawyer and was making sure you stayed just where you are."
"Your aunt's no pushover," Cam said easily, giving Seth's shoulder a quick squeeze. "She's got spine."
"Yeah." Seth straightened his own. "She's okay."
"Your brother over there," Cam continued, nodding toward Phillip. "He's an asshole, but the rest of us have sense enough to know that Sybill didn't bring up the phone call yesterday because it was a party. She didn't want anybody to get upset. A guy doesn't turn eleven every day."
"So I screwed up." Muttering to himself, Phillip grabbed a plank and prepared to beat out his frustrations with nail and wood. "I'll fix it."
sybill needed to do some fixing of her own. It had taken her most of the day to work up both the courage and the plan. She pulled into the Quinn driveway just after four, and was relieved not to see Phillip's Jeep.
He'd be at the boatyard for another hour at least, she calculated. Seth would be with him. As it was Saturday night, they would most likely stop on the way home, pick up some takeout.
It was their pattern, and she knew her behavioral patterns, even if she didn't seem to be able to fully connect with the people who were doing the behaving.
Ten paces back, she thought, and was hurt all over again.
Annoyed, she ordered herself out of the car. She would do what she had come to do. It should take no more than fifteen minutes to apologize to Anna, for the apology to be accepted, at least outwardly. She would explain about the call from Gloria, in detail, so that it could be documented. Then she would leave.
She would be back at her hotel, buried in her work, long before Phillip arrived on the scene.
She knocked briskly on the door.
"It's open," came the response. "I'd rather kill myself than get up."
Warily, Sybill reached for the knob, hesitated, then opened the door. All she could do was stare.
The Quinn living room was usually cluttered, always appeared lived-in, but just now it appeared to have been lived in by a rampaging platoon of insane elves.
Paper plates, plastic cups, several of them dumped or spilled, littered the floor and the tables. Small plastic men were strewn everywhere as if a war had been waged, and the casualties were horrendous. Obviously fatal accidents had taken place with model cars and trucks. Shreds of wrapping paper were sprinkled over all like confetti on a particularly wild New Year's Eve.
Sprawled in a chair, surveying the damage, was Anna. Her hair was in her face, and her face was pale.
"Oh, great," she muttered, turning narrowed eyes to Sybill. "Now she shows up."
"I—I'm sorry?"
"Easy for you to say. I've just spent two and a half hours battling ten eleven-year-old boys. No—not boys," she corrected between her teeth. "Animals, beasts. Spawns of Satan. I just sent Grace home with orders to lie down. I'm afraid this experience might affect the baby. He could be born a mutant."
The children's party, Sybill remembered, her dazzled eyes scanning the room. She'd forgotten. "It's over?"
"It will never be over. I will wake up at night for the rest of my life, screaming, until they cart me off to a padded room. I have ice cream in my hair. There's some sort of… mass on the kitchen table. I'm afraid to go in there. I think it moved. Three boys managed to fall in the water and had to be dragged out and dried off. They'll probably catch pneumonia and we'll be sued. One of those creatures who disguised himself as a young boy ate approximately sixty-five pieces of cake, then got into my car—I don't know how he got by me, they're like lightning—and proceeded to throw up."
"Oh, dear." Sybill knew it wasn't a laughing matter. It shocked her to realize that her stomach muscles were quivering. "I'm so sorry. Can I help you, ah, clean up?"
"I'm not touching any of it. Those men—the one who claims to be my husband and his idiot brothers—they're going to do it. They're going to scrub and clean and wipe and shovel. They're going to do it all. They knew," she said in a vicious whisper. "They knew what a boy's birthday party would mean. How was I to know? But they did, and they hid themselves away down at that boatyard, using that lame excuse about contract deadlines. They left me and Grace alone with this, this unspeakable duty." She shut her eyes. "Oh, the horror."
Anna was silent for a moment, her eyes still closed. "Go ahead. You can laugh. I'm too weak to get up and belt you."
"You worked so hard to do this for Seth."
"He had the time of his life." Anna's lips curved as she opened her eyes. "And since I'm going to make Cam and his brothers clean it up, I'm feeling pretty good about it, all in all. How are you?"
"I'm fine. I came to apologize for last night."
"Apologize for what?"
The question threw her off rhythm. She was already running behind schedule, she thought, distracted by the chaos and Anna's rambling monologue. Sybill cleared her throat and began again. "For last night. It was rude of me to leave without thanking you for—"
"Sybill, I'm too tired to listen to nonsense. You weren't rude, you have nothing to apologize for, and you'll annoy me if you keep this up. You were upset, and you had a perfect right to be."
And that blew Sybill's carefully prepared speech all to hell. "I honestly don't understand why people in this family won't listen to, much less accept, a sincere apology for regrettable behavior."
"Boy, if that's the tone you use when you lecture," Anna observed with admiration, "your audience must sit at attention. But to answer your question, I suppose we don't because we so often indulge in what could be termed regrettable behavior ourselves. I'd ask you to sit down, but those are really lovely slacks
and I have no idea what nasty surprises there are on any of the cushions."
"I don't intend to stay."
"You couldn't see your face," Anna said more gently. "When he looked up at you, when he told you what he remembered. But I could see it, Sybill. I could see it was a great deal more than duty or responsibility or a valiant attempt to do what was right that brought you here. It must have crushed you when she took him away all those years ago."
"I can't do this again." The burn of tears scalded the back of her eyes. "I just can't do this again."
"You don't have to," Anna murmured. "I just want you to know I understand. In my work I see so many damaged people. Battered women, abused children, men who are at the end of their ropes, the elderly we so blithely displace. I care, Sybill. I care about every one of them who come to me for help."
She sighed a little and spread her fingers. "But in order to help them, I have to hold part of myself back, be objective, realistic, practical. If I threw all my emotions into every one of my cases, I couldn't do my job. I'd burn out, burn up. I understand the need for a little distance."
"Yes." The painful tension drained out of Sybill's shoulders. "Of course you do."
"It was different with Seth," Anna went on. "Right from the first minute, everything about him pulled at me. I couldn't stop it. I tried, but I couldn't. I've thought about that, and I believe, sincerely, that my feelings for him were there, just there, even before I met him. We were meant to be a part of each other's lives. He was meant to be part of this family, and this family was meant to be mine."
Risking the consequences, Sybill eased down on the arm of the sofa. "I wanted to tell you… you're so good with him. You and Grace. You're so good for him. The relationship he has with his brothers is wonderful, and it's vital. That strong male influence is important for a boy. But the female, what you and Grace give him, is just as vital."
"You have something to give him, too. He's outside," Anna told her. "Drooling over his boat."
"I don't want to upset him. I really have to go."
"Running away last night was understandable and acceptable." Anna's gaze was direct, level and challenging. "Running now isn't."
"You must be very good at your job," Sybill said after a moment.
"I'm damn good at it. Go talk to him. If I manage to get out of this chair in this lifetime, I'll put some fresh coffee on."
It wasn't easy. But then Sybill supposed it wasn't meant to be. Crossing that lawn toward the boy who sat in the pretty little boat, so obviously dreaming of fast sails.
Foolish saw her first and, alerted, raced toward her, barking. She braced herself and put a hand out, hoping to ward him off. Foolish skimmed his head under it, turning the defensive gesture into a stroke.
His fur was so soft and warm, his eyes so adoring, his face so fittingly silly that she relaxed into a smile. "You really are foolish, aren't you?"
He sat, batting at her with his paw until she took it and shook. Satisfied, he raced back toward the boat, where Seth watched and waited.
"Hi." He stayed where he was, pulling on the line and making the small triangle of sail sway.
"Hello. Have you taken it out yet?"
"Nah. Anna wouldn't let me and any of the guys go out in her today." He jerked a shoulder. "Like we'd drown or something."
"But you had a good time at your party."
"It was cool. Anna's a little pissed—" He stopped and looked toward the house. She really hated it when he swore. "She's pretty steamed about Jake barfing in her car, so I figured I'd hang out here until she levels."
"That's probably very sensible."
Then silence fell, heavy, as they both looked out over the water and wondered what to say.