SIX

HE WAS SITTING on the dock, pole fishing with a smear of Anna’s Brie for bait. The sun was summer-hot on his back, with an August weight to it that drenched the skin and set the brain to dreaming.

He wore nothing but cut-off jeans and a pair of wire-rim sunglasses.

He liked looking through them at the way the light beat down from a hazy blue sky and smacked the water. And he thought, idly, that he might just set the pole aside in a bit and slide right in to cool off.

The water lapped lazily against the hull of the little pram with blue sails tied to the dock. A jay was bitching in the trees, and when a stingy little breeze passed by, it carried a hint of roses from a bush that had lived there longer than he.

The house was quiet. The lawn leading to it was lush and freshly mown. He could smell that, too. Newly cut grass, roses, lazy water. Summer smells.

It didn’t strike him as odd, though it was still spring.

Something had to be done, and he wished to God he knew what, to keep that house quiet, the air summer-peaceful. And his family safe.

He heard the yip of a dog, then the scrambling of canine feet on the dock. Seth didn’t look up, even when the cold nose nudged at his cheek. He simply lifted an arm so the dog could wriggle against his side.

It was always comforting, somehow, to have a dog at your side when your thoughts were heavy.

But that wasn’t enough for the dog, whose tail pounded a drumbeat on the dock as its tongue slathered over Seth’s cheek.

“Okay, okay, cool it. Thinking here,” he began, then felt his heart jump into his throat as he shifted to nudge the dog down.

Not Cam’s dog, but his own. Foolish, who’d died in Seth’s arms five years before. Speechless, Seth stared as those familiar doggie eyes seemed to laugh into his at the world’s best joke.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Joy and shock tangled inside him as he grabbed the dog’s muzzle. Warm fur, cold nose, wet tongue. “What the hell is this?”

Foolish gave another cheerful bark then flopped adoringly across Seth’s lap.

“There you are, you stupid idiot,” Seth murmured, as unspeakable love gushed inside him. “There you are, you idiot. Christ, oh Christ, I’ve missed you.” He bobbled the pole, let go of it as he grabbed for his dog.

A hand reached out, snagged the pole before it dropped into the water.

“Wouldn’t want to waste that fancy cheese.” The woman who sat beside him, legs dangling over the dock, took charge of the pole. “We figured Foolish would cheer you up. Nothing like a dog, is there? For companionship, love, comfort and pure entertainment. Nothing biting today?”

“No, not . . .”

The words slipped back down his throat as he looked at her. He knew that face; he’d seen it in pictures. Long and thin, scattershot freckles over the nose and cheeks. She had a shapeless khaki hat over messy red curls that were streaked with silver. And her dark green eyes were unmistakable.

“You’re Stella. Stella Quinn.” Stella Quinn, he thought as he tried to make sense of it, who’d been dead more than twenty years.

“You turned out handsome, didn’t you? Always thought you would.” She gave the stubby ponytail a friendly tug. “Need a haircut, boy.”

“I guess I’m dreaming.”

“I guess you are,” she said easily, but her hand moved from his hair to his cheek and gave it a rub before she tipped down his dark glasses. “You’ve got Ray’s eyes. I fell for his eyes first, you know.”

“I always wanted to meet you.” You got your wishes in dreams, Seth decided.

“Well, here we are.” With a chuckle, she tapped his sunglasses back in place. “Never too late, is it? Never cared much for fishing myself. Like the water—to look at, to swim in. Still, fishing’s good for thinking, or not thinking at all. If you’re going to brood, might as well have a line in the water. You never know what you’ll pull up.”

“I never dreamed about you before. Not like this.”

The fact was, he’d never dreamed with this kind of clarity. He could feel the warm fur under his hand, and the steady beat of heart as Foolish panted in the heat.

He felt the strength of the sun on his bare back, and could hear, in the distance, the putt and purr of a workboat. The jay never stopped its piercing song.

“We figured it was time I got to play Grandma.” She gave Seth an affectionate pat on the knee. “I missed that while I was here. Getting to fuss and coo over the babies when they came, spoiling you and the others. Dying’s damn inconvenient, let me tell you.”

When he simply stared at her, she let out a long, clear laugh. “It’s natural enough to be a little spooked. It’s not every day you sit around talking to a ghost.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Hard to blame you.” She looked out over the water, and something in her face spoke of absolute contentment. “I’d’ve baked cookies for you, though I was never much of a cook. But you can’t have everything, so you take what you can get. You’re Ray’s grandson, so that makes you mine.”

His head was reeling, but he didn’t feel dizzy. His pulse was galloping, but he didn’t feel fear. “He was good to me. I only had him for a little while, but he was . . .”

“Decent.” She nodded as she said it. “That’s what you told Cam when he asked you. Ray was decent, you said, and you sure as hell hadn’t had much decent up till then, poor little guy.”

“He changed everything for me.”

“He gave you a chance to change everything. You’ve done a pretty good job of it, so far. Can’t choose where you come from, Seth. My boys and you know that better than anyone. But you can choose where you end up, and how you get there.”

“Ray took me in, and it killed him.”

“You say something like that and mean it, you’re not as smart as everyone thinks. Ray’d be disappointed to hear you say it.”

“He wouldn’t have been on that road if it hadn’t been for me.”

“How do you know that?” She poked him again. “If not that road that day, another road another day. Damn fool always drove too fast. Things happen, and that’s that. They happen a different way, we’d sit around complaining about it just the same. Waste a lot of living on the ifs and ors, if you ask me.”

“But—”

“But hell. George Bailey learned his lesson, didn’t he?”

Baffled, fascinated, Seth shifted. “Who?”

Stella rolled her eyes toward heaven. “It’s a Wonderful Life. Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey. Decides it would be better for everyone if he’d never been born, so an angel shows him the way things would’ve worked out if he hadn’t.”

“And you’re going to show me?”

“Do I look like an angel to you?” she asked, amused.

“No. But I’m not thinking it’d be better if I’d never been born either.”

“Change one thing, change everything. That’s the lesson. What if Ray hadn’t brought you here, if he hadn’t run into that damn telephone pole? Maybe Cam and Anna wouldn’t have met. Then Kevin and Jake wouldn’t have been born. You wishing them away?”

“No, Jesus, of course not. But if Gloria—”

“Ah.” With a satisfied nod, Stella lifted a finger. “There’s the nub, isn’t it? No point in saying ‘if Gloria,’ or ‘but Gloria.’ Gloria DeLauter is reality.”

“She’s back.”

Her face softened, her voice gentled. “Yes, honey, I know. And it weighs on you.”

“I won’t let her touch their lives again. I won’t let her fuck up my family. She only wants money. It’s all she’s ever wanted.”

“You think?” Stella sighed. “Well, if you do, I suppose you’ll give it to her. Again.”

“What else can I do?”

“You’ll figure it out.” She handed him the pole.

He woke sitting on the side of the bed, his hand loosely fisted as if it held a fishing pole.

And when he opened those fingers, they shook a little. When he drew one careful breath, he’d have sworn he smelled the faint drift of summer grass.

Weird, he thought and raked his fingers through his hair. Very weird dream. And he could swear he felt the lingering warmth from his dog stretched across his lap.

 

THE first ten years of his life had been a prison of fear, abuse and neglect. It had made him stronger than most ten-year-old boys. And a great deal more wary.

Ray Quinn’s pre-Stella affair with a woman named Barbara Harrow had been brief. He’d put it so completely behind him that his three adopted sons had been totally unaware of it. Just as Ray had been unaware of the product of that affair.

Gloria DeLauter.

But Gloria had known about Ray, and had tracked him down. In her usual style she’d used extortion and blackmail to bleed Ray for money. And had, in essence, sold her son to her father. But Ray had died suddenly, before he found the way to tell his sons, and his grandchild, of the connection.

To the Quinn brothers, Seth had simply been another of Ray Quinn’s strays. They’d been bound to him by no more than a promise to a dying man. But that had been enough.

They’d changed their lives for him. They’d given him a home, stood up for him, shown him what it was to be part of a family. And they’d fought to keep him.

Anna had been his caseworker. Grace his first surrogate mother. And Sybill, Gloria’s half sister, had brought back the only soft memories of his childhood.

He knew how much they’d sacrificed to give him a life. A life as decent as Ray Quinn. By the time Gloria had stepped back into the picture, hoping to bleed them for more money, he’d been one of them.

One of the brothers Quinn.

This wasn’t the first time Gloria had approached him for money. He’d had three years to forget her, to feel safe after his new family had circled around him. Then she’d slithered back to St. Chris and had extorted money from a fourteen-year-old boy.

He’d never told them of it.

A few hundred that first time, he remembered. It was all he could manage without his family finding out—and had satisfied her. For a little while.

He’d paid her off each time she’d come back, until he’d fled to Europe. His time there hadn’t been only to work and to study, but to escape.

She couldn’t hurt his family if he wasn’t with them, and she couldn’t follow him across the Atlantic.

Or so he’d thought.

His success as an artist, the resulting publicity, had given Gloria big ideas. And bigger demands.

He wondered now if it had been a mistake to come home, as much as he’d needed to. He knew it was a mistake to continue to pay her. But the money meant nothing. His family meant everything.

He imagined Ray had felt the same.

In the clear light of day, he knew the sensible thing, the sane thing would be to tell her to get lost, to ignore her. To call her bluff.

But then he’d get one of her notes, or come face-to-face with her, and he’d clutch. He found himself strangled between his helpless childhood and the desperate need to shield the people he loved.

So he paid, with a great deal more than money.

He knew how she worked. She wouldn’t pop up on his doorstep right away. She’d let him stew and worry and wonder, until ten thousand seemed like a bargain for a little peace of mind. She wouldn’t be staying in St. Chris, wouldn’t risk being seen and recognized by his brothers or sisters. But she’d be close.

However dramatic, however paranoid it was, he’d swear he could all but feel her—the hate and the greed—breathing down his neck.

He wasn’t running again. She wouldn’t make him deprive himself of home and family a second time. He would, as he had before, lose himself in his work and live his life. Until she came.

He’d wheedled a second morning session out of Dru. From the sitting the previous week he knew she expected him to be prepared when she arrived, precisely at seven-thirty, and for him to be ready to start. And to stop exactly sixty minutes later.

And to ensure he did, she’d brought a kitchen timer with her.

The woman had no tolerance for artistic temperament. That was all right with Seth. In his opinion, he didn’t have an artistic temperament.

He was using pastels, just a basic study for now. It was an extension of the charcoal sketch. A way for him to learn her face, her moods, her body language before he roped her into the more intense portraits he’d already planned in his mind.

When he looked at her, he felt all the models he’d used throughout his career had been simply precursors to Drusilla.

She knocked. He’d told her it wasn’t necessary, but she kept that formal distance between them. That, he thought as he walked to the door, would have to be breached.

There could be no formality, and no distance, between them if he was to paint her as he needed to paint her.

“Right on time. Big surprise. Want coffee?”

He’d had his hair cut. It was still long enough to lay over the collar of the torn T-shirt that seemed to be his uniform, but the ponytail was gone. It surprised her that she missed it. She’d always felt that sort of thing was an affectation on a man.

He’d shaved, too, and could almost be deemed tidy if you ignored the holes in the knees of his jeans and the paint splatters on his shoes.

“No, thanks. I’ve had a cup already this morning.”

“One?” He closed the door behind her. “I can barely form a simple declarative sentence on one hit of coffee. How do you do it?”

“Willpower.”

“Got a lot of that, do you?”

“As a matter of fact.”

To his amusement, she set the timer on his workbench, set at sixty. Then went directly to the stool he’d set out for her, slid onto it.

She noticed the change immediately.

He’d bought a bed.

The frame was old—a simple black iron head—and the footboard showed some dings. The mattress was bare and still had the tags.

“Moving in after all?”

He glanced over. “No. But it’s better than the floor if I end up working late and bunking here. Plus it’s a good prop.”

Her brow lifted. “Oh, really?”

“Are you usually so preoccupied with sex, or is it just around me?” It made him laugh when her mouth dropped open. “A prop,” he continued as he moved to his easel, “like that chair over there, those old bottles.” He gestured toward the bottles stacked in a corner. “The urn and this cracked blue bowl I’ve got in the kitchen. I pick up things as they catch my eye.”

He studied his pastels, and his mouth curved. “Including women.”

She relaxed her shoulders. He’d notice if they were stiff, and it would make her feel even more foolish. “That’s quite a speech for one ‘oh, really.’ ”

“Sugar, you pack a lot of punch into an ‘oh, really.’ Do you remember the pose?”

“Yes.” Obediently she propped her foot on the rung of the stool, laced her hands around her knee, then looked over her left shoulder as if someone had just spoken to her.

“That’s perfect. You’re really good at this.”

“I sat like this for an hour just a few days ago.”

“An hour,” he repeated as he began to work. “Before the wild debauchery of the weekend.”

“I’m so used to wild debauchery it doesn’t have a particular impact on my life.”

It was his turn. “Oh, really?”

He mimicked her tone so perfectly, she broke the pose to look toward him, laughing. He always managed to make her laugh. “I minored in WD in college.”

“Oh, if only.” His fingers hurried to capture the bright, beautiful laughter. “I know your type, baby. You walk around being beautiful, smart, sexy and unapproachable so we guys just suffer and dream.”

It was, obviously, the wrong thing to say as the humor on her face died instantly—like flipping a switch. “You don’t know anything about me, or my type.”

“I didn’t say that to hurt your feelings. I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know you well enough for you to hurt my feelings. I know you just well enough to have you annoy me.”

“Then I’m sorry for that. I was joking. I like hearing you laugh. I like seeing it.”

“Unapproachable.” She heard herself mutter it before she could bite down on the urge. Just as her head jerked around before she could pull back the temper. “Did you think I was so damned unapproachable when you grabbed me and kissed me?”

“I’d say the act speaks for itself. Look. A lot of times when a guy sees a woman—a beautiful one he’s attracted to—he gets clumsy. It’s easier to figure she’s out of reach than to analyze his own clumsiness. Women . . .”

If furious was what he was going to get out of her, then he’d capture fury in pastels. “They’re a mystery to us. We want them. We can’t help it. That doesn’t mean you don’t scare the hell out of us, one way or the other, more than half the time.”

She would have sniffed if he wouldn’t have made such a predictable response. “Do you honestly expect me to believe you’re afraid of women?”

“Well, I had some advantage, with all those sisters.” He was working now, but she’d forgotten he was working. Sometimes, that was only better. So he continued to talk while she frowned at him. “But the first girl I was ever serious about? It took me two weeks to get up the nerve to call her on the phone. Your kind doesn’t know what my kind go through.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen. Marilyn Pomeroy, a giddy little brunette.”

“And how long were you serious about Marilyn?”

“About as long as it took me to work up the nerve to call her. Two weeks, give or take. What can I say? Men are no damn good.”

Her lips twitched and curved. “That goes without saying. I was serious about a boy when I was fifteen. Wilson Bufferton Lawrence. The Fourth. Buff to his friends.”

“Jesus, where do you guys come up with these names? What do you do with somebody named Buff? Play polo or squash?”

He’d leveled her temper, she realized. It was something else he was good at. Since he didn’t appear to mind her being mad, it often seemed a waste of time to be mad.

“Tennis, actually. On what you’d call our first official date, we played tennis at the club. I beat him in straight sets, and that was the end of our tender romance.”

“You’d have to expect someone who answers to Buff to be an asshole.”

“I was crushed, then I was mad. I liked being mad better.”

“Me too. What became of Buff?”

“Hmmm. As I was informed by my mother over the weekend, he’s going to be married for the second time this fall. His first marriage lasted slightly longer than our long-ago tennis match.”

“Better luck next time.”

“Naturally,” she said, very soberly, “he’s in finance, as is expected of a fourth-generation Lawrence, and the happy couple is house hunting for their little fifty-room love nest as we speak.”

“It’s nice to know you’re not still bitter.”

“I was reminded, a total of five times, I believe, that I’ve yet to afford my parents the pleasure of spending lavish amounts of money on a wedding that would show the Lawrences, among others, a thing or two.”

“So . . . you and your mother had a nice visit on Mother’s Day.” Though her expression now all but radiated irritation, he kept working. “Careful, you could spill blood with that sneer.”

She took a deep breath, angled her head properly again. “My visits with my mother can rarely be defined as ‘nice.’ I suspect you spent this past Sunday going to see each one of your mothers—sisters.”

“It’s hard to pin down just what they are. Yeah, I spent some time with each of them. Took them their presents. And since each one of them cried, I figure they were a big hit.”

“What did you get them?”

“I did small family portraits. Anna and Cam and the boys, and so on, for each one.”

“That’s nice. That’s lovely,” she said softly. “I got my mother a Baccarat vase and a dozen red roses. She was very pleased.”

He set down his pastels, dusted his hands on his jeans as he crossed to her. And took her face in his hands. “Then why do you look so sad?”

“I’m not sad.”

In response, he simply pressed his lips to her forehead, keeping them there as he felt her tense, then relax.

She couldn’t remember ever having a conversation like this with anyone before. And she couldn’t fathom why it seemed perfectly natural to have it with him. “It would be difficult for you to understand a conflicted family when yours is so united.”

“We have plenty of conflicts,” he corrected.

“No. Not at the core, you don’t. I need to get downstairs.”

“I still have some time left,” he said, holding her in place when she started to slide off the stool.

“You’ve stopped working.”

“I still have some time left,” he repeated, and gestured to her timer. “If there’s one thing I know about, it’s family conflict, and what it does to you inside. I spent the first third of my life in a constant state of conflict.”

“You’re speaking of before you came to live with your grandfather? I’ve read stories about you, but you don’t discuss that aspect,” she said when his head came up.

“Yeah.” He waited for the constriction in his chest to ease. “Before. When I lived with my biological mother.”

“I see.”

“No, sugar, you don’t. She was a whore and a drunk and a junkie, and she made the first few years of my life a nightmare.”

“I’m sorry.” He was right, she supposed, it was something she couldn’t see clearly. But she touched his hand, then took his hand, in an instinctive gesture of comfort. “It must have been horrible for you. Still, it’s obvious she’s nothing to you.”

“That’s what you got out of one statement from me and a handful of articles?”

“No. That’s what I got after eating crab and potato salad with you and your family. Now you look sad,” she murmured, and shook her head. “I don’t know why we’re talking about these things.”

He wasn’t sure why he’d brought up Gloria himself. Maybe it was as simple as speaking out loud to chase away ghosts. Or as complex as needing Dru to know who he was, all the way through.

“That’s what people do, people who are interested in each other. They talk about who they are and where they’ve come from.”

“I told you—”

“Yeah, you don’t want to be interested. But you are.” He traced a finger over her hair, from the short, spiky bangs to the tender nape. “And since we’ve been dating for several weeks—”

“We haven’t dated at all.”

He leaned down and caught her up in a kiss as hot as it was brief. “See?” Before she could comment, his mouth took hers again. Softer now, slower, deeper, with those wonderful hands skimming over her face, along her throat and shoulders.

Every muscle in her body went loose. Every vow she’d made about men and relationships crumbled.

When he eased back, she took a careful breath. And changed her line in the sand. “I may end up sleeping with you, but I’m not dating you.”

“So, I’m good enough to have sex with, but I don’t get a candlelit dinner? I feel so cheap.”

Damn it. Damn it. She liked him. “Dating’s a circular, often tortuous route to sex. I choose to skip it. But I said I might sleep with you, not that I would.”

“Maybe we should play tennis first.”

“Okay. You’re funny. That’s appealing. I admire your work, and I like your family. All completely superfluous to a physical relationship, but a nice bonus all in all. I’ll think about it.”

Saved by the bell, she thought when the timer buzzed. She got off the stool, then wandered to the easel. She saw her face a half dozen times. Different angles, different expressions. “I don’t understand this.”

“What?” He joined her at the easel. “Bella donna,” he murmured, and surprised a shiver out of her.

“I thought you were doing a study of me sitting on the stool. You started it, but you’ve got all these other sketches scattered around it.”

“You weren’t in the mood to pose today. You had things on your mind. They showed. So I worked with them. It gives me some insight, and some ideas about what I want in a more formal portrait.”

He watched her brow knit. “You said I could have four hours on Sunday,” he reminded her. “I’d like to work outside, weather permitting. I’ve been by your house. It’s terrific. Any objection to working there?”

“At my house?”

“It’s a great spot. You know that or you wouldn’t be there. You’re too particular to settle. Besides, it’ll be simpler for you. Ten o’clock okay?”

“I suppose.”

“Oh, and about the foxgloves? How many more sittings can I get if I frame it for you?”

“I don’t—”

“If you bring it back to me, I’ll frame it, then you can decide what it’s worth in trade. Fair enough?”

“It’s down in the shop. I was going to take it to a framer this week.”

“I’ll stop down and get it before I leave today.” He walked his fingers up her arm. “I guess there’s no point in asking you to have dinner with me tonight.”

“None at all.”

“I could just stop by your place later for some quick, cheap sex.”

“That’s awfully tempting, but I don’t think so.” She strolled to the door, then glanced back at him. “If and when we go there, Seth, I can promise it won’t be cheap. And it won’t be quick.”

When the door closed, he rubbed his belly that had tightened at that last provocative look she’d sent him.

He glanced back at the canvas. She was, he decided, quite a number of women rolled up in one fascinating package. Every single one of them appealed to him.

 

“SOMETHING’S troubling him.” Anna boxed Cam into the bathroom—one place almost guaranteed to provide space for an uninterrupted conversation in her personal madhouse. She paced the confined area and talked to his silhouette on the shower curtain.

“He’s okay. He’s just getting his rhythm back.”

“He’s not sleeping well. I can tell. And I swear I heard him talking to himself the other night.”

“You do plenty of solo babbling when you’re pissed off,” Cam mumbled.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”

With an expression between smug and grim—because she’d heard him perfectly—Anna flushed the toilet. Then smiled in cool satisfaction as he cursed at the sudden blast of hot water. “Goddamn it, why do you do that?”

“Because it irritates you and gets your attention. Now about Seth—”

“He’s painting,” Cam said in exasperation. “He’s working at the boatyard, he’s catching up with the family. Give him some time, Anna.”

“Have you noticed what he’s not doing? He’s not going out with his friends. He’s not dating Dru, or anyone else. Though it’s clear from the way he looks at her there isn’t going to be anyone else for the time being.”

Or ever, she concluded.

“He’s downstairs playing video games with Jake,” she continued. “On a Friday night. Aubrey told me he’s only hung out with her once since he got back home. How many weekends did you hang around the house when you were his age?”

“This is Saint Chris, not Monte Carlo. All right, all right,” he said quickly, before she flushed on him again. The woman could be vicious. He loved that about her. “So he’s preoccupied, I’m not blind. I got pretty preoccupied myself when I got tangled up with you.”

“If I thought it was infatuation, or interest or just healthy lust where Dru’s considered, I wouldn’t be worried. And I am worried. I can’t put my finger on it, but when I’m worried about one of my men, there’s a reason.”

“Fine. So go hound him.”

“No. I want you to go hound him.”

“Me?” Cam whisked back the curtain enough to stare at her. “Why me?”

“Because. Mmm, you sure are cute when you’re wet and annoyed.”

“That’s not going to work.”

“Maybe I should come in there and wash your back,” she said and began to unbutton her blouse.

“Okay, that’s going to work.”