by Nora Roberts
He hadn’t had enough sunny days in his ten years to risk ruining one.
‘‘You taking a nap there, Seth?’’
Ethan’s mild voice snapped Seth back to the moment. He blinked, saw the sun glinting off the water, the orange floats bobbing. ‘‘Just thinking,’’ Seth muttered and quickly pulled in another buoy.
‘‘Me, I don’t do much thinking.’’ Jim set the trap on the gunwale and began culling crabs. His leathered face creased in grins. ‘‘Gives you brain fever.’’
‘‘Shit,’’ Seth said, leaning over to study the catch. ‘‘That one’s starting to molt.’’
Jim grunted, held up a crab with a shell cracking along the back. ‘‘This buster’ll be somebody’s soft-shell sand-wich by tomorrow.’’ He winked at Seth as he tossed the crab into the tank. ‘‘Maybe mine.’’
Foolish, who was still young enough to deserve the name, sniffed at the trap, inciting a quick and ugly crab riot. As claws snapped, the pup leaped back with a yelp.
‘‘That there dog.’’ Jim shook with laughter. ‘‘He don’t have to worry about no brain fever.’’
• • •
EVEN WHEN THEY’D TAK en the day’s catch to the waterfront, emptied the tank, and dropped Jim off, the day wasn’t over. Ethan stepped back from the controls. ‘‘We’ve got to go into the boatyard. You want to take her in?’’
Though Seth’s eyes were shielded by the dark sunglasses, Ethan imagined that their expression matched the boy’s dropped jaw. It only amused him when Seth jerked a shoulder as if such things were an everyday occurrence.
‘‘Sure. No problem.’’ With sweaty palms, Seth took the helm.
Ethan stood by, hands casually tucked in his back pockets, eyes alert. There was plenty of water traffic. A pretty weekend afternoon drew the recreational sailors to the Bay. But they didn’t have far to go, and the kid had to learn sometime. You couldn’t live in St. Chris and not know how to pilot a workboat.
‘‘A little to starboard,’’ he told Seth. ‘‘See that skiff there? Sunday sailor, and he’s going to cut right across your bow if you keep this heading.’’
Seth narrowed his eyes, studied the boat and the people on deck. He snorted. ‘‘That’s because he’s paying more attention to that girl in the bikini than to the wind.’’
‘‘Well, she looks fine in the bikini.’’
‘‘I don’t see what’s the big deal about breasts.’’
To his credit, Ethan didn’t laugh out loud, but nodded soberly. ‘‘I guess part of that’s because we don’t have them.’’
‘‘I sure don’t want any.’’
‘‘Give it a couple of years,’’ Ethan murmured under the cover of the engine noise. And the thought of that made him wince. What the hell were they going to do when the kid hit puberty? Somebody was going to have to talk to him about . . . things. He knew Seth already had too much sexual knowledge, but it was all the dark and sticky sort. The same sort he himself had known about at much too early an age.
One of them was going to have to explain how things should be, could be—and before too much more time passed.
He hoped to hell it wasn’t going to have to be him.
He caught sight of the boatyard, the old brick building, the spanking new dock he and his brothers had built. Pride rippled through him. Maybe it didn’t look like much with its pitted bricks and patched roof, but they were making something out of it. The windows were dusty, but they were new and unbroken.
‘‘Cut back on the throttle. Take her in slow.’’ Absently Ethan put a hand over Seth’s on the controls. He felt the boy stiffen, then relax. He still had a problem with being touched unexpectedly, Ethan noted. But it was passing. ‘‘That’s the way, just a bit more to starboard.’’
When the boat bumped gently against the pilings, Ethan jumped onto the pier to secure lines. ‘‘Nice job.’’ At his nod, Simon, all but quivering with anticipation, leaped overboard. Yipping frantically, Foolish clambered onto the gunwale, hesitated, then followed.
‘‘Hand me up the cooler, Seth.’’
Grunting only a little, Seth hefted it. ‘‘Maybe I could pilot the boat sometime when we’re crabbing.’’
‘‘Maybe.’’ Ethan waited for the boy to scramble safely onto the pier before heading to the rear cargo doors of the building.
They were already open wide and the soul-stirring sound of Ray Charles flowed out through them. Ethan set the cooler down just inside the doors and put his hands on his hips.
The hull was finished. Cam had put in dog’s hours to get that much done before he left for his honeymoon. They’d planked it, rabbeting the edges so that they would lap, yet remain smooth at the seams.
The two of them had completed the steam-bent framing, using pencil lines as guides and ‘‘walking’’ each frame carefully into place with slow, steady pressure. The hull was solid. There would be no splits in a Quinn boat’s planking.
The design was primarily Ethan’s with a few adjustments here and there of Cam’s. The hull was an arc-bottom, expensive to construct but with the virtues of stability and speed. Ethan knew his client.
He’d designed the shape of the bow with this in mind and had decided on a cruiser bow, attractive and, again, good for speed, buoyant. The stern was a counterdesign of moderate length, providing an overhang that would make the boat’s length greater than her waterline length.
It was a sleek, appealing look. Ethan understood that his client was every bit as concerned with appearance as he was with basic seaworthiness.
He’d used Seth for grunt labor when it was time to coat the interior with the fifty-fifty mix of hot linseed oil and turpentine. It was sweaty work, guaranteed to cause a few burns despite caution and gloves. Still, the boy had held up fine.
From where he stood, Ethan could study the sheerline, the outline at the top edge of the hull. He’d gone with a flattened sheerline to ensure a roomier, drier craft with good headroom below. His client liked to take friends and family out for a sail.
The man had insisted on teak, though Ethan had told him pine or cedar would have done the job well enough for hull planking. The man had money to spend on his hobby, Ethan thought now—and money to spend on status. But he had to admit, the teak looked wonderful.
His brother Phillip was working on the decking. Stripped to the waist in defense against the heat and humidity, his dark bronze hair protected by a black capwithout team name or emblem and worn bill to the back, he was screwing the deck planks into place. Every few seconds, the hard, high-pitched buzz of the electric driver competed with Ray Charles’s creamy tenor.
‘‘How’s it going?’’ Ethan called over the din.
Phillip’s head came up. His martyred-angel’s face was damp with sweat, his golden-brown eyes annoyed. He’d just been reminding himself that he was an advertising executive, for God’s sake, not a carpenter.
‘‘It’s hotter than a summer in hell in here and it’s only June. We’ve got to get some fans in here. You got anything cold, or at least wet, in that cooler? I ran out of liquids an hour ago.’’
‘‘Turn on the tap in the john and you get water,’’ Ethan said mildly as he bent to take a cold soft drink from the cooler. ‘‘It’s a new technology.’’
‘‘Christ knows what’s in that tap water.’’ Phillip caught the can Ethan tossed him and grimaced at the label. ‘‘At least they tell you what chemicals they load in here.’’
‘‘Sorry, we drank all the Evian. You know how Jim is about his designer water. Can’t get enough of it.’’
‘‘Screw you,’’ Phillip said, but without heat. He glugged the chilly Pepsi, then raised a brow when Ethan came up to inspect his work.
‘‘Nice job.’’
‘‘Gee, thanks, boss. Can I have a raise?’’
‘‘Sure, double what you’re getting now. Seth’s the math whiz. What’s zip times zip, Seth?’’
‘‘Double zip,’’ Seth said with a quick grin. His fingers itched to try ou
t the electric screwdriver. So far, nobody would let him touch it or any of the other power tools.
‘‘Well, now I can afford that cruise to Tahiti.’’
‘‘Why don’t you grab a shower—unless you object to washing with tap water, too. I can take over here.’’
It was tempting. Phillip was grimy, sweaty, and miserably hot. He would cheerfully have killed three strangers for one cold glass of Pouilly-Fuisse. But he knew Ethan had been up since before dawn and had already put in what any normal person would consider a full day.
‘‘I can handle a couple more hours.’’
‘‘Fine.’’ It was exactly the response Ethan had expected. Phillip tended to bitch, but he never let you down. ‘‘I think we can get this deck knocked out before we call it a day.’’
‘‘Can I—’’
‘‘No,’’ Ethan and Phillip said together, anticipating Seth’s question.
‘‘Why the hell not?’’ he demanded. ‘‘I’m not stupid. I won’t shoot anybody with a stupid screw or anything.’’
‘‘Because we like to play with it.’’ Phillip smiled. ‘‘And we’re bigger than you. Here.’’ He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet and found a five. ‘‘Go on down to Crawford’s and get me some bottled water. If you don’t whine about it, you can get some ice cream with the change.’’
Seth didn’t whine, but he did mutter about being used like a slave as he called his dog and headed out.
‘‘We ought to show him how to use the tools when we have more time,’’ Ethan commented. ‘‘He’s got good hands.’’
‘‘Yeah, but I wanted him out. I didn’t have the chance to tell you last night. The detective tracked Gloria De-Lauter as far as Nags Head.’’
‘‘She’s heading south, then.’’ He lifted his gaze to Phillip’s. ‘‘He pin her yet?’’
‘‘No, she moves around a lot, and she’s using cash. A lot of cash.’’ His mouth tightened. ‘‘She’s got plenty to toss around since Dad paid her a bundle for Seth.’’
‘‘Doesn’t look like she’s interested in coming back here.’’
‘‘I’d say she’s got as much interest in that kid as a rabid alley cat has in a dead kitten.’’ His own mother had been the same, Phillip remembered, when she’d been around at all. He had never met Gloria DeLauter, but he knew her. Despised her.
‘‘If we don’t find her,’’ Phillip added, rolling the cold can over his forehead, ‘‘we’re never going to get to the truth about Dad, or Seth.’’
Ethan nodded. He knew Phillip was on a mission here, and knew he was most likely right. But he wondered, much too often for comfort, what they would do when they had the truth.
ETHAN’S PLANS AFTER A fourteen-hour workday were to take an endless shower and drink a cold beer. He did both, simultaneously. They’d gotten take-out subs for dinner, and he had his on the back porch alone, in the soft quiet of early twilight. Inside, Seth and Phillip were arguing over which video to watch first. Arnold Schwarzenegger was doing battle with KevinCostner.
Ethan had already placed his bets on Arnold.
They had an unspoken agreement that Phillip would take responsibility for Seth on Saturday nights. It gave Ethan a choice for the evening. He could go in and join them, as he sometimes did for these movie fests. He could go up and settle in with a book, as he often preferred to do. He could go out, as he rarely did.
Before his father had died so suddenly and life had changed for all of them, Ethan had lived in his own little house, with his own quiet routine. He still missed it, though he tried not to resent the young couple who were now renting it from him. They loved the coziness of it and told him so often. The small rooms with their tall windows, the little covered porch, the shady privacy of the trees that sheltered it, and the gentle lap of water against shore.
He loved it, too. With Cam married and Anna moving in, he might have been able to slip out again. But the rental money was needed now. And, more important, he’d given his word. He would live here until all the legal battles were waged and won and Seth was permanently theirs.
He rocked, listening to the night birds begin to call. And must have dozed because the dream came, and came clearly.
‘‘You always were more of a loner than the others,’’ Ray commented. He sat on the porch rail, turned slightly so he could look out to the water if he chose. His hair was shiny as a silver coin in the half light, blowing free in the steady breeze. ‘‘Always liked to go off by yourself to think your thoughts and work out your troubles.’’
‘‘I knew I could always come to you or Mom. I just liked to have a handle on things first.’’
‘‘How about now?’’ Ray shifted to face Ethan directly.
‘‘I don’t know. Maybe I haven’t gotten a good handle on it yet. Seth’s settling in. He’s easier with us. The first few weeks, I kept expecting him to rabbit off. Losing you hurt him almost as much as it did us. Maybe just as much, because he’d just started to believe things were okay for him.’’
‘‘It was bad, the way he had to live before I brought him here. Still, it wasn’t as bad as what you’d faced, Ethan, and you got through.’’
‘‘Almost didn’t.’’ Ethan took out one of his cigars, took his time lighting it. ‘‘Sometimes it still comes back on me. Pain and shame. And the sweaty fear of knowing what’s going to happen.’’ He shrugged it off. ‘‘Seth’s a little younger than I was. I think he’s already shed some of it. As long as he doesn’t have to deal with his mother again.’’
‘‘He’ll have to deal with her eventually, but he won’t be alone. That’s the difference. You’ll all stand by him. You always stood by each other.’’ Ray smiled, his big, wide face creasing everywhere at once. ‘‘What are you doing sitting out here alone on a Saturday night, Ethan? I swear, boy, you worry me.’’
‘‘Had a long day.’’
‘‘When I was your age, I put in long days and longer nights. You just turned thirty, for Christ’s sake. Porch sitting on a warm Saturday night in June is for old men. Go on, take a drive. See where you end up.’’ He winked. ‘‘I bet we both know where that’s likely to be.’’
The sudden blare of automatic gunfire and screams made Ethan jerk in his chair. He blinked and stared hard at the porch rail. There was no one there. Of course there was no one there, he told himself with a quick shake. He’d nodded off for a minute, that was all, and the movie action in the living room had wakened him.
But when he glanced down, he saw the glowing cigar in his hand. Baffled, he simply stared at it. Had he actually taken it out of his pocket and lit it in his sleep? That was ridiculous, absurd. He must have done it before he’d drifted off, the habit so automatic that his mind just didn’t register the moves.
Still, why had he fallen asleep when he didn’t feel the least bit tired? In fact, he felt restless and edgy and too alert.
He rose, rubbing the back of his neck, stretching his legs on a pacing journey up and down the porch. He should just go in and settle down with the movie, some popcorn, and another beer. Even as he reached for the screen door, he swore.
He wasn’t in the mood for Saturday night at the movies. He would just take a drive and see where he ended up.
GRACE’S FEET WERE NUMB all the way to the ankles. The cursed high heels that were part of her cocktail waitress uniform were killers. It wasn’t so bad on a weekday evening when you had time now and then to step out of them or even sit for a few minutes. But Shiney’s Pub always hopped on Saturday night—and so did she.
She carted her tray of empty glasses and full ashtrays to the bar, efficiently unloading as she called out her order to the bartender. ‘‘Two house whites, two drafts, a gin and tonic, and a club soda with lime.’’
She had to pitch her voice over the crowd noise and what was loosely called music from the three-piece band Shiney had hired. The music was always lousy at the pub, because Shiney wouldn’t shell out the money for decent musicians.
But no one
seemed to care.
The stingy dance floor was bumper to bumper with dancers, and the band took this as a sign to boost the volume.
Grace’s head was ringing like steel bells, and her back was beginning to throb in time with the bass.
Her order complete, she carried the tray through the narrow spaces between tables and hoped that the group of young tourists in trendy clothes would be decent tippers.
She served them with a smile, nodded at the signal to run a tab, and followed the hail to the next table.
Her break was still ten minutes away. It might as well have been ten years.
‘‘Hey, there, Gracie.’’
‘‘How’s it going, Curtis, Bobbie.’’ She’d gone to school with them in the dim, distant past. Now they worked for her father, packing seafood. ‘‘Usual?’’
‘‘Yeah, a couple of drafts.’’ Curtis gave Grace his usual—a quick pat on her bow-clad butt. She’d learned not to worry about it. From him it was a harmless enough gesture, even a show of affectionate support. Some of the outlanders who dropped in had hands a great deal less harmless. ‘‘How’s that pretty girl of yours?’’
Grace smiled, understanding that this was one of the reasons she tolerated his pats. He always asked about Aubrey. ‘‘Getting prettier every day.’’ She saw another hand pop up from a nearby table. ‘‘I’ll get you those beers in just a minute.’’
She was carting a tray full of mugs, bowls of beer nuts, and glasses when Ethan walked in. She nearly bobbled it. He never came into the pub on Saturday night. Sometimes he dropped in for a quiet beer midweek, but never when the place was crowded and noisy.
He should have looked the same as every second man in the place. His jeans were faded but clean, a plain white T-shirt tucked into them, his work boots ancient and scuffed. But he didn’t look the same as other men—and never had to Grace.
Maybe it was the lean and rangy body that moved as easily as a dancer through the narrow spaces. Innate grace, she mused, the kind that can’t be taught, and still so blatantly male. He always looked as though he was walking the deck of a ship.
