by Nora Roberts
She shot a look over her shoulder that she hoped revealed nothing more than amused interest. “I might just do that.”
Seth, she thought, careful now to keep her eyes straight ahead. He’d just given her the open door to see Seth the following day.
Cam gave a quiet and male hum. “I gotta say, there’s a woman who knows how to walk.”
“Yes, indeed.” Phillip hooked his hands in his pockets and enjoyed the view. Slim hips and slender legs in breezy maizecolored slacks, a snug little shirt the color of limes tucked into a narrow waist. A sleek and swinging fall of mink-colored hair just skimming strong shoulders.
And the face had been just as attractive. A classic oval with peaches-and-cream skin, a mobile and shapely mouth tinted with a soft, soft pink. Sexy eyebrows, he mused, dark and well arched. He hadn’t been able to see the eyes under them, not through the trendy wire-framed sunglasses. They might be dark to match the hair, or light for contrast.
And that smooth contralto voice had set the whole package off nicely.
“You guys going to stand there watching that woman’s butt all day?” Ethan wanted to know.
“Yeah, like you didn’t notice it.” Cam snorted.
“I noticed. I’m just not making a career out of it. Aren’t we going to get anything done around here?”
“In a minute,” Phillip murmured, smiling to himself when she turned the corner and disappeared. “Sybill. I sure hope you hang around St. Chris for a while.”
SHE DIDN’T KNOW HOW LONG she would stay. Her time was her own. She could work where she chose, and for now she’d chosen this little water town on Maryland’s southern Eastern Shore. Nearly all of her life had been spent in cities, initially because her parents had preferred them and then because she had.
New York, Boston, Chicago, Paris, London, Milan. She understood the urban landscape and its inhabitants. The fact was, Dr. Sybill Griffin had made a career out of the study of urban life. She’d gathered degrees in anthropology, sociology, and psychology along the way. Four years at Harvard, postgraduate work at Oxford, a doctorate from Columbia.
She’d thrived in academia, and now, six months before her thirtieth birthday, she could write her own ticket. Which was precisely what she’d chosen to do for a living. Write.
Her first book, Urban Landscape, had been well received, earned her critical acclaim and a modest income. But her second, Familiar Strangers, had rocketed onto the national lists, had taken her into the whirlwind of book tours, lectures, talk shows. Now that PBS was producing a documentary series based on her observations and theories of city life and customs, she was much more than financially secure. She was independent.
Her publisher had been open to her idea of a book on the dynamics and traditions of small towns. Initially, she’d considered it merely a cover, an excuse to travel to St. Christ opher’s, to spend time there on personal business.
But then she’d begun to think it through. It would make an interesting study. After all, she was a trained observer and skilled at documenting those observations.
Work might save her nerves in any case, she considered, pacing her pretty little hotel suite. Certainly it would be easier and more productive to approach this entire trip as a kind of project. She needed time, objectivity, and access to the subjects involved.
Thanks to convenient circumstance, it appeared she had all three now.
She stepped out onto the two-foot slab that the hotel loftily called a terrace. It offered a stunning view of the Chesapeake Bay and intriguing glimpses of life on the waterfront. Already she’d watched workboats chug into dock and unload tanks of the blue crabs the area was famous for. She’d watched the crab pickers at work, the sweep of gulls, the flight of egrets, but she had yet to wander into any of the little shops.
She wasn’t in St. Chris for souvenirs.
Perhaps she would drag a table near the window and work with that view. When the breeze was right she could catch snippets of voices, a slower, more fluid dialect than she heard on the streets of New York, where she’d based herself for the last few years.
Not quite Southern, she thought, such as you would hear in Atlanta or Mobile or Charleston, but a long way from the clipped tones and hard consonants of the North.
On some sunny afternoons she could sit on one of the little iron benches that dotted the waterfront and watch the little world that had formed here out of water and fish and human sweat.
She would see how a small community of people like this, based on the Bay and tourists, interacted. What traditions, what habits, what clicheés ran through them. Styles, she mused, of dress, of movements, of speech. Inhabitants so rarely realized how they conformed to unspoken rules of behavior dictated by place.
Rules, rules, rules. They existed everywhere. Sybill believed in them absolutely.
What rules did the Quinns live by? she wondered. What type of glue had fashioned them into a family? They would, of course, have their own codes, their own short-speak, with a pecking order and a reward and discipline standard.
Where and how would Seth fit into it?
Finding out, discreetly, was a priority.
There was no reason for the Quinns to know who she was, to suspect her connection. It would be better for all parties if no one knew. Otherwise, they could very well attempt, and possibly succeed in blocking her from Seth altogether. He’d been with them for months now. She couldn’t be sure what he’d been told, what spin they might have put on the circumstances.
She needed to observe, to study, to consider, and to judge. Then she would act. She would not be pressured, she ordered herself. She would not be made to feel guilty or responsible. She would take her time.
After their meeting that afternoon, she thought it would be ridiculously simple to get to know the Quinns. All she had to do was wander into that big brick building and show an interest in the process of creating a wooden sailboat.
Phillip Quinn would be her entreée. He’d displayed all the typical behavioral patterns of early-stage attraction. It wouldn’t be a hardship to take advantage of that. Since he only spent a few days a week in St. Chris, there was little danger of taking a casual flirtation into serious territory.
Wrangling an invitation to his home here wouldn’t present a problem. She needed to see where and how Seth was living, who was in charge of his welfare.
Was he happy?
Gloria had said they’d stolen her son. That they’d used their influence and their money to snatch him away.
But Gloria was a liar. Sybill squeezed her eyes shut, struggling to be calm, to be objective, not to be hurt. Yes, Gloria was a liar, she thought again. A user. But she was also Seth’s mother.
Going to the desk, Sybill opened her Filofax and slid the photograph out. A little boy with straw-colored hair and bright blue eyes smiled out at her. She’d taken the picture herself, the first and only time she’d seen Seth.
He must have been four, she thought now. Phillip had said he was ten now, and Sybill remembered it had been six years since Gloria showed up on her doorstep in New York with her son in tow.
She’d been desperate, of course. Broke, furious, weepy, begging. There’d been no choice but to take her in, not with the child staring up with those huge, haunted eyes. Sybill hadn’t known anything about children. She’d never been around them. Perhaps that was why she’d fallen for Seth so quickly and so hard.
And when she’d come home three weeks later and found them gone, along with all the cash in the house, her jewelry, and her prized collection of Daum china, she’d been devastated.
She should have expected it, she told herself now. It had been classic Gloria behavior. But she’d believed, had needed to believe, that they could finally connect. That the child would make a difference. That she could help.
Well, this time, she thought as she tucked the photo away again, she would be more careful, less emotional. She knew that Gloria was telling at least part of the truth this time. Whatever she did from this point
on would depend on her own judgment.
She would begin to judge when she saw her nephew again.
Sitting, she turned on her laptop and began to write her initial notes.
The Quinn brothers appear to have an easy, malepattern relationship. From my single observation I would suspect they work together well. It will take additional study to determine what function each provides in this business partnership, and in their familial relations.
Both Cameron and Ethan Quinn are newly married. It will be necessary to meet their wives to understand the dynamics of this family. Logically one of them will represent the mother figure. Since Cameron’s wife, Anna Spinelli Quinn, has a full-time career, one would suspect that Grace Monroe Quinn fulfills this function. However, it’s a mistake to generalize such matters and this will require personal observations.
I found it telling that the business sign the Quinns hung this afternoon contained Seth’s name, but as a Quinn. I can’t say if this disposal of his legal name is for their benefit or his.
The boy must certainly be aware that the Quinns are filing for custody. I can’t say as yet whether he has received any of the letters Gloria has written him. Perhaps the Quinns have disposed of them. Though I sympathize with her plight and her desperation to get her child back, it’s best that she remain unaware that I’ve come here. Once I’ve documented my findings, I’ll contact her. If there is a legal battle in the future, it’s best to approach the matter with facts rather than raw emotion.
Hopefully the lawyer Gloria has engaged will contact the Quinns through the proper legal channels shortly.
For myself, I hope to see Seth tomorrow and gain some insight into the situation. It would be helpful to determine how much he knows about his parentage. As I have only recently become fully informed, I’ve not yet completely assimilated all the facts and their repercussions.
We will soon see if small towns are indeed a hotbed of information on their inhabitants. I intend to learn all I can learn about Professor Raymond Quinn before I’m done.
THREE
THE TYPICAL VENUE FOR SOcializing, information gathering, and mating rituals, small town or big city, Sybill observed, was the local bar.
Whether it was decorated with brass and ferns or peanut shells and tin ashtrays, whether the music was whiny country or heart-reeling rock, it was the traditional spot for gathering and exchanging information.
Shiney’s Pub in St. Christopher’s certainly fit the bill. The decor here was dark wood, cheap chrome, and faded posters of boats. The music was loud, she decided, unable to fully identify the style booming out of the towering amps flanking the small stage where four young men pounded away at guitars and drums with more enthusiasm than talent.
A trio of men at the bar kept their eyes glued to the baseball game on the small-screen TV bracketed to the wall behind the bar. They seemed content to watch the silent ballet of pitcher and batter while they nursed brown bottles of beer and ate fistfuls of pretzels.
The dance floor was jammed. There were only four couples, but the limited space caused several incidents of elbow rapping and hip bumping. No one seemed to mind.
The waitresses were decked out in foolish male-fantasy outfits—short black skirts, tiny, tight V-neck blouses, fishnet stockings, and stiletto heels.
Sybill felt instant sympathy.
She tucked herself into a wobbly table as far away from the amps as humanly possible. The smoke and noise didn’t bother her, nor did the sticky floor or the jittery table. Her choice of seating afforded her the clearest view of the occupants.
She’d been desperate to escape her hotel room for a couple of hours. Now she was set to sit back, enjoy a glass of wine, and observe the natives.
The waitress who approached was a petite brunette with an enviable bustline and a cheery smile. “Hi. What can I get you?”
“A glass of Chardonnay and a side of ice.”
“Coming right up.” She set a black plastic bowl filled with pretzels on the table and picked her way back to the bar, taking orders as she went.
Sybill wondered if she’d just had her first encounter with Ethan’s wife. Her information was that Grace Quinn worked at this bar. But there had been no wedding ring on the little brunette’s finger, and Sybill assumed that a new bride would certainly wear one.
The other waitress? That one looked dangerous, she decided. Blond, built, and brooding. She was certainly attractive, in an obvious way. Still, nothing about her shouted newlywed either, particularly the way she leaned over an appreciative customer’s table to give him the full benefit of her cleavage.
Sybill frowned and nibbled on a pretzel. If that was Grace Quinn, she would definitely be scratched from mother-figure status.
Something happened in the ball game, Sybill assumed, as the three men began to shout, cheering on someone named Eddie.
Out of habit she took out her notebook and began to record observations. The backslapping and arm punching of male companions. The body language of the females, leaning in for intimacy. The hair flipping, the eye shifting, hand gesturing. And of course, the mating ritual of the contemporary couple through the dance.
That was how Phillip saw her when he came in. She was smiling to herself, her gaze roaming, her hand scribbling. She looked, he thought, very cool, very remote. She might have been behind a thin sheet of one-way glass.
She’d pulled her hair back so that it lay in a sleek tail on her neck and left her face unframed. Gold drops studded with single colored stones swung at her ears. He watched her put her pen down to shrug out of a suede jacket of pale yellow.
He had driven in on impulse, giving in to restlessness. Now he blessed that vaguely dissatisfied mood that had dogged him all evening. She was, he decided, exactly what he’d been looking for.
“Sybill, right?” He saw the quick surprise flicker in her eyes when she glanced up. And he saw that those eyes were as clear and pure as lake water.
“That’s right.” Recovering, she closed her notebook and smiled. “Phillip, of Boats by Quinn.”
“You here alone?”
“Yes . . . unless you’d like to sit down and have a drink.”
“I’d love to.” He pulled out a chair, nodding toward her notebook. “Did I interrupt you?”
“Not really.” She shifted her smile to the waitress when her wine was served.
“Hey, Phil, want a draft?”
“Marsha, you read my mind.”
Marsha, Sybill thought. That eliminated the perky brunette. “It’s unusual music.”
“The music here consistently sucks.” He flashed a smile, quick, charming, and amused. “It’s a tradition.”
“Here’s to tradition, then.” She lifted her glass, sipped, then with a little hmmm began transferring ice into the wine.
“How would you rate the wine?”
“Well, it’s basic, elemental, primitive.” She sipped again, smiled winningly. “It sucks.”
“That’s also a proud Shiney’s tradition. He’s got Sam Adams on draft. It’s a better bet.”
“I’ll remember that.” Lips curved, she tilted her head. “Since you know the local traditions, I take it you’ve lived here for some time.”
“Yeah.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her, as something pushed at the edges of his memory. “I know you.”
Her heart bounded hard into her throat. Taking her time, she picked up her glass again. Her hand remained steady, her voice even and easy. “I don’t think so.”
“No, I do. I know that face. It didn’t click before, when you were wearing sunglasses. Something about . . .” He reached out, put a hand under her chin and angled her head again. “That look right there.”
His fingertips were just a bit rough, his touch very confident and firm. The gesture itself warned her that this was a man used to touching women. And she was a woman unused to being touched.
In defense, Sybill arched an eyebrow. “A woman with a cynical bent would suspect that’s a line, and not a very orig
inal one.”
“I don’t use lines,” he murmured, concentrating on her face. “Except originals. I’m good with images, and I’ve seen that one. Clear, intelligent eyes, slightly amused smile. Sybill . . .” His gaze skimmed over her face, then his lips curved slowly. “Griffin. Doctor Sybill Griffin. Familiar Strangers.”
She let out the breath that had clogged in her lungs. Her success was still very new, and having her face recognized continued to surprise her. And, in this case, relieve her. There was no connection between Dr. Griffin and Seth DeLauter.
“You are good,” she said lightly. “So, did you read the book or just look at my picture on the dust jacket?”
“I read it. Fascinating stuff. In fact, I liked it enough to go out and buy your first one. Haven’t read it yet though.”
“I’m flattered.”
“You’re good. Thanks, Marsha,” he added when she set his beer in front of him.
“Y’all just holler if you need anything.” Marsha winked. “Holler loud. This band’s breaking sound records tonight.”
Which gave him an excuse to edge his chair closer and lean in. Her scent was subtle, he noted. A man had to get very close to catch its message. “Tell me, Dr. Griffin, what’s a renowned urbanite doing in an unapologetically rural water town like St. Chris?”
“Research. Behavioral patterns and traditions,” she said, lifting her glass in a half toast. “Of small towns and rural communities.”
“Quite a change of pace for you.”
“Sociology and cultural interest aren’t, and shouldn’t be, limited to cities.”
“Taking notes?”
“A few. The local tavern,” she began, more comfortable now. “The regulars. The trio at the bar, obsessed with the ritual of male-dominated sports to the exclusion of the noise and activities around them. They could be home, kicked back in their Barcaloungers, but they prefer the bonding experience of passive participation in the event. In this way they have companionship, partners with whom to share the interest, who will either argue or agree. It doesn’t matter which. It’s the pattern that matters.”
