by Nora Roberts
“Bitch,” was Phillip’s first comment. “She’s testing us out, trying her hand at a little more blackmail to see if we’ll fall for it the way Dad did.”
“You can’t.” Anna put a hand on Cam’s arm, felt the quiver of rage. “You have to let the system work. You have to trust me to see that she doesn’t do this. In court—”
“Anna.” Cam shoved the letter into the hand Ethan had held out. “We’re not going to put that boy through a court case. Not if there’s another way.”
“You don’t mean to pay her. Cam—”
“I don’t mean for her to have one fucking cent.” He prowled away, struggling to fight off fury. “She thinks she’s got us by the balls, but she’s wrong. We’re not one lone old man.” He whirled back, eyes blazing. “Let’s see her try to get through us to lay hands on Seth.”
“She was pretty careful how she worded things,” Ethan commented as he scanned the letter again. “Doesn’t make it less of a threat, but she’s not stupid.”
“She’s greedy,” Phillip put in. “If she’s already angling for more after what Dad paid her, she’s testing the depth of the well.”
“She sees you as her source now,” Anna agreed. “And there’s no predicting what she’ll do if she knows that source isn’t easily tapped.” Pausing, she pressed her fingers to her temples, ordered herself to think. “If she comes back into the county and attempts to make contact with Seth, I can have her detained, legally barred—at least temporarily—from direct contact with him. You have guardianship. And Seth is old enough to speak for himself. The question is, will he?”
She lifted her hands, frustrated, let them fall. “He’s told me very little about his life before he came here. I’ll need specifics in order to block any custody attempt on her part.”
“He doesn’t want her. And she doesn’t want him.” Ethan resisted, barely, crumpling the letter into a ball. “Unless he’s worth the price of another fix. She let her johns try for him.”
Anna shifted to face him, kept her eyes calm and direct on his. “Did Seth tell you that? Did he tell you there had been sexual abuse and she’d been a party to it?”
“He told me enough.” Ethan’s mouth went hard and grim. “And it’s up to him if he wants to tell anybody else and see it put in some goddamn county report.”
“Ethan.” Anna laid a hand on his rigid arm. “I love him, too. I only want to help him.”
“I know.” He stepped back because the anger was too fierce and too likely to spew on everyone. “I’m sorry, but there are times the system makes it worse. Makes you feel like you’re being swallowed up.” He struggled to block out the echo of pain. “He’s going to know he’s got us, with or without any system, to stand with him.”
“The lawyer needs to know she made contact.” Phillip took the letter from Ethan, folded it, and tucked it back into the envelope. “And we have to decide how we’re going to handle it. My first impulse is to go down to Virginia Beach, dig her out of her hole, and tell her in a way she’d understand just what’s going to happen to her if she comes within fifty miles of Seth.”
“Threatening her won’t help . . .” Anna began.
“But it would feel damn good.” Cam bared his teeth. “Let me do it.”
“On the other hand,” Phillip continued, “I think it might be very effective—and look very good if it ever comes to a legal battle—if our pal Gloria got an official letter from Seth’s caseworker. Outlining the status, the options, and the conclusions reached. Contacting or attempting to contact a birth mother who may be rethinking giving up custody of her child—a child who’s in your files—would come within the parameters of your job, wouldn’t it, Anna?”
She mulled it over, knowing it was a fine line and expert balance would be required to walk it. “I can’t threaten her. But . . . I may be able to make her stop and think. But the big question is, do we tell Seth?”
“He’s afraid of her,” Cam murmured. “Damn it, the kid’s just starting to relax, to believe he’s safe. Why do we have to tell him she’s poking her finger back into his life?”
“Because he’s got a right to know.” Ethan spoke quietly. His temper had leveled off, and he was able to think clearly again. “He’s got a right to know what he might have to fight. If you know what’s after you, you’ve got a better chance. And because,” he added, “the letter was addressed to the Quinns. He’s one of us.”
“I’d rather burn it,” Phillip muttered. “But you’re right.”
“We’ll all tell him,” Cam agreed.
“I’d like to do the talking.”
Both Cam and Phillip stared at Ethan. “You would?”
“He might take it easier from me.” He looked over as Seth came through the door. “So let’s find out.”
“Mother Crawford put on extra hot fudge. Man, she just poured it on. There’s about a million tourists up on the waterfront, and . . .”
His excited chatter trailed off. His eyes went from gleeful to wary. Inside his chest, his heart began to drum. He recognized trouble, bad trouble. It had its own smell. “What’s the deal?”
Anna took the large bag from him and turned to set the plastic-topped dishes of ice cream out. “Why don’t you sit down, Seth?”
“I don’t need to sit down.” It was easier to get a head start running if you were already on your feet.
“There was a letter that came today.” It was best, Ethan knew, if hard news was delivered fast and clean. “From your mother.”
“She’s here?” The fear was back, sharp as a scalpel. Seth took one quick step in retreat, going stiff as a board when Cam laid a hand on his shoulder.
“No, she’s not here. But we are. You remember that.”
Seth shuddered once, then planted his feet. “What the hell did she want? Why’s she sending letters? I don’t want to see it.”
“Then you don’t have to,” Anna assured him. “Why don’t you let Ethan explain, then we’ll talk about what we’re going to do.”
“She knows Ray’s dead,” Ethan began. “I gotta figure she’s known right along, but she’s taken her time getting to it.”
“He gave her money.” Seth swallowed hard to gulp down the fear. Quinns weren’t afraid, he told himself. They weren’t afraid of anything. “She took off. She doesn’t care that he’s dead.”
“I don’t suppose she does, but she’s hoping for more money. That’s what the letter’s about.”
“She wants me to pay her?” Fresh and bright fear exploded in Seth’s brain. “I don’t have any money. What’s she writing to me for money for?”
“She wasn’t writing to you.”
Seth took a ragged breath and concentrated on Ethan’s face. The eyes were clear and patient, the mouth firm and serious. Ethan knew, was all he could think. Ethan knew what it was like. He knew about the rooms, the smells, the fat hands in the dark.
“She wants you to pay her.” Part of him wanted to beg them to do it. To pay her whatever she wanted. He would swear in blood that he would do anything they asked of him for the rest of his life to honor the debt.
But he couldn’t. Not with Ethan watching him, and waiting. And knowing.
“If you do, she’ll just come back for more. She’ll keep coming back.” Seth rubbed the back of a sweaty hand over his mouth. “As long as she knows where I am she’ll keep coming back. I have to go someplace else, someplace where she can’t find me.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” Ethan crouched so they were closer to eye level. “And she’s not going to get any more money. She’s not going to win.”
Slowly, mechanically, Seth shook his head back and forth. “You don’t know her.”
“I know pieces of her. She’s smart enough to know we’re set on keeping you with us. That we love you enough to pay.” He saw the flash of emotion in Seth’s eyes before the boy lowered them. “And we would pay if that would end it, if that would ease things. But it won’t end or ease it. It’s like you said. She’d just come ba
ck.”
“What are you going to do?”
“It’s what we’re going to do now. All of us,” he said and waited for Seth’s gaze to settle on his face again. “We’ll go on as we’ve been going on, mostly. Phil will talk to the lawyer so we got that end covered.”
“You tell him I’m not going back with her,” Seth said furiously, shooting a desperate look at Phillip. “No matter what, I’m not going back.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Anna’s going to write her a letter,” Ethan continued.
“What kind of letter?”
“A smart one,” Ethan said with the hint of a smile. “With all those fifty-dollar words and that official-sounding stuff. She’ll be doing it as your caseworker, to let Gloria know we’ve got the system and the law behind us. It might give her pause to think.”
“She hates social workers,” Seth put in.
“Good.” For the first time in more than an hour, Anna smiled and meant it. “People who hate something are usually afraid of it, too.”
“One thing that would help, Seth, if you can do it—”
He turned back to Ethan. “What do I have to do?”
“If you could talk to Anna, tell her how things were before—as close to exact as you can manage.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. It’s over. I’m not going back.”
“I know.” Gently, Ethan put his hands on Seth’s trembling shoulders. “And I know talking about it can be almost like being there again. It took me a long time to be able to tell my mother—to tell Stella. To say it all out loud, even though she already knew most of it. It started to get better after that. And it helped her and Ray get the legal crap handled.”
Seth thought of High Noon, of heroes. Of Ethan. “It’s the right thing to do?”
“Yeah, it’s the right thing.”
“Will you come with me?”
“Sure.” Ethan rose, held out a hand. “We’ll go home and talk it through.”
FOURTEEN
“Ready? Mama? Time to go?”
“Almost, Aubrey.” Grace put the finishing touches on her potato salad, sprinkling paprika on to give it zest and color.
Aubrey had been asking her the same question since seven-thirty that morning. Grace decided the only reason she hadn’t run out of patience with her daughter was because she felt just as anxious and eager as a two-year-old herself.
“Maaamaaa.”
At the deep frustration in Aubrey’s voice, Grace had to swallow a chuckle. “Let me see.” Grace tucked the clear wrap tidily around the bowl before she turned and studied her little girl. “You look pretty.”
“I have a bow.” In a purely female gesture, Aubrey lifted a hand and patted the ribbon Grace had threaded through her curls.
“A pink bow.”
“Pink.” With a smile, Aubrey beamed up at her mother. “Pretty Mama.”
“Thanks, baby.” She hoped Ethan thought so. How would he look at her? she wondered. How should they behave? There would be so many people there, and no one—well, besides the Quinns—no one knew they were in love.
In love, she thought with a long, dreamy sigh. It was such a marvelous place to be. She blinked when little arms wrapped around her legs and squeezed.
“Mama! Ready?”
Laughing, Grace hauled her up for a big hug and kiss. “All right. Let’s go.”
No general in the hours before a decisive battle ever ordered his troops into action with more authority and determination than Anna Spinelli Quinn.
“Seth, you set those folding chairs up under the shade trees over there. Isn’t Phillip back with the extra ice yet? He’s been gone twenty minutes. Cam! You and Ethan are putting those picnic tables too close together.”
“Minute ago,” Cam said under his breath, “they were too far apart.” But he walked backward, hauling the table another foot.
“That’s good. That’s fine.” Armed with bright red, white, and blue striped cloths, Anna hurried across the lawn. “Now you can move the umbrella tables, nearer the water, I think.”
Cam narrowed his eyes. “You said you wanted them over by the trees.”
“I changed my mind.” She scanned the yard as she spread the tablecloths.
Cam opened his mouth to protest, but caught Ethan’s warning shake of the head in time. His brother was right, he decided. Arguing wasn’t going to change a thing.
Anna had been on a tear all morning, and when he said as much to Ethan as they moved out of earshot, it was with the irritation of the baffled.
“We’re talking about a practical-minded, organized woman here,” Cam added. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her. It’s just a damn picnic.”
“I guess women get that way over things like this,” was Ethan’s opinion. He remembered the way Grace had refused to let him take a shower in his own bathroom just because Cam and Anna were coming home. Who knew what went on in a female mind?
“She wasn’t this bad over the wedding reception.”
“I expect she had her mind on other things then.”
“Yeah.” Cam grunted as he picked up one of the round umbrella tables—again—and began to cart it toward the sun-dazzled water. “Phil’s the smart one. He got the hell out of the house.”
“He’s always had a knack for it,” Ethan agreed.
He didn’t mind moving tables, or setting up chairs, or any of the dozens of chores—small and large—that Anna came up with. It helped keep his mind off weightier matters.
If he let himself think too much, he started to get a picture of Gloria DeLauter in his head. Because he’d never seen her, the image his brain conjured up was a tall, fleshy woman with tangled straw-colored hair, hard eyes smeared with sooty makeup, a mouth lax from too many trips to the bottle, too many matings with the needle.
The eyes were blue, like his own. The mouth, despite its slick coat of lipstick, shaped like his own. And he knew it wasn’t Seth’s mother’s face he was seeing. It was his own mother’s.
The picture wasn’t dim and fuzzy as it had become over time. It was sharp and clear as yesterday.
It still had the power to ice his blood, to churn a sick animal fear in his stomach that was kin to shame.
It still made him want to strike out with bruised and bloodied fists.
He turned slowly as he heard the squeal of joy. And saw Aubrey racing over the lawn, her eyes bright as sunbeams. And saw Grace, standing by the porch steps, her smile warm and just a little shy.
You’ve got no right, the nasty little voice in his head hissed. No right to touch something so fine and bright.
But, oh, he had a need, one that swamped him like a storm surge and left him floundering. When Aubrey launched herself at him, his arms reached down, swung her up and around as she shrieked in delight.
He wanted her to be his. With a bone-deep longing, he wanted this perfect, this innocent, this laughing child to belong to him.
Grace’s knees wobbled as she walked to them. The picture they made flashed into her mind, into her heart, where she knew it would imprint itself. The lanky man with big hands and a serious smile and the golden-bright child with a pink bow in her hair.
The sun poured over them as full and rich as the love that poured from her heart.
“She’s been ready to come over since she opened her eyes this morning,” Grace began. “I thought we could come a little early and I’d give Anna a hand.” He was watching her so intently, so quietly, her nerves did a rapid dance under her skin. “There’s not much left to do, but—”
She broke off because his arm had snaked out, wrapped around her fast and hard to pull her against him. She had time to draw in one startled breath before his mouth came down on hers. Rough and needy, it shot bolts of heat into her blood, sent her startled brain into a dizzying spin. Dimly she heard Aubrey’s happy squeal.
“Kiss, Mama!”
Oh, yes, Grace thought, sprinting to catch up to this frantic pace he’d set. Please. Kiss me, kiss me, k
iss me.
She thought she heard some sound from him, a sigh perhaps, that came from someplace too deep inside to make a sound. His lips softened. The hand that had clutched the back of her shirt like a man gripping his own life opened, stroked. This gentler, sweeter emotion that shimmered from him was no calmer than that first whip of greed; it only gilded the edges of the yearning he’d stirred.
She could smell him, heat and man. She could smell her daughter, powder and child. Her arms circled them both, instinctively making them a unit, holding there when the kiss ended and she could press her face into his shoulder.
He’d never kissed her in front of anyone. She knew Cam had only been a few feet away when Ethan had taken hold of her. And Seth would have seen . . . and Anna.
What did it mean?
“Kiss me!” Aubrey demanded, patting her hand against Ethan’s cheek and puckering up.
He obliged her, then nuzzled at her neck where it would tickle and make her laugh. Then he turned his head and brushed his lips over Grace’s hair. “I didn’t mean to grab you that way.”
“I was hoping you did,” she murmured. “It made me feel you’ve been thinking about me. Wanting me.”
“I’ve been thinking about you, Grace. I’ve been wanting you.”
Because Aubrey was wiggling, he set her down and let her run off toward Seth and the dogs. “I meant I didn’t mean to be rough with you.”
“You weren’t. I’m not fragile, Ethan.”
“Yes, you are.” When he saw Aubrey fall on Foolish so they could wrestle in the grass, he looked back at Grace, into her eyes. “Delicate,” he said softly, “like the white china with pink roses we only use on Thanksgiving.”
It made her heart flutter pleasantly that he would think so, even if she knew better. “Ethan—”
