Inner Harbor (25 page)

“I recognized Gloria yesterday,” he interrupted. “A pretty woman gone brittle. Hard and sharp at the eyes, bitter at the mouth. She and my mother would have recognized each other, too.”

What could she say, how could she argue when she'd seen the same thing, felt the same? “I didn't recognize her,” she said quickly. “For a moment I thought there was a mistake.”

“She recognized you. And she played the angles, pushed the buttons. She'd know how.” He paused a moment. “She'd know exactly how. So do I.”

She looked at him then, noted he was studying her coolly. “Is that what you're doing? Pushing buttons, playing angles?”

Maybe it was, he thought. They would both have to figure that out before much longer. “Right now I'm answering your question. Do you want the rest?”

“Yes.” She didn't hesitate, for she'd discovered she very much wanted to hear it all.

“When I was thirteen, I thought I had it handled. I figured I was just fine. Until I found myself face down in the gutter, bleeding to death. Drive-by shooting. Wrong place, wrong time.”

“Shot?” Her gaze whipped back to his. “You were shot.”

“In the chest. Probably should have killed me. One of the doctors who made sure I didn't die knew Stella Quinn. She and Ray came to see me in the hospital. I figured them for weirdos, do-gooders, your basic assholes. But I played along with them. My mother was done with me, and I was going to end up solid in the system. I thought I'd use them until I was steady on my feet again. Then I'd take what I needed and cut out.”

Who was this boy he described to her? And how was she
to reconcile him with the man beside her? “You were going to rob them?”

“It's what I did. What I was. But they . . .” How to explain it? he wondered. The miracle of them. “They just wore that away. Until I fell in love with them. Until I'd have done anything, been anything, to make them proud of me. It wasn't the paramedics or the surgical team that saved my life. It was Ray and Stella Quinn.”

“How old were you when they took you in?”

“Thirteen. But I wasn't a kid like Seth. I wasn't a victim like Cam and Ethan. I made my choices.”

“You're wrong.” For the first time, she reached out and, taking his face in her hands, she kissed him gently.

He lifted his hands to her wrists, had to concentrate on not squeezing her skin the way that soft kiss had squeezed his heart. “That's not the reaction I expected.”

It wasn't the one she'd expected to have. But she found herself feeling pity for the boy he described to her and admiration for the man he'd made himself into. “What reaction do you usually get?”

“I've never told anyone outside the family.” He managed a smile. “Bad for the image.”

Touched, she rested her forehead against his. “You're right. It could have been Seth,” she murmured. “What happened to you, it could have been Seth. Your father saved him from that. You and your family saved him, while mine's done nothing. And worse than nothing.”

“You're doing something.”

“I hope it's enough.” When his mouth came to hers, she let herself slide into comfort.

F
OURTEEN

P
HILLIP UNLOCKED THE
boatyard at seven
A
.
M
. The very fact that his brothers hadn't given him grief about not working the day before, or about taking a full Sunday off the previous week, had his guilt quota at peak.

He expected he had a good hour, maybe a little more before Cam showed up to continue work on the hull of the sport's fisher. Ethan would put in a morning of crabbing, taking advantage of the fall season, before heading in to work that afternoon.

So he would have the place to himself, and the quiet and solitude to deal with the paperwork he'd neglected the week before.

Quiet didn't mean silence. His first act when entering his cramped office was to hit the lights. The next was to switch on the radio. Ten minutes later, he was nose-deep in accounts and very much at home.

Well, they owed just about everybody, he concluded. Rent, utilities, insurance premiums, the lumberyard, and the ever popular MasterCard.

The government had demanded its share in the middle of September, and the bite had been just a little nasty. The next tax nibble wasn't far enough away to let him relax.

He juggled figures, toyed with them, stroked them, and decided red wasn't such a bad color. They'd made a tidy profit on their first job, the bulk of which had been poured back into the business. Once they turned the hull, they would get another draw from their current client. That would keep their heads above water.

But they weren't going to see a lot of the color black for a time yet.

Dutifully, he cut checks, updated the spreadsheet, reconciled figures, and tried not to mourn the fact that two and two stubbornly insisted on making four.

He heard the heavy door below open, then slam.

“Hiding up there again?” Cam called out.

“Yeah, having a real party.”

“Some of us have real work to do.”

Phillip looked at the figures dancing over his computer screen and laughed shortly. It wasn't real work to Cam, he knew, unless you had a tool in your hand.

“Best I can do,” he muttered and shut the computer down. He stacked the outgoing bills on the corner of the desk, tucked the paychecks in his back pocket, then headed down.

Cam was strapping on a tool belt. He wore a ball cap backward to keep his hair out of his eyes, and it flowed beneath the down-sloped bill. Phillip watched him slide the wedding band off his finger and tuck it carefully into his front pocket.

Just as he would take it out after work, Phillip mused, and slip it back in place. Rings could catch on tools and cost a man a finger. But neither of his brothers left theirs at home. He wondered if there was some symbolism, or comfort, in having that statement of marriage on them, one way or the other, at all times.

Then he wondered why he was wondering and nudged the question, and the idea of it, aside.

Since Cam had reached the work area first, the radio wasn't tuned to the lazy blues Phillip would have chosen, but to loud, kiss-my-ass rock. Cam eyed him coolly as Phillip tugged on a tool belt of his own.

“Didn't expect to see you in so bright and early this morning. Figured you had a late night.”

“Don't go there again.”

“Just a comment.” Anna had already chewed him out when he complained to her about Phillip's involvement with Sybill. He should be ashamed, he shouldn't interfere, he should have some compassion for his brother's feelings.

He'd rather take that brother's fist in the face any day than a hot verbal slap from his wife.

“You want to fool around with her, it's your business. She's a pleasure to look at. I'd say she's got a wide cold streak in her, though.”

“You don't know her.”

“And you do?” Cam lifted a hand when Phillip's eyes flashed. “Just trying to get a handle on it. It's going to matter to Seth.”

“I know she's willing to do what she can so he's where he needs to be. Reading between the lines, I'd say she grew up in a repressive, restrictive atmosphere.”

“A rich one.”

“Yeah.” Phillip strode to a pile of planks. “Yeah, private schools, chauffeurs, country clubs, servants.”

“It's a little tough to feel sorry for her.”

“I don't think she's looking for sympathy.” He hefted a plank. “You said you wanted to get a handle on her. I'm telling you she had advantages. I don't know if she had any affection.”

Cam shrugged and, deciding they'd get more accomplished working together, took the other end of the plank to fit it into
place on the hull. “She doesn't strike me as deprived. She strikes me as cold.”

“Restrained. Cautious.” He remembered the way she reached out to him the night before. Still, it had been the first time she'd done so, the only time. He clamped down on the frustration of not being sure that Cam wasn't right. “Are you and Ethan the only ones entitled to a relationship with a woman that satisfies your hormones and your brain?”

“No.” Cam lapped the ends. Deliberately he relaxed his shoulders. There was something in Phillip's voice that gave away that frustration, and something else. “No, we're not. I'll talk to Seth about her.”

“I'll talk to him myself.”

“All right.”

“He matters to me, too.”

“I know he does.”

“He didn't.” Phillip pulled out his hammer to nail the laps. “Not as much as he did to you. Not enough. It's different now.”

“I know that, too.” For the next few minutes they worked in tandem, without words. “You stood up for him anyway,” Cam added when the plank was in place. “Even when he didn't matter enough.”

“I did it for Dad.”

“We all did it for Dad. Now we're doing it for Seth.”

B
Y NOON, THE SKELETON
of the hull had taken on the flesh of wood. The smooth-lap construction was labor-intensive, tedious and exacting. But it was their trademark, a choice that offered extreme structural strength and required great skill by the boatbuilder.

No one would argue that Cam was the most skilled of the
three of them in woodworking. But Phillip thought he was holding his own.

Yeah, he thought, standing back to scan the exterior planking or skin of the hull. He was holding his own.

“You pick up any lunch?” Cam asked before he poured water from a jug into his mouth.

“No.”

“Shit. I bet Grace packed Ethan one of those monster lunches of hers. Fried chicken, or thick slabs of honey-baked ham.”

“You got a wife,” Phillip pointed out.

Cam snorted, rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah. I can just see me talking Anna into packing me a lunch every day. She'd smack me with her briefcase as she marched out the door to work. There are two of us,” he considered. “We can take Ethan, especially if we catch him by surprise when he comes in.”

“Let's go the easier route.” Phillip dug into his pocket, pulled out a quarter. “Heads or tails?”

“Heads. Loser gets it, and buys it.”

Phillip flipped the coin, caught it and slapped it onto the back of his hand. The eagle's beak seemed to sneer at him. “Damn it. What do you want?”

“Meatball sub, large chips, and six gallons of coffee.”

“Fine, clog your arteries.”

“Last I checked they don't stock any tofu at Crawford's. Don't know how you eat that crap. You're going to die anyway. Might as well go with a meatball sub.”

“You go your way, I'll go mine.” He reached in his pocket again for Cam's paycheck. “Here, don't spend it all in one place.”

“Now I can retire to that little grass shack on Maui. You got Ethan's?”

“What there is of it.”

“Yours?”

“I don't need it.”

Cam narrowed his eyes as Phillip pulled on his jacket. “That's not the way it works.”

“I'm in charge of the books, I say how it works.”

“You put in your time, you take your share.”

“I don't need it,” Phillip said, with heat this time. “When I do, I'll take it.” He stalked out, leaving Cam fuming.

“Stubborn son of a bitch,” Cam muttered. “How am I supposed to rag on him when he pulls crap like that?”

He bitched plenty, Cam mused. He nagged his brothers to distraction over the pettiest detail. Then he handled the details, he thought as he capped the water jug. He'd back you into a corner, then he'd go to the wall for you.

It was enough to drive you nuts.

Now he was getting himself twisted up over a woman none of them knew they could trust if things got sticky. He, for one was going to keep a close eye on Sybill Griffin.

And not just for Seth's sake. Phillip might have the brains, but he was just as stupid as the next guy when it came to a pretty face.

“A
ND YOUNG KAREN
Lawson who's been working down at the hotel since she hooked up with the McKinney boy last year saw it written down, in black and white. She called her mama, and as Bitty Lawson's a good friend of mine and my longtime bridge partner—though she'll trump your ace if you don't watch her—she called me right up and let me know.”

Nancy Claremont was in her element, and that element was gossip. As her husband owned a sizable chunk of St. Chris, meaning she did as well, and part of that chunk was the old barn those Quinn boys—a wild bunch if you asked her—rented for their boatyard—though God knew what else went on in there—she knew it was not only her right but her duty
to pass on the succulent tidbit that had come her way the previous afternoon.

Of course, she'd used the most convenient method first. The telephone. But you didn't get the pleasure of face-to-face reaction over the phone. So she'd brought herself out, dressed in her brand-new pumpkin-colored pantsuit, fresh out of the J. C. Penney catalog.

There was no point in being the most well-off woman in St. Christopher's if you didn't flaunt it a bit. And the best place to flaunt, and to spread gossip, was Crawford's.

Second-best was the Stylerite Beauty Salon over on Market, and that, as she'd made an appointment for a cut, color, and curl, was her next stop.

Mother Crawford, a fixture in St. Chris for all of her sixty-two years, sat behind the counter in her smeared butcher apron, her tongue tucked firmly in her cheek.

She'd already heard the news—not much got by Mother, and nothing got by her for long—but she disposed herself to hear Nancy out.

“To think that child is Ray Quinn's grandson! And that writer lady with her snooty airs is the sister of that nasty girl who said all those terrible things. That boy's her nephew. Her own kin, but did she say one word about it? No, sir, she did not! Just hoity-toitying around, going off sailing with Phillip Quinn, and a lot more than sailing, if you ask me. The way young people carry on today without a snap of their fingers for morals.”

She snapped her own, inches from Mother's face, and her eyes glittered with malicious delight.

Since Mother sensed that Nancy was about to veer off the subject at hand, she shrugged her wide shoulders. “Seems to me,” she began, knowing the scatter of people in the store had their ears bent her way, “that there are a lot of people around this town who ought to be hanging their heads after what was being passed around about Ray. Whispering about
him behind his back when he was living, and over his grave when he passed on, about him cheating on Stella, God rest her, and having truck with that DeLauter woman. Well, it wasn't true, was it?”

Her sharp eyes scanned the store, and indeed, a few heads did lower. Satisfied, she beamed her gaze hard into Nancy's glittering eyes. “Seems to me you were willing enough to believe bad about a good man like Ray Quinn.”

Sincerely insulted, Nancy puffed out her chest. “Why, I never believed a word of it, Mother.” Discussing such matters, she thought to herself, wasn't the same as believing them. “Truth is, a blind man couldn't have missed the way that boy's got Ray's eyes. Had to be a blood relation. Why, I said to Silas just the other day, I said, ‘Silas, I wonder if that boy could be a cousin or something to Ray?” '