Chesapeake Blue (Chesapeake Bay Saga 4) - Page 18

  "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 si

mple 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