"Well, you can't always get what you want. As the song says." He glanced over with an easy smile, his hand still on Sybill's nape, as the clerk hurried out with an envelope. "Hi, there, Karen. How's it going?"
The clerk blushed clear to the hairline, her eyes darting from his face to Sybill's. "Fine. Um… here's your fax, Dr. Griffin."
"Thank you." Without flinching Sybill took the envelope and tucked it into her bag. "You'll bill my account for the service."
"Yes, of course."
"See you around, Karen." Smoothly, Phillip slid his hand from Sybill's neck to the small of her back to guide her across the lobby.
"She'll have told her six best friends by her next break," Sybill murmured.
"At the very least. The wonders of small towns. The Quinns will be the hot topic of discussion over a number of dinner tables tonight. By breakfast, the gossip mill will be in full swing."
"That amuses you," Sybill said tightly. "It reassures me, Dr. Griffin. Traditions are meant to reassure. I spoke to our lawyer," he continued as they crossed the waterfront. Gulls swooped, dogging a workboat on its way to dock. "The notarized statement will help, but he'd like to take your deposition, early next week if you can manage it."
"I'll make an appointment." In front of the bank she stopped and turned toward him. He'd changed into casual clothes, and the wind off the water ruffled his hair. His eyes were concealed behind shaded lenses, but she wasn't certain she cared to see the expression in them. "It might look less as if I'm under house arrest if I go in alone."
He merely lifted his hands, palms out, and stepped back. She was a tough nut, he decided when she strode into the bank. But he had a feeling that, once cracked, there was something soft, even delectable inside.
He was surprised that someone as intelligent, as highly trained in the human condition as she was couldn't see her own distress, couldn't or wouldn't admit that there had been something lacking in her own upbringing that forced her to build walls.
He'd nearly been fooled, he mused, into believing she was cold and distant and untouched by the messier emotions. He couldn't be sure what it was that insisted he believe differently. Maybe it was nothing more than wishful thinking, but he was determined to find out for himself. And soon.
He knew that making her family secrets accessible and so informally public would be humiliating for her, and perhaps painful. But she'd agreed without condition and was following through without hesitation.
Standards, he thought. Integrity. She had them. And he believed that she had heart as well.
Sybill offered a thin smile as she came back out. "Well, that's the first time I've seen a notary's eyes nearly pop out of her head. I think that should—"
The rest of her babbling statement was lost as his mouth rushed to cover hers. She lifted a hand to his shoulder, but her fingers only curled into the soft material of his sweater.
"You looked like you needed it," he murmured, and skimmed a hand over her cheek.
"Regardless—"
"Hell, Sybill, we've already got them talking. Why not add to the mystery?"
Her emotions were rocking, making it difficult for her to hold on to any threads of composure. "I've no intention of standing here making a spectacle of myself. So if you'll—"
"Fine. Let's go somewhere else. I've got the boat."
"The boat? I can't go out on the boat. I'm not dressed for it. I have work." I need to think, she told herself, but he was already pulling her to the dock.
"A sail will do you good. You're starting on another headache. The fresh air should help."
"I don't have a headache." Only the nasty, simmering threat of one. "And I don't want to—" She nearly yelped, so stunned was she when he simply plucked her off her feet and set her down on the deck.
"Consider yourself shanghaied, doc." Quickly, competently, he freed the lines and leaped aboard. "I have a feeling you haven't had nearly enough of that kind of treatment in your short, sheltered life."
"You don't know anything about my life, or what I've had. If you start that engine, I'm going to—" She broke off, grinding her teeth as the motor putted to life. "Phillip, I want to go back to my hotel. Now."
"Hardly anybody ever says no to you, do they?" He said it cheerfully as he gave her a firm nudge onto the port bench. "Just sit back and enjoy the ride."
Since she didn't intend to leap overboard and swim back to shore in a silk suit and Italian shoes, she folded her arms. It was his way of paying her back, she supposed, by taking away her freedom of choice, asserting his will and his physical dominance.
Typical.
She turned her head to stare out over the light chop. She wasn't afraid of him, not physically. He had a tougher side than she'd or
iginally thought, but he wouldn't hurt her. And because he cared for Seth, deeply, she'd come to believe, he needed her cooperation.
She refused to be thrilled when he hoisted the sails. The sound of the canvas opening itself to the wind, the sight of the sun beating against the rippling white, the sudden and smooth angling of the boat, meant nothing to her, she insisted.
She would simply tolerate this little game of his, give him no reaction. Undoubtedly, he would grow weary of her silence and inattention and take her back.
"Here." He tossed something, making her jump. She looked down and saw the sunglasses that had landed neatly in her lap. "Sun's fierce today, even if the temperature's cooling. Indian summer's around the corner."
He smiled to himself when she said nothing, only slid the sunglasses primly on her nose and continued to stare in the opposite direction.
"We need a good hard frost first," he continued conversationally. "When the leaves start to turn, the shoreline near the house is a picture. Golds and scarlets. You get that deep blue sky behind them, and the water mirror-bright, that spice of fall on the air, and you could start to believe there's no place else on the planet you'd ever want to be."
She kept her mouth firmly shut, tightened the fold of her arms across her breasts.
Phillip merely tucked his tongue in his cheek. "Even a couple of avowed urbanites like you and I can appreciate a fine fall day in the country. Seth's birthday's coming up."
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her head jerk around, her mouth tremble open. She shut it again, but this time when she turned away, her shoulders where hunched defensively.
Oh, she felt all right, Phillip mused. There were plenty of messy emotions stewing inside that cool package of hers.
"We thought we'd throw him a party, have some of his pals over to raise hell. You already know Grace bakes a hell of a chocolate cake. We've got his present taken care of. But just the other day I saw these art supplies in this shop in Baltimore. Not a kid's setup, a real one. Chalk, pencils, charcoal, brashes, watercolors, paper, palettes. It's a specialty shop a few blocks from my office. Somebody who knew something about art could breeze in there and pick out just the right things."
He'd intended to do so himself, but he saw now that his instincts to tell her about it had been true. She was facing him now, and though the sun flashed off her sunglasses, he could see from the angle of her head that he had her full attention.
"He wouldn't want anything from me."
"You're not giving him enough credit. Maybe you're not giving yourself enough either."
He trimmed the sails, caught the wind, and saw the instant she recognized the curve of trees along the shore. She got unsteadily to her feet. "Phillip, however you may feel about me right now, it can't help the situation for you to push me at Seth again so soon."
"I'm not taking you home." He scanned the yard as they passed. "Seth's at the boatyard with Cam and Ethan, in any case. You need a distraction, Sybill, not a confrontation. And for the record, I don't know how I feel about you at the moment."
"I've told you everything I know."
"Yeah, I think you've given me the facts. You haven't told me how you feel, how those facts affect you personally, emotionally."
"It isn't the issue."
"I'm making it an issue. We're tangled up here, Sybill, whether we like it or not. Seth's your nephew, and he's mine. My father and your mother had an affair. And we're about to."
"No," she said definitely, "we're not."
He turned his head long enough to shoot her a glittering look. "You know better than that. You're in my system, and I know when a woman's got me in hers."
"And we're both old enough to control our more basic urges."
He stared at her another moment, then laughed. "Hell we are. And it's not the sex that worries you. It's the intimacy."
He was hitting all the targets. It didn't anger her nearly as much as it frightened her. "You don't know me."
"I'm beginning to," he said quietly. "And I'm someone else who finishes what I start. I'm coming about." His voice was mild now. "Watch the boom."
She stepped out of the way, sat. She recognized the little cove where they had shared wine and pate. Only a week ago, she thought dully. Now so much had changed. Everything had changed.
She couldn't be here with him, couldn't risk it. The idea of handling him now was absurd. Still, she could do nothing but try.
Coolly, she eyed him. Casually, she smoothed her hand over the sophisticated twist the wind had disordered. Caustically, she smiled. "What, no wine this time? No music, no neat gourmet lunch?"