Chesapeake Blue by Nora Roberts Page B

didn't cook.
    There were arguments—over baseball, clothes, video games. It didn't take her long to realize it was just another kind of interaction. Dogs sidled up to the table and were ordered firmly away—usually after someone snuck food into a canine mouth. The breeze blew in cool over the water while as many as six conversations went on at the same time.
    She kept up. Early training had honed her ability to have something to say to everyone and anyone in social situations. She could comment about boats and baseball, food and music, art and travel even when the talk of them and more leaped and swirled around her.
    She nursed a second glass of wine and stayed far longer than she'd intended. Not just because she couldn't find a polite way to leave. Because she liked them. She was amused by and envious of the intimacy of the family. Despite their numbers and the obvious differences—could sisters be less alike than the sharp-tongued, sports-loving Aubrey and Emily, the waiflike ballerina?—they were all so firmly interlinked.
    Like individual pieces of one big, bold puzzle, Dru decided. The puzzle of family always fascinated her. Certainly her own continued to remain a mystery to her.
    However colorful and cheerful they seemed on the surface, Dru imagined the Quinn puzzle had its share of shadows and complications.
    Families always did.
    As did men, she thought, turning her head deliberately to meet Seth's dead-on stare. She was perfectly aware that he'd watched her almost continuously since they'd sat down to eat. Oh, he was good at the conversation juggling, too; she'd give him that. And from time to time he'd tune his attention fully on someone else. But his gaze, that straight-on and vivid blue gaze, would always swing back to her.
    She could feel it, a kind of heat along her skin. She refused to let it intrigue her. And she certainly wasn't going to let it fluster her.
    "The afternoon light's good here." His eyes still on Dru, he scooped up a forkful of pasta salad. "Maybe we'll do some outdoor work. You got anything with a long, full skirt? Strapless or sleeveless to show off your shoulders. Good strong shoulders," he added with another scoop of pasta. "They go with the face."
    "That's lucky for me, isn't it?" She dismissed him with a slight wave of her hand and turned to Sybill. "I enjoyed your last documentary very much, the studies and examples of blended family dynamics. I suppose you based some of your findings on your own experiences."
    "Hard to get away from it. I could study this bunch for the next couple of decades and never run out of material."
    "We're all Mom's guinea pigs," Fiona stated as she handily picked out another crab. "Better watch out. You hang out around here, Seth'll have you naked on a canvas and Mom'll have you analyzed in a book."
    "Oh, I don't know." Aubrey gestured with her drink. "Annie Crawford hung around here for months, and Seth never did paint her—naked or otherwise. I don't think Sybill ever wrote about her either, unless I missed the one about societal placement of brainless bimbos."
    "She wasn't brainless," Seth put in.
    "She called you Sethie. As in, 'Oh, Sethie, you're a regular Michael Dee Angelo.'"
    "Want me to start trotting out some of the guys you hung with a few years back? Matt Fisher, for instance?"
    "I was young and shallow."
    "Yeah, you're old and deep now. Anyway"—he shifted that direct gaze to Dru again—"you got a long, flowy thing? Little top?"
    "No."
    "We'll get something."
    Dru sipped the last of her wine, tilted her head slightly to indicate interest. "Has anyone ever declined to be painted by you?"
    "No, not really."
    "Let me be the first."
    "He'll do it anyway," Cam told her. "Kid's got a head like a brick."
    "And that comes from the most flexible, most reasonable, most accommodating of men," Anna declared as she rose. "Anybody got room for dessert?"
    They did, though Dru didn't see how. She declined offers of cakes, pies, but lost the battle of wills