staring at the road, all but willing Anna to pull into the drive. Now he jammed his hands in his pockets, mortified.
"Nothing, just walking around."
"You weren't walking," Seth pointed out.
"Because I'd stopped. Now I'm walking again. See?"
Seth rolled his eyes at Cam's back, then caught up with him. "What am I supposed to do?"
Cam feigned intense interest in the candy-red tulips sunning themselves along the edge of the house. "About what?"
"Stuff. Ethan's out on the workboat and Phillip's closed up in the office doing computer stuff."
"So?" He leaned down to tug up a weed—at least he thought it was a weed. Where the hell was she? "Where are those kids you've been hanging with?"
"They had to go to the store and have lunch with their grandmother." Seth sneered on principle. "I don't have anything to do. It's boring."
"Well, go… clean your room or something."
"Come on."
"Jesus, what am I, your social director? Is the TV broken?"
"Nothing on Saturday mornings but kid shit."
"You are a kid," Cam pointed out and heard the sound of an approaching car with vast relief. "Teach that brain-dead dog of yours some tricks."
"He's not brain-dead." Instantly insulted, Seth turned and whistled for the pup. "Watch." Foolish raced up, carrying what appeared to be a can of beer in his mouth.
"Yeah, chewing on aluminum. That's brilliant. Look, I don't—" But Cam broke off when Seth snapped a finger, pointed, and Foolish plopped his butt on the ground.
"He does it on voice command, too," Seth said matter-of-factly as he rubbed Foolish's head in reward. "But I've got him responding to hand signals." He held a hand out, and Foolish gamely lifted a paw.
"That's pretty good." Pride and surprise mixed in his voice. "How long did it take you to teach him that?"
"Just a couple hours here and there."
All three watched as Anna pulled into the drive. Foolish was the first to rush to greet her.
"He doesn't do real good with Stay yet," Seth confided. "But we haven't worked on it long."
He didn't do real good with Down, either. The minute Anna stepped out of the car Foolish was leaping and yip-ping, his tongue lashing out joyfully to lick everywhere.
Cam figured the dog had the right idea. He'd have liked to jump on her and start licking himself. She wore jeans that were faded to a soft, pale blue and a lipstick-red top tucked into the waistband. It was a simple outfit that borrowed from the practical and the siren.
And made Cam's mouth water.
"She looks different with her hair down," Seth commented.
"Yeah." He wanted his hands on it, on her. And that was that.
She was crouched down, purring at the puppy, who had flopped adoringly on his back to have his belly rubbed. Her head came up, and even with the shaded glasses, Cam could see her eyes widen in awareness, then shift warningly to the child who walked behind him.
Ignoring the signal, he hauled her to her feet, gave her one good yank that made her stumble over the pup and against him, and closed his mouth over her sputtering protest.
It was like being swallowed by the sun, was all she could think. The heat was huge and had reached flash point before she could draw the first breath. Need, restless and greedy, pumped out of him and slammed into her at alarming speed. The wild drumming of a woodpecker hunting breakfast echoed through the still air and matched the frantic beat of her heart. All she could do was hold on until he'd devoured enough of what he wanted from her to satisfy him.
When he eased her back, those clever lips curved—a smug look she was sure she would resent when her head settled back on her shoulders again. "Morning, Anna."
"Good morning." She cleared her throat, stepped back, and made herself look over at Seth. He appeared to be more bored than shocked, so she worked up a smile for him. "Good morning, Seth."
"Yeah, hi."
"Your dog's growing into his feet." Because she needed the distraction, she looked down at Foolish and held out a hand. He planted his rump and lifted a paw, charming her. "Oh, aren't you smart?" She crouched again, shook his paw, tugged his ears. "What else can you do?"
"We're working on a couple of things." Foolish had just run through his entire repertoire, but Seth didn't want to say so.
"You make a good team. I've got some groceries in the car," she said casually. "Makings for dinner. Give me a hand?"
"Yeah, all right." He shot a resentful look at Cam. "I've got nothing else to do."
"We're going sailing, aren't we?" She said it brightly, amused when she saw Cam's mouth fall open and Seth look at her with sharp, interested eyes.
"Am I going?"
"Of course." She turned, opened the car door, then handed him a bag. "As soon as we put this stuff away. I hope I'm a quick learner. I know next to nothing about boats."
Cheered, Seth settled bags on each hip. "Nothing to it. But you should have a hat." With this, he carted his bags toward the house.
"I was figuring on it being just you and me," Cam told her. And he'd had a nice fantasy going about slipping into some quiet bend of the river and making rocky love to her in the bottom of the boat.
"Were you?" She took out a small overnight bag, pushed it into his hands. "I'm sure it'll be great fun with the three of us."
She closed her car door, patted Cam's cheek, then sauntered into the house behind Seth.
it turned out to be the four of them. Seth insisted on taking Foolish, and with Anna backing him all the way, they outvoted Cam.
It was tough to stay annoyed when his crew was so damn cheerful. Foolish sat on a bench, wearing an ancient doggie life jacket that had belonged to one of Ray and Stella's numerous dogs, and barked happily at waves and birds.
Seth, already munching on one of the sandwiches from the cooler, dutifully explained to Anna the mystery of the rigging.
She looked so damned cute, Cam thought, with one of his old and battered Orioles caps on her head, watching studiously as Seth identified each line.
He maneuvered through the channels, motoring between markers at an easy speed, working through what the locals called Little Neck River into Tangier Sound and toward the bay.
There was a light chop, and Cam glanced back to see how Anna would weather it. She was kneeling in the stern, leaning over the rail, but he saw with a grin that it wasn't because of a queasy stomach. Her smile was huge, her finger pointing eagerly as she caught sight of the clumps of trees and spreading marshes of Smith Island.
He called for Seth to hoist sail.
It was a moment Anna would never forget. City life hadn't prepared her for the sounds, the motion, the sight of white sails rising, snapping in the wind, then filling with it.
For a moment the boat seemed to fly, with the wind slapping her cheeks and filling the canvas to bursting. Water churned in their wake and she tasted salt.
She wanted to watch everything at once, the waves rising from blue-green water, the sea of white canvas above, the stretches and bumps of land. And the man and boy who worked so smoothly, so competently, with barely a word passing between them.
They sailed past what Seth identified as a crab shanty. It was no more than a fragile shack of beaten and weathered gray wood stilted out of the water and attached to a rickety dock. The orange floats that marked the crab pots dotted the surface. She watched a workboat rocking in the tide as a waterman—a picture in his faded pants, battered cap, and white boots—hauled up a chicken wire cage.
He paused in his work long enough to touch the brim of his cap in greeting before tossing two snapping crabs into his water tank.
Life on the water, Anna thought and watched the work-boat putt toward the next float.
"That's Little Donnie," Seth told her. "Ethan says they call him that even though he's grown up because his father's Big Donnie. Weird."
Anna laughed. It had looked to her as if Little Donnie was pushing two hundred pounds. "I guess th
at's the way it is when you live in a small community. It must be wonderful to live and work on the water that way."
Seth lifted a shoulder. "It's okay. But I'd rather just sail."
When she lifted her face to the wind, she decided he had a point. Just sail—fast and free, with the boat rising and falling, the gulls wheeling overhead. Cam looked so natural at the wheel, she thought, with his long legs planted apart to accommodate the roll of the boat, his hands firm, his dark hair flying. When he turned his head, was it any wonder her heart jumped? When he held out a hand, was it any wonder she rose and walked cautiously over the unfamiliar deck to take it.
"Want the wheel?"
Desperately. "Better not," she said, trying to be practical. "I don't know what I'm doing."
"I do." He tugged her in front of him, put his hands over hers. "That's Pocomoke," he told her, nodding toward a narrow channel. "If you want to slow down, we can head that way, dodge some crab pots."
The wind slapped playfully at her face. She watched a gull swoop toward the surface of the water, skim it, then rise up calling in that sharp cry that sounded like a laughing scream. The hell with practicalities. "I don't want to slow down."
She heard him laugh above her ear. "Atta girl."
"Where are we heading? What are we doing?"
"Heading south, southwest. Sailing to the luff," he told her. "On the edge of the wind."
"On the edge? It feels like we're in the middle of it. I didn't know we could go so fast. It's wonderful."
"Good. Hold on a minute."
To her shock, he stepped back and called to Seth to help him make some adjustments to the sails. As her hands white-knuckled on the wheel, she heard them laughing. She heard the creak of the masts, the shiver of the canvas as it turned. If anything, she thought the boat picked up speed. She tried to relax. After all, there was nothing but water ahead of them.
She could see to the right—starboard, she corrected herself—a small motorboat cruising out of one of the many rivers and channels. Too far away, she judged, for any traffic jams or accidents.