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Phillip, a part that had lived inside a young, careless thief, that resented even the possibility that Seth could be Ray’s son by blood, a son conceived in adultery and abandoned in shame. It would be a betrayal of everything the Quinns had taught him, everything they had shown him by living their lives as they had.
    He detested himself for considering it, for knowing that now and then he studied Seth with cool, appraising eyes and wondered if the boy’s existence was the reason Ray Quinn was dead.
    Whenever that nasty thought crept into his mind, Phillip shifted his concentration to Gloria DeLauter. Seth’s mother was the woman who had accused Professor Raymond Quinn of sexual harassment. She claimed it had happened years before, while she was a student at the university. But there was no record of her ever attending classes there.
    The same woman had sold her ten-year-old son to Ray as if he’d been a package of meat. The same woman, Phillip was certain, that Ray had been to Baltimore to see before he haddriven home—and driven himself to his death.
    She’d taken off. Women like Gloria were skilled in skipping out of harm’s way. Weeks ago, she’d sent the Quinns a not-so-subtle blackmail letter: If you want to keep the kid, I need more. Phillip’s jaw clenched when he remembered the naked fear on Seth’s face when he’d learned of it.
    She wasn’t going to get her hands on the boy, he told himself. She was going to discover that the Quinn brothers were a tougher mark than one softhearted old man.
    Not just the Quinn brothers now, either, he thought as he turned off onto the rural county road that would lead him home. He thought of family as he drove fast down a road flanked by fields of soybeans, of peas, of corn grown taller than a man. Now that Cam and Ethan were married, Seth had two determined women to stand with him as well.
    Married. Phillip shook his head in amused wonder. Who would have thought it? Cam had hitched himself to the sexy social worker, and Ethan was married to sweet-eyed Grace. And had become an instant father, Phillip mused, to angel-faced Aubrey.
    Well, good for them. In fact, he had to admit that Anna Spinelli and Grace Monroe were tailor-made for his brothers. It would only add to their strength as a family when it came time for the hearing on permanent guardianship of Seth. And marriage certainly appeared to suit them. Even if the word itself gave him the willies.
    For himself, Phillip much preferred the single life and all its benefits. Not that he’d had much time to avail himself of all those benefits in the past few months. Weekends in St. Chris, supervising homework assignments, pounding a hull together for the fledgling Boats by Quinn, dealing with the books for the new business, hauling groceries—all of which had somehow become his domain—cramped a man’s style.
    He’d promised his father on his deathbed that he would take care of Seth. With his brothers he’d made a pact to moveback to the Shore, to share the guardianship and the responsibilities. For Phillip that pact meant splitting his time between Baltimore and St. Chris, and his energies between maintaining his career—and his income—and tending to a new and often problematic brother and a new business.
    It was all a risk. Raising a ten-year-old wasn’t without headaches and fumbling mistakes under the best of circumstances, he imagined. Seth DeLauter, raised by a part-time hooker, full-time junkie, and amateur extortionist, had hardly come through the best of circumstances.
    Getting a boatbuilding enterprise off the ground was a series of irksome details and backbreaking labor. Yet somehow it was working, and if he discounted the ridiculous demands on his time and energy, it was working fairly well.
    Not so long ago his weekends had been spent in the company of any number of attractive, interesting women, having dinner at some new hot spot, an