She couldn’t stop the smile. “No, but they don’t hurt.”

“I’ll make you an egg-white omelette in the morning, and you’ll be my slave.”

She managed to laugh. “We’ll see about that.”

She was afraid she was entirely too close to a slavish condition now. The heart she was desperately trying to ignore continued to insist that she’d fallen in love with him.

That, she warned herself, would be a much bigger, more permanent mistake, than knocking on his door on a rainy evening.

SIXTEEN

WHEN A TWENTY-nine-year-old woman changed her clothes three times before attending an eleven-year-old boy’s birthday party, she was in trouble.

Sybill lectured herself on this simple fact even as she stripped off a white silk blouse—white silk, for Lord’s sake, what had she been thinking of—and exchanged it for a teal turtleneck.

She was going to a simple, informal family dinner party, she reminded herself, not a diplomatic reception. Which, she admitted with a sigh, wouldn’t have posed nearly as much of a social or fashion dilemma. She knew exactly what to wear, how to behave, and what was expected of her at a formal reception, a state dinner, a gala, a charity ball.

It was a pathetic statement on her narrow social experience, she concluded, that she knew neither how to dress nor how to behave at her own nephew’s birthday dinner.

She slipped a long chain of silver beads over her head, took it off, cursed herself and put it on again. Underdressed, overdressed, what did it matter? She wouldn’t fit in anyway. She would pretend she did, the Quinns would pretend she did, and everyone would be desperately relieved when she said her good-byes and went away.

Two hours, she told herself. She would only stay two hours. Surely she could survive that. Everyone would be polite, would avoid awkward or nasty scenes for Seth’s sake.

She picked up her brush to smooth her hair back, then secured it with a clip at the nape of her neck before critically studying herself in the mirror. She looked confident, she decided. Pleasant, nonthreatening.

Except . . . maybe the color of the sweater was too vivid, too bold. Gray might be better, or brown.

Good God.

The ringing of the phone was such a welcome diversion, she all but leapt on it. “Yes, hello, Dr. Griffin.”

“Syb, you’re still there. I was afraid you’d taken off.”

“Gloria.” Her stomach plummeted to her unsteady knees. Very carefully she lowered herself to the side of the bed. “Where are you?”

“Oh, I’m around. Hey, I’m sorry I ditched you the other night. I was messed up.”

Messed up, Sybill thought. It was a good term for certain conditions. From the rapid pace of Gloria’s speech, she assumed her sister was messed up even now. “You stole money out of my wallet.”

“I said I was messed up, didn’t I? I panicked, you know, needed some cash. I’ll pay you back. You talk to those Quinn bastards?”