Yeah, she was sneaky all right. Hitting him over the head like that with her vulnerability, sobbing in his arms that way and looking so damned hurt and defenseless. Then waking up in the middle of the night and turning into some sort of a sex-fantasy goddess.

Now she was offering him coffee. She had a hell of a nerve.

“I appreciate you staying last night. It helped.”

“I’m here to serve,” he said shortly.

“I . . .” She gnawed on her bottom lip, alerted and confused by his tone. “It was a difficult day for both of us. I suppose I’d have been wiser to stay away. I was already a little off balance after Gloria’s call, and then—”

His head shot up. “What? Gloria called you?”

“Yes.” And now, Sybill thought, she’d only proven why that was information best kept to herself. He was upset. Everyone was going to be upset.

“She called you? Yesterday?” With his temper simmering, he picked up his shoe, examined it. “And you didn’t think that it was worth mentioning before this?”

“I didn’t see any point in it.” Because her hands couldn’t seem to keep still, she pushed at her hair, tugged at the sheet. “I wasn’t going to mention it at all, actually.”

“Weren’t you? Maybe you forgot, momentarily, that Seth is my family’s responsibility. That we have a right to know if your sister’s going to cause more trouble. A need to know,” he said, rising as his anger rapidly approached flash point. “So that we can protect him.”

“She won’t do anything to—”

“How the hell do you know?” He exploded with it, rounding on her so that she clutched the sheets in white-knuckled fingers. “How can you know? By observing from ten paces back. Goddamn it, Sybill, this isn’t a fucking exercise. This is life. What the hell did she want?”

She wanted to shrink, as she always did from anger. She coated her heart and her voice with ice, as she always did to face it. “She wanted money, of course. She wanted me to demand it from you, to give her more myself. She shouted at me, too, and swore at me, just as you are. It appears that staying ten paces back has put me directly in the middle.”

“I want to know if and when she contacts you again. What did you tell her?”

Sybill reached for her robe, and her hand was steady. “I told her that your family would not give her anything. And neither would I. That I had spoken with your lawyer. That I had added, and would continue to add, my weight and influence to see that Seth remains a permanent part of your family.”

“That’s something, then,” he muttered, frowning at her as she pulled on her robe.

“It’s the least I can do, isn’t it?” Her tone was frigid, distant and final. “Excuse me.” She strode into the bathroom, shut the door.

From where he stood, Phillip heard the deliberate click of the lock. “Well, fine, that’s just fine.” He snarled at the door, grabbed his jacket, then got the hell out before he made matters any worse than they already were.