‘‘I’m not going to forget it,’’ she murmured, and the way she looked at him, her eyes soft and full of need, made his head swim.

‘‘It’s not going to happen again. So you stay clear of me for a while.’’ Desperation tinged his voice as he leaned across and shoved open her door. ‘‘I mean it, Grace, you just stay clear of me for a while. I’ve got enough to worry about.’’

‘‘All right, Ethan.’’ She wouldn’t beg. ‘‘If that’s what you want.’’

‘‘That’s exactly what I want.’’

This time he didn’t wait until she was in the house but backed out of the drive the minute she closed the truck’s door.

For the first time in more years than he could count, he thought seriously about getting blind drunk.

EIGHT

SETH KEPT WATCH FOR them. His excuse for being in the front yard as the shadows grew long was the dogs. Not that it was an excuse, exactly, he thought. He was trying to teach Foolish not just to chase the battered, well-chewed tennis ball but to bring it back the way Simon did. The trouble was that Foolish would race back to you with the ball, then expect you to play tug-of-war for it.

Not that Seth minded. He had a supply of balls and sticks and an old hunk of rope that Ethan had given him. He could toss and tug as long as the dogs were willing to run. Which was, as far as he could tell, just about forever.

But while he played with the dogs, he kept his ears tuned for the sound of an approaching car.

He knew they were on their way home because Cam had called from the plane. Which was just about the coolest thing Seth could think of. He couldn’t wait to tell Danny and Will how he’d talked to Cam while Cam had been flying over the Atlantic Ocean.

He’d already looked up Italy in the atlas and found Rome. Had traced his finger back and forth, back and forth across that wide ocean from Rome to the Chesapeake Bay, to the little smudge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that was St. Christopher’s.

For a little while he’d been afraid they wouldn’t come back. He imagined Cam calling and saying they’d decided to stay over there so he could race again.

He knew Cam had lived all over the place, racing boats and cars and motorcycles. Ray had told him all about it, and there was a thick scrapbook in the den that was filled with all kinds of newspaper and magazine pictures and articles about how many races Cam had won. And how many women he’d fooled around with.