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selling flowers in a small waterfront shop.
    It didn't matter to her what people thought or what they said—any more than she supposed such things mattered to Seth Quinn. She'd come here to get away from the demands and expectations, the sticky grip of family, and the unrelenting upheaval of being used as the fraying rope in the endless game of tug-of-war her parents played.
    She'd come to St. Chris for peace, the peace that she'd yearned for most of her life.
    She was finding it.
    Though her mother would be thrilled—perhaps, stubbornly, because her mother would be thrilled at the prospect of her precious daughter capturing the interest of Seth Quinn—Dru had no intention of cultivating that interest. Neither the artistic interest, nor the more elemental and frankly sexual interest she'd seen in his eyes when he'd looked at her.
    Or, if she was being honest, the frankly sexual interest she'd felt for him.
    The Quinns were, by all reports, a large, complex and unwieldy family. God knew she'd had her fill of family.
    A pity, she admitted, tapping the card on her palm before dropping it into a drawer. The young master was attractive, amusing and appealing. And any man who took the time to buy flowers for his sisters, and wanted to make sure each purchase suited the individual style of the recipient, earned major points.
    "Too bad for both of us," she murmured, and shut the drawer with a final little snap.
    HE WAS THINKING of Dru as she was thinking of him, and pondering just what angles, just what tones would work best on a portrait. He liked the idea of a three-quarter view of her face, with her head turned to the left, but her eyes looking back, out of the canvas.
    That would suit the contrast of her cool attitude and sexy chic.
    He never doubted she'd consent to pose. He had an entire arsenal of weapons to battle a model's reluctance. All he had to do was decide which one would work best on Drusilla.
    Tapping his fingers on the wheel to the outlaw beat of Aero-smith that blasted out of his stereo, Seth considered her.
    There was money in her background, he decided. Seth recognized designer cut and good fabric even if he was more interested in the form beneath the fashion. Then there was the cadence of her voice. It said high-class private school to him.
    She'd tagged James McNeill Whistler for the name of her shop. Which meant, he thought, she'd had a very tony education, or someone pounding poetry and literature into her head as Phil had done with him.
    Probably both.
    She was comfortable with her looks and didn't fluster when a man made it clear she attracted him.
    She wasn't married, and instinct told him she wasn't attached. A woman like Dru didn't relocate to tag along after a boyfriend or lover. She'd moved from Washington, started a business and run it solo because that's just the way she wanted it.
    Then he remembered just how far off the mark he'd been regarding the fictional Widow Whitcomb Banks, and decided to hedge his bets by doing a little research before approaching her again.
    Seth pulled into the parking lot of the old brick barn the Quinns had bought from Nancy Claremont when the woman's tight-fisted, tight-assed husband had keeled over dead of a heart attack while arguing with Cy Crawford over the price of a meatball sub.
    Initially they'd rented the massive building, one that had been a tobacco, warehouse in the 1700s, a packinghouse in the 1800s and a glorified storage shed for much of the 1900s.
    Then it had been a boatyard, transformed and outfitted by the brothers Quinn. For the last eight years, it had belonged to them.
    Seth looked up at the roof as he climbed out of the car. He'd helped reshingle that roof, he remembered, and had nearly broken his neck doing it.
    He'd smeared the hot fifty-fifty mix on seams, and burned his fingers. He'd learned to lap boards in the bottomless well of Ethan's patience. He'd sweated like a pig along with Cam repairing the dock. And had escaped by whatever means