This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Eclipse Bay
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2000 by Jayne Ann Krentz
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Electronic edition: September, 2002
Dedication
For Supreme Webscholar Cissy and the wonderful gang at www.jayneannkrentz.com
You all said you wanted a series . . .
prologue
Eclipse Bay, Oregon
Midnight, eight years earlier . . .
“It’s going to be a long walk home.”
The voice was low and rough around the edges, unmistakably masculine. The kind of voice that sent little shivers down a woman’s spine. It came out of the bottomless shadows near the base of Eclipse Arch, the stone monolith that dominated this secluded stretch of rocky beach.
Hannah Harte jerked her gaze away from the sight of Perry Decatur’s disappearing taillights and spun around. Her pulse, already beating briskly as a result of the unpleasant tussle in the front seat, shifted into high gear.
Maybe getting out of the car had not been one of her brighter ideas. This stretch of Bayview Drive was a very lonely place at this hour of the night. Nice going, Hannah, she thought. The old frying-pan-into-the-fire trick. And you’re supposed to be so sensible and cautious. The one who never takes chances. The one who never gets into trouble.
“Who’s there?” She edged back a step and prepared to run.
The man on the beach sauntered casually out of the dense darkness of the arched rock and stepped into the cold light of the late-summer moon. He was less than twenty feet away.
“You’re a Harte,” he said. Cold, ironic amusement filtered through the words. “Don’t you recongnize a no-good, low-down, untrustworthy Madison on sight?”
She took in the stark profile, the glint of silver light on midnight-dark hair, and the air of arrogant, prowling grace. She didn’t need the additional clues of a leather jacket, a black crew-neck T-shirt, and jeans.
Rafe Madison. Her generation’s most notorious member of the disreputable, thoroughly scandalous Madison clan. For three generations, ever since the legendary street fight between Mitchell Madison and Sullivan Harte in front of Fulton’s Supermarket, the Hartes had dutifully warned their offspring not to get involved with the wild, unruly Madisons.
Rafe had apparently made it a point to live up to his family’s scandalous heritage. The product of an affair between his sculptor father and a model, Rafe had been orphaned along with his brother at the tender age of nine. Both boys had been raised by their disreputable grandfather, Mitchell, who was, according to Hannah’s mother, in no way qualified to be a father.
Rafe had blossomed into the quintessential bad boy, but he had somehow managed, by the skin of his teeth, to stay out of jail. As far as most people in Eclipse Bay were concerned, it was only a matter of time before he wound up behind bars.
He was twenty-four, four years older than herself, Hannah thought. It was common knowledge that his grandfather was furious with him because he had dropped out of college in the middle of his sophomore year. Rafe had done a short stint in the military, and from all accounts, he had managed to prove all the recruitment posters wrong and emerge with no marketable skills. Word had it that this summer Mitchell was trying to coerce him into going to work for his older brother, Gabe, who was attempting, against all odds, to revive the family business. No one expected Gabe to succeed in that endeavor.
Although she and her family spent every summer and many weekends and vacations here in Eclipse Bay, Hannah had had no direct contact with Rafe while she was growing up. The four years’ difference in their ages had, until tonight, served to keep their orbits safely separated, even in this small seaside community where both families had deep roots. Four years was a chasm when one was a kid.
But tonight was her twentieth birthday. In the fall she would start her junior year of college in Portland. For some reason the four years between herself and Rafe Madison no longer seemed an impenetrable barrier.
Her first reaction to the realization that he had witnessed the struggle in the front seat of Perry’s car was overwhelming mortification. Hartes did not indulge in public scenes. Just her dumb luck to have a Madison hanging around when she broke that unwritten rule. Anger warred with acute embarrassment.
“Do you do this a lot?” she asked gruffly.
“Do what a lot?”
“Hide behind large rocks in order to spy on people who want to have private conversations?”
“You’ve got to admit that the entertainment options in this town are a little limited.”
“I suppose that’s especially true if you’ve got a severely limited concept of what constitutes entertainment.” Everyone knew that Rafe’s motorcycle was frequently spotted in the small parking lot behind Virgil’s Adult Books and Video Arcade. “What do you do when you’re not being a voyeur?”
“A voyeur?” He whistled softly. “That’s a fancy word for a Peeping Tom, isn’t it?”
She stiffened. “Yes, it is.”
“Thought so. Wasn’t absolutely sure, though. I dropped out of college before we got to some of the more up-scale words.”
He was mocking her. She knew it, but she was not certain how to deal with it.
“I wouldn’t brag about leaving school if I were you.” She clutched her purse more tightly in front of her body, as if it were a magic shield she could use to ward off any demonic vibes Rafe might be emitting. “My father says that it’s too bad you blew off your future like that. He says you have potential.”
Rafe’s teeth flashed briefly in a sardonic grin. “Lots of people have said that over the years, starting with my first-grade teacher. But they’ve all concluded that I won’t ever live up to whatever potential I’ve got.”
“You’re an adult now. It’s your responsibility to make your life work properly. You can’t blame your failure on others.”
“I never do that,” he assured her earnestly. “I’m proud to say that I am solely to blame for my own screwups.”
She was out of her depth here. She tightened her grip on the purse and took another step back.
“You sort of implied that you and the guy who just took off came here to talk privately.” His words pursued her in the darkness. “But I didn’t get the feeling that the two of you were having what you’d call a meaningful conversation. Who was the jerk, anyway?”
For some oblique reason she felt compelled to defend Perry, who, unlike Rafe Madison, would amount to something someday. Or maybe it was her own self-image she wanted to protect. She did not like to think of herself as the kind of woman who dated jerks.
Not that Perry was a jerk. H
e was a budding academic.
“His name is Perry Decatur,” she said coolly. “He’s a grad student at Chamberlain. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Guess he thought the evening was going to end a little differently.”
“Perry’s okay. He just got a little pushy tonight, that’s all.”
“Pushy, huh? Is that what you call it?” Rafe gave an easy shrug. “Well, it looked like you pushed back pretty good. For a minute there, I thought you might need a little help, but then I realized that you were handling him just fine on your own.”
“Perry is hardly the violent type.” Outrage flared. “He’s a grad student, for crying out loud. He plans to teach political science.”
“Is that right? Since when is politics a science?”
She was pretty sure that was a rhetorical question. “He expects to be offered a position on the faculty at Chamberlain as soon as he gets his Ph.D.”
“Well, shoot. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have worried about you even half a minute while the two of you were staging that arm-wrestling contest. I mean, a guy who’s going for his Ph.D. and plans to become a hotshot professor at Chamberlain wouldn’t try to force himself on a woman. Don’t know what I was thinking.”
She was profoundly grateful for the simple fact that it was midnight. At least Rafe could not see the hot color she was almost sure was staining her face a vivid shade of pink. “There’s no call to be sarcastic. Perry and I had a disagreement, that’s all.”
“So, do you date a lot of jerks?”
“Stop calling Perry a jerk.”
“I was just curious. Can’t blame me under the circumstances, can you?”
“Yes, I can and I do.” She glared. “You’re being deliberately obnoxious.”
“But not quite as obnoxious as the jerk, huh? I haven’t even touched you.”
“Oh, shut up. I’m going home.”
“I hate to mention it, but you are standing alone here on an isolated stretch of road in the middle of the night. Like I said, it’s going to be a long walk back to your folks’ place.”
She seized the only weak point she could find in his logic. “I’m not alone.”
In the pale moonlight, his smile gleamed dangerously. “We both know that as far as your family is concerned, the fact that I’m here with you makes your situation worse than being alone. I’m a Madison, remember?”
She raised her chin. “I don’t give a darn about that stupid feud. Ancient history, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Right. Ancient history. But you know what they say about history. Those who don’t learn from it are condemned to relive it.”
Startled, she stared at him. “You sound just like Aunt Isabel. She’s always saying things like that.”
“I know.”
Hannah was floored. “You’ve talked to my aunt?”
“She talks to me.” He raised one shoulder in another dismissive gesture. “I do some work around that big house of hers sometimes. She’s a nice old lady. A little strange, but then, she is a Harte.”
She wondered what her parents would say if they discovered that Aunt Isabel hired Rafe to do odd jobs around Dreamscape. “I guess that explains where you picked up the quote.”
“You didn’t think I’d actually read it in a book, did you?”
“Everyone knows you do most of your reading at Virgil Nash’s porn shop.” Lord, she sounded prissy. “I doubt that you’d find a quote like that in any of the books or magazines he stocks.”
Rafe was silent for a beat, as if her comment had surprised him. But he recovered immediately. “Right. Mostly I just look at the pictures, anyhow.”
“I believe it.”
“I’ll bet the jerk reads a lot.”
Quite suddenly she’d had enough. It was time to level this playing field. Rafe Madison had four years and a lifetime of experience on her, but she was a Harte. She could hold her own against a Madison.
“If you didn’t come here to play some voyeuristic games,” she said coldly, “what are you doing at Eclipse Arch at this time of night?”
“Same thing you are,” he said very smoothly. “My date and I had a little disagreement, and she kicked me out of her car.”
Hannah was astonished. “Kaitlin Sadler threw you out of her car because you wouldn’t have sex with her?”
“We didn’t argue about having sex,” he said with devastating honesty. “We argued about the fact that she’s dating other guys.”
“I see.” It was no secret that Kaitlin had been seeing other men. “I hear she wants to marry someone who can take her away from Eclipse Bay.”
“You heard right. Obviously I’m not in a position to do that, what with my failure to achieve my full potential and all.”
“Obviously.”
“Hell, I don’t even have a steady job.”
“I don’t suppose Kaitlin would consider flipping veggie burgers at Snow’s Café a position with a lot of guaranteed upward mobility,” Hannah mused.
“No, she doesn’t. She made that real clear.”
Hannah was appalled to realize that she felt an insidious little tendril of sympathy for him. “You’ve got to admit that you certainly can’t afford to keep her in the style to which she wants to become accustomed.”
“I know. But I thought we had an understanding that while we were seeing each other, neither of us would fool around with anyone else.”
“Kaitlin, I take it, didn’t share that understanding?”
“Nope. She said she didn’t want to be tied down to me. Made it clear that her first priority was finding a rich husband. Naturally, I was crushed to learn that I was nothing more than a plaything for her.”
“Yeah. Crushed.”
“Hey, Madisons have feelings too.”
“Really?” she murmured. “I’ve never heard that.”
“The family likes to keep it quiet.”
“I’m not surprised. Sort of ruins the image.”
“Yeah. You know, you’d be surprised how irritating it is to date a woman who is actively hunting elsewhere for a wealthy husband.”
“Kaitlin’s definitely active,” Hannah said neutrally. “Everyone in town knows it.”
Rafe smiled thinly. “As of tonight she can be active with someone else.”
“I suppose she was upset when you told her you didn’t want to continue in the role of, uh, plaything?”
“She was pissed as hell.”
She tried to read his face in the shadows, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking or feeling. Assuming that is, that he was thinking or feeling anything at all.
“I get the impression that you are not particularly devastated by the breakup in your relationship,” she ventured cautiously.
“Sure, I’m devastated. I just told you, I’m a sensitive guy. But I’ll get over it.”
“What about Kaitlin?”
“Worrying about Kaitlin’s feelings is not real high on my list of priorities at the moment.”
Hannah gazed at him in amazement. “You mean you’ve actually got a list of priorities?”
“Okay, so it isn’t a computer-generated five-year master plan like the one you’ve probably got tacked up on your bedroom wall. But some of us have to make it up as we go along.”
She winced at the thought of the list of personal goals she had made for herself at the start of the summer. It was, indeed, hanging on the bulletin board over her dresser. It was an updated, more finely tuned version of the list she had made when she graduated from high school. Formulating objectives and then plotting a course to reach those objectives was second nature to her. Everyone in her family was trained to be organized and forward-looking. As her father, Hamilton, was fond of saying, an unplanned life was a messy life.
Madisons, on the other hand, were notorious for their propensity to be driven by quixotic obsessions, quirky desires, and the occasional wild hair. When a Madison was consumed by a passion, people said, nothing was allowed to get in the
way. Rafe’s casual attitude toward the breakup with Kaitlin Sadler tonight was convincing evidence that she did not rank as his passion.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Hannah said, still uncertain about whether or not Rafe was teasing her. “What’s on your list of priorities?”
For a moment she thought he was not going to respond. Then he shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his leather motorcycle jacket and turned slightly to face the bay.
“I don’t think my plans would be of much interest to you,” he said laconically. “It’s not like I’m going to get a Ph.D. or anything.”
She watched him, unwillingly fascinated now. “Tell me.”
He fell silent for a moment. She had the impression that he was engaged in some kind of internal debate.
“My grandfather says that when I’m not busy screwing around I have a head for business,” he said eventually. “He wants me to go to work for Gabe.”
“But you don’t want to do that?”
“Madison Commercial is Gabe’s baby. He’s in charge, and that’s the way it has to be. We get along okay, but I learned a few things about myself in the army. One of them was that I’m not cut out to take orders.”
“No surprise there, I guess.”
Rafe took one hand out of his pocket, scooped up a small stone, and sent it skipping out across the dark water of the bay. “I want to do my own thing.”
“I can understand that.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “You do?”
“I don’t want to work in a corporation or a bureaucracy either,” she said quietly. “I’m going to open my own business as soon as I graduate.”
“Got it all planned, huh?”
“Not entirely. But by the time I get out of college I should have most of the details nailed down. What about you? What’s your chief objective?”
“To stay out of jail.”
“That’s certainly an impressive career goal. I’ll bet you need to study for years and years and probably do an internship and a residency as well in order to achieve that objective.”
Eclipse Bay Page 1
