Summer in Eclipse Bay

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “I don’t want to be rude, sir, but I’m in a hurry here. Maybe we should talk about this later.”

  “We’ll talk right now.” Mitchell banged the cane again for emphasis. “I heard you spent the night out at Octavia’s place.”

  “That, sir, is a flat-out lie.”

  Mitchell was startled into momentary speechlessness.

  “You tellin’ me it was someone else? You weren’t the man who was out there last night?”

  “I had dinner with Octavia,” Nick said evenly. “I went home afterward. I did not spend the night.”

  “The way I hear it, you were there until nearly one o’clock in the morning.”

  “You’ve got spies on your payroll?”

  “Don’t need any spies. Young Boone saw you drive past the marina late last night. He told everyone at the post office first thing this morning.”

  “You know, sir, I hate to break this to you, but nowadays it’s not all that unusual for a couple of adults to spend an evening together that doesn’t wind up until one in the morning.”

  “Not here in Eclipse Bay, they don’t, not unless they’re foolin’ around. And you two aren’t a couple of adults.”

  “We’re not?”

  “Nope.”

  “Mind if I ask just how you classify us, if not as adults?”

  “You’re a Harte and Octavia is Claudia’s great-niece.”

  “So?”

  “Shoot and damn, son.” Mitchell raised the cane and waved it in a slashing arc. “I warned you. If you think I’m gonna just stand by and let you take advantage of that gal, you’re—”

  “Mitch, wait.” Octavia’s clear voice echoed across the parking lot. “I can explain everything.”

  Nick turned his head and saw Octavia coming toward them at top speed. She left the sidewalk in front of her shop and raced across Bay Street, hair flying behind her.

  He was amazed that she could actually run in the sexy little slides. They did not look as if they’d provide adequate support or stability for this kind of exercise. But, then, what did he know about ladies’ shoes?

  A car horn blared. Brakes screeched. Octavia paid no attention. She reached the opposite side of the street and kept moving, heading straight for Mitchell and Nick.

  “You don’t understand, Mitch,” she shouted. “It’s okay, really it is.”

  Mitchell glared at her with concern when she skidded to a halt, breathless and flushed, in front of him.

  “See here, you all right?” he asked. “Something wrong?”

  “No, no, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.” Still breathing hard, she shot a quick, unreadable glance at Nick and then turned back to Mitchell. “I just wanted to assure you that you don’t have to protect me from Nick.”

  “I already warned him once that I won’t stand by and let him fool around with you.”

  “That’s just it, we are not fooling around.”

  “Well, just what the heck do you call it?” Mitchell demanded.

  Nick waited with genuine interest to hear her answer.

  Octavia drew herself up with astonishing aplomb. “Nick is working for me.”

  Mitchell gaped. “What the devil?”

  She bestowed an icy little smile on Nick and then looked at Mitchell with cool determination. “He has kindly agreed to investigate the missing Upsall. A.Z. and Virgil and I don’t feel that Chief Valentine can handle the case on his own.”

  “Well, shoot and damn.” Mitchell looked bemused for a couple of seconds, but in true Madison style, he recovered swiftly. “That doesn’t explain why he was out at your place until all hours last night.”

  “Relax,” Octavia said smoothly. “Last night was no big deal.”

  Nick felt his insides clench. No big deal?

  “It’s true we had dinner together, but so what?” Octavia went on in a breezy manner. “The only reason he left as late as he did was because of the storm. My fault, entirely. I didn’t want him driving home until the wind had died down a little. I was afraid about stuff like downed power lines and trees falling across the road.”

  She did not have to sound quite so damned casual, Nick thought.

  But her tactics were working. Mitchell was starting to appear somewhat mollified.

  “Well, shoot and damn,” Mitcheli said again. “So you kept him there at your place on accounta the high winds?”

  “Violent storms make me a little nervous.”

  “That one last night was a tad rough,” Mitchell admitted. “Worst we’ve had in a while. You say he’s gonna play private eye for you? Just like the guy in his books?”

  “Precisely,” Octavia said firmly. “From now on whenever you see Nick with me, you may assume that we are discussing the case. Nothing more.”

  “Huh.” Mitchell looked thoughtful now. “If you’re sure that’s all there is to it—”

  “Absolutely certain,” Octavia said. “Like I said, last night was no big deal. Just a friendly dinner that lasted a little longer than we anticipated because of the storm.”

  “Huh.” Mitchell looked hard at Nick. “You think you can find that painting?”

  “Probably not.” Nick shrugged. “But Virgil and A.Z. and Octavia want me to ask around a little so I said I would. If you hear anything useful, let me know.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Mitchell nodded to both of them and stalked back toward the waiting SUV.

  They watched him climb into the front seat and slam the door. Bryce put the behemoth in gear and drove out of the parking lot.

  There was a short silence. Nick folded his arms, leaned back against the BMW, and looked at Octavia.

  “Let’s get something straight here,” he said. “I don’t need you to protect me from Mitchell Madison.”

  Octavia reached into her shoulder bag, removed a pair of sunglasses, and slipped them onto her nose. Leveling the playing field, Nick thought. Now he could not read the expression in her eyes any better than she could read his.

  “I think I’m the one who should make things clear,” she said crisply. “I have a vested interest in making certain that you are not distracted by Mitchell and his misguided attempts to protect me. I want you to concentrate on finding that Upsall. Do we understand each other?”

  “Yeah, sure. We understand each other.” He paused a beat. “Last night was no big deal, huh?”

  She pursed her lips and tilted her head slightly. Light glared on the lenses of her glasses. “I may not have phrased that correctly.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “After due consideration, I’ve decided that last night was actually quite therapeutic for me.”

  Her deliberate, reflective, analytical tone sent a cold chill through him.

  “Therapeutic?” he repeated cautiously.

  “Don’t laugh, but this morning, when I woke up, I felt like the princess in the fairy tale, the one who’d been asleep for a hundred years. Awake at last. Okay, so maybe it was more like having been asleep for a couple of years, but you get the picture.”

  He relaxed a little but not much. “I’m a little confused here. Are you saying I’m Prince Charming?”

  She chuckled. “Hardly.”

  His belly tightened. “I was afraid of that.”

  “What I’m trying to explain is that, in a way, I’ve been living in a different world for nearly two years. I put a lot of things on hold while Aunt Claudia was ill, and I never went back to them after she died. I’ve been just sort of floating through my life, as it were.”

  “A free spirit.”

  “That’s how I described it, but it was more like being unanchored or untethered, if you see what I mean.”

  That fit with what he had figured out for himself, he thought. “Sounds like a form of depression or something.”

  “Maybe.” She snapped her fingers. “But whatever the problem was, it’s fixed.”

  “Because we had great sex last night?”

  “The quality of the sex probably wa
sn’t as much of a factor as the fact that I actually did the deed.” She smiled coolly. “It has been a while, you see. My social life was one of the things I put on hold when Aunt Claudia got so ill. I never really got back to it.”

  “Glad I could serve in a useful capacity.”

  “You were extremely useful.” She pushed her glasses up more firmly on her nose and cleared her throat. “Since we’re having this conversation, I should probably take the opportunity to apologize for that unfortunate little scene last night as you were running out the door. Let’s just chalk it up to two years’ worth of celibacy, the storm, and the last remnants of my weird emotional condition.”

  “A nice tidy list of reasons.” He shoved his fingers through his hair. “And for the record, I was not running out the door. It was late and I had to pick up Carson and get back to the cottage.”

  “Of course.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m glad we’ve got that settled. You’ll have to excuse me. I need to get back to the gallery.”

  “Now who’s running?”

  Her mouth tightened. “I’ve got a business to see to and you’ve got a missing painting to investigate.”

  “Sure.” He wished he could see her eyes behind those damn sunglasses. “Would you like to come out to my place and have dinner with Carson and me tonight?”

  She hesitated. “Thanks, but I’m afraid I’m busy this evening.”

  The chill returned to his gut. “Seaton?”

  “Why, yes, as a matter of fact. How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess,” he said grimly.

  “He wants me to look at some of his paintings.” She turned away to start back toward the gallery. “He has never exhibited his work and he wants me to give him a professional opinion on whether it might have commercial possibilities.”

  “Bullshit. He wants to talk you into bed.”

  She stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “Would you like to tell me what it is between you two?”

  “What the hell. I never told anyone else.” He wrenched open the driver’s side door of the BMW and got behind the wheel. “Might be therapeutic for me.”

  “Nick, wait—”

  He slammed the door and looked at her through the lowered window while he started the engine. “Seaton hates my guts because he thinks that I had an affair with his ex-wife while they were still married.”

  Her mouth opened but no words emerged. Her speechless condition gave him some satisfaction, but not much.

  “One more thing,” he added, snapping the car into gear. “What happened last night between you and me wasn’t therapy. It was great sex. There’s a difference.”

  He drove out of the marina parking lot, leaving her standing there in her bright purple jumper and ridiculously sexy shoes.

  chapter 11

  “What the hell do you expect me to do?” Sullivan snarled into the phone. “I’m trying to put together a merger here.”

  “Hate to break this to you,” Mitchell growled on the other end, “but my grandson and your son don’t need any help putting the finishing touches on the Madison-Harte merger. Both of ’em have been running their own companies for years. They know what they’re doing. You’re just gumming things up, hanging over their shoulders there in Portland. Leave ’em be and pay attention to the larger issues.”

  “Larger issues? Never heard you use a fancy phrase like that before, Mitch.”

  “Must have picked it up from one of you silver-tongued Hartes. Look, we’ve got a problem here in Eclipse Bay.”

  Sullivan cranked back in the chair and contemplated the view from the window of the temporary office his new son-in-law, Gabe Madison, had provided for him. The headquarters of Madison Commercial, soon to become Madison-Harte, were located on the top floors of a Portland office tower. From his perch he could see the boat traffic on the Willamette River.

  The summer afternoon was sunny and warm. The weather reporters claimed that it was hot down there on the city streets, but he spent most of his time in Phoenix these days. He knew hot, and this was not hot.

  “Seems to me that you have a problem, Mitch,” he said, stalling for time while he considered the larger issues. “Not me. You’re the one who decided to take on the job of looking out for Claudia Banner’s great-niece.”

  “This problem we’re discussing involves your grandson,” Mitch shot back. “I told you I wouldn’t stand by and let him—”

  “Shut up.” Sullivan got up out of the chair very suddenly.

  Phone in hand, he went to stand at the window. “Don’t say it again.”

  “Don’t say what?” Mitchell asked innocently. “That I won’t let Nick sucker Octavia into an affair and then dump her when he decides he wants to replace her with some other lady?”

  “This is my grandson you’re talking about.” Sullivan’s hand clamped fiercely around the phone, but he managed to keep his voice level. “He is not a philanderer, damn it.”

  “That so? Then why hasn’t he found himself a good woman sometime during the past four years and settled down again? That’s what you Hartes do, isn’t it? Get married and stay married?”

  “Yes, Mitch. Unlike the sterling example of family values you set for your grandsons with your three or four wives and God only knows how many affairs, we Hartes are real big on family values.”

  “You leave my grandsons out of this.”

  “Hard to do that, given that they’re married to my granddaughters.”

  “There’s not a damn thing wrong with Gabe’s or Rafe’s family values and you know it. Lillian is Gabe’s passion and Hannah is Rafe’s. Nothing comes between a Madison and his passion. Those two boys are married for life.”

  “So was Nick,” Sullivan said quietly.

  Silence hummed on the line.

  “That’s the real problem, you see,” Sullivan continued. “Nick figured he had married for life. He hasn’t adjusted to the loss of Amelia. He’s not heartless, he’s just trying to protect himself.”

  “Look, I know folks here in Eclipse Bay like to say that losing her broke Nick’s heart.” There was a note of gruff sympathy in Mitchell’s voice. “Expect it’s true, what with him being a Harte and all. But that ain’t no excuse for him playin’ fast and loose with a nice girl like Octavia. She’s had a rough time of it, too, damn it. But unlike your grandson, I don’t think she’s tough enough to protect herself.”

  “So you’ve decided to do it for her?”

  “Someone’s gotta do it. Not like she’s got any family around to take on the job.”

  Sullivan hesitated. “All right, you’ve made your point.”

  “Got another one to make while I’m at it,” Mitchell said grimly. “Your grandson spent last night at her place.”

  That gave Sullivan pause. “The whole night?”

  “Well, maybe not the entire night—”

  Sullivan relaxed slightly. “Didn’t think so.”

  “But it’s pretty damn obvious those two are foolin’ around.”

  “Obvious to you, maybe.”

  “Yeah, obvious to me. You should have seen the way Octavia jumped to Nick’s defense this afternoon when I cornered him down at the marina.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, cornering my grandson?”

  “I was just makin’ sure he understands he can’t have his way with Octavia.”

  “Damn it, Mitch—” Sullivan broke off abruptly and backtracked to the other part of Mitchell’s comment. “What did you mean when you said Octavia jumped to his defense?”

  “She claimed he’s sort of working for her.”

  “Nick? Working for Octavia Brightwell? Doing what, for crying out loud?”

  “Playing private detective, I hear. Like that fellow in his novels.”

  Sullivan struggled valiantly to hang onto the few remaining wisps of logic that still dangled from the conversation. “Why does Octavia need an investigator?”

  “Long story. That painting Thurgarton left to A.Z. and Virgil and th
e Heralds got stolen from her shop last night.”

  “What was it doing in her gallery? Never mind. I assume she notified Valentine?”

  “Sure. But he’s got his eye on the Heralds and she doesn’t think he’s looking in the right place. Neither does A.Z. or Virgil.”

  “So she hired Nick.” Sullivan sank down onto the corner of his desk and digested that information. “And he agreed to investigate?”

  “Appears that way.”

  “This is bizarre.”

  “Like I said, we’ve got a situation here, Sullivan. I hate to admit it, but I think I’m gonna need some help straightening this one out.”

  “Now, just a minute—”

  “I’ll keep you posted.”

  Mitchell cut the connection.

  Very slowly Sullivan reached across the desk and punched in another, very familiar number. He needed advice from the one person whose insight he had come to trust the most over the years.

  His wife, Rachel, answered on the second ring.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “Why do you say that?” he grumbled.

  “Because it’s the middle of the day and you’re supposed to be deep into the intricacies of the merger of Harte Investments and Madison Commercial.”

  He could hear birds. Somewhere in the background, water splashed. He knew that she was out by the pool of their desert home with his daughter-in-law, Elaine. The two women were holed up together in Phoenix, keeping each other company, while their menfolk worked the merger details with Gabe Madison.

  Sullivan summoned up a vision of Rachel in her swimsuit, her body sleek and wet.

  She was still the only woman for him, he thought. There had never been another since he had met her all those years ago in the wake of the financial disaster of Harte-Madison. He had been a driven man in those days, completely obsessed with the task of rebuilding his business empire.

  But he had learned the hard way that the great strength in the Harte genes was also a potentially devastating flaw. It was the nature of a Harte to be goal-oriented and so focused that other things, important things, sometimes got pushed aside. If Madisons were driven by their passions, Hartes were sometimes inclined to be cold-blooded and relentless in their pursuit of an objective.