Summer in Eclipse Bay eb-3

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  "My son is first and foremost a Harte," Nick said dryly. "His chief concern is making sure that nothing gets in the way of his current objective."

  "And that objective would be?"

  "Getting his picture of Winston exhibited in the Children's Art Show."

  "A worthy ambition," Hannah murmured. "And I'm sure the portrait is stunning. Winston, after all, is an excellent subject. But what does your relationship with Octavia have to do with getting the picture exhibited?"

  Nick grimaced. "Carson is afraid that if I annoy Octavia she might refuse to hang the portrait in the show."

  "A reasonable cause for anxiety under the circumstances," Rafe said cheerfully.

  Hannah looked startled. "Oh, I really don't think she'd take out her hostility on a little boy. She isn't the sort of person who would do that. Octavia is very nice."

  "So," Rafe said a little too easily, "what, exactly, are you doing to annoy such a nice lady, Harte?"

  "You know," Nick said, taking another look at his watch, "it really is getting late, isn't it?"

  "Yes, it is," Hannah said. She swung around on her heel and disappeared down the long, central hall.

  Nick and Rafe followed her. They all came to a halt at the entrance to a comfortable, book-lined room. The dark expanse of the bay filled the space behind the windows. The library lights had been turned down low. Music played softly. A number of the comfortable, overstuffed chairs were occupied by guests who were sipping after-dinner cordials and coffee and talking quietly.

  In the corner two small figures sprawled across a mound of pillows. Several children's books were scattered on the rug beside them. Most of the stories featured dogs.

  Nick crossed the room and looked down at Carson, who was dressed in jeans, running shoes, and a sweatshirt. The boy was sound asleep, one arm flung across Winston. The Schnauzer raised his head from his paws and regarded Nick with intelligent eyes.

  "Thanks for looking after him, Winston. I'll take over now."

  Nick scratched Winston behind the ears and then scooped up his son.

  Relieved of his nanny duties for the evening, Winston got to his feet and stretched. He snuffled politely around Nick's shoes and then trotted briskly toward Hannah.

  Carson stirred a little and settled comfortably against Nick. He did not open his eyes. "Dad?"

  "Time to go home."

  "You didn't make her mad, did you?"

  "I worked very hard not to make her mad."

  "Good." Carson went back to sleep.

  They all trooped down the hall to the front door and out onto the wide veranda. Winston vanished discreetly into the bushes. Hannah arranged Carson's black wind-breaker-a miniature version of the one Nick wore-around the boy's sleeping form.

  "We've got some news," she said softly.

  "What's that?" Nick asked.

  "We're pregnant."

  "Hey, that's great." He grinned and kissed her lightly on the forehead. "Congratulations to both of you."

  "Thanks."

  Rafe put his arm around Hannah and pulled her close against his side. His pride and happiness were apparent. "You're the first to know. We'll start phoning everyone else in both families tomorrow."

  Nick smiled. "Nothing else like it, you know."

  "Yeah, sorta figured that," Rafe said.

  Nick looked down at Carson lying securely in his arms. "You just wish it was this easy to protect them forever."

  They stood there for a moment. No one spoke.

  After a while Nick hugged his son a little more tightly to him and went down the steps. At the bottom he paused briefly and looked back. "Almost forgot. I've got a little news of my own."

  Hannah smiled encouragingly. "What?"

  "Octavia Brightwell is related to our own local legend, Claudia Banner. Turns out that Claudia was her great-aunt."

  Hannah's jaw dropped. "You're kidding."

  "Nope."

  "What the hell is she doing here in Eclipse Bay?" Rafe asked.

  "I don't think she knows the answer to that one, herself. She said something about coming here to see if there was anything that could be done to mend the damage her great-aunt did. But I've got a feeling it's more complicated."

  "What do you mean?" Hannah replied.

  "From what I can tell, she's been drifting since Claudia died a year and a half ago. No close family. No real roots anywhere. Coming here to repair the damage her aunt did gave her a goal. But she tells me that she plans to leave at the end of the summer because it's clear to her that the Hartes and the Madisons have ended the feud all by themselves."

  "Yeah, the good times never last, do they?" Rafe said laconically. His expression turned serious. "Does my grandfather know who she is?"

  "She said Sullivan and Mitchell have known since the night of Lillian's show. Obviously they chose to keep the information to themselves."

  "Figures," Rafe said.

  They waited together on the veranda while Winston finished his business in the damp shrubbery. Hannah watched the BMW disappear into the night.

  "What do you think is going on here?" she said after a while.

  "Damned if I know." Rafe wrapped his hands around the railing. "Maybe it's like Nick said. Maybe Octavia came to Eclipse Bay to carry out her aunt's dying wish and then discovered there was nothing to fix."

  "Nick is getting serious about her. I can tell. Octavia is different from the other women he's been seeing in the past few years. He's acting odd, too. I wonder if he's given her The Talk yet?"

  "Don't know about that, but one thing we can say for sure. The curse has not yet been lifted. Nick didn't stay the night at her place."

  "That business about the curse is absolute nonsense. The reason Nick never spends the night with any of his lady friends is because of Carson. He doesn't like to leave him alone with a sitter all night."

  "That excuse doesn't fly," Rafe said flatly. "It's true that Nick doesn't leave Carson with sitters all night, but you know as well as I do that the kid stays overnight with family at times. Trust me, Nick wouldn't have a serious problem arranging to remain in some woman's bed until breakfast if that's what he wanted to do. If you ask me, he's avoiding it."

  "I suppose you're right. Waking up with someone in the morning is a little different. More intimate, somehow. He's probably afraid that if he spends the night, the lady in question might get the wrong idea in spite of The Talk. He's done his best to avoid getting entangled in a real relationship since Amelia died."

  "It's one thing to have hot sex and leave while it's still dark," Rafe agreed. "It's another thing to face the lady across the breakfast table. Takes the relationship to a whole new level."

  Hannah smiled and patted her tummy. "Certainly had that effect on our relationship. But then, you can cook. That made a huge difference."

  Winston trotted up the steps and kept going toward the front door. Rafe turned his head to watch the dog disappear inside the hall.

  "Uh-oh," he said.

  "Something wrong?"

  "Just realized that we left the door open."

  "So?"

  "So Eddie is still at the front desk. He must have over-heard everything we said when we talked to Nick a few minutes ago. Got a feeling he now knows just who Octavia Brightwell really is. Probably can't wait to tell everyone down at the post office first thing tomorrow morning."

  Hannah groaned. "You're right. Uh-oh."

  "What the heck. It was all bound to come out sooner or later. Not like there's any way to keep a secret in Eclipse Bay, after all."

  "True." Hannah nibbled on her lower lip for a moment. "All the same, I think I'll give Octavia a call first thing in the morning and warn her. She's an outsider. She won't be prepared for what she's going to walk into tomorrow."

  Rafe smiled. He said nothing.

  She raised her brows. "What?"

  "Just struck me that Octavia isn't that much of an outsider."

  "What do you mean?"

  "She's related to Claudia
Banner, remember?" He tightened his arm around Hannah and steered her back toward the open door. "Her family has been involved in this thing from the beginning. Just like us Madisons and Hartes."

  Chapter 7

  All eyes turned toward her when she walked into the Incandescent Body bakery shortly before nine the next morning. And just as quickly shifted away again.

  Even if Hannah had not been kind enough to give her a wake-up call and a warning, Octavia thought, she had been in Eclipse Bay long enough to know what this peculiar attention meant.

  There was fresh gossip going around and she was the focus of it.

  She had been well aware of what would happen if she accepted a date with Nick Harte, she reminded herself. And the fact that everyone now knew that she was related to the infamous Claudia Banner just added a whole lot of very hot spice to the stew that was now brewing in Eclipse Bay.

  She paused just inside the doorway and drew a deep breath. Hartes and Madisons handled this kind of stuff routinely. Aunt Claudia wouldn't have so much as flinched. If they could do it, so could she.

  She gave the small crowd a polite smile and moved forward, weaving a path through the gauntlet of tables. It seemed a very long way to the counter, but she made it eventually.

  "Good morning," she said to the brightly robed Herald who waited to take her order. "Coffee with cream, please."

  "May the light of the future be with you today." The Herald's ankhs and scarab jewelry clanked gently when she raised her palm in greeting. "Your coffee will be ready in a moment."

  The door opened again just as Octavia handed her money to the Herald. She did not need to glance over her shoulder to see who had walked into the bakery. The fresh buzz of excitement said it all.

  "Hi, Miss Brightwell," Carson called from the far end of the room. "Dad said he saw you in here."

  She turned, cup in hand. A deep sense of wistful longing welled up inside her at the sight of Nick and his son together. In his matching black windbreaker, jeans, tee shirt, and running shoes, Carson was a sartorial miniature of his father. But the resemblance went so much deeper, she thought. You could already see in Carson the beginnings of the strength of will, the savvy intelligence, and the cool awareness that were Nick's hallmarks. There was something more there, too. Carson would grow up to be the kind of man whose word was his bond because integrity was bred in the bone in the Harte family.

  Like father, like son.

  She squelched the sudden rush of emotion with a ruthless act of willpower. Nick and Carson had everything they needed in the way of a family. And she would be leaving at the end of the summer.

  "Good morning," she said to Carson. She looked at Nick and felt the heat in his gaze go straight to her nerve endings, setting off little explosions. "Hello."

  "'Morning," he said.

  There was an unmistakable intimacy in the low greeting, a dark, heavy warmth that she was certain everyone in the bakery had picked up on. She knew, with a certainty that was so strong she wondered if she'd developed telepathic powers, that he was thinking about that good-night kiss on her front porch.

  Not that she had any right to complain. She was thinking about it, too.

  Actually, she'd spent far too much of the night recalling it, analyzing it, contemplating every nuance and cataloging her own responses. She had examined that kiss the way she would have examined a painting that had the power to capture her attention and force her to look beneath the surface.

  Her reaction had been over the top and she knew it. In fact, the all-night obsession with the details of that encounter on the porch had made her very uneasy this morning. You'd have thought it was her first serious kiss. And that made no sense at all. This was what came of being relationship-free for nearly two years. A woman tended to overreact when the long drought finally ended. She needed to get some perspective here.

  Nick and Carson arrived at the counter. There was more than just amusement in Nick's eyes. There was some sympathy, too.

  He glanced around with mild interest. "Don't worry about this. The news is out that you're related to Claudia

  Banner and that we were seen together in my car last night."

  "Yes, I know. Hannah called me first thing this morning to warn me."

  "It'll all blow over in a couple of days."

  She wasn't so sure about that, but she decided this was not the time or place to argue the point. "Sure."

  "Give me a minute to grab some coffee for myself and some hot chocolate for Carson," he said. "Then we'll walk you over to the gallery."

  Before she could object or agree, he started to give his order to the Herald.

  Carson looked up at her while they waited for the coffee and chocolate. "Have you framed my picture yet?"

  "I'm going to do it this morning." She smiled down at him. "Want to help?"

  Excitement bubbled through him. "Yes."

  Nick collected the cups and a paper sack from the Herald and gave the bakery one sweeping glance as he started toward the door.

  "Okay, you two," he said out of the side of his mouth in the stone-cold accents of an Old West marshal. "Let's get the heck out of Dodge."

  "Miss Brightwell's gonna frame Winston today," Carson announced. "I'm gonna help."

  "Cool," Nick said.

  Carson whirled and dashed ahead, completely oblivious to the thinly veiled curiosity that permeated the room.

  "A Harte to his toes," Octavia murmured.

  "Oh, yeah."

  Outside, the remnants of the morning cloud cover were starting to dissipate. The day promised warmth and sunshine by noon.

  The shops across from the pier had begun to open for the day. Octavia noticed that the lights were on inside Bay Souvenirs, House of Candy, and Seaton's Antiques.

  "Looks like I'm running a little late this morning." She stopped in front of the door of Bright Visions and slid her key into the lock.

  Carson and Nick followed her into the gallery and waited while she deactivated the alarm and switched on the lights.

  "Where's my picture?" Carson asked.

  "In the back room with the others," Octavia said. "But we have to finish our chocolate and coffee first before we start framing. Don't want to risk spilling anything on the pictures."

  "Okay." Carson went to work on his chocolate. He seemed intent on downing the contents of his cup in record time.

  "Easy," Nick said quietly.

  There was no threatening edge to the tone of his voice, Octavia noted; no boring lecture on good manners. Just a simple instruction spoken with calm, masculine authority.

  Octavia waited until all three cups were in the waste-basket before she opened the door of the back room.

  "All right," she said, "let's see about getting Winston into a suitable frame."

  Nick followed as far as the doorway of the back room. He glanced at his watch. "The mail should be in by now. I'll run down to the post office while you two work on the picture. See you in a few minutes, okay?"

  "Okay." Carson did not look around. His attention was concentrated on the matting and framing materials that Octavia was arranging on the workbench. "Are you gonna use a gold frame for my picture, Miss Brightwell? I think Winston would look good in a gold frame."

  "We'll try gold and black and see which looks best," she said.

  "Obviously I'm not needed here," Nick said. "See you later."

  The door of the gallery closed behind him a few seconds later. Octavia and Carson, absorbed in their task, barely noticed.

  Mitchell Madison ambushed him when he walked into the post office.

  "Heard you had a date with Octavia Brightwell last night," Mitchell commented, looming in Nick's path.

  "Word gets around."

  "You went out to the Thurgarton place together, picked up some old painting, and then you went to her cottage. That right?"

  "Yes, sir. You are well informed."

  "Now, see here." Mitchell put his face very close to Nick's. "I thought I made it damn clear to S
ullivan that I wouldn't stand by while you fooled around with Octavia."

  "Whatever arrangements you made with my grandfather are your business, naturally, but I should probably tell you that I don't generally consult with Sullivan before I ask a woman out. I don't think you can blame him for the fact that I had dinner with Octavia last night."

  Mitchell squinted in a malevolent fashion. "Is that so?"

  "Also, just to set the record straight, I don't call what Octavia and I did last night fooling around."

  "What the devil do you call it?"

  "A date. Mature adults not otherwise involved in a committed relationship get to do stuff like that."

  "Sounds like fooling around to me." Mitchell's jaw tightened. "She tell you Claudia Banner was her great-aunt and that Claudia's passed on?"

  "I think the whole town is aware of those facts by now."

  "I don't give a damn about the town. I'm only interested in what's going on between you and Octavia."

  Nick lounged against one of the old-fashioned counters, folded his arms, and studied Mitchell with morbid fascination. "Mind if I ask why you're so concerned with the subject of my social life?"

  "Because you've got a reputation for lovin' 'em and leavin' 'em and givin' your girlfriends The Talk so they know up front that you're not serious. I'll be damned if I'll stand by and let you treat Claudia Banner's niece that way. That girl's got no family around to look after her, so I'm gonna do it. You treat her right or you'll answer to me. We clear on that?"

  "Very clear. Can I pick up my mail now?"

  Mitchell's brows bristled, but he reluctantly got out of the way. "You know something, Harte?"

  "What?"

  "If you had any sense, you'd get married again. Settle down and give that boy of yours a mother."

  "The day I want advice on my personal life from a Madison, I'll be sure to ask."

  In the end they went with the gold metal frame. Octavia privately thought that the black did a better job of accenting Winston's gray fur, but Carson was entranced with the flashier look.

  When they finished the project, she put the picture together with the others she had prepared for the show.

  "Winston looks great," Carson said, satisfied. "I can't wait for the show. I was afraid maybe you wouldn't want to hang my picture because Dad kept bothering you."