"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.