Summer in Eclipse Bay

  Not yet six and the kid was already displaying an intuitive understanding of the client, Nick thought. Carson was a natural for the business world. Unlike himself.

  He had hated the corporate environment. His decision to leave Harte Investments, the company his grandfather, Sullivan, had founded and that his father, Hamilton, had taken over had not gone down well. Although his father had understood and supported him, his grandfather had been hurt and furious at the time. He had seen Nick’s refusal to follow in his footsteps as a betrayal of everything he had worked so hard to achieve.

  He and Sullivan had managed a rapprochement eventually, thanks to the intervention of everyone else in the family. They were back on speaking terms at any rate. But deep down, Nick was not certain that Sullivan would ever entirely forgive him.

  He did not really blame his grandfather. Sullivan had poured his blood and sweat into building Harte Investments. He had envisioned the firm descending through generation after generation of Hartes. The company had been a personal triumph for him, a phoenix rising from the ashes after the destruction of Harte-Madison, the commercial real estate development business he had founded with his former partner, Mitchell Madison, here in Eclipse Bay.

  The collapse of the company decades earlier had ignited a feud between Sullivan and Mitchell that had thrived until recently. The bad blood between the Hartes and the Madisons was legendary in these parts. It had provided fodder for the gossips of Eclipse Bay for three generations.

  But the first crack in the wall that had separated the two very different families had come last fall when Rafe Madison, the bad boy of the Madison family, had married Nick’s sister Hannah. Several more bricks had crumbled last month when his other sister, Lillian, had wed Gabe Madison.

  But the earth-shattering news that Harte Investments and Gabe’s company, Madison Commercial, were in the process of merging had been the final blazing straw as far as the good people of Eclipse Bay were concerned. The newly formed corporation, after all, effectively re-created the company that had been ripped apart at the start of the feud. Life had seemingly come full circle.

  “You may be right about the Winston picture,” Nick said. “But the house is pretty good, too. The green flower is a great touch.”

  “Yeah, but there will be lots of houses and flowers in the art show. All the kids I know like to draw houses and flowers. Probably won’t be any other dogs, though. Hardly anyone can draw a dog, especially not one as good as Winston.”

  “Winston is unique. I’ll give you that.”

  Carson looked up at him with a considering expression.

  “I’ve been thinking, Dad.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t come with me when I take my pictures to Miss Brightwell tomorrow.”

  Nick raised his brows. “You want me to wait in the car?”

  Carson smiled, clearly relieved. “Good idea. That way she won’t even see you.”

  “You’re really afraid I’m going to mess up your shot at getting a picture into the gallery show, aren’t you?”

  “I just don’t want to take any chances.”

  “Sorry, pal. I’ve got my own agenda here and I’m not about to waste a perfectly good opportunity to move ahead with it just because you’re worried she won’t hang your picture.”

  So he didn’t have a lot of interest in the family business. He was still a Harte, Nick thought: He was just as goal-oriented and capable of focusing on an objective as anyone else in the clan.

  “If you wait in the car,” Carson said ingratiatingly, “I promise I’ll tell Miss Brightwell that it would be okay to go out with you.”

  One of the Harte family mottos in action, Nick thought, not without a degree of sincere admiration. When you find yourself backed into a corner, negotiate your way out of it.

  “Let me get this straight.” He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans and looked down at his son. “If I agree to stay out of the way tomorrow, you’ll put in a good word for me?”

  “She likes me, Dad. I think she’d agree to go out with you if I asked her.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I may not have followed in the family footsteps like Dad and Granddad, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to get what I want.”

  And he definitely wanted Octavia Brightwell.

  That, he thought, was the real reason he and Carson were in Eclipse Bay for an extended stay. He had come here to lay siege to the castle of the Fairy Queen.

  “Well, okay, but promise you won’t wreck things for me.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Resigned, Carson turned back to the dog picture. “I think Winston needs more fur.”

  He selected a crayon and went to work.

  She was an out-and-out coward.

  Octavia sat on the stool behind the gallery sales counter, the heels of her sandals hooked on the top rung, and propped her chin on her hands. She regarded the phone as if it were a serpent.

  One date.

  How could it hurt to go out with Nick Harte just once?

  But she knew the answer to that. If she accepted one invitation, she would probably accept another. And then there would be a third. Maybe a fourth. Sooner or later she would end up in bed with him and that would be the biggest mistake of her life. Some thrill rides were just too risky.

  They called him Hardhearted Harte back in Portland. Nick had a reputation for confining his relationships to discreet, short-term affairs that ended whenever his partner of the moment started pushing for a commitment.

  According to the gossip she had heard, Nick never went to bed with a woman without first having delivered what was known as The Talk.

  The Talk was said to be a clear, concise position statement that made it plain that he was not interested in any long-term arrangements like marriage. Women who chose to sleep with Nick Harte went into the relationship with their eyes wide open.

  They said that even if you lured him into your bed, he would be gone long before dawn. He never stayed the night, according to the stories that circulated about him.

  Here in Eclipse Bay, where gossip about the Hartes and the Madisons had been raised to a fine art, folks were certain that they knew the real reason for The Talk. The local mythology held that Nick, being a true Harte, was unable to love again because he was still mourning the loss of his beloved Amelia. He was under a curse, some said, doomed never to find another true love until the right woman shattered the spell that bound him. His reputation for never staying the night with any of his lovers only fanned the flames of that particular legend.

  Of course, that did not stop shoppers in the narrow aisles at Fulton’s Supermarket from holding forth on the subject of the importance of Nick marrying again in order to provide his son with a mother. They said the same thing at the post office and in the hardware store.

  But Carson didn’t need a mother, Octavia thought. Nick was doing a fine job of raising him, as far as she could tell. The boy was the most self-assured, well-adjusted, precocious little kid she had ever met in her life. And there was no shortage of feminine influence available to him. Carson enjoyed the warmth of a close-knit, extended family that included a doting grandmother, a great-grandmother, and two aunts, Lillian and Hannah.

  She unhooked her sandals, rose from the stool, and went to stand at the front window of Bright Visions. The morning fog was thinning, but it had not yet burned off. Across the street she could just make out the pier and the nearby marina. The lights were on in the Incandescent Body bakery down the street, and she could see the erratic snap and pulse of the broken neon sign that marked the Total Eclipse Bar & Grill. The tavern’s logo, Where the Sun Don’t Shine, was just barely visible.

  The rest of the world was lost in a sea of gray mist.

  Just like her life.

  A shiver went through her. Where had that thought come from? She wrapped her arms around herself. She would not go there, she vowed silently.

  But the moody feeling was a warning, loud
and clear. It was time to make some new plans; time to take control of her future. Her mission here in Eclipse Bay had been a failure.

  Time to move on.

  Her mission.

  For months she had told herself that she had come here to right the wrongs of the past. In the beginning she had established a schedule that had allowed her to divide her time between this gallery and the main branch in Portland. But as the months went by she had found more and more reasons to extend her visits in Eclipse Bay.

  Deep down she had actually been elated when her assistant here had run off with the artist. On impulse she had placed the Portland branch in the capable hands of a trusted manager, packed her suitcases, and moved her personal possessions into the little cottage on the bluff near Hidden Cove.

  What had she been thinking? she wondered.

  It was obvious that the Hartes and the Madisons did not need her help in healing the rift her great-aunt, Claudia Banner, had created so many years ago. The proud families were successfully putting the feud behind them without any assistance at all from her. There had been two weddings in the past few months that had united the clans, and now those old warriors, Sullivan Harte and Mitchell Madison, could be seen drinking coffee and eating donuts together at the bakery whenever Sullivan was in town.

  No one in Eclipse Bay needed her. There was no reason for her to stay. It was time to go.

  But that was easier said than done. She couldn’t just close the door of the gallery and disappear in the middle of the night. Bright Visions was a small business, but it was thriving, and that meant it was worth a goodly sum. She would have to make arrangements to sell up and that might take a while. And then there was the matter of her obligations to the various artists whose work she exhibited and the commitment she had made to the Children’s Art Show.

  The art show had been her idea. She was the one who had come up with the concept and lobbied the members of the Eclipse Bay Summer Celebration committee to include it as one of the activities associated with this year’s event. Enthusiasm for the project ran high. She knew that the children who planned to draw pictures for the event would be crushed if she cancelled it.

  All in all, she concluded, what with getting Bright Visions ready to sell and fulfilling her business and civic commitments, she would probably not be able to escape Eclipse Bay until the end of the summer. But by fall she would be somewhere else. She had to find a place where she truly belonged.

  chapter 2

  That afternoon she closed the gallery at five-thirty and drove over to Mitchell Madison’s house. She got out of the car and waved at Bryce as she went past the open kitchen door. He looked up from the pot he was stirring on the stove and inclined his head in a solemn greeting.

  She smiled to herself. Bryce was the strong, silent type. He had worked for Mitchell for years. No one knew much about his past before he had arrived in town, and Bryce had never felt any impulse to enlighten anyone on that subject.

  She understood where he was coming from, she thought.

  She wandered into the garden and looked around, savoring the little slice of paradise that was Mitchell’s creation. She had spent enough time in Eclipse Bay to know that, while everyone in the vicinity was quick to point out his legendary character flaws and remind you of his several failed marriages, no one disputed Mitchell’s brilliance as a gardener. Gardening was his passion, and no one came between a Madison and his passion.

  She came to a halt on the other side of a bed of gloriously blooming rose bushes.

  “I’ve made a decision, Mitch.”

  He looked up at her from the padded kneeling bench he was using to work around the plants. He had the face of an aging, beat-up old gunslinger, she thought fondly, one who had only hardened with the years; a guy who could still hold his own against the young toughs if called upon to do so.

  “What kind of decision?” Mitchell demanded.

  The sharpness of his tone was a surprise. Mitchell never spoke sharply to her.

  “I’ll be leaving town at the end of the summer,” she said.

  “You mean you’ll be spending more time back in Portland.” He nodded, evidently satisfied, and went back to his weeding. “I can see where you might need to give more attention to your gallery there come fall. It’s a much bigger operation.”

  “No,” she said gently, “I mean that I will be leaving Eclipse Bay for good at the end of the summer season. I plan to sell both branches of Bright Visions.”

  He stiffened, eyes narrowing against the fading sun. “You’re gonna sell up? Well, shoot and damn. Why the hell do you want to go and do a thing like that?”

  “It’s time.” She smiled to cover the wistful feeling. “Past time, really. In fact, I probably shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”

  “Not a lot of money in the art business here in Eclipse Bay, huh?” He shrugged. “No surprise there, I reckon. Eclipse Bay isn’t exactly the art capital of the universe.”

  “Actually, the gallery here is doing fairly well. We drew clients from Chamberlain College and the institute this past winter, and now with summer here, we’re picking up a lot of tourist business. Bright Visions is starting to get a reputation as an important art stop here on the coast.”

  His brows bunched together. “You’re saying your business here is doing all right?”

  “Yes, I expect to sell at a profit.”

  “Then why the hell are you talking about pulling out?”

  “As I said, I think it’s time for me to go.”

  He squinted at her. “You don’t sound right. You feeling okay today, Octavia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not coming down sick, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Shoot and damn. What’s going on here?” He holstered the trowel he had been wielding, gripped the handholds on the low gardener’s bench, and hauled himself to his feet. He seized his cane and turned around to confront her, scowling ferociously. “What’s all this talk about leaving?”

  “There’s something that I want to tell you, Mitch. I don’t plan to let a lot of other folks know because I don’t want to upset people and cause talk. Lord knows, there’s been enough gossip about the Hartes and the Madisons in this town. But you and I are friends. And I want my friends to know who I am.”

  “I know who you are.” He thumped the cane once on the gravel walk. “You’re Octavia Brightwell.”

  “Yes, but there’s more to the story.” She looked at him very steadily and braced herself to deliver the shocker.

  “Claudia Banner was my great-aunt.”

  To her astonishment he merely shrugged. “You think we didn’t figure that out a while back?”

  She stilled. “We?”

  “Sullivan and me. He and I have slowed down some over the years, but we haven’t come to a complete stop. Not yet, at any rate.”

  She didn’t know what to say. “You know?”

  “Sullivan spotted the likeness the night you hosted that show for Lillian’s paintings down at your little gallery. Soon as he pointed it out, I finally realized why there had always been something sort of familiar about you.” He smiled faintly. “You look a lot like Claudia did when she was your age. Same red hair. Something about your profile, too, I think. The way you hold yourself.”

  “But how did you—”

  “Sullivan made some phone calls. Did some checking. Wasn’t hard to find the connection.”

  “I see.” She was feeling a little stunned, she realized. Maybe a little deflated, too. So much for her big bombshell.

  “Not like you tried to hide it,” Mitchell said.

  “No, but I certainly didn’t want to make a big deal about it here in Eclipse Bay, given what happened in the past and all.”

  Mitchell reached down and plucked a lush orange-gold bloom. “Funny thing about the past. The older you get, the less it matters.”

  She fell silent for a long moment, shifting gears as she adjusted to the turn of events. “If Sullivan made som
e calls, you probably know about Aunt Claudia.” She took a deep breath. “That she’s gone, I mean.”

  “Yeah.” Mitchell looked up from the rose. His gaze was steady and a little sad. “Heard she passed on a year and a half ago. Heart problems, Sullivan said.”

  She felt the familiar tightening inside. Eighteen months but she still had to fight back the tears. “She never managed to give up the cigarettes. In the end, the doctor said it was amazing she made it as long as she did.”

  “I remember Claudia and her cigarettes. She was always reaching for the next one. Had herself a fancy little gold lighter. I can still see her taking it out of her purse to light another smoke.”

  “Mitchell, let me get something straight here. Are you telling me that you and Sullivan don’t care that I’m related to Claudia Banner?”

  “Of course we care. But it’s not exactly what you’d call a problem for us.”

  “Oh.” She was not sure how to respond to that.

  “Can’t say we weren’t a bit curious at first, though,” he added dryly.

  “I can imagine. Why didn’t you say something? Ask questions? Demand an explanation? I’ve stopped by here almost every morning or afternoon when I’m in town to say hello. I must have talked to you dozens of times since Lillian’s show. But you never said a word. I’ve seen Sullivan on several occasions, too. He never gave any indication that he knew who I was.”

  “It was your personal business. Sullivan and I talked about it some. Figured we’d let you tell us in your own time.”

  “I see.” She thought about that for a while. “Did you, uh, mention your little insight to anyone else?”

  “Nope. Didn’t figure it was anyone else’s affair.”

  “Believe me, I understand.” She wrinkled her nose. “If word got out that Claudia Banner’s great-niece was in town and that she had become friends with the Madisons and the Hartes, there would be no end to the wild rumors and speculation. That’s exactly why I kept a low profile.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It wouldn’t have been fair to you Madisons or to the Hartes. You’ve all suffered enough over the years because of what happened when you got involved with Aunt Claudia.”