"Well, I suppose I can give you that." She glanced at the label. "It's a very nice wine."

"Thanks." He uncoiled to his feet, crossed the room, and took the bottle from her. "I'll have you know that I went through almost every bottle of red in Rafe's cellar looking for it."

"A dirty job, but someone had to do it, right?"

"Damn right."

He carried the pinot noir into the kitchen, found the corkscrew, and went to work with a few deft, economical movements.

A moment later he poured wine into two glasses. He handed one of the glasses to her and raised his own in a small salute.

"To Hannah and Rafe and the baby," he said.

She smiled and touched her glass to his. "And to the end of the Harte-Madison feud. May you all live long and happy lives."

He paused, the glass partway to his mouth, and slowly lowered it. "You sound like you're saying goodbye."

"I am, in a way." She took a sip of the wine. "I've been in a strange place for the past few months-"

"Yeah, Eclipse Bay is a little weird, isn't it?"

"-but I think I've treaded water long enough."

"You're entitled to tread water for a while after you lose someone you love, you know."

"I know. But Aunt Claudia would have been the first to tell me to get on with my life." She did not want to pursue that topic, she thought. She turned away and opened a cupboard to select some of the green glass dishes she stored inside. "Mind if I ask what that scene at the gallery was about today?"

"Any chance I can get away with asking, 'What scene?'"

"No." She looked at him over her shoulder as she took the plates out of the cupboard. "But I suppose you could tell me to mind my own business."

He leaned back against the tiled counter and contemplated the bloodred wine in his glass for a moment. She knew that whatever he was going to tell her, it was not going to be the whole truth and nothing but.

"Jeremy and I go back a ways. We alternated between being buddies and friendly rivals in the old days here in Eclipse Bay. Competed a little with our cars and-"

"Getting dates with fast women?" she finished lightly.

"Fast women, sad to say, were always pretty scarce around Eclipse Bay."

"Too bad. Go on, what happened with you and Jeremy?"

"We had some adventures. Got into some trouble. Raised a little hell. We stayed in touch in college and we both wound up working in Portland. He took a position as an instructor at a college there and I dutifully tried to fulfill my filial obligations at Harte Investments. And then-"

Then, what?"

He shrugged and drank some more wine. "Then he got married. I got married, too. Things changed."

"You lost track of each other?"

"Life happens, you know?"

"Sounds to me like the two of you did more than just drift apart." She carried the plates past him into the living room. "Today I got the impression that there's some serious tension between you two. Did something happen to cause it?"

"Yesterday's news." He prowled after her and settled into a chair near the window. His expression made it clear that he was about to change the topic. "How are things going with the Children's Art Show project?"

Well, it wasn't as though she had any right to push him for answers to questions she'd had no business asking in the first place, she thought.

She gave him her brightest smile and sank down onto the arm of the sofa. The embroidered hem of her long white skirt drifted around her ankles. Swinging one foot lightly, she took a fortifying sip of wine.

"Very well," she said, lowering her glass. "I'm quite pleased. I think I'm going to have nearly a hundred entries. Not bad for a small town like this."

"No." He stole a glance at her gently swinging ankle. "Not bad."

The casual thing worked right up until the full fury of the storm struck land. She was washing the last of the dishes when the lights flickered twice and went out.

The sudden onslaught of darkness paralyzed her briefly. Her hands stilled in the soapy water. "Oh, damn."

"Take it easy," Nick said from somewhere nearby. "We lose power all the time around here during big storms. Don't suppose you have an emergency generator?"

"No."

"Flashlight?"

She cleared her throat. "Well, yes, as it happens, I do have a flashlight. A nice, big red one with a special high-intensity bulb and an easy-grip handle that I bought last winter after a major storm. It is a model of cutting-edge, modern technology. So powerful that it can be used to signal for help if one happens to be lost at sea or on a mountain."

"I sense a but coming."

"But I forgot to buy some batteries for it."

He laughed softly in the darkness and came to stand directly behind her. "Spoken like a real city girl. Don't worry about it, I've got a flashlight in the car."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me."

He put out his hands and gripped the tiled counter edge on either side of her body. In the shadows she was intensely aware of the heat of his body so close to hers. There was suddenly so much electricity being generated both outside and inside the cottage that she was amazed the lights did not come back on. Probably ought to get her hands out of the dishwater, she thought. A woman could have a major household accident in a situation like this.

Nick put his lips very close to her ear. "I was a Boy Scout. You know what that means?"

"Something to do with being thrifty and neat?"

"Wrong." He grazed her earlobe with his teeth.

"Something to do with getting to wear a cute uniform?"

"Try again." He touched his mouth to her throat.

"Something to do with always keeping spare batteries on hand?"

"You're getting closer. Much closer." He kissed her throat. "Something to do with always being prepared."

"Oh, yeah." She yanked her hands out of the sudsy water and grabbed a dishtowel. "I've heard about the always being prepared thing."

He tightened the cage of his body around her so that her backside was nestled snugly into his thighs. She realized at once that he was aroused. Her senses registered that information and responded with a shot of adrenaline. Her pulse raced. There was a faint trembling in her fingertips. Not fear, she thought. Excitement.

"I take the motto seriously." He brushed his lips along the curve of her throat just below her earlobe. "And not just when it comes to things like flashlight batteries."

She was abruptly grateful for the inky shadows of the kitchen. At least he could not see the flush of heat that was surely setting fire to her cheeks.

"You taste good," he whispered. "Better than those little raspberry things we had for dessert."

There was a new, rougher edge in his voice and she was the cause. All that was female in her rejoiced. Outside, the wind howled. Here in the dark kitchen, power flowed.

He kissed her throat again, his mouth gliding up along the underside of her jaw. She reveled in the intense pleasure and the heady rush of anticipation.

This was why she had tried to keep her distance, she remembered. This was precisely the reason she had been so careful these past few weeks, why she had worked so hard to find so many excuses to decline his invitations. She had known it would be like this: dangerous and unpredictable and very high risk.

And also incredibly exhilarating and intoxicating.

He must have felt her body's response because he shifted again, pressing closer still until she could feel him, hard and muscled, along the full length of her own much softer frame. The contrast thrilled her senses. The mysteries of yin and yang in action.

There was no room to move now inside the cage he had made for her. He had enclosed her in a seductive snare she had no desire to escape.