"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 wasn'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.

"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?"