Summer in Eclipse Bay

to give them my official decision until next month, but I'm leaning strongly toward accepting the offer."
    "San Diego, huh?"
    "It's not a certainty. There's also a possibility that I'm looking at in Denver."
    "I see."
    He drove in silence for a few minutes, piloting the BMW carefully through the small business district, past the pier, the town's single gas station, and the Incandescent Body bakery.
    "Sounds like you're cutting a lot of ties all at once," Nick said eventually. "Is that wise?"
    "I don't have any personal ties in the Northwest. I didn't even move to Portland or open the galleries until a couple of months after Aunt Claudia died."
    "You've only been in the area a little more than a year?"
    "That's right. Not long enough to put down roots. There's nothing holding me here." It was time to accept that truth, she thought. Time to get on with her life.
    She looked out over the expanse of Eclipse Bay. The sun was low in the sky. It streaked the clouds gathering out on the horizon with ominous shades of orange and gold.
    Nick drove without speaking for a while, concentrating on the road, although traffic was almost nonexistent on the outskirts of town.
    "Why did you come to Eclipse Bay?" he asked finally. "Why go to all the trouble of starting up a business in a small town in addition to one in Portland? That was a major undertaking."
    "It's not easy to explain. Aunt Claudia talked a lot about what happened here all those years ago. The memories bothered her a great deal toward the end. She felt guilty about her part in the feud. I promised her that I would come back to see if there was anything I could do to put things right."
    "No offense, but just what the hell did you plan to do to mend a three-generation rift?" Nick asked dryly.
    She winced. His obvious lack of faith in her feud-mending skills hurt for some obscure reason. The worst part was that he was right. She had been a fool to think she could do anything constructive.
    "I don't know," she said honestly. "I just decided to give it a whirl."
    "I gotta tell you, that sounds damn flaky."
    "I suppose it does. The thing is, after Aunt Claudia died there wasn't anything holding me in San Francisco."
    "That's where you were living?"
    "Yes."
    "What about your job?" He flexed his hand on the wheel. "A significant other?"
    "I had a position in a small gallery, but it wasn't anything special. And there was no particular significant other."
    "Hard to believe."
    "I was seeing someone before Claudia got so sick. But it wasn't that serious, and we drifted apart when I started spending more and more time with my aunt. He found someone else and I sort of went into hibernation. By the time I resurfaced after the funeral, I had no social life left to speak of."
    "Family?"
    "Not in the San Francisco area. My folks are separated. Dad lives in Houston. Mom's in Philadelphia. They've both got other families. Other lives. We're not what you'd call close."
    "So you just up and moved to Oregon."
    "Yes." She wrinkled her nose. "I suppose that sounds very flighty to a Harte."
    "Hell, it sounds flighty for anyone, even a Madison."
    That irritated her. Given his track record with women, he had a lot of nerve calling her flaky and flighty.
    "I like to think of myself as a free spirit," she said. She rather liked the sound of that now that she thought about it.
Free spirit
definitely sounded better than
flighty
or
flaky.
More mysterious and exotic, maybe. She arched her brows. "Do you have a problem with that?"
    "Don't know," he said. "I've never actually met a free spirit before."
    He was still pondering all the possible definitions of
free spirit
ten minutes later when he turned into the narrow, unpaved road.
    "You know, I think you were right." Octavia leaned forward a little, peering through the window at the trees that loomed on either side of the rutted path. "I might have spent hours searching for this turnoff. Mr. Thurgarton certainly didn't believe in making his place easy to find, did he?"
    He shrugged. "Thurgarton was one strange man. Just ask anyone."
    She smiled fleetingly. "Sometimes I think that being a bit odd or eccentric is a requirement for renting or purchasing real estate in Eclipse Bay."
    "I will admit that the people we're about to meet certainly exemplify the finest in that local tradition."
    He eased the BMW deeper into the trees and brought it to a halt at the edge of a small clearing.
    Arizona Snow's pickup truck was parked under a nearby tree. Virgil