Dawn in Eclipse Bay (3 page)

“You sure can't prove your very high success rate by me.”

“No.” She picked up the case containing the laptop and walked around the corner of her desk. “I admit you are a glaring failure. Most of my clients, however, are satisfied with the results they get here at Private Arrangements.”

And I intend to quit while they all feel that way,
she thought, heading for the door.

Gabe grabbed his black trench coat off the coatrack. “Your matchmaking program sucks in my opinion.”

“You've made your feelings on the subject quite clear.” She opened the door. “And that is why I'm releasing you from your contract with Private Arrangements.”

“You're not releasing me, you're firing me.”

“Whatever.” She flipped the bank of wall switches, plunging the office into stygian gloom.

“What the hell? Hold on, damn it.” Gabe hoisted the monogrammed leather briefcase sitting on the floor near the coatrack. “You can't just walk out on me like this.”

“I'm not walking out, I'm closing my office.” She stepped into the hall and jangled her keys in a pointed fashion. “I just told you, I'm on my way to see Dr. Flint.”

He shrugged into his trench coat, leaving it unbuttoned. “You're certainly in a rush to keep the appointment. A sex therapist. I still can't believe it.”

“I don't have an appointment. I'm just going to drop by his office. I need to tell him something important. Not that it's any of your business. Furthermore, I don't like the sarcastic tone of your voice. I'll have you know that Anderson is a thorough-going professional.”

“Is that so? A professional sex therapist.” Gabe moved out into the hall. “Guess I should show some respect. They do say it's the oldest profession. No, wait, maybe I've got that mixed up with another line of work.”

She would not dignify that with a response, she thought. She locked the office door with a quick twist of her hand and dropped the keys into her shoulder bag. Whirling around, she strode toward the elevators.

Gabe fell into step beside her. “Don't forget, you owe me another date.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I only got five dates, remember? The contract guarantees six matches.”

“Don't sweat it. I'll refund one-sixth of the fee you paid me.”

“I don't want my money back, I want my sixth date.”

“Better take the money.” She came to a halt in front of the bank of elevators and stabbed the call button. “It's all you're going to get.”

He flattened one hand on the wall beside her head, leaned in very close and lowered his voice to a low, dangerous pitch that made tiny chills chase down her spine.

“Trust me,” Gabe said very deliberately. “You don't want a lawsuit over this.”

She spun around to face him and found him standing much too close.

“Are you trying to intimidate me?” she asked.

“Just making an observation.”

She gave him a frigid smile. “I can see the headlines now.
President of Madison Commercial Threatens Lawsuit over Cancelled Date
. Talk about looking ridiculous.”

“You owe me that date.”

“Back off, Gabe. We both know you're not going to sue me. You'd look like a fool in the press and that's the last thing you'd want. Just think of what the publicity would do to the image of your company.”

Gabe said nothing—just looked at her the way Roman gladiators had no doubt studied each other before an event in the arena. Behind her the elevator doors opened with a soft sighing hiss. She turned quickly and got into the cab.

Gabe got in behind her.

She punched the floor number she wanted and then, without much hope, she also selected the lobby button. Maybe Gabe would take the hint and remain in the elevator when she got off on Anderson's floor.

She stood tensely near the control panel, watching the doors close. She was very aware of Gabe there at her shoulder, dominating the small space, using up all the oxygen so that she could hardly breathe.

“Admit it,” she said when she could no longer stand the silence. “You lied on that questionnaire.”

“The questionnaire has nothing to do with this. You owe me a date.”

“You didn't enter the truth when you made your responses. You put down what you thought the truth should be.”

He quirked one brow. “There's a difference?”

“Night and day in most cases.”

The elevator doors opened. She walked quickly out into the hall.

Gabe glided out after her. So much for hoping he would stay on board and descend to the lobby.

“What do you think you're doing?” she said. “I told you, I'm on my way to talk to Dr. Flint.”

“I'll wait until you're finished.”

“You can't do that.”

“Why not? Doesn't he have a waiting room?”

“I don't believe this.”

“I'm not leaving until you guarantee me a sixth match.”

“We'll talk about it some other time. Give me a call tomorrow.”

“We'll talk about it today.”

“I refuse to let you push me around like this.”

“I haven't touched you,” Gabe said.

She would not lower herself to his level, she thought. She was a mature, sophisticated woman. More to the point, she was a Harte. Hartes did not engage in public scenes. That was more of a Madison thing.

The only option to yelling at Gabe was to pretend he was not right here, shadowing her down the hall. It was not easy.

Obviously she had pushed her luck with Private Arrangements, she thought morosely. She had waited a little too long to go out of business. If only she had stopped accepting clients the day
before
Gabe had walked into her office.

She reached the door marked
Dr. J. Anderson Flint
, opened it and walked into the waiting room. Gabe flowed in behind her, Dracula in a very expensive black trench coat.

The first clue that the situation had the potential to deteriorate further came when she noticed that Anderson's secretary, Mrs. Collins, was not behind her desk. She realized that she had been counting on the woman's presence to ensure that Gabe behaved himself.

She glanced quickly around the serene, vaguely beige room, hoping to spot the secretary somewhere in the shadows. There was no one in sight.

The muffled strains of some loud, hard-core, sixties-era rock music reverberated through the wooden panels of the closed door that separated Anderson's inner office from the waiting room.

Her sense of foreboding increased for some unaccountable reason.

“It looks like Anderson's secretary has gone home early today,” she said. “He's probably working on his notes.”

“Sounds like rock music.”

“Anderson enjoys classic rock.”

“You know him pretty well, huh?”

“We met last month in the coffee shop downstairs.” She knocked lightly on the inner door. “We have a lot in common. Similar professional interests.”

“Is that right?” Gabe said. “You know, I don't think he can hear you above the music. He's really got it cranked up in there.”

The music was loud and getting louder and more intense by the second.

She twisted the knob and opened the door.

And stopped short at the sight of J. Anderson Flint stretched out on his office sofa. He was naked except for a pair of very small, very red bikini briefs that did nothing to conceal his erection. His hands were bound at the wrists above his head. A blindfold was secured around his eyes.

A solidly built woman dressed in a skintight leather catsuit, long black leather gloves, and a pair of five-inch stiletto heels stood over him. She had one leg balanced on the back of the sofa, the other braced on the coffee table. Her back was to the door but Lillian could see that she held a small velvet whip in her right hand and a steel-studded dog collar in her left.

Neither of the room's occupants heard the door open because the music was building to its crashing finale.

Lillian tried to move and could not. It was as if she had been frozen in place by some futuristic ray gun.

“Similar professional interests, you say?” Gabe murmured into her left ear.

His undisguised amusement freed her from the effects of the invisible force field that held her immobile. With a gasp, she managed to turn around. He blocked her path, his attention focused on the scene taking place on the sofa. He smiled.

“Excuse me,” she croaked. She put both hands on his chest and shoved hard to get him out of the way.

Gabe obligingly moved, stepping aside and simultaneously reaching around her to pull the door shut on the lurid scene.

The music thundered to its rousing climax.

Lillian fled through the tasteful waiting room out into the hallway. She did not look back.

Gabe caught up with her at the elevator.

An eerie silence gripped the corridor for the count of five.

“Dr. Flint obviously believes in a hands-on approach to sex therapy,” Gabe remarked. “I wonder just how he plans to incorporate your computer program into his treatment plans.”

This could not be happening, she thought. It was some kind of bizarre hallucination, the sort of thing that could turn a person into a full-blown conspiracy theorist. Maybe some secret government agency was conducting experiments with chemicals in the drinking water.

Or maybe she was losing it. She'd been under a lot of stress lately, what with making the decision to close down Private Arrangements and change careers. Having Gabe as a client hadn't helped matters, either.

No doubt about it, stress combined with secret government drinking water experiments could account for what she had just seen in Anderson's office.

“I think you need a drink,” Gabe said.

Outside on the sidewalk the weird afterglow of the rainy twilight combined with the streetlamps to infuse the city with a surreal atmosphere. It was as if he and Lillian were moving through a dream sequence, Gabe thought. It was easy to believe that they were the only real, solid beings in a world composed of eerie lights and shadows.

In the strange, vaporlike mist, Lillian's flowing, iridescent rain cloak glittered like a cape woven of otherworldly gemstones. He wanted to reach out and pull her close against his side; feel the heat of her body; inhale her scent.

It was getting worse, he thought. This gut-deep awareness had hit him hard when he had first experienced it at Rafe's wedding. He had told himself it would fade quickly. Just a passing sexual attraction. Or maybe a little fevered imagination brought on by the monklike existence he had been living ever since he had turned his attention to the business of finding himself a wife.

The decision to go celibate after the end of the affair with Jennifer several months ago had seemed like a good idea at the time. He had not wanted something as superficial as lust to screw up his thinking processes while he concentrated on such an important matter. To avoid complications, he had deliberately opted to put his sex life on a temporarily inactive status.

Within about six seconds of seeing Lillian after all those years of living in separate universes, he had been inspired to revisit that particular executive decision, however.

Thankfully, he'd had enough common sense still functioning at that point to convince himself that an affair with her was probably not a brilliant idea. She was a Harte, after all. Things between Hartes and Madisons were always complicated. He had come up with a compromise solution. Instead of asking her out on a date, he had signed up as a client of Private Arrangements. He had spent an inordinate amount of time convincing himself that using a professional matchmaking firm was actually a terrific plan. What better, more efficient way to find a wife?

But things had rapidly gone from dicey to disastrous. He had endured five seemingly endless evenings with five very attractive, very successful women. He had spent each of the five dates tormenting himself with visions of how much more interesting things would have been if Lillian had been the woman seated across the candlelit table.

The uncanny part was that he had never been aware of her as anything other than a Harte kid while he had been growing up in Eclipse Bay. But then, in all fairness, the only thing that had held his attention in those days was his dream of rebuilding the financial empire that had been shattered by the Harte-Madison feud.

The fact that the Hartes had resurrected themselves after the bankruptcy and gone on to prosper while his family had floundered and pretty much self-destructed had added fuel to the fire that had consumed him.

He had left Eclipse Bay the day after he graduated from high school, headed off to college and the big city to pursue his vision. He had not seen Lillian at all during the years of empire-building. He had not even thought about her.

But ever since the wedding he had been unable to think about anything else.

If this was lust, it was anything but superficial. If it was something more, he was in trouble because Lillian was not what he had pictured when he set out to look for a wife. For the first time since he had decided to get married he wondered if he should put the search for a wife on hold for a while. Just until he got this murky situation with Lillian cleared up and out of the way. He needed to be able to concentrate and she was making that impossible.

He realized they had halted at a crosswalk.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“I don't know where you're going, but I'm walking home.” Her voice was slightly muffled by the hood of her cloak.

“What do you say we stop somewhere and get you that drink I suggested? I have to tell you that after watching your colleague work with a patient, I could use one, myself.”

“Don't start with me on that subject, Madison.”

He smiled and reached out to take her arm. “Come on, I'll buy.”

He steered her toward the small café in the middle of the block.

She peered fixedly through the glass panes into the cozily lit interior.

“You know what?” she said. “I think you're right. A glass of wine sounds like an excellent idea.”

She pulled free of his hand and went toward the door with quick, crisp steps. She did not look around to see if he was following.

He made it to the door a half a step ahead of her and got it open. She did not thank him, just swept past him into the café.

The place was just starting to fill up with the afterwork crowd. A cheerful gas fire cast an inviting glow. The chalkboard listed several brands of beer from local microbreweries and half a dozen premium wines by the glass. Another hand-lettered menu on the wall featured a variety of oyster appetizers and happy-hour specials.

He knew this place. It was only a few streets over from the office tower that housed the headquarters of Madison Commercial. He stopped in here occasionally on his way home to his empty apartment.

“Come here a lot?” he asked as they settled into a wooden booth.

“No.” She picked up the miniature wine menu and studied it intently. “Why?”

“Portland is a small town in a lot of ways. It's a wonder our paths haven't crossed before,” he said, trying for a neutral topic of conversation.

She frowned at the little menu. “I haven't lived here much in recent years.”

“Where have you been since college?”

“You really want to know?”

“Sure.” He was suddenly more curious than he wanted to let on.

She shrugged and put down the menu. Before she could answer his question, however, the waiter arrived to take their orders. She chose a glass of chardonnay. He asked for a beer.

When the waiter left, there was a short silence. He thought he might have to remind Lillian of the question. Somewhat to his surprise, however, she started to talk.

“After I graduated from college I worked in Seattle for a while,” she said. “Then I moved to Hawaii. Spent a year there. After that I went to California and then back to Seattle. I didn't return to Oregon until I decided to open Private Arrangements.”

“Were you running matchmaking businesses in all those different places?”

She eyed him with a wary expression. “Why do you want to know?”

“Been a while. Just catching up.”

“You and I don't have any catching up to do. We hardly even know each other.”

That was almost funny, he thought.

“I'm a Harte and you're a Madison,” he said. “My brother is now married to your sister. Trust me, we know each other.”

The waiter returned with their drinks and disappeared once more. Lillian picked up her chardonnay, took a sip and set the glass down very precisely on the little napkin. He got the feeling she was debating how much to tell him about herself.

“The official Harte family version of events is that I've spent the last few years trying to find myself,” she said.

“What's the unofficial version?”

“That I'm a little flaky.”

Definitely not wife material, he thought. Probably not good affair material either. He did not date flakes. He didn't do business with flakes, either. If he had known Private Arrangements was run by a flake, he would never have signed on as a client.

Then again, who was he kidding?

Damn. This was not a good idea. If he had any sense he would run, not walk, to the nearest exit. Some lingering vestige of self-preservation made him glance toward the door.

What the hell, he thought, turning back to Lillian. Plenty of time to escape later.

“Didn't realize any of you Hartes had to find yourselves,” he said after a while. “Figured you were all born knowing where you wanted to go in life and how you would get there.”

“You're thinking of everyone else in the family.” She wrinkled her nose. “I'm the exception.”

“Yeah? How exceptional are you?”

She studied the wine in her glass. “Let's just say I haven't found my niche yet.”

“From all accounts you've been extremely successful with Private Arrangements.”

“Oh, sure.” She raised one shoulder in dismissal. “If you're talking business success.”

He went blank.

“There's another kind?” he asked.

Irritation gleamed in her eyes. “Of course there's another kind.”

He leaned back in the booth. “This isn't about finding yourself and inner peace through work, is it?”

“You've got a problem with the concept of work as a source of happiness and personal fulfillment?”

“I've got a problem with people who think work is supposed to be entertainment. Work is work.” He paused. “Probably why they call it work instead of, say, fun. A lot of folks don't seem to get that.”

“You ought to know,” she said.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You've been working night and day since you were a boy to build Madison Commercial.” She smiled wryly. “Folks back in Eclipse Bay always said that you were a different kind of Madison.”

“Different?”

“One who might actually make a success of himself. You certainly proved them right, didn't you?”

How the hell had the conversation turned back on him like this?

“All I proved,” he said carefully, “is that you can get someplace if you want to go there badly enough.”

“And you wanted to get where you are now very, very badly, didn't you?”

He did not know what to make of her in this mood, so he took another swallow of beer to give himself time to come up with a strategy.

“Tell me, Gabe, what do you do for fun?”

“Fun?” The question put him off stride again. He was still working on strategy.

“As far as I can tell, all you do is work. If work isn't fun for you, where do you go and what do you do when you're looking for a good time?”

He frowned. “You make it sound like I never get out of the office.”

“Do you?”

“I'm here, aren't I? This sure as hell isn't my office.”

“You're right. This isn't your office. So, tell me, are you having fun yet?”

“I didn't come here to have fun. We're here because you received a severe shock back there in Dr. J. Anderson Flint's office. I figured you needed a glass of wine for medicinal purposes.”

“The only reason you're still hanging around is because you're trying to figure out how to get your sixth date. Forget it. Never happen.”

“We'll see.”

“Pay attention, Madison.” She leaned forward and narrowed her eyes. “It will never happen because Private Arrangements is closed.”

“So? We'll talk about my sixth date when you reopen on Monday.”

“I meant closed for good. Today was the last day of business. As of five o'clock this afternoon, my firm ceased operations. Get it?”

She was serious, he thought. “You can't just shut down a moneymaking enterprise like that.”

“Watch me.”

“What about your clients?”

“You are the last one.” She raised her glass in a mocking little toast. “Here's to you. Good luck finding yourself a robot.”

“A wife.”

“Whatever.” She took a sip of the wine.

“Why the hell would you want to go out of business? You're a huge success.”

“Financially, yes.” She sat back. “That isn't enough.”

“Damn. You really are into this work-has-got-to-be-a-transcendent-experience thing, aren't you?”

“Yep.” She propped one elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. “Let's get back to you and fun.”

“Thought you just got through implying that the two don't belong in the same sentence.”

“Well, let's talk about your relationship with Madison Commercial, then.”

“Relationship? Are you suggesting that the company is my mistress or something?”

“That's certainly what it looks like to me.”

He was getting irritated. “Is that your
professional
opinion?”

“I'm a matchmaker, remember? I know a good match when I see one. Tell me, what, exactly, do you get out of Madison Commercial?”

He was wary now. “What do I
get
out of it?”

She gave him a bright-eyed, innocently inquiring look. “Do you think your relationship with the company is a substitute for sex?”

She was a Harte, he reminded himself. Damned if he would let her goad him.

“Got news for you. In case you don't know, Ms. Matchmaker, there is no substitute for sex. What I get out of Madison Commercial is a lot of money.”