of the lobster tank, which ran the length of one wall, eagerly choosing their dinner. Their easy laughter drifted over the muted chatter of the other guests to the table beside the window.
Shay was looking out through the glass; beyond it, spatters of fading daylight danced on an ocean tinted with the pinks and golds and deep lavenders of sunset. Her eyes followed the gulls as they swooped and dived over the water, giving their raucous cries, and a slight smile curved her lips. An overwhelming feeling of tenderness filled Mitch as he watched her.
He had to say something, start a conversation. He sliced one irate glance in Ivy’s direction, feeling deserted, and then plunged in with, “Ivy tells me that the house I bought belonged to your mother.”
The moderation with which Mitch spoke surprised him, considering that he could see the merest hint of rosy nipples through the whispery fabric of Shay’s dress. He took a steadying gulp of the white wine Todd had ordered earlier.
The hazel eyes came reluctantly to his, flickered with pain and then inward laughter at some memory. Mitch imagined Shay as a little girl, playing in that miniature house behind the gazebo, and the picture slowed down his respiration rate.
“Yes.” Her voice was soft and she tossed a wistful glance toward Ivy and Todd, who were still studying their unsuspecting prey at the lobster tanks. In that instant Shay was a woman again, however vulnerable, and Mitch was rocked by the quicksilver change in her.
He tried to transform her back into the child. “That little house in back, was that yours?”
Shay smiled and nodded. “I used to spend hours there. At the time, it was completely furnished, right down to china dishes—” She fell silent and her beautiful eyes strayed again to the water beyond the window. “I only lived there for a few years,” she finished quietly.
Mitch began to wish that he had never seen Rosamond Dallas’s house, let alone bought it. He felt as though he had stolen something precious from this woman and he supposed that, in a way, he had. He was relieved when Ivy and Todd came back to the table, laughing between themselves and holding hands.
He was so handsome.
Nothing Ivy had ever said about Mitch Prescott had prepared Shay for the first jarring sight of him. He was a few inches taller than she was, with broad shoulders and hair of a toasted caramel shade, but it was his eyes that unsettled her the most. They were a deep brown, quick and brazen and tender, all at once. His hands looked strong, and they were dusted with butternut-gold hair, as was the generous expanse of chest revealed by his open-throated white shirt. He had just the suggestion of a beard and the effect was one of quiet, inexorable masculinity.
Here was a man, Shay decided uneasily, who had no self-doubts at all. He was probably arrogant.
She sat up a little straighter and tried to ignore him. His vitality stirred her in a most disturbing way. What would it be like to be caressed by those deft, confident hands?
Shay’s arm trembled a little as she reached out for her wineglass. Fantasies sprang, scary and delicious, into her mind, and she battled them fiercely. God knew, she reminded herself, Eliott Kendall had taught her all she needed or wanted to know about men.
Ivy was chattering as she sat down, her eyes bright with the love she bore Todd Simmons and the excitement of having her adored brother nearby. “Aren’t you going to pick out which lobster you want?” she demanded, looking from Shay to Mitch with good-natured impatience.
“I make it a point,” Mitch said flatly, “never to eat anything I’ve seen groveling on the bottom of a fish tank. I’ll have steak.”
Ivy’s lower lip jutted out prettily and she turned to Shay. “What about you? You’re having lobster, aren’t you?”
Shay grabbed for her menu and hid behind it. Why hadn’t she followed her instincts and stayed home? She should have known she wouldn’t be able to handle this evening, not after the day she’d had. Not after losing—selling the house.
“Shay?” Ivy prodded.
“I’ll have lobster,” Shay conceded, mostly because she couldn’t make sense of the menu. She felt silly. Good Lord, she was twenty-nine years old, self-supporting, the mother of a six-year-old son, and here she was, cowering behind a hunk of plastic-covered paper.
“Well, go choose one then!”
Shay shook her head. “I’ll let the waiter do that,” she said lamely. I’m in no mood to sign a death warrant, she thought. Or the papers that will release that very special house to a stranger.
She lowered the menu and her eyes locked with Mitch Prescott’s thoughtful gaze. She felt as though he’d bared her breasts or something, even though there was nothing objectionable in his regard. Beneath her dress her nipples tightened in response, and she felt a hot flush pool on her cheekbones.
Mitch smiled then, almost imperceptibly, and his eyes—God, she had to be imagining it, she thought—transmitted a quietly confident acknowledgment, not to mention a promise.
A wave of heat passed over Shay, so dizzying that she had to drop her eyes and grip the arms of her chair for a moment. Stop it, she said to herself. You don’t even know this man.
A waiter appeared and, vaguely, Shay heard Todd ordering dinner.
Ivy startled her back to full alertness by announcing, “Shay’s going to be a star. I’ll bet she’ll be so good that Marvin will want her to do all the commercials.”
“Ivy!” Shay protested, embarrassed beyond bearing. Out of the corner of one eye she saw Mitch Prescott’s mouth twitch slightly.
“What’s the big secret?” Ivy complained. “Everybody in western Washington is going to see you anyway. You’ll be famous.”
“Or infamous,” Todd teased, but his eyes were gentle. “How is your mother, Shay?”
Shay didn’t like to discuss Rosamond, but the subject was infinitely preferable to having Ivy leap into a full and mortifying description of the commercials Shay would begin filming the following week, after Marvin and Jeannie departed for faraway places. “She’s about the same,” she said miserably.
The salads arrived and Shay pretended to be ravenous, since no one would expect her to talk with her mouth full of lettuce and house dressing. Mercifully, the conversation shifted to Todd’s dream of building a series of condominiums on a stretch of property south of Skyler Beach.
Throughout dinner, Ivy chattered about her Christmas wedding, and when the plates had been removed, Todd brought out the papers that would transfer ownership of Rosamond’s last grand house to Mitch. Shay signed them with a burning lump in her throat and, when Ivy and Todd went off to the lounge to dance, she moved to make her escape.
“Wait,” Mitch said with gruff tenderness, and though he didn’t touch Shay in any physical way, he restrained her with that one word.
She sank back into her chair, near tears. “I know I haven’t been very good company. I’m sorry.…”
His hand came across the table and his fingers were warm and gentle on Shay’s wrist. A tingling tremor moved through her and she wanted to die because she knew Mitch had felt it and possibly guessed its meaning. “Let me take you home,” he said.
For
