"I already warned him once that I won't stand by and let him fool around with you."
"That's just it, we are not fooling around."
"Well, just what the heck do you call it?" Mitchell demanded.
Nick waited with genuine interest to hear her answer.
Octavia drew herself up with astonishing aplomb. "Nick is working for me."
Mitchell gaped. "What the devil?"
She bestowed an icy little smile on Nick and then looked at Mitchell with cool determination. "He has kindly agreed to investigate the missing Upsall. A.Z. and Virgil and I don't feel that Chief Valentine can handle the case on his own."
"Well, shoot and damn." Mitchell looked bemused for a couple of seconds, but in true Madison style, he recovered swiftly. "That doesn't explain why he was out at your place until all hours last night."
"Relax," Octavia said smoothly. "Last night was no big deal."
Nick felt his insides clench. No big deal?
"It's true we had dinner together, but so what?" Octavia went on in a breezy manner. "The only reason he left as late as he did was because of the storm. My fault, entirely. I didn't want him driving home until the wind had died down a little. I was afraid about stuff like downed power lines and trees falling across the road."
She did not have to sound quite so damned casual, Nick thought.
But her tactics were working. Mitchell was starting to appear somewhat mollified.
"Well, shoot and damn," Mitchell said again. "So you kept him there at your place on accounta the high winds?"
"Violent storms make me a little nervous."
"That one last night was a tad rough," Mitchell admitted. "Worst we've had in a while. You say he's gonna play private eye for you? Just like the guy in his books?"
"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."