Page 37 of Eclipse Bay

He grinned. “Thanks.”

So the man could cook. She already knew that. It was not a sufficient reason to fall in love. Lust, maybe, but not love.

She dragged her gaze away from the golden-brown French toast and saw that Rafe was watching her with an odd expression.

“I’ll get the coffee.” She whirled around and seized the pot.

Rafe arranged the French toast on two heated plates and carried the food to the table. Hannah studied the casually elegant fashion in which the puffy, golden-brown triangles had been positioned. There were little sprigs of fresh mint on top of the toast. The syrup in the small pot in front of her was warm.

She picked up her fork. “You know, there’s a theory in some quarters that you turned to a life of crime in order to support yourself after you left Eclipse Bay.”

He nodded. “I’ve heard that theory.”

“But after dinner the other night and breakfast this morning, I think the evidence is clear that you went to a blue-ribbon culinary academy instead of jail.”

He looked up very quickly.

She paused with a bite of French toast poised in midair. “Good heavens, I was joking. Did you really take cooking classes?”

He hesitated. Then shrugged. “Yes.”

She was fascinated. “When?”

“After I got married. In the back of my mind, I think I always had this idea that when you were happily married, you ate at home most of the time. But Meredith wasn’t big on cooking, so I took over the job. The better I got at it, the more restless and unhappy Meredith became.” Rafe made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “After a while I realized that she wasn’t real big on staying at home, either.”

She gazed at him in disbelief. “Meredith left you because you’re a fantastic cook and because you like to eat at home?”

“Well, those weren’t the only reasons,” Rafe admitted. “She might have been willing to tolerate my cooking if I had agreed to go to work at Madison Commercial. But I refused, so in the end she gave up on my future prospects and left.”

Hannah savored another bite of French toast while she thought about that. “I’m sorry your marriage didn’t work out.”

“You should be. I figure it’s your fault that it bombed.”

She nearly dropped her fork. “Myfault. How in the world can you blame me?”

He met her eyes across the short expanse of the table. His mouth curved slightly. “That night on the beach you told me I didn’t have to follow in my father’s and my grandfather’s footsteps when it came to marriage, remember? So a couple of years later, I figured I’d give it a try. I mean, after all, it was advice from Miss Overachiever herself. How could it be wrong?”

“Now, hold on one dang minute here.” She aimed the fork at him. “You can’t blame me just because you chose to follow my perfectly good advice and then messed it up by picking the wrong woman.”

“I’m a Madison. I was bound to pick the wrong woman.”

“That’s a cop-out excuse if I ever heard one and you know it. You will not use it again, do you hear me?”

He halfway lowered his lashes. “Yes, ma’am.”

She subsided slightly. “It’s not like you’re the only person on the face of the earth who made a mistake when it came to selecting the right mate, you know. I didn’t do any better.”

“Yes, you did. You just got engaged. You never got married.”

She made a face and forked up another bite of toast. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. The only reason I didn’t make the mistake of actually marrying Doug was because he very kindly dumped me before we got to the altar.”

“What was he like?”

“He’s a lawyer, a partner at a very prestigious firm in Portland. We met when I did his sister’s wedding. We had lots of things in common.”

“He fit all the criteria on the Mr. Right list you gave me that night on the beach?”

She winced. “You remember that list?”

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