They drank tea during the interview and after the cups were drained, Octavia read the tea leaves that had settled in the bottom of Katie’s porcelain cup.

“You’re involved in an affair of the heart,” she observed, lifting a penciled eyebrow above the top of her thick glasses. “And this man is very special to you.”

Katie blushed to the roots of her hair. “Anything else?”

“Mmm.” Her brow knitted and her lips puckered. “I can’t make it out, but I’d say there was danger in your future.”

Katie’s heart nearly stopped, then she shook her head as she reminded herself she didn’t believe in such nonsense as reading tea leaves, or palms or any other spiritual mumbo jumbo. Still, the odd sensation stuck with her as, after the extended interview, she explained that she was meeting her half-sisters for lunch and Octavia told her to say hello to Tiffany. “Darling girl,” she said. “The apple of my eye, and her children . . . so dear. But her mother is such a proud woman—wouldn’t take any help from me when she was raising Tiffany. Insisted on doing it on her own. Kind of a martyr, if you ask me. But ... eventually Tiffany will get her trust fund and Rose will just have to accept it. Well, enough of that . . .” Her eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am that she’s marrying J.D.”

“She’s happy, I think.”

“As well she should be.” Octavia clapped her beringed hands and looked skyward. “She deserves it. Now—” her owlish eyes fell on Katie again as they walked to the Jeep “you be careful.” She touched Katie lightly on the arm. “Whatever it is you’re getting yourself into, it’s perilous.”

“I’ll be fine,” Katie assured her, but left with an uneasy, nagging sensation that wouldn’t let go of her. So what if the older woman saw danger in the bottom of a porcelain cup? “There’s nothing to it,” she told herself as she drove through the lazy streets of Bittersweet. “Nothing.” Reading tea leaves was just the older woman’s way of passing time.

But she saw that you were involved with Luke.

“Lucky guess,” Katie assured herself as she wheeled into the restaurant parking lot. She locked the car and half jogged to the front door of the little cottage that had been converted into an eatery. Filled with antiques, books and ferns, Claudia’s was known for its special soup of the day and cozy, intimate atmosphere.