“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.