Tempting Fate (28 page)

Sighing, Nick sat on the edge of his son's bed and told him that he was being blackmailed over Lilli's role in
Casino
when she disappeared.

John listened without interruption. It was just one more thing his wife and father had shared that he hadn't. Shut up in his office in New York, trying to do the right thing, giving Lilli the space to pull herself out of her grief, John had been of no use to her or anyone else. Lilli must have thought him a bore who just didn't give a damn about her. Nick, on the other hand, could never be faulted for lacking interest in a woman's troubles.

But it was far, far too late to condemn Nick for being who he was, and there was time yet to go on condemning himself.

“Mattie knew?” he asked.

Nick grunted. “Not until I told her on the train.”

“I'm surprised she didn't throw you off. Maybe she's mellowing.”

“Don't count on it. Next she's going to make me tell Dani.”

John's head vibrated with pain that zigzagged right down to his broken ribs. “She's right, Nick.”

“I know it.” He coughed, a wet, sloppy cough the by-product of which ended up in John's wastebasket. His father was clearly exhausted but insisted on getting to his feet. “There's something I neglected to tell even Mattie—I'll be damned if I know why. Not to spare her, for sure. I guess I just don't know what to make of it myself.”

“What?” John prodded.

“Joe Cutler came to see me shortly before he was killed. He was on his way home via California and stopped in.”

“What for?”

His father's eyes were watery, with spots of yellow clouding the whites, but utterly sane. “He wanted to know if I'd ever figured out who was blackmailing me.”

“You didn't, did you?”

“Hell, I thought it was Joe.”

John sat up, pain shooting through him. “Nick—”

“But it wasn't. And now I keep wondering if maybe he figured out who it was—or something. I don't know.”

“I'll talk to Zeke Cutler,” John said.

“Yeah. One other thing, John. There was never anything between me and Lilli. Not even a glimmer. I know it's been on your mind. She treated me like a father-in-law.”

“Whom she adored and respected.”

“She came to me because she wanted to try something new—to stretch herself. That's all. When she turned up missing, she hadn't made up her mind, as far as I know, about what she was willing to sacrifice to realize her dreams. John—I swear, I just wanted to make her happy.”

John reached for his father's bony hand. “I know, Pop. We all did.”

Dani flopped down onto a chair at the umbrella table in her cottage garden, kicked off her sneakers and put her feet up. Ira had reported that Pembroke security was on the alert; they'd already escorted several uninvited reporters off the premises.

She unscrewed the top off a bottle of lime-flavored mineral water she'd grabbed ice cold from her refrigerator. Nothing made any sense. Her mother, her father, Mattie, Nick, Joe Cutler, Zeke, movies, Tennessee, blackmail—how could she ever hope to put all the pieces together?

It was hot and sticky even in her garden. She rolled up the hem of her shorts, noticing the grass and dirt stains. She must look terrible. She ought to turn Magda loose on her.

Ira, semirecovered from his encounter with Quint Skinner in the woods, had insisted on greeting the two film legends like royalty when Dani arrived at the inn with Mattie and Nick. If Ira hadn't had such a rotten day, he'd probably have drummed up a red carpet and a couple of crowns. As it was, he'd waltzed them off to the former ballroom—where Nick's grandfather was so famously born—for a candlelight dinner and oohing and aahing by the guests.

Mattie and Nick pretended not to be fazed, but Dani wasn't fooled. They loved every minute of the attention they received.

Nick had called her “urchin” when Dani had picked them up at the train station and acted as if she'd never yelled at him on the phone. Mattie had repressed her earlier hurt and decided Dani's anger had been all to the good. “It's wonderful that we can disagree and disappoint and still be friends. I never could with my father. We never even argued. When I told him I was going to California, he only said, ‘If you do, there's no turning back. I'll disown you.' And he meant it.”

So even if all wasn't forgiven, Dani and her grandparents accepted the reality of being stuck—and more often than not blessed—with each other for family.

None of which explained anything. The past and the present were intertwined, inseparable. Answers were elusive, she knew, if not nonexistent.

Zeke walked out of her kitchen onto the terrace carrying a tall glass of iced tea. He must have gotten in through the front. Dani hadn't even heard him. “Iced tea's probably a sacrilege around here,” he said, “but one more bottle of mineral water or natural soda and I'm likely to effervesce right into space.”

“How'd you get into my cottage? I've been locking my doors.”

“Locked doors are a specialty of mine.” He sat beside her, and she saw him take in her bare feet and everything else about her appearance. “I just left the inn. Your Pembroke grandparents are holding court, enjoying their decorative, healthy meal from what I could see.”

“They are a pair.”

“Imperfect but, to you, wonderful.”

She smiled. “My definition of a family. I've been pretty hard on them—”

“You're hard on everybody,” Zeke said without condemnation. “Especially yourself.”

“If something had happened to either of them before I could make things right…” She shook her head and drank some of her flavored mineral water. “I don't know.”

“They know how you feel. It's obvious that you know they can do wrong and don't care.” He looked at her, the lines at the corners of his eyes more prominent against the background of the increasingly gloomy sky. The air was pregnant with impending storms, heavy and still. “And you can't make everything right, Dani. No one can.”

“I thought a white knight's mission was to right all wrongs.”

He sipped his iced tea, looking distant. “I gave up on that a long time ago. Maybe when I started I wanted to make up for what Joe did—not just for my sake, but for his. What he became wasn't what he was, Dani. I can't explain. Anyway, I came to understand I can't change the past.”

“So you live in the present. You isolate yourself from other people.”

His dark eyes penetrated her. “So do you.”

“Me? I have tons of friends—”

“What about marriage, children?”

His voice was soft and rhythmic, filled with challenge. Dani set down her bottle of mineral water. She could hear Kate—as she had a thousand times—telling her that she needed a man who wouldn't be afraid to ask the tough questions. “I've been busy. You're older than I am. What about marriage and children for you?”

He shrugged and said without self-pity, “They were what another Zeke Cutler used to dream about.”

“And now you make the world safe and secure for other people and let them dream your dreams for you.”

“You really have to get together with my friend Sam,” he said, amused. “The way I see it, I'm just earning a living the best way I know how.”

“Does that mean you've ruled out marriage and children?”

“Have you?”

“I know I can be happy without them. If they happen, they happen.”

The humor, always so unexpected, sparkled in his whole face, not just his eyes. “That's awfully fatalistic for a woman who's half Pembroke. Aren't Pembrokes all about risk and adventure and taking chances?”

“I don't take many chances with people.”

“You take chances with people all the time. The people you employ, the people who buy a Pembroke Springs product, the people who stay at the Pembroke or even stop at your rose gardens—they're all in one way or another risks.”

“That's different,” she said airily. She wasn't going to lose this one. “It's not like I sleep with them or brought them into the world.”

Zeke smiled, smug, as if he had her. “They're still people and they're still risks. So I rest my case.”

“You can't just declare victory. You know it's different. Okay, okay. Never mind. Let's look at you. You take physical risks, but I don't see you running around with a toddler on your shoulders.”

She stopped right there, her throat constricted as she imagined it. Zeke's dark hair blowing in the wind and his laughter mingling with the squeals of the black-eyed baby riding on his shoulders. It was so vivid and real in her mind that she knew it was possible.

He put down his iced tea and got to his feet and lifted her into his arms. “No more talk.”

Her attraction to him, percolating under the surface all day, erupted. The man looked at her—talked to her—as if he knew her. What she was thinking and feeling. She was accustomed to keeping her inner workings to herself, unavailable, even undetectable, to others, but Zeke had worn down all her defenses. Or maybe it was just the timing. She was confused and frustrated and scared, and he happened to have shown up when she didn't want to be alone. She didn't know. She wasn't even sure right now that she cared.

“Let's go upstairs,” he said.

“Mattie and Nick should be making their entrance any minute.”

Zeke shook his head. “I had Ira give them my room.”

“Since when do you have Ira do anything? And those two have been divorced for almost fifty years—they'll start fighting and wreck the place.”

“Oh, I think they'll manage.” His arms tightened around her, so that she could feel the strength of him, and sense his own ambivalence. He lived in the present. Well, for now so could she. “Let's go, Dani.”

She looked at him. “Don't you want to hear about Nick's being blackmailed during the filming of
Casino?
”

A muscle tensed in his jaw. “Upstairs.”

Although it wasn't yet dark, Nick collapsed onto the brass bed in the small, attractive room on the third floor of the house his grandfather had built. He couldn't have stayed on his feet if he'd wanted to. He was just too tired. It seemed as if answers, or perhaps just the right questions, were all around him, teasing him, eluding him, and if he could just be still and think, they'd come to him.

He could hear Mattie in the bathroom, washing up, brushing her hair, performing the nightly routine she'd had since she was a girl in Cedar Springs. Nick had never thought he'd live to see her grow old.

She came out, a towel draped around her neck, looking radiant. “You're so quiet. Don't you dare die on me.”

“Wouldn't want to annoy you.”

Regret washed over her face, and she sat on the edge of the bed. “I'm sorry—staying here must be strange for you.”

Ever since turning up the driveway to the Pembroke, Nick had felt as if he was touching the past. Everything triggered a memory. But memories did him no good, and he tried to repress them. His were all so old, back to a time even before Mattie. Most of the people he'd known in those days were gone. Yet, strangely, the beauty and possibilities Dani had discovered in the once-neglected property comforted him, and so did the memories that lurked always in his mind. In his granddaughter's restorations he saw not just her stubborn, risk-taking nature, but also a bit of Pembroke determination. They'd been dreamers and survivors. His grandmother, too. Ulysses's widow, a woman who'd chosen happiness over regret and despair.

Mattie slid under the crazy quilt with him, her body slim and small. “Stop thinking, darling,” she said, snuggling beside him. He felt like a pack of toothpicks. “Let's just lie here a while and listen to the rain.”

Zeke fingered the Cedar Springs Woolen Mill label on one of Dani's old blankets. “This was made when the mill first opened, I'd say.” He was sitting up, the muscles of his bare chest taut, his skin looking almost golden in the evening gloom. “That's well before Joe worked there, or even my mother.”

Dani detected a note of nostalgia in his controlled voice. Lying alongside him, she asked, “Did you ever work there?”

He let go of the blanket. “No.”

A summer Adirondack thunderstorm was crashing around them. They'd left the windows open, the curtains billowing in the strong, suddenly cool breeze. Lightning flashed and cracked, followed almost immediately by an enormous clap of thunder that seemed to shake the entire cottage. The storm had to be directly overhead. Dani couldn't think of a better time to make love. And she and Zeke had already, explosively. But that didn't stop her from wanting to again. Her life, she decided, had become very complicated.

Outside there was a hissing sound that grew louder and louder, and then the hard, driving rain came, pounding and drenching the cottage. The wind was still blowing hard into the bedroom, bringing with it sprays of rain. Zeke jumped lightly off the bed and banged the window shut.