Tempting Fate (29 page)

Watching him, Dani was struck again by how unbelievably sexy Zeke was. He looked so hard and capable, and she'd given up hope her attraction to him would ever wane. If he walked out of her life now and turned up again in another fifty years, it would still be there, one of those givens in life. Dani Pembroke would always want to make love to Zeke Cutler.

He caught her staring and smiled. “Like the view?”

“I didn't realize white knights could be so sexy.”

He laughed. “And I didn't realize hotheaded heiress entrepreneurs who like to climb rocks could be so sexy.”

“Ex-heiress,” she corrected.

“Once an heiress, always an heiress. It's a matter of attitude, not money.”

She didn't argue the point. Instead she enjoyed the idea of being sexy—of his thinking and saying she was sexy. To have him respond to her that way—even if just for now—felt good.

“Are there any other windows that need to be shut?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Good,” he said and came back to bed with her.

The rain crashed against the window, and there was another flash of lightning, then the rumbling roar of more thunder. The storm was moving fast.

Zeke slipped his arms around her, hooking one leg into hers. He was slippery and wet from the rain that had blown onto him, his skin cool to the touch of her fingertips, her lips. They kissed for a long time, slowly, tongues exploring. They paid no attention to the storm. The lights flickered. He cupped her bottom with his hands, then, in the same slow rhythm as their kiss, moved them up her sides, and she wondered what she felt like, tasted like, to him. Was she as new and exciting and different to him as he was to her? Was he as amazed and absorbed by what they were becoming to each other? She didn't want the answers. Not now.

She pulled away from their kiss and lay back on the bed, and he moved his hands over her breasts, watching her as, with one finger, he traced a circle, so slowly, so erotically, around each nipple, not touching it. Then his tongue touched where his finger hadn't. He dragged his hand down her abdomen, to her inner thighs, between her legs. Suddenly she was as out of control as the weather, until she couldn't stand it anymore and pulled him against her, felt the strength of him, and the state of his arousal.

“I'm not holding back,” she whispered. “I want you to know that.”

He smiled. “I know.”

“Are you as afraid as I am?”

“Yes.”

His answer reassured her, although she didn't know exactly why. She supposed it was because he shouldn't have all the answers any more than she should, because she wanted him to feel the mystery and uncertainty she was feeling. Falling in love shouldn't be simple and predictable. But was that what was happening to them? Dani felt a shiver of panic. Was she falling in love with this man?

But the storm was howling, and finally he was inside her once more, whispering words against sounds of the rain and the wind.

“I can't hear you,” she said.

He brought his mouth close to hers. “It doesn't matter.”

And it didn't, she realized. For now, their bodies were doing all the communicating that, at the moment, needed to be done.

Later, when the skies were quiet and the rain had died to a gentle drizzle and Dani knew she wouldn't sleep, she crept out of bed, wonderfully stiff. She raised the window, feeling the cool air on her overheated skin. She could hear water dripping into puddles in her garden. Chickadees played in her marble birdbath. She watched them for a few minutes, knowing her life would never be as it had been. Everything had changed, and not just because of the gold key and her mother. Because of Zeke, too, and the capacity for love she'd discovered in herself. She cared about him. What was more, she wanted him to care about her.

When she turned around, her bed was empty. She might have imagined their lovemaking, made up a white knight to carry her off into the sunset.

“Zeke?”

There was no answer. She wasn't sure she'd expected one.

Pulling on her robe, she went back downstairs. No Zeke whipping up something in the kitchen. No note stuck to the refrigerator. How far could he have gotten without clothes? She took her stairs two steps at a time and checked the bedroom. He'd sneaked out with his clothes. With her right there in the room with him. Had she been catatonic?

“The bastard,” she muttered with a small laugh.

She should have waited until after they'd made love to tell him about Nick's being blackmailed.

But she suspected his departure was his way of telling her exactly what she'd been thinking as she'd stared down at her rain-drenched garden—that what they had together was a wonderful dream. It just might not be real.

I
n the morning Dani made herself get dressed and walk over to her office at the main house. Ira came in to show her his bruised neck. “And you know what kind of sympathy I get around here? None. People say they wish they'd done it. Some friends I have. Rejoicing that I'm almost choked to death by some psychopath.”

“Ira, you're exaggerating.”

“My own friends telling me that's the way I'll die, with someone's hands around my throat.”

Dani tried not to laugh because, of course, she didn't believe a word. “Not if I'm around with my trusty rock.”

“Or Zeke with his gun. I think our friend spotted the guy lurking in the woods, and that's why he ran off.”

“Women never get credit for anything,” Dani said, propping her feet up on her art deco–style coffee table.

Ira scoffed. “Your problem is you want credit for everything. Comes from being the only child of an only child. You don't even have cousins. The rest of us learned what it's like to be shoved out of a tree house by a brother or sister, but not Dani Pembroke. She expects people to behave. Why would some goon want to spy on her in the woods?”

She wiggled her toes, feeling remarkably refreshed given her current state of confusion and sporadic sleep. “Don't inflict your stereotypes on me, Ira. Do you want the day off?”

“No, you'd never manage to run this place and skulk about in the woods for desperadoes. Dani—” He sighed and ran a hand through his corkscrew curls, calming down. “Thanks for letting me vent. I'm worried, that's all. About you, if you want the truth. I know it annoys you to have anyone worry about you, but there it is.”

Her eyes misted. “Thanks. If anything had happened to you yesterday—”

“You'd have named some stupid garden after me—The Ira Bernstein Memorial Blackberry Patch.” He grinned then, irreverent as ever. “I'll run along and let you pretend to work.”

When he'd gone, one of her consultants in New York called. Dani acted glad to hear from him. “What's going on up there? Rumors are flying.”

“Such as?”

“Such as an internationally known security expert who happened to have grown up in the same hometown as your grandmother is at the Pembroke.”

“Zeke Cutler. Yes, he's here. What else?”

She could almost hear her very professional, very good marketing consultant gritting his teeth. “That Mattie Witt and Nick Pembroke are there.”

“Also true.”

“What about your wearing the dress your mother wore in
Casino
to the track on Saturday?”

“Not true,” Dani said steadily.

“And your having decided to sell the Pembroke because you can't stand the memories?”

“You know that's not true.”

He sighed. “Just like to be sure. Is there anything going on that hasn't hit the rumor mill?”

“A lot, but let's talk later.”

“Dani…just be careful. Please.”

“I will. Thanks for the call.”

She hung up before she ended up saying more than she should and someone overheard her in the hall and got another rumor started.

Zeke had returned to her cottage after midnight and stayed until just after dawn. When he left, he didn't say where he'd been or where he was going.

“I'm doing what I know how to do,” he'd told her.

“And shutting me out.”

He'd smiled in that deliberate, cocky way of his that said he just might know her better than she knew herself. She wondered if he knew how irritating that was. “I wouldn't presume to tell you about total dissolved solvents.”

She was smiling, thinking of him, when Eugene Chandler walked into her office. “Hello, Danielle,” he said as he looked around, her unconventional work space a contrast to the elegant offices at the Chandler Hotels headquarters in New York. He cleared his throat and added, “I apologize for not calling ahead.”

“That's okay. Have a seat. Can I get you anything?”

“No, thank you.”

He didn't sit down, but walked into the middle of the sun-washed room, rubbing one finger across the top of her old player piano. She'd opened the windows to let in a cool, fresh morning breeze, filled with the scent of flowers and grass. She could hear guests outside enjoying themselves. Her grandfather peered out the leaded-glass window.

“Is something the matter?” she asked.

“I'd forgotten how quite extraordinary this property is,” he said pensively, still staring out the window. “It always was impractical as a private home. Of course, Ulysses Pembroke never concerned himself with practicalities. I understand that but for you, Danielle, this property would be a shopping mall by now.”

“I'll take that as a compliment.”

“Many people are grateful you stuck to your guns when I told you this scheme of yours would never work. Don't get me wrong. I admire what you've accomplished. I didn't come here to criticize.”

His quiet words, the concern in his cool blue eyes, made Dani wonder if she might have unfairly pigeonholed her grandfather, damned him forever for the occasional insensitive remark, failed to understand him as badly as he'd failed to understand her. Failed to forgive. Perhaps, she thought, his rigidness and uncompromising attitude weren't as rigid and uncompromising as she'd always believed. Learning more about Jackson Witt allowed her to look at her disagreements with Eugene Chandler—and there undeniably were many—with a new perspective. If nothing else, she had to give her grandfather credit for always being forthright with her in his own exasperating way.

“I understand Mattie and Nick are in town,” he said.

Dani wasn't surprised. That kind of news would travel fast. “They arrived yesterday afternoon.”

“And they're already up to their old antics. I was with a friend at his stables this morning, and who should float overhead in a bright yellow balloon but those two. Mattie still has that orange flight suit of hers, I see. I should have thought by now they were too old for ballooning.”

“Not according to Mattie. Nick I don't know about—she probably had to browbeat him into going. It's fairly calm out. They shouldn't have run into any problems.”

He didn't seem reassured. “Danielle—why are they here? Why is your father here? And what really happened to him?”

It went against every fiber of her being to confide in him. Dani dropped her feet to the floor and jumped up, wishing for an interruption. A fax, another call from New York, papers to sign. But she walked over to the window and stood beside her tall and very dignified grandfather. She inhaled, suddenly sympathetic to this old man who'd lost so much. But how could she explain questions she barely understood herself—never mind their possible answers?

“I don't know exactly why Mattie, Nick and Pop are here, except that some things have been going on….” But her nature, years of mistrust and miscommunication, and maybe a touch of concern for him, stopped her from going further. She added gently, “I'm sure it's all a tempest in a teapot.”

He turned to her, and she could see where he'd nicked his chin shaving, where the dark, puffy circles had formed under his eyes. “There's something I think you should know. Zeke Cutler and his older brother, Joe, were in Saratoga the week your mother disappeared. I didn't know it at the time—no one thought to tell me.”

“How did you find out?”

He smiled thinly. “It was the one reasonably interesting detail my private investigators managed to produce. Oh, I had both Cutler brothers checked out. Joe was in the army then, Zeke was in high school in Tennessee. Apparently they came north to inform Mattie that her father was dying of cancer.”

“Zeke told me—”

“But did he tell you his brother had decided while he was up here that he was in love with your aunt Sara?”

Dani felt a rush of cold. Sara? And Joe Cutler? Zeke had to know. And he'd chosen not to tell her. She didn't feel betrayed, only a tug of hopelessness. She was falling in love with Zeke—no use pretending she wasn't—but how could they ever really work together? The past seemed destined to extinguish the possibilities that had sparked between them.

“Of course,” her grandfather went on, “Sara's heart already lay with Roger. It was right around that time that they began seeing each other.”

“Did he know about Joe?”

“I don't think so. I believe Joe knew more about Roger than Roger knew about Joe.”

“Then Sara dumped Joe?”

Her grandfather wrinkled up his face in distaste. “I don't think their relationship ever progressed to the point that she needed to be that direct. I'm sure she discouraged him as sensitively as she could.”

Dani sank onto the piano bench, remembering her aunt at twenty. She'd been pretty and rebellious, still shattered by her mother's death. Having two men as different as Roger Stone and Joe Cutler falling for her must have been a welcome distraction. But how different was the Sara Chandler Stone of today. “Does Sara realize you know this?” Dani asked.

He shook his head. “There would be no point. She's had enough to endure without another reminder of that terrible summer. Joe Cutler…” He hesitated, turning from the window. “It's too late now, I suppose, but I've often wondered if he might have known something…” He trailed off. “But there's never been any evidence to suggest his involvement with your mother's disappearance.”

“Could Roger and Sara know anything and just not realize it?”

“It's possible. I intend to ask.” His eyes clouded. “Danielle—I brought you something. I don't know if it will make any difference to you, but—” Stopping midsentence, he reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a small, black leather volume; it looked old. “This is one of my mother's journals. Her last, actually. The entries stop right as her three oldest children became ill with diphtheria and died. Lilli and Sara both read it when they were younger—I'd have given it to you sooner to read if I'd thought you were interested.”

Dani felt a stab of guilt. “Grandfather, I had no idea…”

He held up a hand. “I'm not criticizing. I'm merely explaining why I've waited until now to give this to you. Danielle, my mother and your great-great-grandmother—Ulysses's wife—maintained a quiet, almost secret friendship.” Handing Dani the diary, he went on. “I've marked an entry I think might interest you right now, given what's been going on in your life.”

Dani opened up to the marked page. Her great-grandmother's handwriting was delicate and clear, faded with time. She looked up at her grandfather, but he waved her on. She read:

Dani pictured the two refined women smashing up the fountain in their ruffled tea dresses. She shut the volume. “Did Nick know about this?” she asked her grandfather.

“Not unless Lilli told him. I'm quite sure his grandmother never told him about having buried a large twenty-four-karat gold key. Otherwise he would have…” He deliberately didn't finish.

But Dani did. “He'd have hocked it first chance he got.”

Eugene Chandler let her have the last word on that one. “I only wish Lilli had left us with a similar insight into her character as my mother did.” He became strangely quiet, his shoulders slumped. “It would be a blessing to know what happened to her before I pass on. I've always thought I wouldn't have to die with her disappearance still unresolved.”

“I hope you won't,” Dani said.

“But,” he went on awkwardly, “I would rather leave the past alone and not know than to see anything happen to you.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead. “It's always a pleasure to see you, Danielle.”

She was too stunned to say goodbye. As she watched him leave, it struck her that despite his inability to know what to say to her—his seeming lack of emotion—her grandfather had suffered and had been changed by the long years of not knowing what had happened to his firstborn daughter. His inability to know what to say to Dani—his seeming lack of emotion—didn't mean he didn't care.

She remembered the day he'd marched down to her Greenwich Village apartment for the first and only time, not long after she'd gone into business for herself. He had demanded to know why, if she insisted on a career, didn't she take a position with Chandler Hotels? She'd been mystified. Not only did he disapprove of Chandler women taking careers, and generally disapproved of her choice, but her father had embezzled from Chandler Hotels, betrayed his father-in-law's trust. Betrayed his coworkers. How could her grandfather expect her to work with the same people her father had robbed?