Tempting Fate (12 page)

“I wasn't thinking about us.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean—”

“But you did, Dani,” he said, not harshly. “It's time to get rid of that chip on your shoulder. Your grandfather needs you. You're his only grandchild. Sara needs you, too. We have no children of our own. She—” He broke off, annoyed. “Dani, can't you see? We all care about you.”

Unable to think of anything to say, she swallowed and bit her lip, and Roger sucked in another breath and hurled himself back among his guests, leaving her to wonder if it wouldn't be easier on all of them if they didn't care. She about them, they about her.

Life, she thought, could be so damn complicated.

Zeke melted into a small crowd of onlookers who hadn't been invited to the hundredth annual Chandler lawn party. They'd gathered on North Broadway to watch the comings and goings of the rich and elegant.

With her red feather, Dani was easy to pick out.

It wasn't as easy to pick out Sara Chandler Stone, but Zeke did. She would be forty-seven now. Four years older than Joe would have been if he had lived. Eighteen months after her sister's disappearance, she had married Roger Stone. Joe was a soldier by then. Zeke wondered if his brother had ever stopped loving Sara Chandler, or if he really ever had. Joe had been so young twenty-five years ago.

Zeke watched Sara greet a guest with a hug and a kiss and a smile, and it was easy to forget that she and the hothead with the iron skillet were from the same family. But they were. That was something Zeke needed to remember.

There was no point in sticking around. He wasn't even sure why he had this long.

But as he turned, he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck, almost as if by instinct.

Quint Skinner came up beside him. “Evening, Zeke.”

“Quint.”

“Heard you were in town. Working?”

Zeke shook his head. “You?”

“Nope. I was passing by and thought I recognized you.” He narrowed his small blue eyes and scrutinized Zeke, his soldier's training apparent in his steady, steely gaze. “I don't want any trouble.”

His tone was amiable, but Zeke wasn't fooled. Despite his Pulitzer Prize, Quint was a man of physical action, threats, intimidation. He'd never seemed entirely comfortable with his role as a celebrated writer. Zeke's experience in protection and security wouldn't impress him. Quint would still think he could beat him senseless. And very likely he could.

“See you around,” he said, starting down the wide brick sidewalk.

“Hey, Skinner.”

The soldier-turned-writer looked back, the evening sun catching his broad red face. He wore a khaki suit cut a size too small for his muscular frame, probably just to remind people he wasn't just a smarmy journalist but a man who'd killed people.

Zeke's gaze was direct and unintimidated. “Didn't know you liked roses.”

There was no indication of surprise in the intense, beady eyes. Quint put a hand the size of a butt ham into the palm of his other hand and cracked his knuckles one by one. Just itching to knock out a few of Zeke's teeth. “I'll go where I want to go, and I'll do what I want to do. You just stay out of my way.”

Zeke said nothing more. Quint had no gift for melting into a crowd, and Zeke was able to watch him all the way down North Broadway. If Skinner had robbed Dani, why? Had he made the connection between the gold key and the night Dani's mother had disappeared? Between the gold key and Joe Cutler?

And the blackmail note, Zeke thought. Where did that little gem fit in?

Lots of questions. He just wished he had a few answers.

Dinner was served on long tables covered in pink linen and decorated—Kate Murtagh style—with simple milk-glass vases of asters and baby's breath. Sara had Dani sit next to her grandfather at the end of the table, where a portly man was expounding on the yearling sales and the state of Saratoga's thoroughbred-racing tradition.

Someone commented that the revival of Pembroke Springs and the opening of the Pembroke would be good for the town, and Dani felt her grandfather stiffen next to her. He didn't look at her, but she knew he disapproved of her having gone into business for herself against his wishes and against his advice, a different sort of embarrassment for him than her mother's disappearance and her father's embezzling.

But he didn't say anything, and the conversation drifted to other, more innocuous topics. Someone asked how long she'd been in Saratoga. Someone else asked where her date was, the unsubtle implication being that she'd been seen arriving with Zeke.

“One of my guests dropped me off,” she explained.

Her grandfather's clouded, watery eyes fastened on her, his irritation apparent, she was sure, only to her. Getting a ride from a male guest—even having paying guests—would grate on him. Mentioning it at his dinner party would be, in his mind, rude, a deliberate act to embarrass him.

Dani lasted through the main course, then excused herself and ducked into the kitchen.

Thankfully, no one followed her. The racing talk and flower-scented breeze, and just being there, reminded her of the nine-year-old who'd waited and waited and waited for her mother to come home.

Trying to squash the flood of memories, she stopped at the counter, where Kate was sifting confectioner's sugar onto a plate of her incomparable brownies.

“Rough night, eh? Well, if you'd wanted to avoid the nonsense,” she said without sympathy, “you could have stayed in here with me and watched the show from the kitchen. I'd even have let you help—except you in a black skirt and white top carrying a tray of stuffed mushrooms would probably kill your grandfather. Though I don't know why you in that dress hasn't killed him.”

“Maybe he was anticipating something worse.”

Kate looked remarkably calm despite being in the midst of serving two hundred. “I suppose it's possible.”

But there was something in her eyes. “Kate?”

She set down her sifter. “We have to talk.”

“Okay. Tomorrow—”

“Now. Dani, have you ever heard of a book called
Joe Cutler: One Soldier's Rise and Fall?
”

Dani shook her head.

“Joe Cutler is—was—this Zeke character's older brother. I knew there was something familiar about his name. I asked Aaron, and he remembered.” Aaron also taught history at the local high school. “Joe was pretty messed up.”

“You've read the book?”

She nodded. “A few years ago. It's got nothing to do with Zeke being in town so far as I can see.” Her intelligent eyes focused on Dani. “Except for one thing—he and his brother grew up in Cedar Springs, Tennessee.”

And there it was. A connection. Cedar Springs and Mattie. But her grandmother hadn't returned to her hometown since she had left for Hollywood at nineteen, long before Zeke was even born.

“What's he up to?” she asked.

“Beats me,” Kate said, “but you need to watch yourself with this guy.”

Dani snatched a brownie. “I will.”

“If Cutler's responsible in any way for that bruise on your arm—” Kate waved her spatula “—you let him know he'll have to answer to me.”

Impossible to tell if the woman was serious. And yet, beneath her bantering tone was a concern for Dani, something she never wanted to take for granted.

She went down a darkened hall and through the antique-filled drawing room where the oil portrait of her mother at sixteen still hung above the mantel. She seemed so sophisticated, yet demure, the perfect young heiress. The artist had failed—or, given who was paying the bill, perhaps simply had known better than to try—to catch the glint in her eye, the determined set to her jaw that hinted at a seething soul. Lilli Chandler had been privileged and beautiful at sixteen. At thirty, privilege and beauty hadn't been enough to satisfy her.

“I've tried to take that portrait down,” Eugene Chandler said from a Queen Anne chair, startling Dani. “I thought it would be easier on all of us, Sara in particular. She always adored your mother. But she insisted it should stay.”

Dinner must have broken up for the more informal dessert, or he, too, had made good his escape. “Look, if I in any way—”

He cut her off, or hadn't heard her. “You know, right or wrong, that's how I remember Lilli—as a lovely, devoted sixteen-year-old girl who might never really have existed…” He trailed off as he sighed, sounding tired and old. When he continued, his voice was almost inaudible. “That's the most difficult part. She's gone, and I never knew her. My own daughter.”

“I'm sorry—”

“No. I am.”

Dani took a step toward him. “Are you all right?”

He smiled sadly. “No, I'm not.”

She'd never seen him so depressed. Even when it had become clear that something had happened and her mother had disappeared, he'd shown only anger, determination, raging worry. Never real, quiet, reflective sadness. “Should I get Sara?”

“You should go on, Danielle.”

As she moved closer, he looked away. He was not a man given to touching, the quick kiss, the tender hug. And he'd come not to expect such affection from his only granddaughter. “I'm not sure I should leave you—”

“I prefer to be alone,” he said, not gently.

“If you're sure.”

“I'm sure.” His clouded eyes met hers, just for an instant. “I've never known what to say to you nor you to me. So go on, Danielle. Carry on. You always have, you know.”

Would he like her better if she fell on her face? If she had to crawl on her knees to him in desperation? But it wasn't the time for accusation or asking him to be something he wasn't. How could she ask him to accept her when she couldn't accept him?

Suddenly she was nine again, running from the grandfather she'd never been able to please.

She kicked off her high heels on the porch and scooped them up in one hand, walking through the cool, soft grass to the sidewalk. She'd left her sneakers in Zeke's car. It didn't matter—she'd walk home barefoot. She wanted off North Broadway, away from the Chandlers and back to her own little cottage where she'd learned to keep the memories at bay.

“Your feather's drooping.”

Zeke fell in beside her, dark, solid, taking her in with an efficient glance that told her nothing of what he was thinking. In the darkness the shadows of the trees and streetlights played on his face, making his expression even more impossible to read.

“What're you doing here?” she asked.

“Just hanging out.”

Dani didn't believe him. “You don't strike me as the type to just ‘hang out.'”

He shrugged. “Know me so well, do you?”

“Mr. Cutler—”

“You've really got to stop that. The name's Zeke, as in Ezekiel James Cutler. Only bad guys call me Mr. Cutler. How come you're leaving early?”

“No reason.”

He slowed his pace, eyeing her. “You're not a very good liar, are you?”

She wished she hadn't noticed the humor playing at the edges of his voice and in his eyes. She didn't answer, instead thinking about what Kate had told her about him. She'd hoped she'd have a chance to think, to talk to Mattie, before confronting him again.

“Why don't I give you a ride home,” he said, “and you can tell me what's on your mind.”

They'd come to his car. He unlocked the passenger door and swung it open. He looked very tough and very controlled, and Dani suddenly wondered what kind of woman a professional white knight went for, what kind he attracted.

“I prefer to walk,” she said.

“Kind of a long way to walk in bare feet.”

“You could give me my sneakers back.”

He smiled. “I could.”

They were at an impasse, his will against hers. Her high heels dangling from one hand, she wiggled her toes on the cool, rough sidewalk and became aware—too aware—of the fit of her dress and the aching of her bruises and just how tired she was.

“I'll ask you again. Was your being in my garden yesterday afternoon a coincidence?”

He stood back from the door, leaving it open. “Dani, you know I didn't rob you or—” he touched her wrist “—do that to you.” His eyes, dark and serious, held hers. “But I don't often believe in coincidences.”

Dani knew there were other ways to get home without Zeke Cutler's help. She could call the Pembroke for a ride, or call a friend, or a taxi. She could even go back and ask her aunt or grandfather if their driver could take her home.

She could fight one Ezekiel James Cutler for her sneakers.

But without a word, she slid onto the passenger seat of his rented car. She wanted to know more about this man.
Had
to know more about him. It wasn't just the burglary, his profession, his being from Cedar Springs, Tennessee. It was also her reaction to him, the strange, unsettling feeling that she was meant to find him in her garden one of these days. And how could she explain the rushes of warmth when she was around him? She was wary, and annoyed that he was clearly holding back on her, but, she had to admit, she was also intrigued.