“She got back from Elly’s right before I arrived,” Heather said. “Then Brody and Greg arrived.”
“Agent Rawlings.” Vic grimaced. “I forgot about him.”
“He’s with Adrienne now,” Brody said.
“I knew she went to Elly’s, but I haven’t seen her since last night.” He licked his lips, visibly chapped. “I went up to my bedroom and drank an entire bottle of a very expensive wine she had picked out for my cellar, and I got wild.”
Brody’s jaw was visibly tight. “Don’t do this again, Vic.”
He swallowed, shivering. “I couldn’t stop thinking that my parents missed knowing Adrienne. Their only granddaughter. They’re gone now, and they never had that chance...” He cleared his throat. “They were good people.”
“I remember,” Brody said. “Your father went fishing with my father a couple of times when you had them out here.”
Vic muttered that he wanted to get moving, but Heather shook her head. “It’s best to stay put until the rescue team gets here,” she said.
He didn’t argue. Brody stayed with him while Heather went back down to the shore, where she could get a decent signal and text Eric their exact location. The rescue team would already be en route based on Greg’s instructions.
They hadn’t wasted any time and arrived a few minutes later, with Heather’s firefighter brothers, Chris and Justin, in the lead. She let them do their thing and sat on a knee-high boulder to take off her snowshoes. The snow was disturbed enough now by the comings and goings, and the road close enough, that she figured she’d manage in her boots.
Brody dropped back to her. He already had his snowshoes off. “Team’s left with Vic.”
She smiled up at him. “Good work, Agent Hancock.”
“You, too.”
“I imagine you’ve dealt with a few diplomats in trouble after a wild night.”
“Oh, yes.” He squinted out at the cove. “Not like this, though. Not on my home turf.” He turned back to her. “At least we got to Ambassador Scarlatti before the damn fool froze to death.”
But Heather knew how concerned Brody was about his friend. She walked with him out to the road and on to the house, saying little. She wasn’t surprised to find Adam and Brandon pacing on the front porch with Eric. As Brody had predicted, all of her brothers had responded when word reached them of the emergency on Echo Lake and her involvement. Greg Rawlings was chatting amiably with Eric. Heather assumed they were discussing the situation with Vic but then overheard Greg tell her eldest brother what a great guy Brody was, in addition to being a top-notch DSS agent.
Brody slung an arm over her shoulders. “With Greg here, your brothers are bound to warm up to me.”
Brandon rolled his eyes but said nothing. Adam was grinning.
The rescue team returned with Vic, on his feet and arguing with Justin and Christopher, who were urging him to get checked out at the hospital.
Greg Rawlings cut through Vic’s argument. “Into the ambulance, Ambassador. Now.”
Vic acquiesced, letting the paramedics ease him onto a stretcher. He paused and looked out at the lake. “It all got to me. My life. What I’ve missed. What I’ve done. The mistakes.” He smiled, tears shining in his eyes. “Look, though. There are signs of spring.”
Greg frowned and turned to Christopher. “Make sure the doctors check his head. There are no signs of spring out here.”
Christopher grinned but said nothing.
“I’m glad we don’t have a missing ambassador on our hands,” Eric said, then glanced at Brody. “Or a DSS agent who went off.”
Brody shrugged. “I haven’t smashed pumpkins in a long time.”
Eric laughed and headed back to his car.
Once the ambulance was on its way, Greg clapped a thick arm over Heather’s shoulder. “You’re plucky as hell, Heather. No wonder Brody likes you.”
Twenty-Two
Vic’s entire body ached when he returned from the hospital and installed himself in his chair by the fire. He hadn’t broken any bones or damaged any vital organs, and he didn’t have a concussion. That was something, at least. He had multiple scrapes and bruises, and he’d strained his lower back, probably in his desperate sprawl to avoid slamming into the boulder. His left hip in particular was already ablaze with color. His left hand was in a bandage, but he’d dispense with that before bed.
“You’re lucky,” Christopher Sloan had told him.
A polite way to say he’d been a moron.
Never in his life had he lost it like he had last night and especially this morning, after he’d heard Adrienne and Rohan leave to help with Elly’s goats. Once he’d started tearing up the place, he couldn’t stop. He had a new understanding of blind rage. His was directed entirely at himself. He’d have stopped short of hurting anyone or setting the place on fire, and he doubted he’d have escalated if he hadn’t been alone.
A rationalization, perhaps. Selfishness, thinking he’d only hurt himself.
Brody built a fire for him in the living room. Greg shook his head at Vic. “You ever throw a fit like that on the job?”
“Never.”
The senior DSS agent grunted. “Good.”
Vic cleared his throat. “You and Brody put your lives on the line for people like me. I’m not worthy of your sacrifice.”
“Your worthiness isn’t the point, Ambassador,” Greg said, his eyes serious now.
“You’re just doing your job. Yes, yes.” Vic looked away from that steely gaze. “I want to be a better man. It isn’t too late, is it?”
“Not in my book,” Brody said, turning from the fire.
“Apologies,” Vic said. “I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud.”
Greg zipped up his jacket. “I’d have let you start by grabbing a broom and dustpan and cleaning up this place, but I figured you were too busted up to do much good. A couple of Sloan boys and I did the job for you while you were getting patched up.” His expression softened. “What’s done is done. Move on.”
Brody replaced the screen on the fire. “All you can do is your best.”
Vic sat up, wincing in pain. “Spoken like two men who’ve busted up a bar or two.” But his attempt at humor failed, and all he could do was sink back into his chair and shake his head. “I broke a beautiful vase I bought in Morocco.”
“At least it wasn’t the vase I gave you for your birthday when I was thirteen,” Brody said. “Remember that, Vic? I made it myself in pottery class.”
“A vase? Are you sure? It must be here somewhere...”
Brody grinned. “I never made you a vase, Vic. I did take a pottery class, though.”
Greg was staring at his friend. “Pottery, Brody?”
“Yeah. I still have this little paper-clip holder I made. It’s shaped like an ashtray. The teacher wouldn’t let us make ashtrays. My mother signed me up for classes. She thought it would help me get in touch with my softer side.”
“I need to get out of this town,” Greg said, shaking his head.
He left through the front door. Brody started to follow him, but stopped on the entry threshold and looked back at Vic. “Get some rest. Call if you need anything.”
“I noticed everyone knows about you and Heather.”
“Are her brothers getting their tar and feathers?”
“I think they like you. Does that scare you?”
He grinned. “Only a little.”
Vic thanked him and resisted the thousand self-deprecating comments that had congregated on the tip of his tongue. Brody didn’t need to hear them, and Greg wouldn’t stand for them. “That bastard will throw a brick through the window if he hears me whining,” Vic muttered to himself. But he could hear the anguish and regret in his voice, and he could feel the tears rising in his eyes.
“My father would have been horrified,” he said. “My mother...not so much.” But he could see she was struggling, too, with what he’d done. “Adrienne...”
“I’m sorry I’ve made you so unhappy.” She sank onto the rug in front of the hearth. “If I could do it over again, I wouldn’t tell you that you’re my father. I’d just house-sit for you and get to know you. But when I tell myself that, it feels wrong.”
“You’re not a deceitful person.”
“If you’d wanted a family, you’d have one.”
“It’s not that simple. Adrienne, I know I must not be the father you fantasized about—”
“You’re better than I feared. My mother has had some unpleasant men in her life since her divorce. I had no reason to believe the men before her marriage were all that great, either. She’s not easy herself.”
Vic suspected Adrienne was trying to keep her tone relatively lighthearted, as if the events of recent days—particularly today—hadn’t affected her as deeply as they so obviously had. As they would anyone, he thought, trying to ignore a sharp pain in his left hip.
“I should let you get some rest,” Adrienne said.
“No, no. Stay. Please.” He forced himself to smile through the pain. “I enjoy your company. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I upset you this morning.”
“Don’t be. I knew what had happened. Agent Rawlings called it a dark night of the soul. That’s what it was, wasn’t it?”
“You could say that.”
“It was cathartic?”
Vic nodded, if not feeling slightly less like a fool, at least accepting that he’d been one. “If I have another dark night of the soul, I hope it’s during summer. Lying in the snow, shivering.” He shuddered. “Pure misery.”
“There’d be red ants in summer. Ticks. Slugs. Mosquitoes.”
“Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine?”
She laughed, and he laughed, too, although it hurt like hell. Rohan plopped down on the floor between him and Adrienne. She reached over and stroked his plump belly. “I checked my mother’s photo albums last fall for any pictures that might lead me to you—to my biological father. I found that one picture of my mother and me on a lake. I asked her where it was, and she told me it was Echo Lake, on the outskirts of an out-of-the-way little town in Massachusetts called Knights Bridge. She said you had a house there. She and I were in Boston—she was at a conference and thought I should do the Freedom Trail—and then she decided to drive out here to say hi to you, her old friend from Paris. But you weren’t here, and so we had a picnic by the lake and went back to Boston.”
“Who took the picture?”
“It must have been Brody’s father. He was out fishing. My mother never admitted that you and she had an affair, but I figured it out. I was so sure.”
“And you were right,” Vic said.
“It didn’t mean that I knew you were my father. I only knew that when I found that picture of you as a young man. It was a mistake to manipulate you. I know that now, but I’m glad I got to know you.”
“Me, too. None of this is your fault, Adrienne.”
“You never had an affair with someone in Knights Bridge, did you, Vic?”
“Never. I don’t kiss and tell but no, never. Categorically.” He grinned. “Not that Knights Bridge lacks for tempting women, mind you. I wouldn’t want to get into trouble for that. It’s a tough place to keep a secret, anyway.”
“Do you think you’ll ever get married?”
“You are direct.”
“Sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“Drugs and alcohol were never my problem. Stable relationships were. I deserve to be a lonely old man.”
She scoffed at him. “With that attitude, that’s what you’ll be because you don’t feel you deserve love—whether it’s the love of friends or romantic love.”
He smiled. “How did you get to be so wise?”
“Experience.” She left it at that. “Don’t just sit out here in your big house. There’s so much you can do. Maybe you could help Noah Kendrick and Dylan McCaffrey with their entrepreneurial retreats. You could provide international perspective on business. You could lecture at one of the local colleges.”
“I could help with Elly’s goats. Maggie and Olivia’s goat’s milk products are taking off, and I could use a diversion. I can see my old bosses now, discovering I’ve gotten into goat’s milk products. Elly also tells me her twin daughters have a theater venture going with the Hollywood fashion designer who used to live in town.” Vic suddenly felt more his old, positive, can-do self, and yet different, too. More settled in his own skin. More at ease with himself. “Knights Bridge has a lot to offer for the next season of my life.”
“And you have a lot to offer Knights Bridge.”
“Thank you.”
Adrienne snuggled up with Rohan and lay down in front of the fire. She seemed to have enjoyed offering him advice. She reminded him of his mother.
“Adrienne...” He hesitated, but he knew the time was right. “I would like to show you where your grandparents are buried in Schenectady. Where they raised me. They were good people.” Vic smiled, picturing them. He felt warmer, the aches of the day more to do with his bruises and scrapes now than his emotional anguish. “You’d have liked them, Adrienne. They appreciated a good bottle of wine.”
“I wish I’d known them. I know you wish that, too.”
“Very much so.”
“They must have been proud of you, Vic. An ambassador.” Adrienne tucked her knees up. “You had lunch with my mother in New York.” She rolled onto her side. “No sparks left, huh?”
“Adrienne...”
She grinned. “I thought that would break through your malaise. Or is it the pain pills? You did get pain pills?”
“I refused them.”
“It’s being around those two tough guys.”
Vic sighed. “It’s because I don’t need them.”
“If you say so.”
He liked seeing the spark in her eyes. This was the Adrienne Portale who’d wowed the wine world and had shown up at his apartment in New York guessing—knowing—he was her father. Keeping that her secret as she sought information. Proof.
She put her hand out for Rohan to lick. “My mother is a force of nature, but she did what was best for her and believed that it was also best for me. I’m sorry for not being more open with you.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“At some point in life, you recognize and maybe even accept that your parents are only human, after all.”
“Your mother isn’t June Cleaver,” Vic said half under his breath.
“Who’s June Cleaver?” Adrienne laughed. “Kidding. She’s the lady who vacuumed in a dress.”
Vic struggled to his feet. He was stiff and sore, but he didn’t collapse in agony. His dignity was in shreds, but that small victory helped. He got a log out of the wood box. “Knights Bridge is your home now as much as mine, Adrienne,” he said, pulling back the fireplace screen. “I want you to know that.”
“It’s a great place.” She sat up, her face flushed from the heat of the fire—and no doubt the emotions of the day, as well. “Does that mean I get to use the sauna?”
“Sauna, wine cellar, guest suite and any porch you want. It’s going to be great.” He watched as Rohan curled up in her lap. “He missed you.”
“He missed you, Vic. I’m just giving him attention because he knows you’re in pain. Like it or not, he’s your dog. He’s a Knights Bridge dog, though. He’s not a New York dog.”
&n
bsp; “I didn’t tell you? I’m giving up my New York apartment.”
“Good for you. You’re figuring out your life now that you’re retired. I’m figuring out mine, too. I’ve been wandering, and I don’t want to wander anymore. You’ve lived all over the world, but it was your job as a senior officer with the Foreign Service. Same with Brody and his work. His job is so intense.”
“I really thought you two might hit it off.”
“He is a stud, but I’m not ready for another relationship right now.” She looked up at Vic. “There was never anything between you and Brody’s mother, huh?”
“No. Never.” He was so shocked at her question that he thought his heart skipped about twelve beats. “Good heavens, Adrienne.”
She laughed, unrepentant. “What about Elly?”
“We’re good friends. No question.”
She pointed to his side table by his chair. “I notice you’re reading up on goats.”
“Goats and puppies. My goodness. My life has changed.”
He placed the log on the fire and returned to his chair. He adjusted his position to ease the pain, but now he wished he hadn’t been so sanctimonious about medication.
“You okay, Vic? Need some ice? Do you want me to call Brody—”
“I’m fine.” He took a moment to let the surge of pain subside. “Now. Tell me about this wine-shop cad.”
“I have no secrets left, do I?”
“None. You’re in Knights Bridge now. You’ll learn that it’s damn tough to keep a secret here. His name is Thad, correct?”
“Yes,” Adrienne said. “He was the wrong man at the wrong time in my life.”
“Sometimes good can come out of that,” Vic said softly.
His daughter smiled up at him. “Yes, it can.” She gave him a conspiratorial look. “I enjoyed several excellent bottles of wine with him.”
Echo Lake Page 25
