“Good idea.”
She looked at him with those big black eyes, and her skin was so pale, her lower lip pulled in a little under her top teeth, and she said, “You want out of here, don’t you? You’re getting—we’re getting—” She stopped, straightening her spine and going high-minded heiress on him. It was as good a defense as any. “Leave whenever you wish. I’ll be fine on my own.”
But in her fierceness he saw not only strength and character, but also vestiges of the little girl who’d had no choice but to be fine on her own. He sensed her pride and toughness and the twenty-five years of battles she’d had with herself not to show the parts of her that weren’t so proud and weren’t so tough. He was from another world, one without trust funds to throw in people’s faces when he got mad or prestigious hundred-year-old parties to skip, but he thought he understood. They’d both loved people who in the end had left them to face the world alone.
“Take your shower,” he said. “I won’t sneak out on you.”
While she was in the bathroom, he contemplated his next move, whether he at least should tell her that her father hadn’t tripped in the woods, something she already seemed to suspect. Should he tell her he’d posted Sam at her father’s hospital room? Those were the kinds of things he could legitimately tell her, if he were in the habit of telling anyone anything. He talked to Sam because they worked together, because they were friends. He didn’t know what he and Dani were.
“I forgot my robe,” she called.
He fetched it from the bedroom and hung it on one finger through a narrow opening in the doorway. It was a thin little scrap of fabric. She’d have had more covering in a good bath towel.
“Does this make me an official white knight?” he asked.
“It does not,” she said, a hint of amusement in her voice as she snatched the robe. “I’m just not used to having someone around when I’m taking a shower.”
He only got a glimpse of her dripping hand. Stifling an image of her parading around her claustrophobic apartment stark naked, Zeke noticed one of hundreds of photographs, postcards and posters on the hall wall, which she used like a giant bulletin board. It was of her and her grandmother in the basket of a hot-air balloon. Dani must have been fourteen or fifteen. Her smile reminded him of her mother. It struck him that Dani was older now than Lilli had been when she disappeared. She wasn’t a kid anymore. Neither was he. They’d both survived loss.
“We’ve been on our own for a long time,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. She’d come up beside him. He could feel the heat and dampness of her skin. The robe, he observed, was as flimsy as he’d expected. “It’s been good for me—I’ve been happy. I don’t want to lose that independence. I don’t want anyone to have to feel responsible for me, to hurt because I hurt.”
“It’s not always possible,” he said carefully, aware Dani Pembroke had just exposed a bit of her soul, which had to be a rarity for her, “to tell people what to feel and what not to feel. Someone can hurt for you not out of a sense of responsibility, but out of love.”
“Kate keeps telling me the only true love is between independent people. She says intimacy isn’t about dependence.”
“A smart woman, your friend Kate.”
The filmy robe matted to the places where her skin was still damp, outlining the soft shape of her breasts. Water dripped from her tangled hair. Zeke told himself to leave. They’d both said too much, revealed too much. But instead he moved closer to her, close enough that he could smell the fresh scent of soap and see the lines at the corners of her dark eyes, sense the desire that stirred inside her. He damn well knew what was stirring in him.
“Don’t leave yet,” she whispered.
In her bedroom they opened the window to the breeze and the flutter of pigeons. The tie on her robe had come loose, dangling to the tops of her bare feet, revealing her small breasts and smooth, flat stomach. Zeke inhaled deeply. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to strip off his clothes and make love to her now, here, anywhere. But he waited. She needed to be certain. There were questions yet to be answered—even asked—about the places where their pasts had intersected. They mattered. But they didn’t, Zeke understood, determine how much he wanted Dani Pembroke, how much this slim, black-eyed woman had come to mean to him.
She stood next to him at the window as he pulled the shade. One side of her robe had fallen off her shoulder and caught in the crook of her elbow. As small and feminine as she was, she was strong for her size, and athletic. And sexy, Zeke thought. He wondered if she knew how sexy.
Hesitating only slightly, she slipped her hands around his lower back. Her touch was light but not tentative, igniting a desire within him so hot it burned his soul. She pressed her breasts against his chest and tilted her head back, dampening her lips with the tip of her tongue, inviting him.
“Don’t hold back,” she said. “Not for my sake, anyway.”
He kissed her then, a long and searching kiss, not an end, he felt, but a beginning. There was much more yet to come between them.
In the midst of it, her robe fell to the floor. He couldn’t have said the precise moment, but became aware that she was naked, that his hands were coursing up her smooth, trim bottom. Their kiss had taken on an urgency and hunger that quickly sensitized and electrified every inch of his body, every fiber of his soul.
He dispensed with his own clothes in a matter of seconds.
While he did, Dani backed up and sat on the edge of the bed, almost primly. Then he saw her black eyes on him—not embarrassed or second-guessing him or herself, but shining with unabashed lust.
“Changed your mind?” he asked, half-serious, half-playful.
She shook her head. There was no hesitation. He went to her, sat beside her, and without touching her anywhere else, ran his palms up her bare arms. He could feel the awareness shooting through her.
Her eyes never leaving him, she smiled and came to him. They fell together onto the cool, soft sheets, with the breeze from the courtyard and a cat yowling. Soon Zeke felt nothing but the passion and the power of the emotions he had for this woman…and heard only the voice inside him—insistent, annoying—warning caution and distance because those were his way.
“Zeke…” Her face was a mask in the shadows as she pulled him deeper into her. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone. It’s a little frightening. I know I shouldn’t fall for you…I can’t…”
“You don’t have to.” He could hear the aching in his own voice. “Just love me a little now.”
Her mouth found his. “I do, now.”
Later she fell asleep with her head against his shoulder. He felt the softness of her still-damp hair on his chin, smelled its freshness. He shut his eyes, letting himself relax in the moment.
Suddenly it was as if Mattie and Nick had met on the Cumberland River all those decades ago not for themselves, but for them, the ex-heiress and security expert, both with too many dead dreams.
And Zeke knew what he had to do.
As he extricated himself from Dani’s arms, he could see her long, thick eyelashes against the paleness of her skin and the soft shape of her mouth as she slept. There was no evidence of the tension of the last days. She looked relaxed and at peace with her world, a world so different from his. He imagined her at nine, alone, her mother gone, her father shattered. She must have been a tiny girl, a spitfire determined from day one not to be just a “Chandler heiress” or a “Pembroke scoundrel” but only herself, whoever that might be.
Not making a sound, Zeke gathered up his clothes and dressed in the bathroom, quickly, and he got out of there before he could change his mind.
Ninety minutes later, he was driving a newly rented car—now he’d have two—north on the interstate. He finally had himself under control. He could think, figure out what came next. He’d head to Saratoga, find Sam, lay everything out for him, get his unbiased opinion. There’d be no putting off the tough questions. Joe was dead, and Lilli Chandler Pembroke had been missing for twenty-fiv
e years. Maybe they were somehow the cause of the break-ins at Dani’s cottage and his room and the attack on her father. Maybe they weren’t. But it was time to focus on the present before someone else got hurt.
A centered calm descended over him. He was finished standing back. Dani didn’t have to like him. She didn’t have to appreciate or understand him or the choices he’d made about his life. She didn’t have to want him meddling in her life. She could think whatever she wanted to think. Be who she wanted to be. But he’d quit worrying about treading lightly where Danielle Chandler Pembroke was concerned. He’d just added her to his mission in Saratoga.
And that wasn’t her problem. It was his.
In the morning Dani got up much later than usual and microwaved a muffin she had in the freezer and found a note on the table, read the precise no-nonsense handwriting.
I’ve gone back to Saratoga. I need to do a few things on my own. I’ll be in touch. No regrets? None here. Z
No, she thought with a jolt of surprise, she had no regrets.
She’d heard him leave but hadn’t stirred. On some level, she’d understood that he’d needed to get out of there, be back on his own. He’d tried to be quiet, but it was her door length of locks that had alerted her. If she’d been clothed, she might not have resisted going after him. But she’d have had to dig out clothes and put them on, and by then he’d have been gone anyway. She’d debated wrapping herself up in her quilt and intercepting him, but that could have led to other things, like making love on the hall floor, because it was getting to be that way between them. She’d imagined them using the quilt as a pad. He was an expert in security and self-protection. There was no telling what ideas he’d come up with.
Then she found a sheet of paper under the note.
It was a photocopy of a blackmail note.
The whole world will know Lilli Chandler Pembroke isn’t the perfect heiress she pretends to be….
Dani dropped her muffin and fell back against her chair. Her hands shook. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“Oh, Mother…Mama…”
She moved fast, downing another cup of coffee and cleaning up the kitchen, trying to focus—as Zeke had suggested—on the present. On what she was doing. Not on the questions slicing through her mind.
But where had he gotten that note? When? What did it mean?
Did Mattie know—Nick—her father?
“Stop,” she said out loud, calmly but forcefully. She needed to be able to function. She couldn’t indulge wild thinking or ask questions she knew she couldn’t answer.
In ten minutes, she was on Mattie’s front stoop, ringing the doorbell.
There was no answer. It was a warm, humid morning, and Dani tried again, waited and finally let herself in with the key she’d always had. In the quiet town house there was no indication that her grandmother had gone anywhere special or planned to be away for long or knew that her daughter-in-law had been blackmailed twenty-five years ago. Or maybe not twenty-five years ago. Maybe the note had been written more recently.
But your secret is safe with me if you pay up tonight….
Using her cell phone in the kitchen, which overlooked her grandmother’s beautiful private garden, Dani called the hospital in Saratoga.
Her father was grumpy but on the mend. “Hey, kid, what’s up?”
“I’m at Mattie’s. Did she call? Is she on her way to Saratoga?”
“Not that I know of. We talked last night—she didn’t mention coming up. Why? Is something wrong?”
It was in her voice. Her father had always been able to tell when she was upset. “She’s not here.”
“Is there some reason we should worry?”
“No, I just…” She exhaled, not knowing exactly what she “just.” Just had good reason to worry these days? Just had made love to Joe Cutler’s brother and didn’t have her head on straight? Just had read a blackmail note to her missing mother? “Never mind, Pop. How’re you feeling?”
“Lousy.”
“Take care of yourself, okay?”
“Yeah, sure, kid.”
On the surface he was lighthearted, irreverent, confident, every bit the man he’d become since his father-in-law had caught him with many thousands of Chandler Hotels’s dollars in his personal account. But underneath, where perhaps only a daughter knew to listen, Dani heard his fear.
“Pop, what’s going on?”
“I’ve got to go—the vampires are coming to suck my blood. You should see my day nurse.”
“Pop—”
“Talk to you later, kid.” He sighed. “Just listen to Zeke, okay?”
“Then you trust him,” she said.
But he’d hung up.
Dani left a note for Mattie, and feeling uneasy but at least reasonably rested, fought her way onto the subway and to an Amtrak train heading north.
Fifteen
Nick’s stamina wasn’t what it used to be. The long flight from Los Angeles to New York had worn him out. The young man who’d taken Hollywood by storm seemed to have been another man altogether, someone Nick didn’t even know.
Mattie didn’t help him feel any less old and useless.
“Good heavens, Nick,” she said when she greeted him at LaGuardia. “You look older’n dirt, as we used to say down home.”
He grunted at her. “I am older than dirt.”
She smiled that still-dazzling smile of hers, ever the dark-eyed eighteen-year-old girl he’d found staring at the Cumberland River. She kissed him on the cheek. “I’ve a car waiting.”
Using his cane, he followed slowly behind her. They didn’t speak until they were in the cab, on their way into the city. Mattie placed a wrinkled hand gently on Nick’s wrist. She smiled. Two smiles in the same hour. He really must look awful. “We have time,” she said. “We’ll clean up and have something to eat and catch our breath. Then we’ll go to Saratoga.”
Leaning back against the seat, Nick nodded and watched out his window as they moved toward a city he no longer knew.
Sam Lincoln Jones stood outside John Pembroke’s hospital room in jeans, a bright orange polo shirt, running shoes and military sunglasses. He wore a shoulder holster that held his Smith & Wesson .38.
“Subtle,” Zeke said.
“Subtlety doesn’t work with these people.”
“Then I take it you’ve met our patient.”
Sam’s mouth twitched in what passed for a smile when he was working. When he wasn’t working, he’d put on jazz and his half-moon glasses and read thick tomes on criminological theory, and sometimes he’d laugh out loud. “He mistook me for a lawyer.”
Zeke laughed, not sure if Sam was kidding.
“I had on a jacket,” Sam said. “Got hot in here and figured maybe the gun might impress him.”
“Did it?”
Sam just looked at him.
“Anything interesting happen?”
“Roger and Sara Stone showed up a little while ago. They were all real polite and cool to each other. Roger and Sara talked about how worried they were about their niece.”
Zeke nodded. “I just stopped at their place here in town. Roger tried to hire me again.”
“Bet the pay’s good.” Sam drank some gray take-out coffee. “But you don’t need money to make you keep an eye on this lady, do you?”
“No.”
“She blew in here, too. Left about twenty minutes ago. Nurses gave her daddy something to calm him down after she got through with him.”
Zeke had second-guessed his decision to leave her a copy of the blackmail note. But it was done. “You listen in?” he asked.
“Part of the job, isn’t it?” Sam spoke without relish or distaste; he was just stating the facts. “From what I gather, Dani Pembroke (a) hates anyone taking her for granted, (b) hates anyone short of the CIA deliberately keeping her in the dark about anything, and (c) hates anyone feeling responsible for her happiness and well-being, which is tied up with (a) and (b). I could give you some technical mumbo jumbo ana
lyzing her behavior and attitude, but you get the idea.” Sam’s eyes were unreadable behind his dark glasses. “She’s intense.”
“And John?”
“Threatened to pour a pitcher of ice water on her head or hire you if she didn’t back off. A real pair. Devoted to each other under it all.” Sam was silent a moment. “I debated following her.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Bad vibes.”
Reason enough.
Even with the sunglasses, Sam’s gaze penetrated. “You holding back on her?”
“Not as much as she thinks.”
“You’ve always liked to take your life into your hands in the most peculiar ways,” Sam said, not as lightly as Zeke would have wished. “I assume you know Mattie Witt and Nick Pembroke are on their way.”
“To Saratoga?”
“Ah. I see you did not know.”
Without a word Sam handed over his gun. Zeke took it. Knowing Sam as he did, he’d probably hauled an arsenal east with him. Yet he seldom resorted to violence, even in their sometimes violent profession. He just liked to be prepared.
“Hope you don’t need it,” Sam said.
“So do I.”
It was quiet and cool in the woods, with almost no breeze. Dani followed the narrow path from the bottling plant. She’d let her staff there know she was on the grounds. The receptionist, a sixty-year-old woman from Saratoga, had reported that Ira was looking for Dani. “He said it was important but not urgent.” Meaning whatever he wanted probably didn’t involve a burglary or a ransacked room.
Mosquitoes buzzed around her head in the stillness. She’d checked the spot where her father had claimed to trip. It might have happened as he’d said. But she didn’t think so, no matter how stubbornly he clung to his story.
Despite the warm air, she shivered, feeling incredibly alone. Her father had said the man posted outside her room—Sam Jones—was Zeke’s doing, a partner or friend or both. Jones didn’t say a word to her, but had looked as if he was considering stuffing her in a closet until his pal returned. Dani hadn’t introduced herself.
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