Carla Neggers - Tempting Fate

“I don’t think so.”

“Dani, what-”

“It’s a long story, and I know you’re busy. Later, okay?”

“You’re damn right later.”

A server raced over for more tortellini, and while Kate got to work, Dani made her exit. Soon, she thought, she’d tell Kate about the burglary, about finding Zeke in her garden, about Mattie’s reaction. But first she had to concentrate on tonight.

Memory took her back through the house. She hadn’t been there since Mattie came to take her back to New York while the search for her mother continued. Nothing in the big, elegant house seemed to have changed.

Outside, the breeze held the fragrance, still familiar to her, of the Chandler flower gardens, and she remembered the girl she’d been, so feisty and determined and free, willing to take on her grandfather or the whole world, it didn’t matter. She’d had a mother who’d loved her and a father who’d been honest, and she’d adored them both, at nine not seeing them as flawed human beings, and never feeling alone. But that was then.

She rounded the curved front porch with its baskets of pink-and-white petunias, heard someone whisper her name, and people began looking in her direction. In seconds a hush had come over the two hundred Chandler guests.

Dani hesitated, her resolve wavering. She knew these people. They’d been her mother’s friends. They’d helped look for her-they’d joined search parties and talked to the police and called everyone they knew for any possible tips, any hints about Lilli’s state of mind, where she might have gone. What might have happened to her. In the ensuing years they’d cooperated with the scores of private detectives Eugene Chandler had enlisted to find his missing daughter.

And all the while Dani had avoided them, had avoided Saratoga Springs in August. For twenty-five years the prestigious Chandler Stakes and Lilli Chandler Pembroke’s disappearance had been inexorably linked, not just for Dani, but for her mother’s family and friends as well.

Looking at them, elegantly dressed, uncertain of what they should do, Dani wondered if they secretly resented her mother for not having vanished at a more opportune time, then realized how horribly unfair she was being.

But she understood their shock as they gaped at her. She could feel herself becoming not the good-humored, risk-taking child of Pembroke scoundrels, not herself, but the image of what they wanted her to be.

It was as if, for a brief, stunned moment, lovely, lost Lilli Chandler Pembroke had finally come home.

Only she hadn’t. Dani had always known, even at nine, that she couldn’t-didn’t want to, ever-take her mother’s place.

She thought of Zeke Cutler. Was this enough of a grand entrance for him? It was far more than she’d bargained for. But this was her own doing, and her response was her choice. She pictured Kate Murtagh in the kitchen with the shades up, howling with laugher because she’d told Dani so.

Dani made herself smile. There was really nothing else to do. “Hi, everybody,” she said. “Good to see you all.”

Their relief was palpable. She wasn’t going to make a scene. They could have another glass of champagne and a bit of caviar before dinner and not have to think about Lilli’s disappearance or John Pembroke’s embezzling from his own father-in-law or Dani’s having walked away from her Chandler trust.

She swept a glass of champagne from a passing tray as Sara Chandler Stone came up beside her. “Danielle,” she said, taking her niece by the hand and kissing her lightly on the cheek, “I’m so glad you came tonight. It’s been far too long.”

Dani almost believed her. “I’m glad I came, too.”

Her aunt smiled, playing the perfect Chandler hostess to the hilt. Her perfume was light and elegant, the same scent her older sister had worn, and probably their mother before them. She wore a simple, stunning coral dress, with diamond studs at her ears and a sprinkle of diamonds in her hair.

She was staring at Dani. “That feather…in your hair…”

“It’s the one Mother wore in Casino. It’s meant as a tribute, Sara. Nothing more.”

“Of course,” Sara mumbled. But she looked shocked, and grief-stricken.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Sara carefully restored her hostess face. First the charming smile, then the rich, bright eyes; her cosmetics, Dani noticed, were expertly applied. She bet Sara hadn’t needed a Magda to do her up.

“Oh, don’t be silly. I was just surprised, that’s all. I think it’s a wonderful idea. Lilli would have been delighted. Here, let me introduce you to some of my friends. You haven’t seen Father yet, I take it. He should be out soon. He doesn’t move as fast as he used to.”

While Sara chattered on, Dani followed her around, surprising her with how many people on the lawns, among the beautiful gardens, her niece already knew. Their lives, hers and Dani’s, were concentric circles within a larger circle, never touching.

People were gracious and interested, asking about the Pembroke and Pembroke Springs. No one mentioned Lilli or commented on the ostrich plume. Dani invited everyone she spoke to up to her newly opened spa-inn for high tea; many said they’d already sneaked a peek at her rose gardens.

Finally Sara excused herself. “I’ll let you mingle now-I need to check with the kitchen.”

Dani wondered how Kate liked being called “the kitchen,” and smiled to herself, sipping her champagne near a stone statue of Demeter she’d tried to dress when she was six or seven. She realized, suddenly and with a rush of relief that surprised her, that she was no longer a frightened nine-year-old waiting for her mother to come and share her raspberries.

“You could have chosen a different dress,” Eugene Chandler said beside her. “Mattie’s, isn’t it?”

Dani tried not to let her grandfather’s cold tone undermine her surge of confidence. “Yes-I’m surprised you recognized it.”

“It was a credible guess.” He wasn’t very convincing, but he’d never admit to remembering what Mattie Witt had worn in a movie more than fifty years old. As for the ostrich plume, he’d claimed never to have seen Casino and his older daughter’s searing performance. “I assume it was a deliberate choice on your part.”

It was an accusation, not a question, but Dani refused to let him get to her, which was exactly what he was trying to do. “No need to spend money on a new dress when I’ve got a perfectly good one in the attic. How are you, Grandfather?”

Tilting his head back slightly, he inhaled through his nose. Even at eighty-two he was straight-backed and still possessed an uncanny knack for irritating her. His bearing and arrogance-his pride, he’d say-had seen him through scandal and loss. But clearly he’d aged. He was the only surviving child of Ambrose Chandler and his very young third wife, Beatrix, who’d lost their three older children to diphtheria when Eugene was just a baby. Now he was an old man with parchment-thin skin and brown spots on his hands, arms and face. His blue eyes had clouded, and his lips had a purplish cast to them. Dani might have felt sympathy for him, for the man had endured pain and anguish-the early death of the wife he’d adored, the years of not knowing what had happened to his firstborn child, the embarrassment of having his son-in-law steal from his family’s firm and the lack of a close relationship with his only grandchild.

But if tragedy ennobled some and embittered others, it seemed to have had no effect whatsoever on Eugene Chandler. His daughter was missing, so he just didn’t talk about her. His son-in-law was a reprobate, so he ignored him. His granddaughter had thrown her inheritance in his face after his cruel, offhand remark about dropping the Pembroke from her name, so he went right on as if nothing had happened between them and he’d said nothing wrong.