Carla Neggers - Tempting Fate

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.

“If I’d been your crook,” Zeke said, climbing in behind the steering wheel, “I’d have gone after you when you tried to nail me with that bottle of mineral water.”

“You did go after me.”

He glanced at her, turning the key in the ignition. “Honey,” he said in an exaggerated drawl, “that wasn’t going after you.”

There it was again, not just a rush of warmth but a flood. Dani shifted in her seat, reaching down onto the floor for her sneakers. She slipped them on and didn’t bother tying the laces.

“Tell me, would you have thrown the skillet or just bonked me on the head with it?”

“I don’t know. I guess it would have depended on what you did. I’m not a trained white knight. I have to operate on instinct-like when I walked into my room and saw it had been trashed. Since I don’t carry a weapon, I used what was at hand.”

“Which was?”

She hesitated, then held up one red shoe as she had yesterday.

Zeke grimaced.

“It worked out,” Dani said, not defensively.

Without comment he pulled into the street and started down North Broadway toward the main commercial center of town. He seemed to give his driving his total concentration. Dani noticed the dark hairs on his forearms, the muscles, the tanned skin. His long fingers. For no reason she could fathom, she found herself wondering if he dreamed. Was he ever haunted by the past? Did he ever lie awake nights asking what might have been? She thought of the book Kate had told her about. Easy to guess that his brother probably hadn’t come to a happy end.

Had Mattie known Joe Cutler? Did she know Zeke? Was that why she’d responded the way she had when Dani had told her about the burglary?

He turned down Circular Street, and Dani had the feeling he was letting her make the next move, giving her a little time to pull herself together.

Finally she decided just to get on with it. “I want you to leave the Pembroke.”

He glanced at her. “Why?”

“Because you haven’t told me the truth.”

Following the traffic onto Union Avenue, he didn’t argue or protest, but kept his eyes on the road.

“You have until tomorrow morning,” she said.

“Dani, you can’t throw me out.”

She breathed deeply. “Yes, I can.”

“It’d end up in the papers.” He slowed for a traffic light, then came to a stop. “Enough reporters are on your case without you going toe-to-toe with an internationally recognized security specialist such as myself.”

There was a note of self-deprecation in his tone, of humor, but it was buried underneath the seriousness. Dani felt her mouth go dry. She should have found another way home.

The light changed, and he continued a short way past the racetrack and turned smoothly onto the Pembroke driveway. “A photographer caught you tonight, feather and all. Someone could easily have seen you get into my car. Imagine what a heyday the gossips would have if they found out that you’d given me the boot.”

“Are you threatening to tell them?”

“No.”

They passed the rose garden, the fragrance permeating the cool night air, easing Dani’s confusion and nervousness. Zeke bore left at the fork in the road, onto the dirt road and over the narrow bridge. She could hear the trickle of the stream, smell its coldness.

“Why are you here?” she asked softly.

“I have my reasons.”

Which, his tone said, were none of her affair. “Do they have anything to do with the business you’re in?”

He didn’t answer, sliding his rented car to a stop at the end of the flagstone path that led to the front door of her cottage. “Do Hansel and Gretel show up every now and then?”

“Are you implying I’m a wicked witch?”

His expression was impenetrable in the darkness. Probably he wanted it that way. “Maybe not wicked.”

Dani bit the inside corner of her mouth, feeling unusually awkward, deeply aware-physically aware-of the man sitting next to her.

It would be so easy to back down, so easy to trust him. But she had no basis for trust, and she’d never been very good at backing down. “You have until tomorrow morning. I’ll speak to Ira.”

She could feel Zeke’s eyes on her. He seemed capable of seeing things people wouldn’t want him to see, of penetrating not only thoughts, but souls. In his business, such sensitivity-such probing-could be an asset. He asked quietly, “Do you like living out here all alone?”

“I did until yesterday afternoon.”

“You know, you should lock your doors. It’s often an effective deterrent.”

His tone was professional, neither critical nor patronizing, but Dani hated being told what to do. “How do you know my doors weren’t locked?”

“I tried them.”

“When?”

“This morning. I wandered off on my own during a guided nature walk.”

She placed her hand on the door latch, her heart pounding. She could be gone in a matter of seconds. Was she crazy to be alone with a man she didn’t know-a man who apparently knew more about her than she did him? He was from Mattie’s hometown. He was staying at the Pembroke on the twenty-fifth anniversary of her mother’s disappearance. He was an internationally known security consultant. Dani was torn by curiosity, but she felt she had no choice. She had no reason to trust him. It wasn’t, right now, a risk she was prepared to take.

“I want you off my property.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Are you going to go quietly?”

A flash of sexy smile. “Honey, I don’t go anywhere quietly unless I so choose. And that’s probably the only thing you and I have in common.”

“Oh, no,” she said coolly, deciding on gut instinct to take him on then and there. “That’s not all we have in common, and you know it. You see, Zeke, upstairs, in my bedroom, I have a blanket on my bed. It’s dark green, pure wool, quite old. My grandmother gave it to me. She took it with her when she left home.” In the darkness, through the opened windows, she could hear the crickets and tree toads, the breeze soughing in the woods and meadow. “It was made in a woolen mill in Cedar Springs, Tennessee.”

Zeke didn’t move a muscle or say a word.

“My grandmother’s hometown,” Dani said in a near whisper. “And yours.”

She was off like a shot, racing up the walk and through her front door, slamming it behind her. Her wrist ached. So did her scraped shins and her feet from standing so long in her three-inch heels. But she hunted up her car keys and locked all her doors. Front, back, side. She hadn’t bothered last night. What more was there for her thief to get?

She didn’t lock her windows. She’d suffocate.