Carla Neggers - Tempting Fate

And she didn’t call Mattie right away, although she was tempted. She wanted to think first. Get her perspective on tonight, on Zeke Cutler of Cedar Springs, Tennessee.

Groaning, pushing him out of her mind, she ran into her kitchen and got out the half bushel of peaches she’d been meaning to freeze for days. They were going soft. She filled her biggest pot with water and put it on the stove. When it was hot, she’d scald the peach skins to make them easier to peel. Or so the theory went. No matter what she did, the peel always seemed to stick.

As she worked, she considered, and finally admitted, what really had gotten to her tonight.

Zeke’s confidence, his striking looks and his unexpected humor, cloaked as it was in his middle-Tennessee accent, had made her aware of the void in her own life. Riding next to him, she’d felt alone and needy-and that was unacceptable. It wasn’t that he gave two figs about her or she’d ever want him to. He could have arranged the burglary yesterday just to unnerve her and get her to hire him. Given what she’d seen so far of the man, such underhandedness seemed out of character, but that wasn’t the point.

The point was that something about him, or tonight, had made her feel empty. She’d found herself wanting closeness. Wanting love and romance and companionship.

And she remembered something her father had told her years ago, in a static-riddled phone call from some fleabag hotel in some hellish corner of the world. “The love of your life,” he’d said, “is the person who makes you forget what all your standards and preconceived notions about love and romance even were.”

If such a man existed, Dani hadn’t met him yet. And the last thing she needed now was to mess up her life with pointless longing. Loneliness was not a choice she planned to make for herself.

And it was silly to let a dark-eyed security consultant stir up her deepest doubts about herself.

She grabbed fistfuls of peaches and dropped them into the pot, although the water wasn’t yet scalding hot. But she was impatient, anxious to get moving on something, anything.

“Oh, God,” she whispered.

It wasn’t just Zeke Cutler.

She watched the peaches bob to the surface of the water.

Had her mother ever peeled peaches? Had she ever made her own peach jam or known the satisfaction of pulling a peach cobbler from the oven in the dead of winter knowing it was made from fruit she’d frozen herself?

Dani couldn’t remember. Or she just didn’t know.

Twenty-five years tonight.

What happened to you, Mama? Are you alive? Are you dead?

Why did you leave me?

She dropped in more peaches, burning her fingers. She knew she might as well peel peaches until dawn, do up the whole lot of them, because there was no way she’d get any sleep tonight.

Zeke drove back into Saratoga too fast for his own comfort. It wasn’t the speed in and of itself that bothered him. It was how much he’d let Dani distract him. She could easily worm her way under his skin and bore a hole deep inside him before he’d ever realized he’d let down his armor.

Maybe she already had.

He slid his car to a stop across the street from the Chandler cottage on North Broadway. Kate Murtagh herself was hefting a folded table into a pickup truck, the evening’s festivities now another Saratoga memory. Zeke wasn’t sure what he was doing here. Waiting for answers to fall out of the sky?

Dani had gone after her burglar with a three-inch red high heel.

Definitely a hothead.

But she was also courageous and determined, and even now he could see her liquid black eyes shining in the darkness.

He could hear Kate speaking to her crew. “You sure we have everything? We leave so much as a gum wrapper out here, and Auntie Sara will have us back cleaning the place with a toothbrush.”

Auntie Sara.

Had Roger told his wife that Joe Cutler’s little brother was in town?

“Hell, Naomi,” he whispered to himself, “I should have just pretended I never got your letter.”

But he had never been any good at pretending, and he was here.

Kate spotted him and marched over, boldly poking her head in through the passenger window. “So you’re Zeke Cutler,” she said.

He smiled. “I know who you are, too.”

“I’m Dani’s friend is who I am. You drove her home?”

“I did. She arrived safe and sound.”

“You didn’t put that bruise on her arm?”

“I did not.”

Kate’s brow furrowed, and she looked tired. It must have been a long night for her. “I hope not, seeing how she got in your car with you. But you listen here, Mr. Cutler-I’m on the case. I may slice carrots and whip up crème fraîche for a living, but this is my town, and I’ve got friends here.” She patted the car door. “I’ll have my eye on you.”

Didn’t these women know he was licensed to carry a gun? Zeke stared out at Dani’s tall, attractive friend. “I can see why you and Ms. Pembroke are friends. You both eat nails for breakfast.”

“You hold that thought,” she said and marched back to her pickup.

In another moment, Sara Chandler Stone took her place in the passenger window. “It’s been a long time, Zeke.” Her voice was quiet and ladylike, more so than it had been twenty-five years ago.

He nodded. “Yes.”

She smiled, a cool, sad smile that didn’t reach her deep blue eyes. “Welcome to Saratoga.”

“Nice town.”

“Will you be at the Chandler Stakes tomorrow?”

“Maybe.”

Color rose in her cheeks, which looked even paler in the harsh artificial glare of the streetlights. “Even at thirteen you were laconic.” She touched a hand to her hair, still perfectly in place, and he saw the manicured nails, not too long, not too radically colored. “I’d like to talk to you-not tonight. In the morning?”

“Sara-”

“I’ll be at the track for breakfast.”

She darted away as quickly and unexpectedly as a hummingbird, and it seemed to Zeke that she had become everything she’d dreaded becoming.

Maybe she should have run off with Joe and saved them both.

Zeke turned around in the entrance to Skidmore College up the street, then went back down Broadway through town, following the same route he had with Dani. He didn’t have a plan-he was still just punting-but he knew what he had to do, at least for tonight.

He parked his car in the Pembroke’s guest lot, wondering if come morning Dani would have it towed. But he’d take that risk. There was a part of him that was looking forward to having her try to toss his ass off her property-the part, he thought, that he had to keep under a very tight lid.

He followed a brick path through the darkness. In the distance he could hear an owl’s hoot. Nearby, the purr of tree toads. The grounds were quiet, the jam makers and rock climbers gone to bed or to town to party. Leaving the walk, he found his way across gardens and lawns and down the hillside to the pink, mauve and purple cottage at the edge of the woods.

He sat under a pine tree in a small meadow of wildflowers that looked as though they’d been planted there intentionally. He had a good view of the side entrance, a reasonable view of the front and an excellent view of the side-garden entrance, but none whatsoever of its rear gate. Fortunately, it squeaked. And every window in the place was open. If somebody got in, he’d hear Dani yell. Provided she wasn’t too stubborn to yell.

One day he’d discuss her attitude with Sam Lincoln Jones. Sam liked to analyze people’s attitudes. He said it helped him think he was making use of his education.

Until then Zeke would just do some thinking and keep an eye on things, in case Quint Skinner made a return visit.