Carla Neggers - Tempting Fate

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-five 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.

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.”