Carla Neggers - Tempting Fate

Her eyes misted. “Thanks. If anything had happened to you yesterday-”

“You’d have named some stupid garden after me-The Ira Bernstein Memorial Blackberry Patch.” He grinned then, irreverent as ever. “I’ll run along and let you pretend to work.”

When he’d gone, one of her consultants in New York called. Dani acted glad to hear from him. “What’s going on up there? Rumors are flying.”

“Such as?”

“Such as an internationally known security expert who happened to have grown up in the same hometown as your grandmother is at the Pembroke.”

“Zeke Cutler. Yes, he’s here. What else?”

She could almost hear her very professional, very good marketing consultant gritting his teeth. “That Mattie Witt and Nick Pembroke are there.”

“Also true.”

“What about your wearing the dress your mother wore in Casino to the track on Saturday?”

“Not true,” Dani said steadily.

“And your having decided to sell the Pembroke because you can’t stand the memories?”

“You know that’s not true.”

He sighed. “Just like to be sure. Is there anything going on that hasn’t hit the rumor mill?”

“A lot, but let’s talk later.”

“Dani…just be careful. Please.”

“I will. Thanks for the call.”

She hung up before she ended up saying more than she should and someone overheard her in the hall and got another rumor started.

Zeke had returned to her cottage after midnight and stayed until just after dawn. When he left, he didn’t say where he’d been or where he was going.

“I’m doing what I know how to do,” he’d told her.

“And shutting me out.”

He’d smiled in that deliberate, cocky way of his that said he just might know her better than she knew herself. She wondered if he knew how irritating that was. “I wouldn’t presume to tell you about total dissolved solvents.”

She was smiling, thinking of him, when Eugene Chandler walked into her office. “Hello, Danielle,” he said as he looked around, her unconventional work space a contrast to the elegant offices at the Chandler Hotels headquarters in New York. He cleared his throat and added, “I apologize for not calling ahead.”

“That’s okay. Have a seat. Can I get you anything?”

“No, thank you.”

He didn’t sit down, but walked into the middle of the sun-washed room, rubbing one finger across the top of her old player piano. She’d opened the windows to let in a cool, fresh morning breeze, filled with the scent of flowers and grass. She could hear guests outside enjoying themselves. Her grandfather peered out the leaded-glass window.

“Is something the matter?” she asked.

“I’d forgotten how quite extraordinary this property is,” he said pensively, still staring out the window. “It always was impractical as a private home. Of course, Ulysses Pembroke never concerned himself with practicalities. I understand that but for you, Danielle, this property would be a shopping mall by now.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Many people are grateful you stuck to your guns when I told you this scheme of yours would never work. Don’t get me wrong. I admire what you’ve accomplished. I didn’t come here to criticize.”

His quiet words, the concern in his cool blue eyes, made Dani wonder if she might have unfairly pigeonholed her grandfather, damned him forever for the occasional insensitive remark, failed to understand him as badly as he’d failed to understand her. Failed to forgive. Perhaps, she thought, his rigidness and uncompromising attitude weren’t as rigid and uncompromising as she’d always believed. Learning more about Jackson Witt allowed her to look at her disagreements with Eugene Chandler-and there undeniably were many-with a new perspective. If nothing else, she had to give her grandfather credit for always being forthright with her in his own exasperating way.

“I understand Mattie and Nick are in town,” he said.

Dani wasn’t surprised. That kind of news would travel fast. “They arrived yesterday afternoon.”

“And they’re already up to their old antics. I was with a friend at his stables this morning, and who should float overhead in a bright yellow balloon but those two. Mattie still has that orange flight suit of hers, I see. I should have thought by now they were too old for ballooning.”

“Not according to Mattie. Nick I don’t know about-she probably had to browbeat him into going. It’s fairly calm out. They shouldn’t have run into any problems.”

He didn’t seem reassured. “Danielle-why are they here? Why is your father here? And what really happened to him?”

It went against every fiber of her being to confide in him. Dani dropped her feet to the floor and jumped up, wishing for an interruption. A fax, another call from New York, papers to sign. But she walked over to the window and stood beside her tall and very dignified grandfather. She inhaled, suddenly sympathetic to this old man who’d lost so much. But how could she explain questions she barely understood herself-never mind their possible answers?

“I don’t know exactly why Mattie, Nick and Pop are here, except that some things have been going on…” But her nature, years of mistrust and miscommunication, and maybe a touch of concern for him, stopped her from going further. She added gently, “I’m sure it’s all a tempest in a teapot.”

He turned to her, and she could see where he’d nicked his chin shaving, where the dark, puffy circles had formed under his eyes. “There’s something I think you should know. Zeke Cutler and his older brother, Joe, were in Saratoga the week your mother disappeared. I didn’t know it at the time-no one thought to tell me.”

“How did you find out?”

He smiled thinly. “It was the one reasonably interesting detail my private investigators managed to produce. Oh, I had both Cutler brothers checked out. Joe was in the army then, Zeke was in high school in Tennessee. Apparently they came north to inform Mattie that her father was dying of cancer.”

“Zeke told me-”

“But did he tell you his brother had decided while he was up here that he was in love with your aunt Sara?”

Dani felt a rush of cold. Sara? And Joe Cutler? Zeke had to know. And he’d chosen not to tell her. She didn’t feel betrayed, only a tug of hopelessness. She was falling in love with Zeke-no use pretending she wasn’t-but how could they ever really work together? The past seemed destined to extinguish the possibilities that had sparked between them.

“Of course,” her grandfather went on, “Sara’s heart already lay with Roger. It was right around that time that they began seeing each other.”

“Did he know about Joe?”

“I don’t think so. I believe Joe knew more about Roger than Roger knew about Joe.”

“Then Sara dumped Joe?”

Her grandfather wrinkled up his face in distaste. “I don’t think their relationship ever progressed to the point that she needed to be that direct. I’m sure she discouraged him as sensitively as she could.”

Dani sank onto the piano bench, remembering her aunt at twenty. She’d been pretty and rebellious, still shattered by her mother’s death. Having two men as different as Roger Stone and Joe Cutler falling for her must have been a welcome distraction. But how different was the Sara Chandler Stone of today. “Does Sara realize you know this?” Dani asked.

He shook his head. “There would be no point. She’s had enough to endure without another reminder of that terrible summer. Joe Cutler…” He hesitated, turning from the window. “It’s too late now, I suppose, but I’ve often wondered if he might have known something…” He trailed off. “But there’s never been any evidence to suggest his involvement with your mother’s disappearance.”