Carla Neggers - Tempting Fate

“You’re a fine one to talk about what’s ‘polite,’” Dani said, but she took the envelope. Indeed, inside was an airline ticket. “Ira, I can’t let you guys pay for my airfare-Hey, it’s to San Diego. Are you nuts? I can’t-”

“Isn’t San Diego Zeke’s home base?”

“Yes, that’s my point!”

“Mine, too. Sam will give you directions from the airport to wherever the hell Cutler’s got himself squirreled away. The rest is up to you.”

“I smell a conspiracy.”

“You’re the boss, kid, but you’re also our friend.” Ira smiled at her, unrepentant. “We just want you to be happy.”

For the first time in twenty years Zeke had a dream.

He settled back in the pilot’s chair of his boat and indulged himself.

Dani would bounce up onto his flybridge with her dark hair and dark eyes and sparkling smile. She’d be wearing one of her little dresses, maybe have her hair pulled back. She’d laugh when she saw him. He’d scoop her up and carry her down to his bunk where they’d make love until dawn.

It was a hell of a dream.

“Zeke?”

Her voice was always a part of it-the things she would say to him, the things he would say to her.

“You can put down the machine gun. It’s me, Dani.”

He opened his eyes, and she was there on his flybridge, in a short fuchsia dress and fuchsia sandals. His imagination?

“There you are,” she said.

“Hello, Dani,” he answered, just in case she wasn’t a mirage.

“No machine gun?”

“Nope. I’m retired. Out of the business. Think I’ll spend the foreseeable future fishing.” Or carrying toddlers on his shoulders. Maybe both. But that was a part of his dream.

She shrugged. “Oh, you’ll find something to do. White knights always do. I was afraid for a minute I had the wrong boat. Sam said to look for the oldest, ugliest boat out here-”

“Sam?”

“Well, yes. How else did you think I’d ever find you?”

Zeke sighed. “You weren’t supposed to find me so easily.”

“It wasn’t easy. By the way, Sam’s a very nice man. He fell in love with Saratoga while he was recovering in the hospital.”

Zeke squinted, wondering if he’d had too much sun or too much George Dickel. Was he hallucinating? “What’re you doing here?”

She squinted right back at him, as if wondering if he was the same man she’d met in Saratoga a month ago, had slept with and loved and cried with. She wrinkled up her nose, uncharacteristically unsure of herself. “I need a date.”

He started off his chair. A date? “Choking’s too good for you. I think I’ll just throw you into the bay-”

“No, I’m serious.”

He looked at her. How could he have fallen in love with such an exasperating woman? “So am I.”

Then she laughed that laugh of his dreams. How could she be real?

“Dani-”

“There’s going to be a big gala celebration of Nick’s ninetieth birthday in Beverly Hills on Saturday. It’s being televised. Mattie’s coming. It’ll be her first public appearance in a million years. Pop’s flying in from Tucson-well, you can imagine all the hoopla.”

Zeke just stared at her. She had to have been born to legends and scoundrels. An anonymous upbringing like his wouldn’t have made her who she was. She’d have been someone else altogether, and he didn’t want that. He wanted her.

“I dragged Kate to New York, and she helped me pick out a dress,” she chattered on. “It’s by some fancy designer. Cost more than I’ve spent on clothes in the last ten years. No lie. Grandfather’s picking up the bill. My Chandler grandfather. Nick’s as broke as ever. Anyway, Grandfather said if I turned up in something out of a catalog, he’d disown me, not that he can, and Kate agreed that if I tried to use the money for a new roof on the bottling plant-”

“Dani,” Zeke said again.

She snapped her mouth shut. “What?”

“Why me?”

Brushing her hair back with one hand, she didn’t answer right away. He knew then, with certainty, that he was asking her to take the biggest risk of all, one that had nothing to do with money or total dissolved solvents or proprietary bottles. One that had only to do with herself. And him.

“Because I love you.”

He slid off his chair and went to her, held her in his arms, felt the tension slide out of her. “Oh, Dani,” he whispered, “one day you’ll know how much I love you.”

Because the bourbon hadn’t conjured her up, and neither had the sun. She wasn’t even a dream.

Dani-what they had together, what they could be together-was real.

Carla Neggers lives in rural Vermont with her husband and their two children. Since completing her first novel at the age of twenty-four, she has written over forty books and has appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.