A Rare Chance

by Carla Neggers

  “I mean it,” she said, feeling an unsteadiness in her legs that hadn’t been there before. “You kissed me because I was here, I was clearly willing, and you—well, you figured, why not? What did you have to lose? I accept that. But if you think I’m going to go all goo-goo over you and leave you alone, you can forget it.”

  He started to laugh. He laughed so hard he didn’t say a word. His laughter—deep, unrestrained, spine-melting laughter—echoed from within her apartment. A few minutes later, it floated up to her from the street. She grabbed a clay pot, frowning. She’d been perfectly candid. She hadn’t gone and turned their kiss into something serious, some indicator that they were meant to be together forever and ever. She’d looked reality square in the eye.

  So what was so funny? It was as if she were the last woman on the planet he’d expect to go faint of heart and feeble of mind over a kiss.

  She snatched up the wire brush. Never mind, she told herself. Unraveling her feelings toward Cam Yeager and even trying to unravel his toward her would get her nowhere. At least a scrubbed pot was something she could see—a tangible accomplishment, and one not likely to come back and haunt her.

  She set to work.

  Pete Darrow joined Joshua Reading in the library, its walls lined with wood shelves of row after row of books, mostly classics, mostly untouched. It was late, after midnight. A green-shaded brass floor lamp provided the only light, the perfect snooty, phony intellectual affectation. Joshua wore a full-length bathrobe in a heavy, rich, deep burgundy terrycloth. His hair was still damp from the shower. Lizzie was upstairs asleep, he said. Darrow could believe it. After what he’d heard, all the way from his room above the garage, anyone would be exhausted. Except Joshua, of course. His sexual antics only seemed to energize him. He stayed on his feet, pacing.

  “Tell me about Gabriella Starr,” he said.

  Darrow shrugged. He could tell Joshua Reading a lot about Gabriella Starr. That her father was in town, that she had an increasingly tight relationship with Cam Yeager. That her friendship with Lizzie Fairfax had dangerous, inexplicable nuances, with their accompanying unpredictability. What Darrow knew about both women, Joshua would want to know—and expect he had a right to know. But that wasn’t how Darrow worked. The only person alive with whom he’d ever had a relationship that entailed full disclosure was Cam Yeager. And that was over.

  “There’s not much to tell,” Darrow said, with, he knew, no apparent evasiveness. He’d anticipated this meeting. “She and Lizzie looked at dresses this morning. You know, girl stuff.”

  “Did Lizzie ask her to be her maid of honor?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Joshua grimaced. “Christ. What else?”

  “Nothing much. Lizzie got a little weepy. You know women and weddings.” Darrow paused, noting Joshua’s lack of reaction, and added dryly, “She’s probably just tired.”

  “I don’t want her getting any ideas about canceling our engagement.” Joshua spoke half to himself as he continued to pace, his hands knotted into fists at his sides, his neck muscles tensed. And this was after a couple of hours of rough sex. “She’s everything I want in a wife. I intend to marry her.”

  “Ah, love.”

  Joshua spun around, hissing fiercely, almost snarling, like a mad dog who’d been poked one too many times with a sharp stick. “Do you doubt my feelings for Lizzie?”

  “Nope.”

  No, Darrow thought, he knew exactly what Joshua’s feelings for Lizzie were, and they had nothing to do with love and everything to do with lust, obsession, and the thrill of his power over her. Darrow was no expert on romance, but Joshua and Lizzie’s relationship wasn’t about romance. It was about possession. Control. Darrow had seen the work of enough Joshua Readings to know the difference.

  Maybe Lizzie’d wake up to what was going on before it was too late.

  Maybe you should mind your own damned business, get your business finished with the bastard, and hit the road.

  The thing was, he couldn’t save Lizzie Fairfax unless she wanted to be saved.

  And he probably couldn’t save her anyway, not without ruining himself in the process. He’d leave the white-horse work to Yeager.

  Joshua stood rock-still. “Don’t think you have any power over me just because I’m paying you twice what you’re worth to tend to my personal security. You don’t. You wanted money and a way out of the police department. I’m providing both.” Pausing, he tightened the tie to his bathrobe. “If you divulge any details of my personal life, you’re finished. I promise you that.”

  Darrow shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t give a rat’s ass about your personal life.”

  “Good. Now that we have that clear, what about Lizzie? What have you learned?”

  The bastard, Darrow thought. The sick, lousy bastard.

  “I’m worried about her. She might be getting cold feet.” Joshua’s tone was steady, virtually without emotion. “If she is, I don’t want her leaving before she’s had a chance to work through it. Our relationship has developed quickly. It’s understandable she’d have doubts. But I don’t want her hurting me—hurting us—because of them.”

  “You can’t force her to marry you,” Darrow said calmly.

  Joshua’s eyes darkened. “I have no intention of doing any such thing. My motives are in her best interests. If you knew her, you’d understand. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get back to bed.”

  Darrow let him go. He waited in the quiet, dimly lit room until he heard Joshua’s footsteps on the stairs. Then he pulled the little gold chain on the floor lamp, casting the room in darkness. Still he didn’t move.

  Then it came, the disembodied moans.

  Lizzie.

  Darrow swallowed. His throat was so tight he almost couldn’t breathe. There was a scream, then laughter. Joshua’s, Lizzie’s. Darrow tensed, unable to move. Part of him wanted to race upstairs and pull the two of them apart.

  But who would be more resentful? Joshua? Or Lizzie?

  He walked back through the kitchen and out to his room above the garage.

  Chapter

  Ten

  I’m not marrying Joshua.”

  Lizzie’s voice was firm but barely audible. Gabriella had her cordless phone in the living room, where she’d been doing yoga after a particularly unnerving day at work. Titus had been tense and uncommunicative all day, for no apparent reason. Gabriella didn’t mind bad moods if she understood their source, but Titus’s was inexplicable to her. He’d never once in her year with TJR Associates let any family strife follow him into the office, at least not that she’d noticed, and she knew of no current or even impending business crises. Joshua, meanwhile, had shown up for a few hours at midday, and Gabriella had never even seen him. She wondered if she were more attuned to emotional nuances—even prone to projecting her own anxieties—because of her own situation with Scag, Lizzie, Pete Darrow, Cam Yeager, and mysterious, incomplete tales of blackmail.

  When she’d arrived home, she’d scrubbed off her makeup and pulled on her sweats and planned for an evening contemplating just how over her head Lizzie was with Joshua, just how over her head she was with Cam Yeager, and what Cam knew about Pete Darrow and the Reading brothers that he wasn’t saying.

  But ten minutes into her yoga session, the phone had rung.

  She leaned back against the couch, stretching her legs out on the carpeted floor and trying to remain calm. Her entire living room was done in shades of beige and cream, very soothing. “Lizzie, are you okay? Do you want to get together? I can come to you—”

  “I can’t. I’m leaving. My plane boards in a few minutes.”

  “Your plane—”

  “Please don’t, Gabriella. No questions. Nothing.” Lizzie sobbed just once, as if she had to let off that little bit of panic and grief or she’d explode. “I’m leaving the country. I’m not taking a direct route and I’m not telling anyone where I’m going. I don’t want to put you in an even more awkward position than
you already are.”

  Gabriella scrambled to her feet, ready to act. “You’re at Logan, right? What airline? I can be there in half an hour.”

  “No!”

  “It’s Pete Darrow, isn’t it? He did something?”

  “It’s me, Gabriella. Just me. Please don’t ask any questions.”

  “Lizzie—” Gabriella stopped herself, running a hand through her hair, pacing, knowing that in a crisis she always preferred to act, not think. But she needed to penetrate Lizzie’s turmoil of emotions and get her to think before she did anything impulsive. “Lizzie, you can’t just run away.”

  It was as if she hadn’t spoken. “I need you to do something for me, Gabriella. If you can’t, it’s okay. I’ll make other arrangements. I’ve left a key with the croissant cart near baggage claim with instructions that it be turned over only to you.” She talked fast, gulping for air, as if she couldn’t believe she was doing what she was doing. “Only to you.”

  “A key? For what? Lizzie—”

  “It opens a locker here at Logan. I’ve left a package there. I want you to put it in a safe place and forget about it. Don’t open it.”

  Gabriella sighed, worried for her friend, frustrated with her dramatics. Leaving the country. A package. Good Lord. “I’m not supposed to know what’s in it?”

  “That’s right. Promise me, Gabriella. Promise me you won’t open it.”

  “Lizzie.” Gabriella sank onto her couch, her hands shaking, suddenly cold. She couldn’t seem to get a decent breath. “Lizzie, are you afraid for your life?”

  “No, of course not.” She sounded almost convincing. But not quite. “I’m just keyed up. It’s not every day I walk out on my fiancé, but I can’t…” She swallowed another sob, her strain evident. “I can’t marry Joshua Reading. I just can’t.”

  “You don’t have to. Look, you can catch another plane. Sit tight and let me come to you and we’ll talk. Okay? Come on, Lizzie, running isn’t going to solve anything.”

  “Promise me, Gabriella. About the package. It’s important. Promise me?”

  She sighed, impatient with her own inability to get through to Lizzie. “Of course. I’ll get the package, I won’t open it, I’ll stash it, I’ll forget about it. I promise.”

  “Thank you.” Relief seemed to make Lizzie’s voice even shakier, and she sobbed quietly. “I know. You’re always so strong, I knew I could count on you. I’ve got to go. I’ll be in touch once the dust settles.”

  “Lizzie—”

  But she’d hung up. Gabriella resisted an urge to pitch the phone across the room. She’d hoped that reassuring Lizzie about her package would calm her down enough that they could talk calmly and rationally about what was going on. Instead, Lizzie had hung up as fast as she could.

  How could she just take off? How could she run?

  Scag wandered in from the kitchen. Gabriella hadn’t heard him come down from the greenhouse. A couple of weeks ago, his injury had made descending the steep stairs an ordeal, but the relatively calm life he’d been leading had started to have its effect. He could go for longer and longer periods without using his cane, and his skin had lost its grayish cast.

  He held his hands, covered with wet potting mixture, out in front of him, bits of gunk falling off onto her floor. “You got any real soap? I’ve been using that crap on the kitchen sink, but I think it’s meant for a baby’s butt, not a gardener’s hands.”

  “It’s pure glycerin—”

  “Like I said.” His gaze focused on her, his expression changing from mild annoyance to concern. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Lizzie. She’s cutting and running.”

  “No wedding, huh?”

  Gabriella shook her head. She had to get to the airport. Maybe Lizzie had exaggerated how fast her flight was departing. Maybe Gabriella could get there in time and talk her friend into a more reasonable approach to her problems.

  “Bet she hasn’t told her fiancé,” Scag said.

  “Probably not. Why does she do this?”

  Scag shrugged, taking her rhetorical question seriously. “Because Lizzie Fairfax always runs when things get difficult or scary or just plain uncomfortable. That’s her way.”

  Nodding absently, Gabriella grabbed her fanny pack from the hall closet while her father looked on.

  “Faced with a five-hundred-pound gorilla, Lizzie’ll run,” he said philosophically. “Faced with a five-hundred-pound gorilla, you’ll spit in his eye. It’s the basic difference between the two of you. Sometimes you gotta run. Sometimes you gotta spit. Trick is knowing which time is which.”

  “Thanks for the pearls of wisdom, Scag.”

  She strapped on the fanny pack, deciding against a quick change of clothes. She would have to go out into the world wearing baggy sweatpants and an oversized—a very oversized—T-shirt from a local boxing club.

  “Where you going?” her father asked.

  “Logan.”

  He shook his head knowledgeably. “She’ll be long gone, kid. You’ll never catch up with her.”

  “The glycerin soap’s about all I have on hand, unless you want to use my sea kelp soap in the bathroom.” She pulled open the outer door, glancing back over her shoulder at him. “It’ll make your skin feel nice and soft.”

  He grunted. “I’m putting my order in for a good hand soap tomorrow. You want me to wait ’til you get back?”

  Gabriella hesitated in the doorway, suddenly overwhelmed by her friend’s obvious pain and what it all could mean. But she wasn’t alone. She had her father here. Scoundrel and unreliable rake that he was, he was here. “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He started back toward the kitchen, leaving a trail of potting mixture. “It’ll probably take me half the goddamned night to get my hands clean anyway.”

  She grinned. He was such a jerk. “There’s stuff in the fridge for dinner. Help yourself.”

  “You want me to call Yeager?”

  “Good God,” she said, “no, I don’t want you to call Yeager.”

  Her father looked around at her, his dark eyes gleaming. “Like I said, you’ll always spit in the gorilla’s eye.”

  Cam knew how to tail people, but he wasn’t gifted at it the way Pete Darrow was.

  Gabriella Starr, however, was easy.

  She was so focused on what she was doing that she paid no attention to her surroundings. He picked her up when she raced out of her building looking as if she were taking on all the beasts of hell and in a hurry to do it. He’d been camped across the street, waiting for Tony Scagliotti to emerge. He’d planned to buy the old man a cup of coffee and further pick his brains about Lizzie Fairfax and his take on her relationship with Joshua Reading and their impending marriage. Did Lizzie feed vicariously on danger? Could she know about Joshua’s illegal arsenal? Could Cam approach her with any hope of getting anything useful out of her? Or would he only spook her into doing something stupid?

  It wasn’t much of a strategy, but it beat going out to Reading Point and making himself a target for Pete Darrow.

  And it beat going up to her apartment and talking to Gabriella about her best friend. Cam had already decided he’d talked too much to Gabriella Starr. He was accustomed to confiding in no one but his partner and, if necessary, his immediate superiors. His father had taught him the value of discretion. If nothing else, Tom Yeager was known for his ability to keep his mouth shut.

  Yet his reluctance to confide in Gabriella stemmed not only from a personal aversion to talking out of turn but from his fears for her safety. He didn’t trust Joshua Reading. Every instinct he had said the guy was twisted, a fuse waiting to be lit—maybe already on fire. It was something Darrow was using to his own advantage. But he would have the facts, and he would know the risks, and he would have a plan. Cam didn’t, and neither did Gabriella. If he gave her partial information, or wrong information, or information that pissed her off or worried her, there was no telling what she’d do.

&n
bsp; A woman of action was Gabriella Starr. Maybe a part of her was the logical, calculating, cautious corporate type who’d done so well at TJR Associates. But another part was the impulsive, risk-taking, in-your-face fighter who was Tony Scagliotti’s daughter. That was the side of Gabriella Starr that Cam didn’t want to poke too hard.

  He didn’t trust her not to do something they’d both regret.

  He might have felt bad about doubting her, except the feeling, he’d realized, was mutual. She hadn’t exactly confided in him either.

  So best not to talk to her. Best not to get sucked in by those warm brown eyes and her vulnerability where Lizzie Fairfax was concerned and his own need to talk to her, confide in her, tell her everything.

  Especially best not to get sucked in by his own need. It was physical, it was emotional, it was distracting, it was damned unnerving.

  She turned down Arlington Street, breaking into a half run as she passed the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. It was dusk, but the red tulips in the Public Garden across Arlington seemed brighter, the grass even greener. The air was warm, almost summerlike. Cam half expected she’d spotted him and was making a break for it, trying to shake him. But that wasn’t Gabriella Starr’s style. If she’d seen him, she’d have flung around and jumped all over him for following her, punched him in the gut the way she had Pete Darrow. She was in one hell of a hurry.

  About what?

  She disappeared down the Arlington Street subway station. Cam followed, digging into his pocket for a token. There was enough of a crowd that she didn’t spot him. He saw her brushing her hair back with one hand, fighting her own impatience. He could almost feel her frustration and fear. The honest, upright thing to do, he supposed, was to go to her, announce his presence, try to be of some comfort and get her to tell him what was wrong. Maybe she’d be glad to see him. Maybe she’d want to talk.

  He chuckled to himself in disbelief, pushing through the turnstile. “Like hell.”

  She boarded an inbound train. He got into the car ahead of hers and moved to the back so that he could keep an eye on her. She ignored an available seat and remained on her feet, her slim, strong body swaying with the rolling movements of the trolley car. With her hair pulled back in a short ponytail and her baggy sweatclothes, she could have passed for one of the ubiquitous college students patroling the city.