Dani let her gaze take in the foyer, the sweep of the staircase with its graceful banister that curved to the soaring second-story gallery, and tried to see it through Jake’s eyes. Would he see beyond the trappings to the home beneath? Or would he be put off by the grandeur?
“You’re here.” Her father’s booming voice, which he used to great effect in the Senate, welcomed them. “Come. Join us in the library.”
With his shock of white hair and casual country clothes, he looked every inch the Southern gentleman he was.
Dani stood on tiptoes and kissed him. “Who’s us?”
“I have a surprise for you. Victor’s joining us for dinner tonight.”
She nearly turned and ran, but good manners drilled into her by her mother from the time she could first say “please” and “thank you” required that she paste a smile on her face and, with Jake’s hand at her waist, cross the foyer to the paneled doors leading to the library.
She had always loved this room, with its floor-to-ceiling bookcases, the march of books across the shelves, volumes that had clearly been read and reread. She knew of people who bought stacks of them just for effect. For her father, for herself, they were as necessary as breathing.
Victor rose from an oxblood leather chair and turned to face them, a smile of pleasure lighting his face. “Dani. It’s good to see you again.” He paused, his gaze raking Jake’s imposing figure. “And, of course, your watchdog.”
Dani bit down on her lower lip to curb the words that threatened to spill over. “Jake is hardly a watchdog,” she said mildly. “He’s a decorated soldier. We all have reason to be grateful to him. Me, most of all.”
Victor assumed a chastened look. “You’re right. Please forgive any slight. It was unintended, I assure you.”
From beneath her lashes, Dani stole a look at Jake. She knew, just as he did, that Victor had meant the not-so-subtle insult. Only the tightening of Jake’s lips, though, gave any indication of his reaction to the snub.
Her father seemed oblivious to the undercurrents and guided Jake to the gun collection that he kept housed in a glass case. “Finest collection in the state, if I do say so myself.”
The senator’s collection included muskets from the Revolutionary War era to dueling pistols of the early nineteenth century to more modern weaponry of the last century. Each gun was clearly identified with a small brass plaque, including a brief history of its origins.
“You have a fine collection, sir. You have every right to be proud.”
Stewart Barclay’s expression grew expansive. “Thank you. Dani has never been interested in it, but I enjoy showing it off to a man like yourself.”
Automatically, Dani assumed the duties of hostess but couldn’t help comparing herself to her mother.
Madeline Barclay was a true Southern lady, beautiful and gracious in a way Dani would never be. She had presided at Belle Terre with a gentle but firm hand, her dinner parties legendary, as was her devotion to her family.
The evening passed with only the occasional jab directed at Jake from Victor. In a moment alone with her father, while the other two men admired the gun collection, Dani asked, “Why did you invite Victor tonight?”
Her father frowned, his expression thoughtful. “I’m not sure that I did invite him. He called the other day, said how it had been too long since we’d seen each other. One thing led to another, and by the time we’d hung up, I guess I did issue an invitation of sorts. What’s wrong? I thought you and Victor were friends.”
“We were. Are,” she corrected. “But he can be a little...intense sometimes.”
Her father patted her back. “He means well.”
“I suppose so.”
The frown in her parent’s eyes deepened. “There was a time when I thought you and Victor might make a match of it.”
Dani didn’t want to go there, so she changed the subject. “We’ve been following up on how Newton learned of my allergy to peanuts.”
“Rabb’s a good man. He proved himself the other night, saving you from that woman.” Her father’s voice turned grim. “I wish I’d been there. I should have been there. I should have never left town in the first place.”
“You had a meeting in Washington,” Dani reminded him gently. “I don’t want or expect you to put your life on hold because some crazy person has me in his sights. That means he wins, and I won’t let him.”
“Thank you, my dear. You’re more generous than I deserve.” Her father coughed into his hand, a sign that he was embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have been so high-handed, hiring Rabb without asking you. I was wrong.”
That cost him, she knew, and she kissed his cheek. “I owe you an apology, as well. You hired Jake even when I didn’t want you to. He saved my life.”
“When I think of that woman trying to poison you, I want to take a horse whip to her.”
“Me, too,” Dani confided.
The shrewd gaze that had skewered many a political opponent was now aimed on her. “This Rabb. Is he important to you? More than just being your bodyguard?”
“We’re friends.” That much was true, at least.
This time his cough was a harrumph. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready. You’re like your mama in that way. She kept things inside until she had them sorted out for herself.” A whiff of sadness colored his voice, and then he held out his arm. “Let’s get back to the others. I don’t want Rabb to take Victor’s head off. Not that he couldn’t do it without breaking a sweat.”
“You noticed that, too, did you?”
“I’m old, honey. Not senile. Of course I saw what was going on. Rather like putting a pet lamb in the same pen with a lion. Jake could take Victor down with a swipe of one paw.”
He was right. That Jake treated the other man with forbearance gave testament to his self-control. He reminded her of a predator trying to decide if it were worth the physical exertion to pounce on an irksome prey.
She put her hand on her father’s arm and rejoined the other two men.
Here, in the dining room where her mother had presided over countless dinner parties, where old china and family silver were set with formal precision, Dani looked at the man she had at one time believed she would marry.
Victor was handsome in an Ashley Wilkes kind of way. Like the Gone with the Wind character, his patrician good looks were undeniably appealing, but he was deficient in something. Or, she reflected, perhaps it was only in comparison with Jake that he appeared to be lacking.
Of course, any man would come up short when compared to Jake Rabb. The thought startled her. Where had that come from? With his rough-hewn features and unruly hair, Jake was not conventionally handsome. But there was a quality to him that went beyond mere physical handsomeness and made a woman, any woman, fully aware of herself, her femininity. He could be both gentle and harsh, depending upon the situation. The dichotomy was a powerful one.
Victor fit in the richly appointed room in a way that Jake never would. Yet Jake held his own with his quiet but insightful conversation and parried thrusts with the other man with a wit that clearly surprised Victor.
With her new recognition of Victor’s pettiness and ego, she wondered what she had ever seen in him. True, he had been solicitous and supportive after her mother’s disappearance, but that wasn’t the basis for marriage. Marriage meant total commitment, an awareness of each other’s needs, an acceptance of both the good and the bad. Victor would never have been able to give her what she needed, could never have accepted her for who she was.
She’d had a narrow escape back then. Her resolve to keep him at arm’s length from now on was only strengthened by tonight’s dinner.
In spite of his presence, she enjoyed herself, enjoyed the newfound harmony between herself and her father. She was coming to understand him in new ways and hoped he felt the sa
me.
At the close of the evening, Victor took her hand, brought it to his lips. “Always a pleasure to see you, Dani. I realize I came across as heavy-handed at our lunch. I apologize for it and hope you won’t hold it against me.”
“Of course not.” She withdrew her hand as quickly as possible and pretended not to notice the displeasure that flashed in his eyes. She turned her attention to her father. “Thank you, Daddy.”
Jake held out his hand. “Thank you, sir.”
The senator clasped his hand. “Thank you for keeping my daughter safe.”
Outside, the afternoon had faded to the soft light of spring dusk. In the Jeep, Dani placed a hand on Jake’s arm. “I know that wasn’t how you’d planned to spend the evening, with Victor there.”
“He doesn’t bother me.”
They made the drive back to the city in near silence, each wrapped up in their own thoughts. Millions of stars crammed the Georgia night, their brilliance in full view without the competition of the city lights.
Dani momentarily forgot that someone was after her, that her life was in danger until someone was caught. All she could think of was sharing the beautiful night with Jake.
She glanced at him, studying his profile. There was strength in the hard lines of his face, a strength tempered by compassion. Her feelings for him were more than a little confused, perhaps because she didn’t know her own heart.
Could the heart be trusted? Or was it a traitorous vessel waiting to lead the unwary astray? Once before, she’d had feelings for a man, and that had ended badly. She’d hurt Victor and, in doing so, hurt herself, as well. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—make the same mistake again.
* * *
Jake had told Dani the truth. Victor Wingate didn’t bother him with his little digs, his sly comments crafted as insults. He’d met men like him before, desperate to prove their power and resorting to putting others down to do so. However, Jake didn’t trust the man. Wingate was clearly trying to ingratiate himself with the senator.
It didn’t have to have anything to do with Dani. Wingate was ambitious, a lawyer on his way up. It was natural that he might turn to a powerful man like the senator for a leg up.
Why, then, did Jake have that itching at the back of his neck? In the battlefield, he’d learned to pay attention to that feeling. It had saved him and his men from walking into a trap more than once.
Beside him, Dani stretched. “I shouldn’t have had that last piece of dessert.”
“You could eat a dozen desserts and still not weigh more than a buck five.”
She slanted a grin at him, her small white teeth gleaming in the darkness. “I’ll have you know that I weigh considerably more than a hundred and five pounds.”
“How much more?” he challenged.
“At least ten pounds more.”
“Ah. I’ll have to watch my step, then. At a hundred and fifteen pounds, you’re a force to be reckoned with.”
She swatted his arm. “I’ve been practicing those moves you and Shelley showed me every chance I get.”
“Good.” His light mood had vanished. “You may need them someday.”
“You still think I’m in danger, don’t you?”
It was tempting to lie to her, to tell her that after more than a week with nothing from her stalker, that the man—or woman—responsible had grown bored with the game, but lying wasn’t his style. Dani deserved the truth.
“Yes, I do.”
“I was hoping you’d lie to me,” she said, voice so quiet that he had to strain to hear the words. “I wanted to believe it was all over.”
“I know.” He reached for her hand, squeezed it. “I wish I believed that.” He changed gears. “When did your mother go missing?”
“April. Four years ago this month.”
“What was your first instinct when she didn’t come home?”
“I thought she was still angry with me. We’d had a fight that morning. She’d driven into the city to have breakfast with me. And we argued. It was pretty bad.” She worried her bottom lip.
“What was it about?”
“Victor. Mama wanted me to break it off with him. She said she didn’t think he was right for me. The more she told me what to do, the more determined I became to keep seeing him.” A wry smile canted her lips. “Someone once told me that I could be stubborn.”
Jake didn’t return the smile. “He was right. What happened next?”
“Mama didn’t return home that afternoon or that night. Daddy called me, asked if I knew where she was. I thought maybe she’d spent the day shopping, then taken a room in a hotel because it had gotten too late to drive home.”
“Did she do that often? Spend the day in the city, then spend the night there.”
“Mama was a firm believer in the power of retail therapy. She could shop me into the ground.”
“When did you start to get worried?”
“The next morning. When neither Daddy nor I had heard from her, we knew something was wrong. Even when she was mad as a wet hen at either of us, she would never have let us worry like that.
“Daddy started calling her friends, her sister. No one had heard a thing. We couldn’t file a missing-persons report until the next day, but we started checking with hotels, then hospitals. There was no record of her checking in.”
“With your contacts and your father’s pull, you must have called in some help.”
“We did. I called in every favor I could think of. The police were on it. But there wasn’t a trace of her. By the time Dad hired the private investigators, the trail, if there’d ever been one, had grown cold.”
“You must have been frantic.”
“I was. I could barely function and finally took a leave of absence from work. Everyone was very understanding.
“Eventually, I had to return to work and Dad got on with his life. For a long time, we were just going through the motions. After a while, things got better.” Her small shrug was eloquent. “We kept living because we didn’t have a choice.”
“You’re right,” he said and thought of his own despair at the deaths of his men. Wasn’t that what he’d done? Forced himself to go on, even when he didn’t see the point of anything? “You keep living because you don’t have a choice.”
“Is that what you did?”
Her perception didn’t surprise him. “I tried holing up on my boat and shutting out the world. It was Shelley who pulled me out.”
“By starting the business.”
“Yeah. She saved my life.”
“That’s how I felt about Victor. He saved me. He can be pompous and rigid and a total jerk sometimes, but he was there for me. I can’t forget that.”
And Wingate played upon that, Jake thought. He used it to his advantage, cozying up to Dani when she was vulnerable, like now. Fortunately, she had come to her senses about the man.
“Why are you asking about my mother? Her disappearance can’t have anything to do with what’s happening now.”
Jake wasn’t so certain. Whoever was stalking Dani had intimate knowledge of her life, her family, her work. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to put Madeline Barclay’s disappearance and the stalking together.
“I’m just trying to make some pieces fit.” He realized his answer wasn’t really an answer at all. He’d hoped she’d leave it there. But Dani, being Dani, couldn’t leave it alone, and he hadn’t really expected her to.
“Mama went missing years ago. There’s nothing to connect that with what’s happening now.” She took a deep breath. “It’s over. Can we please not talk about it anymore?” As if to emphasize that, she said, “I need to pick up some more clothes. Can we stop at my apartment?”
Thoughtful, Jake pulled off the main highway onto the city street that would take him to Dani’s ap
artment building. As he approached the parking garage, he slowed.
Maybe he was reaching at straws. All he knew was that patterns tended to repeat themselves. Sometimes with a variation, but the pattern remained.
He pulled into a parking slot, helped Dani from the Jeep and hurried her into the elevator located nearby. Parking garages were a good place for attack. There was no sign of a threat; however, Jake didn’t relax his vigilance.
* * *
Dani waited while Jake unlocked the door to her apartment, then drew his gun in preparation for checking the interior.
His harsh intake of breath told her something bad had happened. She moved to go inside but froze at his sharp “Stay put.”
After long minutes had passed, he called, “Come on in. But watch your step.” His face turned grim. “I’m calling Monroe.”
Broken glass, overturned furniture and ripped upholstery greeted her. Dani knew enough to wait for the crime-scene techs before touching anything. Every piece of furniture was defaced in some way. She couldn’t help her cry of distress.
Blood rushed to her head. Her sense of violation was so acute that she struggled to breathe. She bent from the waist, braced her hands on her knees. She started to shake.
Jake got the inhaler from her purse and was at her side in an instant. He put it to her mouth. “Breathe.”
She took several lifesaving breaths, then set the inhaler aside. “I’m all right.” It was a lie, and they both knew it.
He pulled her to him, sheltered her against his chest. “It’s worse in your bedroom,” he said quietly, and she knew he was trying to prepare her.
But nothing could prepare her for the destruction she found. She blinked against the scene before her, as though she could wipe it away, but the room came into sudden, shocking focus.
Her clothes had been pulled from the closet, slashed into pieces. Perfumes and creams were spilled onto the floor and dresser. Drawers had been upended, their contents splashed across the ground.
The bed had been stripped of its spread, the mattress stabbed in dozens of places, stuffing strewn about in tufts of foam. The entire scene was one of such destruction that she felt as though she were on the job, viewing pictures of a crime.
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