His tone was amiable, but Zeke wasn’t fooled. Despite his Pulitzer Prize, Quint was a man of physical action, threats, intimidation. He’d never seemed entirely comfortable with his role as a celebrated writer. Zeke’s experience in protection and security wouldn’t impress him. Quint would still think he could beat him senseless. And very likely he could.
“See you around,” he said, starting down the wide brick sidewalk.
“Hey, Skinner.”
The soldier-turned-writer looked back, the evening sun catching his broad red face. He wore a khaki suit cut a size too small for his muscular frame, probably just to remind people he wasn’t just a smarmy journalist but a man who’d killed people.
Zeke’s gaze was direct and unintimidated. “Didn’t know you liked roses.”
There was no indication of surprise in the intense, beady eyes. Quint put a hand the size of a butt ham into the palm of his other hand and cracked his knuckles one by one. Just itching to knock out a few of Zeke’s teeth. “I’ll go where I want to go, and I’ll do what I want to do. You just stay out of my way.”
Zeke said nothing more. Quint had no gift for melting into a crowd, and Zeke was able to watch him all the way down North Broadway. If Skinner had robbed Dani, why? Had he made the connection between the gold key and the night Dani’s mother had disappeared? Between the gold key and Joe Cutler?
And the blackmail note, Zeke thought. Where did that little gem fit in?
Lots of questions. He just wished he had a few answers.
Dinner was served on long tables covered in pink linen and decorated—Kate Murtagh style—with simple milk-glass vases of asters and baby’s breath. Sara had Dani sit next to her grandfather at the end of the table, where a portly man was expounding on the yearling sales and the state of Saratoga’s thoroughbred-racing tradition.
Someone commented that the revival of Pembroke Springs and the opening of the Pembroke would be good for the town, and Dani felt her grandfather stiffen next to her. He didn’t look at her, but she knew he disapproved of her having gone into business for herself against his wishes and against his advice, a different sort of embarrassment for him than her mother’s disappearance and her father’s embezzling.
But he didn’t say anything, and the conversation drifted to other, more innocuous topics. Someone asked how long she’d been in Saratoga. Someone else asked where her date was, the unsubtle implication being that she’d been seen arriving with Zeke.
“One of my guests dropped me off,” she explained.
Her grandfather’s clouded, watery eyes fastened on her, his irritation apparent, she was sure, only to her. Getting a ride from a male guest—even having paying guests—would grate on him. Mentioning it at his dinner party would be, in his mind, rude, a deliberate act to embarrass him.
Dani lasted through the main course, then excused herself and ducked into the kitchen.
Thankfully, no one followed her. The racing talk and flower-scented breeze, and just being there, reminded her of the nine-year-old who’d waited and waited and waited for her mother to come home.
Trying to squash the flood of memories, she stopped at the counter, where Kate was sifting confectioner’s sugar onto a plate of her incomparable brownies.
“Rough night, eh? Well, if you’d wanted to avoid the nonsense,” she said without sympathy, “you could have stayed in here with me and watched the show from the kitchen. I’d even have let you help—except you in a black skirt and white top carrying a tray of stuffed mushrooms would probably kill your grandfather. Though I don’t know why you in that dress hasn’t killed him.”
“Maybe he was anticipating something worse.”
Kate looked remarkably calm despite being in the midst of serving two hundred. “I suppose it’s possible.”
But there was something in her eyes. “Kate?”
She set down her sifter. “We have to talk.”
“Okay. Tomorrow—”
“Now. Dani, have you ever heard of a book called Joe Cutler: One Soldier’s Rise and Fall?”
Dani shook her head.
“Joe Cutler is—was—this Zeke character’s older brother. I knew there was something familiar about his name. I asked Aaron, and he remembered.” Aaron also taught history at the local high school. “Joe was pretty messed up.”
“You’ve read the book?”
She nodded. “A few years ago. It’s got nothing to do with Zeke being in town so far as I can see.” Her intelligent eyes focused on Dani. “Except for one thing—he and his brother grew up in Cedar Springs, Tennessee.”
And there it was. A connection. Cedar Springs and Mattie. But her grandmother hadn’t returned to her hometown since she had left for Hollywood at nineteen, long before Zeke was even born.
“What’s he up to?” she asked.
“Beats me,” Kate said, “but you need to watch yourself with this guy.”
Dani snatched a brownie. “I will.”
“If Cutler’s responsible in any way for that bruise on your arm—” Kate waved her spatula “—you let him know he’ll have to answer to me.”
Impossible to tell if the woman was serious. And yet, beneath her bantering tone was a concern for Dani, something she never wanted to take for granted.
She went down a darkened hall and through the antique-filled drawing room where the oil portrait of her mother at sixteen still hung above the mantel. She seemed so sophisticated, yet demure, the perfect young heiress. The artist had failed—or, given who was paying the bill, perhaps simply had known better than to try—to catch the glint in her eye, the determined set to her jaw that hinted at a seething soul. Lilli Chandler had been privileged and beautiful at sixteen. At thirty, privilege and beauty hadn’t been enough to satisfy her.
“I’ve tried to take that portrait down,” Eugene Chandler said from a Queen Anne chair, startling Dani. “I thought it would be easier on all of us, Sara in particular. She always adored your mother. But she insisted it should stay.”
Dinner must have broken up for the more informal dessert, or he, too, had made good his escape. “Look, if I in any way—”
He cut her off, or hadn’t heard her. “You know, right or wrong, that’s how I remember Lilli—as a lovely, devoted sixteen-year-old girl who might never really have existed…” He trailed off as he sighed, sounding tired and old. When he continued, his voice was almost inaudible. “That’s the most difficult part. She’s gone, and I never knew her. My own daughter.”
“I’m sorry—”
“No. I am.”
Dani took a step toward him. “Are you all right?”
He smiled sadly. “No, I’m not.”
She’d never seen him so depressed. Even when it had become clear that something had happened and her mother had disappeared, he’d shown only anger, determination, raging worry. Never real, quiet, reflective sadness. “Should I get Sara?”
“You should go on, Danielle.”
As she moved closer, he looked away. He was not a man given to touching, the quick kiss, the tender hug. And he’d come not to expect such affection from his only granddaughter. “I’m not sure I should leave you—”
“I prefer to be alone,” he said, not gently.
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” His clouded eyes met hers, just for an instant. “I’ve never known what to say to you nor you to me. So go on, Danielle. Carry on. You always have, you know.”
Would he like her better if she fell on her face? If she had to crawl on her knees to him in desperation? But it wasn’t the time for accusation or asking him to be something he wasn’t. How could she ask him to accept her when she couldn’t accept him?
Suddenly she was nine again, running from the grandfather she’d never been able to please.
She kicked off her high heels on the porch and scooped them up in one hand, walking through the cool, soft grass to the sidewalk. She’d left her sneakers in Zeke’s car. It didn’t matter—she’d walk home barefoot. She wanted of
f North Broadway, away from the Chandlers and back to her own little cottage where she’d learned to keep the memories at bay.
“Your feather’s drooping.”
Zeke fell in beside her, dark, solid, taking her in with an efficient glance that told her nothing of what he was thinking. In the darkness the shadows of the trees and streetlights played on his face, making his expression even more impossible to read.
“What’re you doing here?” she asked.
“Just hanging out.”
Dani didn’t believe him. “You don’t strike me as the type to just ‘hang out.’”
He shrugged. “Know me so well, do you?”
“Mr. Cutler—”
“You’ve really got to stop that. The name’s Zeke, as in Ezekiel James Cutler. Only bad guys call me Mr. Cutler. How come you’re leaving early?”
“No reason.”
He slowed his pace, eyeing her. “You’re not a very good liar, are you?”
She wished she hadn’t noticed the humor playing at the edges of his voice and in his eyes. She didn’t answer, instead thinking about what Kate had told her about him. She’d hoped she’d have a chance to think, to talk to Mattie, before confronting him again.
“Why don’t I give you a ride home,” he said, “and you can tell me what’s on your mind.”
They’d come to his car. He unlocked the passenger door and swung it open. He looked very tough and very controlled, and Dani suddenly wondered what kind of woman a professional white knight went for, what kind he attracted.
“I prefer to walk,” she said.
“Kind of a long way to walk in bare feet.”
“You could give me my sneakers back.”
He smiled. “I could.”
They were at an impasse, his will against hers. Her high heels dangling from one hand, she wiggled her toes on the cool, rough sidewalk and became aware—too aware—of the fit of her dress and the aching of her bruises and just how tired she was.
“I’ll ask you again. Was your being in my garden yesterday afternoon a coincidence?”
He stood back from the door, leaving it open. “Dani, you know I didn’t rob you or—” he touched her wrist “—do that to you.” His eyes, dark and serious, held hers. “But I don’t often believe in coincidences.”
Dani knew there were other ways to get home without Zeke Cutler’s help. She could call the Pembroke for a ride, or call a friend, or a taxi. She could even go back and ask her aunt or grandfather if their driver could take her home.
She could fight one Ezekiel James Cutler for her sneakers.
But without a word, she slid onto the passenger seat of his rented car. She wanted to know more about this man. Had to know more about him. It wasn’t just the burglary, his profession, his being from Cedar Springs, Tennessee. It was also her reaction to him, the strange, unsettling feeling that she was meant to find him in her garden one of these days. And how could she explain the rushes of warmth when she was around him? She was wary, and annoyed that he was clearly holding back on her, but, she had to admit, she was also intrigued.
“If I’d been your crook,” Zeke said, climbing in behind the steering wheel, “I’d have gone after you when you tried to nail me with that bottle of mineral water.”
“You did go after me.”
He glanced at her, turning the key in the ignition. “Honey,” he said in an exaggerated drawl, “that wasn’t going after you.”
There it was again, not just a rush of warmth but a flood. Dani shifted in her seat, reaching down onto the floor for her sneakers. She slipped them on and didn’t bother tying the laces.
“Tell me, would you have thrown the skillet or just bonked me on the head with it?”
“I don’t know. I guess it would have depended on what you did. I’m not a trained white knight. I have to operate on instinct—like when I walked into my room and saw it had been trashed. Since I don’t carry a weapon, I used what was at hand.”
“Which was?”
She hesitated, then held up one red shoe as she had yesterday.
Zeke grimaced.
“It worked out,” Dani said, not defensively.
Without comment he pulled into the street and started down North Broadway toward the main commercial center of town. He seemed to give his driving his total concentration. Dani noticed the dark hairs on his forearms, the muscles, the tanned skin. His long fingers. For no reason she could fathom, she found herself wondering if he dreamed. Was he ever haunted by the past? Did he ever lie awake nights asking what might have been? She thought of the book Kate had told her about. Easy to guess that his brother probably hadn’t come to a happy end.
Had Mattie known Joe Cutler? Did she know Zeke? Was that why she’d responded the way she had when Dani had told her about the burglary?
He turned down Circular Street, and Dani had the feeling he was letting her make the next move, giving her a little time to pull herself together.
Finally she decided just to get on with it. “I want you to leave the Pembroke.”
He glanced at her. “Why?”
“Because you haven’t told me the truth.”
Following the traffic onto Union Avenue, he didn’t argue or protest, but kept his eyes on the road.
“You have until tomorrow morning,” she said.
“Dani, you can’t throw me out.”
She breathed deeply. “Yes, I can.”
“It’d end up in the papers.” He slowed for a traffic light, then came to a stop. “Enough reporters are on your case without you going toe-to-toe with an internationally recognized security specialist such as myself.”
There was a note of self-deprecation in his tone, of humor, but it was buried underneath the seriousness. Dani felt her mouth go dry. She should have found another way home.
The light changed, and he continued a short way past the racetrack and turned smoothly onto the Pembroke driveway. “A photographer caught you tonight, feather and all. Someone could easily have seen you get into my car. Imagine what a heyday the gossips would have if they found out that you’d given me the boot.”
“Are you threatening to tell them?”
“No.”
They passed the rose garden, the fragrance permeating the cool night air, easing Dani’s confusion and nervousness. Zeke bore left at the fork in the road, onto the dirt road and over the narrow bridge. She could hear the trickle of the stream, smell its coldness.
“Why are you here?” she asked softly.
“I have my reasons.”
Which, his tone said, were none of her affair. “Do they have anything to do with the business you’re in?”
He didn’t answer, sliding his rented car to a stop at the end of the flagstone path that led to the front door of her cottage. “Do Hansel and Gretel show up every now and then?”
“Are you implying I’m a wicked witch?”
His expression was impenetrable in the darkness. Probably he wanted it that way. “Maybe not wicked.”
Dani bit the inside corner of her mouth, feeling unusually awkward, deeply aware—physically aware—of the man sitting next to her.
It would be so easy to back down, so easy to trust him. But she had no basis for trust, and she’d never been very good at backing down. “You have until tomorrow morning. I’ll speak to Ira.”
She could feel Zeke’s eyes on her. He seemed capable of seeing things people wouldn’t want him to see, of penetrating not only thoughts, but souls. In his business, such sensitivity—such probing—could be an asset. He asked quietly, “Do you like living out here all alone?”
“I did until yesterday afternoon.”
“You know, you should lock your doors. It’s often an effective deterrent.”
His tone was professional, neither critical nor patronizing, but Dani hated being told what to do. “How do you know my doors weren’t locked?”
“I tried them.”
“When?”
“This morning. I wandered off on my own during
a guided nature walk.”
She placed her hand on the door latch, her heart pounding. She could be gone in a matter of seconds. Was she crazy to be alone with a man she didn’t know—a man who apparently knew more about her than she did him? He was from Mattie’s hometown. He was staying at the Pembroke on the twenty-fifth anniversary of her mother’s disappearance. He was an internationally known security consultant. Dani was torn by curiosity, but she felt she had no choice. She had no reason to trust him. It wasn’t, right now, a risk she was prepared to take.
“I want you off my property.”
“So you’ve said.”
“Are you going to go quietly?”
A flash of sexy smile. “Honey, I don’t go anywhere quietly unless I so choose. And that’s probably the only thing you and I have in common.”
“Oh, no,” she said coolly, deciding on gut instinct to take him on then and there. “That’s not all we have in common, and you know it. You see, Zeke, upstairs, in my bedroom, I have a blanket on my bed. It’s dark green, pure wool, quite old. My grandmother gave it to me. She took it with her when she left home.” In the darkness, through the opened windows, she could hear the crickets and tree toads, the breeze soughing in the woods and meadow. “It was made in a woolen mill in Cedar Springs, Tennessee.”
Zeke didn’t move a muscle or say a word.
“My grandmother’s hometown,” Dani said in a near whisper. “And yours.”
She was off like a shot, racing up the walk and through her front door, slamming it behind her. Her wrist ached. So did her scraped shins and her feet from standing so long in her three-inch heels. But she hunted up her car keys and locked all her doors. Front, back, side. She hadn’t bothered last night. What more was there for her thief to get?
She didn’t lock her windows. She’d suffocate.
And she didn’t call Mattie right away, although she was tempted. She wanted to think first. Get her perspective on tonight, on Zeke Cutler of Cedar Springs, Tennessee.
Groaning, pushing him out of her mind, she ran into her kitchen and got out the half bushel of peaches she’d been meaning to freeze for days. They were going soft. She filled her biggest pot with water and put it on the stove. When it was hot, she’d scald the peach skins to make them easier to peel. Or so the theory went. No matter what she did, the peel always seemed to stick.
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