Tempting Fate (18 page)

She'd laughed. “Everybody knows me.”

He couldn't tell if she meant to sound snobby or if she really thought everybody knew her. “Well, everybody knows my mother and father. My mother's a movie star, and my father's a famous movie director—and my great-grandfather was a train robber. I'm staying at his estate.”

“I know all the estates in Saratoga.” Her blue eyes had glistened as she took up the challenge. “You don't have one.”

“The Pembroke—”

“Oh, that. It's all boarded up. Father says it has rats.”

John had felt his first sting of real humiliation. “We just keep it that way so no one bothers the treasure.”

From her expression, he knew he had her interest, but her father, tall, fair and imposing, showed up and, with just a look, managed to scold her for running off by herself. “Lilli, I've warned you to stay away from the stable boys.”

“He's not a stable boy. His mother's a movie star and—”

“A movie star?” Eugene Chandler had turned and appraised John with such frank distaste he could still feel his cheeks burning decades later. He'd felt shabby in his jeans, in contrast to the rich man's handsome gray suit. “You're Mattie Witt and Nicholas Pembroke's boy. Well, run along. You've no business here.”

Mattie had been unsympathetic to her son's dejection. Why on earth should he care what the Chandlers thought of him? She was truly and honestly mystified. Only much, much later did John come to understand that his mother's fierce independence hadn't come naturally to her, that she'd had to fight and sacrifice—and suffer—for her treasured freedom.

That lonely summer, he'd only understood how much he'd wanted the Chandlers to approve of him. For the rest of that first August in Saratoga, he'd explored the Pembroke estate and Saratoga's library and all its museums and streets, not just for a sense of the Pembroke past, of their abused energy and promise, but for a peek at his own destiny.

He knew he'd be different. He had to be.

Ten years later he and Lilli were married. Eugene grew fond of his son-in-law. “I swear, John,” he would say, “sometimes I forget you're even a Pembroke.”

He'd lived to be reminded.

Now, so many years later, John ran his hand through his thinning gray hair and wiped the sweat from his brow, pushing aside thoughts of what might have been. He had to focus on what was. His wife had disappeared ten years into their marriage, and he'd become a bum and a wanderer and no kind of father to their only daughter.

Looking around him, he realized he'd missed the hundredth running of the Chandler Stakes. He glanced at the scoreboard. The homely bay had won. If he'd bet just fifty bucks…

“Look at yourself,” he whispered. “What's become of you?”

He pulled himself away from the fence and almost ran straight into a brick wall of a man. He started to apologize, then the fellow said, “John Pembroke,” as if he were a ghost.

John squinted. “Who are you?”

The man smiled, not a particularly friendly smile. “I take it you don't recognize me. I'm not surprised. It's been a while.”

But John only needed a minute, a chance to pull himself back out of his memories and self-recrimination. He was good at faces, and he'd read the book on Joe Cutler, and had heard his younger brother had quit college and gone into security work.

“Zeke Cutler,” he said. “You and your brother came to my office looking for my mother.”

They'd refused to tell him why, and he'd sent them packing. A couple of country boys from Cedar Springs, Tennessee. Mattie didn't need them pestering her. She'd never mentioned if the two brothers from her hometown had found her, and he'd never mentioned he'd seen them. Mattie was entitled to her discomfort with her past. John had enough with his.

He looked at the man Zeke Cutler had become. It couldn't be easy being Joe Cutler's little brother. “What do you want with me?”

“I thought,” Zeke said in his calm, efficient way, “you might want to walk up to the Pembroke with me.”

Given his daughter's disposition, John decided having a security and protection consultant at his side was a pretty good idea. Besides, he wanted to talk to Zeke, find out if they were in Saratoga Springs for similar reasons.

Scratching his head, John appraised Cutler's impressive physique and hoped to hell they were on the same side. Slaying dragons had never been his long suit.

“This way,” Zeke said.

“Yes,” John said, stupidly irritated at being treated like a stranger. “I know the way.”

D
ani didn't relax until she was on her pine-scented driveway. When she reached her cottage, she paced in the garden, debating all the different reasons her father could be in town that didn't have to do with her, her missing keys or Zeke Cutler.

“You should learn to relax.”

She whirled around at the sound of her father's voice. He walked through the gate, looking as devil-may-care as ever. “Pop,” she said. “How can I relax with—”

But she stopped midsentence when Zeke followed her father into the garden.

Her father walked past her to the kitchen door. “Sit down before you run out of gas, Dani. I'm going to get something to eat. Then you can skewer me, okay?”

He disappeared into the kitchen, and Zeke came onto the stone terrace, moving with that surprising grace and economy. “We walked up together from the track,” he said. “Your father's an interesting man. He told me he used to play spy in the rose garden when he was a kid.”

“I don't understand him.”

“Oh, I think you do. Maybe too well.”

“Are you packed yet?”

“Haven't even seen the damage. Think I should sue the Pembroke?”

The humor danced at the back of his eyes and played at the corners of his mouth. He had a way of making her think things and notice things—about him, about herself—that she'd prefer not to think or notice.

When she got rid of him and her father, she'd call Mattie and insist they have a heart-to-heart talk about the Cutler brothers of Cedar Springs, Tennessee.

Her father emerged from the kitchen with a peach, a paring knife and a paper towel. “You know, you don't have much over me in lifestyle. I scoured the entire kitchen for a napkin and had to settle for a paper towel.”

“I only have cloth napkins.”

“La-di-da.” He plopped down at her umbrella table and ate a slice of peach off the end of the paring knife. He'd lost weight in the months since Dani had last seen him. He had a gaunt look that made her wonder if he shared her affliction of insomnia. His clothes seemed even more threadbare than usual. “Place looks good. First time your mother and I took you up here after you could talk, you said you'd paint the cottage purple. You were just a little tot. How the hell old are you now?”

“Thirty-four.”

He shuddered. “I must be getting old. Well, kid, it's good to see you. Going to have a seat, or are you planning to give me the third degree standing up?”

Zeke appeared to be observing the proceedings between father and daughter with great amusement. He'd already taken a seat at the table.

Still keyed up, Dani brushed crumbs off the table.

“You'll give yourself ulcers,” John said.

She shot him a look. “Why are you here?”

“In Saratoga?” He lifted his bony shoulders in a shrug that was not convincingly innocent. He'd always been a notoriously rotten bluffer, in life and in poker. “It's blistering hot this time of year in Arizona.”

Weak, Dani thought. Very weak. “You could afford a plane ticket?”

“I'm here.”

“It was hot in Arizona last summer and the summer before.”

“The truth is,” her father said, “the thought of coming here used to scare me to death. I had enough reminders of your mother in my life. Lately, though…” He leaned back and stared up at the clear, beautiful blue sky. “I don't know. Reporters have been pestering me for a quote about Lilli, the Chandler Stakes, even that gold key you found. I suppose it's all been working on me. I woke up the other morning and thought, my God, it really has been twenty-five years.” He set his paring knife down on the table. “So I booked a flight and here I am.”

“Nice try, Pop,” Dani said.

He ignored her. “This place—” Squinting, he looked around the transformed garden, then waved one hand, as if to take in all of his great-grandfather's property. “It isn't what it used to be. It's changed. Everything around here's changed. I don't feel as if I'm stepping back into my past.”

He was lying. Dani knew it, and so, she felt, did Zeke. It wouldn't have surprised her if her father had already told Zeke the real reason why he was in Saratoga. He had always found it easier to talk to anyone but his own daughter. They were so different. For years she'd struggled to embrace the past—to remember her mother in every detail, to relive every moment of their too-short time together. All her father wanted was to run as far as he could from the past. Yet now here he was in Saratoga, immersed in it.

But Dani didn't press the point. “Did Mattie send you?”

“I haven't talked to her in a couple of weeks.”

“Then she called Nick about the burglary, and he sent you.”

John sighed, but it couldn't have been a surprise to him that she understood the peculiar dynamics between him and his parents—and where and how she fit into their jumbled worlds. “They're worried,” he said.

“Nobody needs to worry about me.”

“But they do. We're your family, Dani.”

Quietly, without a word, Zeke retreated to the kitchen. Dani appreciated the gesture. But she was still determined that he leave the Pembroke.

She changed the subject. “Grandfather said he spoke to you.”

They both knew she was referring to her Chandler grandfather, not to Nick. “Yes, he was cordial. Of course. He invited me to join him for dinner tonight. I refused, but he knew I would.” He grinned, his dark eyes sparkling. “Haven't had dinner with the old fart in over twenty years. He'd slip me a batch of poisoned mushrooms and bury me in the backyard with that dead mole you found when you were six or seven.”

Dani laughed, surprising herself—and, she could see, her father. She'd carried the mole on a spatula she'd fetched from the kitchen and showed it to her grandparents at tea. They'd been apoplectic. Her mother had quietly maneuvered her out to the garden, where they'd had a proper burial. Lilli had cried. Dani, who'd adored small fuzzy animals, had wanted to find the culprit who'd killed the poor ugly little thing.

“When did you get in?” she asked, less confrontational.

“Early this morning.”

“Where did you sleep?”

“Didn't.”

“Pop, why didn't you knock on my door? You know I'll always take you in—” She broke off, thinking her life—and maybe his, too—would be easier if she didn't love him. It was that way with Pembrokes and their fathers. “Mattie's room is free.”

“If it's all the same to you,” John said, “I'll just find something in town. I stayed with a trainer friend last night, but he's having company tonight.”

“You don't know Saratoga in August anymore. It's me or the gutter.”

He made a face. Since her mother's disappearance, she and her father under the same roof hadn't been a winning combination. “Not much choice, then, is there?”

She looked at him. “Nope.”

“Well, you might not be welcoming me with open arms, but at least you haven't told me you hope I fall into a well and drown. Not, I understand, that the thought hasn't crossed your mind.”

She started to argue with him but realized he was just trying to jerk her string to keep her from asking questions—demanding answers—about what was really at stake. Zeke came out of the kitchen with her last beer but didn't sit down. Dani looked from him to her father and back again. “You two know each other,” she said, and it came out an accusation.

Neither man answered right away. A squirrel ran up the crabapple tree at the edge of the garden, and a breeze cooled the suddenly very warm late-afternoon air.

Finally her father got up, threw his peach pit over the fence, stretched and yawned. “I'm beat—really, this trip's taken everything out of me. I don't travel the way I used to. Why don't you two go to some nice, quiet place for dinner, and I'll take a walk and get some sleep. We'll have plenty of time to talk.”

“Pop—”

“Sounds fine to me,” Zeke said.

Her father planted a quick kiss on her cheek. “Good to see you, kid.”

It was two against one, and her father was adept at getting himself out of a tight spot. And he was fast. He was out the garden gate before Dani had figured out a good counterargument and worked up the energy to make it.

She was intensely aware that she was alone in her garden, again, with Zeke.

“I'll walk back to the inn with you and see that you check out,” she said stiffly.

“That line's wearing thin, Dani. I think we should do as your father suggests and head to town and a nice, quiet restaurant for dinner.”

“Why should I do that?”

“Because,” he said, “we need to talk.”

Zeke turned down Dani's offer to cook on the grounds that he'd seen her kitchen, but agreed to ride with her in her car to town. She was a good driver. Even as distracted as she was, she concentrated on what she was doing. She found a parking space on Broadway in front of an attractive downtown restaurant with sidewalk tables that were tempting on such a beautiful day. But Dani led the way to a table inside, where it was quieter, pleasantly informal. A waitress brought them a small, steaming loaf of bread and dots of herbed butter.

“Is this all right?” Dani asked.

“It's fine.”

She ordered a glass of the house red wine, and he did the same, watching her make a show out of examining the menu. She probably knew every item on it and had already decided what she wanted, but he figured she needed something to do besides look at him. He had no problem at all looking at her.

Their wine arrived. Dani immediately took a big drink of hers, then held on to the glass. “You don't mind having a blocked view of the entrance?”

It was an obstructed view, not blocked, but he didn't argue the point. “No, do you?”

She shrugged. “I'm just trying to figure out what kinds of things security consultants know, what they look out for. If I were to hire you, what would you tell me?”

Oh, sweetheart,
he thought,
if you only knew
.

But he tried his wine and decided to take her question relatively seriously, even if it was intended to distract him. “I would teach you the basics of personal safety.”

“Which are?”

“First you have to know what personal safety is. To my way of thinking, it's providing yourself with a stable environment in which you can pursue the activities and lifestyle you enjoy with limited fear of harm.”

“Does that mean you'd make me stop rock climbing?”

He shook his head. “That's an activity you enjoy. I'm talking about ensuring yourself the kind of environment in which you can do your rock climbing, or whatever else you do for fun, without fear of intrusion.”

“You mean like burglars and kidnappers and such?”

“I mean,” he said, not especially appreciating her cheeky tone, “that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

She drank more of her wine; he noticed that her eyes were as black as Mattie's and maybe even more dazzling. “Give me some examples.”

“I encourage common sense and reasonable precautions—”

“For rich girls?”

“And boys. And men and women. And the poor, the middle-class, the downtrodden. I give the same basic instructions to everyone, regardless of gender, position or wealth. I encourage common sense and reasonable precautions,” he repeated.

Their waitress returned and took their order, a cold pasta salad for Dani, lasagna for Zeke. He tore off a piece of bread and buttered it, then took a bite with a swallow of wine. He wondered if she was deliberately provoking him or if she just had a knack for it.

“An egalitarian bodyguard,” she said.

He decided it was deliberate.

“What kind of precautions?” she asked.

“The usual. Make sure someone always knows your plans, change your routine periodically, don't draw undue attention to yourself.”

“And people don't think that's too restrictive?”

“Some have more trouble with certain suggestions than others. One executive I worked with hated telling anyone his plans, another enjoyed flaunting his notoriety. And there are always those who are married to their routines. It's a balancing act. I don't encourage recklessness or paranoia.”

“I see.” She took a piece of bread but skipped the butter. “What do you advise when something bad does happen?”

Her voice had softened, lost its bantering edge, and Zeke yearned to reach across the table and take her hand, but he held back. Kept his distance. It wasn't just necessary, it was the right thing to do. Or so he told himself.

“Again, common sense,” he said, focusing on her question, his answer. “If attacked, it's important to remain calm and to be assertive—to find a balance between seeming too weak or too superior to an attacker, or to becoming dehumanized. I suggest my clients give up money and valuables on demand, without question. In general, it's best not to resist unless in immediate mortal danger—but that's in general. Every situation is particular, needs its own reading.”