A Rare Chance (13 page)

Lizzie smiled, her green eyes sparkling. She wore diamonds in her ears, a dazzling turquoise dress—and a ring. An enormous diamond-and-sapphire engagement ring. Gabriella realized her engagement to Joshua Reading was now a fact, something she'd simply have to accept.

“Sometimes I think I must be dreaming,” Lizzie said, “everything's so perfect.”

Nothing's perfect,
Gabriella wanted to say. Perfection isn't human. It isn't
real.
But having just learned that Cam Yeager didn't fit in the tidy box she'd made for him, she could admit she wasn't in the best of moods. She didn't want her cynicism to spill over onto Lizzie's happiness.

“There is one thing,” Lizzie said suddenly, in a low voice.

Gabriella felt an immediate concern for her friend. Lizzie Fairfax could be so damned vulnerable when she was in love, even when she was in love with her best friend's boss. “What is it?”

Lizzie glanced over her shoulder, giving vague smiles to guests whose eye she caught, then, apparently satisfied no one important was within earshot, said, “Please don't tell Joshua or Titus about Scag, at least not yet. I know it's bound to come out, but since I haven't told Joshua, and here we've been—we've fallen in love—he could take it the wrong way, maybe think I was holding back. I don't want
anything
to spoil what we have.”

“Lizzie, I can't imagine what difference it makes. He's not your father. I know I promised Joshua and Titus that my relationship with Scag wouldn't come back to haunt them, but I haven't told them he's in town because I really don't know what to say, except he's here for a visit. Things are too unsettled, and there's no point borrowing trouble.”

Lizzie's fingers dug into Gabriella's elbow, almost hurting. “Just hold off for a while, okay? I need to make sure Joshua understands that my loyalty to you and Scag doesn't have anything to do with him. I mean, it's not the same.”

“Lizzie, I'll do whatever you want.”

“Thanks. I knew I could count on you.” Her relief was almost palpable, her grip on Gabriella loosening. “Come on, dinner's just about ready to be served.”

Gabriella abandoned any effort to talk to Lizzie in more depth about her relationship with Joshua Reading. It wasn't the time or the place. But what the hell business was it of Joshua's if Lizzie had helped Scag get to Boston?

Seeing little other choice, Gabriella quashed her unsettled feelings about the evening, pinned a smile on her face, and followed her friend to the table.

Ninety minutes later, she was among the first to duck out, just after dessert was served, declining an after-dinner drink. Joshua saw her to the door. “I don't know how to thank you for bringing Lizzie and me together,” he said in a low voice. He looked slightly embarrassed at his obvious emotion. Everything about him suggested his love for Lizzie Fairfax was genuine.

Gabriella smiled. “It was just one of those things that was meant to be, I suppose.”

“Well, we'll always be grateful. Thanks for coming tonight.”

“My pleasure,” she murmured, and made a quick retreat.

Even with the outdoor light, it was very dark in the parking area. Gabriella glanced around for Pete Darrow as she pulled on her car door, wondering just how Cam Yeager intended to find her. He could be one cocky SOB.

The door was locked.

She frowned. She hadn't locked it. She never bothered locking her doors when out on Reading Point. There seemed no need. Digging out her key, she glanced at the back seat.

Cam. He'd obviously reinserted himself under her fleece throw and locked himself in. Not even a toe was visible. Gabriella didn't know how he'd done it. He was not a small man.

He was also not a forthcoming one.

“Governor's son,” she muttered, unlocking her door.

Once inside, she tossed her handbag in back, somewhere in the vicinity of his head. He cursed, barely stirring under the blanket. Such self-control. “Take out my eye, why don't you?”

It was a thought. But she feigned innocence. “Oh, are you back there?”

“I thought it'd make things easier on your nerves if I was in place when you finished dinner.”

She snorted, sounding more like her father than she would have cared to admit. “If you gave half a fig about my ‘nerves' you'd have told me you were the son of the damned governor!”

“
Former
governor,” he corrected, matter-of-fact.

“I had to learn it from Titus Reading and stand there as if none of it had anything to do with me.”

“It doesn't.”

“I've a good mind,” she said through clenched teeth, “to stop right here and call Pete Darrow over.”

“How'll you explain having a governor's son tucked in the back seat?”

He was so irreverent. So damned sure of himself. But instead of irritating her, he intrigued her, something she found both unsettling and strangely exhilarating. Without further comment, she headed down the driveway and back out through the security gate. When she reached the main road, Cam climbed into the front seat, employing more grace than Gabriella would have thought possible given his thick, muscular build.

“You should have told me,” she said as he situated himself beside her.

“Right, and if I hadn't done my research, you'd have told me all about your father and orchids and being shot in the ass by some crazy banana grower. And my father's not the least bit relevant to this situation. Yours is.”

Gabriella shook her head. “It seems to me your friendship with Pete Darrow had everything to do with why he resigned from the police department. So who you are—who your father is—is very relevant.”

Cam was unrepentant. “Then I guess you should have done your research if you'd wanted to know.”

“I never realized—it just never occurred to me that you were related to Tom Yeager. I was in college when he was governor, but I remember he was a sensible, low-key sort. He only served one term, didn't he?”

Cam nodded. “My mother got sick his last year in office. He decided not to run again so he could be with her. She hung in there for a while. She died about five years ago.”

“I'm sorry,” Gabriella said, remembering her own mother's early, unexpected death. Grief, knowing life was so short, had been a part of what had propelled her into life with Scag. What had it done to Cam?

“She was a terrific woman,” he said. “She never liked me being a cop, but she didn't give me a hard time about it. She and my father both believed in public service as a noble calling, a privilege. They never got cynical. Anyway, now my father teaches at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and plays golf.”

“What does he think of your becoming a prosecutor?”

Cam shrugged, settling back in his seat. “I didn't ask and he didn't say.”

Gabriella wasn't sure she liked having to reassess this man. He kept surprising her, refusing to be stereotyped.

“Why did Titus mention my father?” he asked.

She related their conversation and gave a quick summary of the evening: good food, friendly company, Joshua and Lizzie for all appearances deliriously happy. No serious trouble from Pete Darrow. When she'd finished, she glanced over at her passenger. “What about you? Any luck?”

He shook his head. “Darrow knew I was out there. He managed to restrict my movements, but he never actually saw me.”

“You didn't find what you were looking for?”

“No.”

“Then you
are
looking for something. You're not just spitting in the wind and seeing what happens.” But he said nothing. She sighed, turning on to Storrow Drive, intensely aware of him close beside her. “Well, at least you weren't caught and you didn't break a leg.”

He grinned. “At least.”

She made her way to lower Pinckney Street and dropped him off at his apartment. “I don't suppose your father was a penniless politician,” she said as he started out of her car.

He looked around at her, his eyes dark and unreadable in the dim light. “My great-grandfather escaped famine to come to this country. He got a job in the shipyards and believed in the values of scholarship, citizenship, and hard work. I would say my father and I are both direct beneficiaries of his vision—and his good fortune. But to answer your question, no, my father wasn't a penniless politician.”

“I was just curious.”

Cam laughed, leaning back into the car toward her. “Thought you had me all figured out, didn't you, Gabby?”

Her face remained impassive only through sheer force of will. “It's not a matter of having you figured out. It's a matter of having all the facts.”

“Bullshit. I think it's a matter of you wanting to know everything about me there is to know.” He winked, irreverent as ever. “Well, the feeling's mutual.”

“You and I—perhaps we should stick to the problem of Pete Darrow and forget all this other stuff.”

“You mean like what happened in your hall this afternoon?”

“Yes,” she said primly, “like that.”

With one hand, he trailed a finger along her jaw. “When you forget this afternoon, Gabby, you give me a call, okay?”

G
abriella took herself out for lemon scones and cappuccino at a Newbury Street cafe on Saturday morning, not to get away from Scag and his dire talk of scales and black rot so much as to remind herself why she lived in Boston. After she had seen a good hunk of the world, Boston possessed a welcome familiarity, with its own unique mix of sedateness and energy. She and her mother would come to town every year for the flower show in March and then again for the
Nutcracker
or the latest show at the Museum of Fine Arts and, at least once a year, a Red Sox game. Her mother had been a die-hard Red Sox fan; money could always be found for their annual trip to Fenway Park.

Happiness, she maintained, was something created, discovered in the everyday things. For her, the wild beach plums and lady slippers and cranberries of Cape Cod were enough. She hadn't needed to canvass the world for the rare epiphyte. It wasn't that she lacked ambition or drive, simply that she focused on goals and not yearnings. She believed in the achievable more than the intangible, and she wasn't a restless woman. No matter what she wanted or how much she wanted it, she didn't tie her happiness to getting it. Her affair with Tony Scagliotti at the age of twenty-one had taught her the necessity of that independence of spirit and soul.

Gabriella broke off another small piece of scone. It was very fresh, soft and buttery. If only, she thought, she had her mother's ability to be content. Maybe then she could get Cam Yeager out of her mind.

She had finally, and however belatedly, done her research on him, calling a reporter friend. Cam had attended Harvard as an undergraduate, majoring in history and political science. Instead of going on to law school, as he and his family had anticipated, he had opted for the police academy. There was no apparent opposition from his family, despite their surprise. When he made detective, Pete Darrow eventually became his partner.

He had earned his law degree at night, and not from Harvard, as his father had.

Gabriella's contact with him since the dinner party on Reading Point had been polite and limited. She'd found him up on the roof with Scag after work last night, helping to rearrange shelves and repair one of the fans, all with the notion of preventing further erosion of the health of her orchids. Scag had apparently called him. Cam's being the son of a governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in no way altered Scag's assessment of his brute strength.

Thomas Yeager, however, Scag remembered from his days as a judge, before he was elected governor. “ ‘Hang 'Em High Yeager,' we called him,” Scag said, neglecting to mention that he referred to all judges that same way, his opinion of them not being any loftier than that of cops and prosecutors.

Cam had tolerated her father's prejudices and stereotypes with surprising equanimity. They'd all had dinner together, ordering in pizza and eating on the roof, enjoying the downright balmy evening. Afterward, Cam had volunteered to give Scag a ride to Cambridge.

But before departing, Cam had told them that Pete Darrow was now following Lizzie on a regular basis. “I just thought you should know,” he'd said, as if it ought to be enough, as if Gabriella ought not to remind him he hadn't yet told her why he was worried about his ex-partner's job change, why he'd felt he needed to sneak onto Reading Point.

It wasn't enough, but Gabriella hadn't pushed the point. “You don't think Joshua put him up to it, do you?”

He'd shrugged. “I'm just gathering information. I'll think later.”

Sighing, Gabriella finished the last of her scone and cappuccino, paid up, and headed for the dress shop where she'd promised to meet Lizzie to get ideas for her wedding gown. Gabriella had put on jeans and an oversized blue cotton sweater that was almost too warm for the pleasant spring weather. When she arrived at the elite, intimate shop, located above a trendy hair salon, Lizzie was already there, in a crisp navy and white combo out of keeping with her obviously somber mood. The stark colors seemed to drain the color from her face.

Gabriella saw she had dark circles under her eyes, and her hands were trembling. She rushed forward, pushing past a very young bride-to-be who was carrying on about French lace. “Lizzie,” she said, “what's wrong? What's happened?”

Lizzie's green eyes misted, but she forced a small smile. “Oh, it's nothing. I'm just being silly and dramatic. You know me.”

“When you're being silly and dramatic, you don't usually look like hell.”

Gabriella spoke in a low voice in case of eavesdroppers. The shop didn't do off-the-rack dresses, reflected in its eclectic decor of cushiony love seats in a deep sage green fabric, antique marble-topped Victorian side tables, and floor-to-ceiling mirrors. There wasn't a coat hanger in sight, although a short, narrow hall led to something that looked suspiciously like a suite of dressing rooms. The salespeople were all beautifully, expensively dressed. This was a corner of the world Lizzie Fairfax had grown up in, and occasionally, through her childhood and adulthood, had flirted with rejecting.

“Lizzie,” Gabriella went on, sitting beside her on the fluffy love seat, “come on. Talk to me. What's wrong?”

She didn't meet Gabriella's eye, staring instead at her hands, twisted together in her lap. “It must just be an anxiety attack. I've been having them every now and then.” She squeezed back tears. “I've got to get hold of myself.”

Gabriella pried Lizzie's hands apart and took one in hers, feeling how clammy and cold it was. “If it's anything to do with the wedding,” she said carefully, “or Joshua or Pete Darrow…”

Lizzie was shaking her head violently. “It's nothing. Please, Gabriella.”

Gabriella glanced around, but the salespeople and fellow customers were giving them a wide berth. She turned back to Lizzie, feeling a firmness of purpose, a certain steeliness. “Lizzie, I know Pete Darrow's been following you.”

It was as if she'd let all the air out of her. Lizzie collapsed against the couch and covered her eyes with one hand, tears streaming down her cheeks. Gabriella could have gone after Darrow and strangled him herself for upsetting her friend.

“I wanted everything to be perfect,” she said, sobbing.

“Don't worry about Darrow. It's not as if you have anything to hide.”

She swung forward, her eyes wild. “It doesn't
matter
if I have anything to hide! Joshua just—he—”

“Come on,” Gabriella said, urging Lizzie to her feet, “let's get out of here. We'll look at dress designs another time.”

Lizzie gave a pathetic smile. “I wanted us to have this day together, Gabriella, just like we planned when we were thirteen. Remember?”

“I remember. We promised that whoever we married, whenever we married, we'd make sure we didn't neglect each other.”

“Except you were so sure you'd never marry,” Lizzie said, trying to laugh. “You've always been so stubborn and independent, Gabriella. I—sometimes I wish I were more like you.”

They were making progress toward the door, and Gabriella caught the eye of one of the salespeople, a rail-thin man in a trendy suit. He looked more relieved than disappointed that they were leaving.

“And sometimes,” she said, “I wish I were more like you, Lizzie.”

Lizzie scoffed. “In what way?”

“Your ability to get along with people, have fun, enjoy the moment—I like that about you.”

“Do you? Lately I—I don't know. I'm not sure I've liked much about myself.”

This from a woman who'd just announced her engagement? But this was no time to press Lizzie on that serious point, and Gabriella guided her friend down the stairs and back outside, where the bright sun only made Lizzie Fairfax seem even more distraught and drained.

“We're both survivors,” Gabriella said, hoping to help restore her confidence. “We've always been alike in that. Remember that time in Colombia when the police thought Scag and me were in cahoots with a drug lord and the drug lord thought we were in cahoots with the police? You got us on a plane before either of them could catch up with us. When you need to act, Lizzie, you always do.”

She nodded vaguely, delicately brushing away her tears with the tips of her fingers. “I've just never—I guess I'm not used to being the one on the firing line.”

“Darrow hasn't threatened you, has he?”

“No, it's not that.”

But she didn't elaborate, and Gabriella, knowing how Lizzie could clam up about her own problems, especially if they made her seem weak or overly emotional or undignified, urged her down the street. She was thinking of her lemon scones and cappuccino. Something to eat, something to drink, and maybe Lizzie would tell her more about what was upsetting her.

“Something wrong, ladies?”

Gabriella recognized Pete Darrow's cocky tone and swung around without thinking, without planning. Before he could wipe the smirk off his face, she hauled off and slammed a fist into his lower abdomen. He had just enough time to tense his rock-hard muscles, taking some of the sting out of her blow.

“Christ,” he said, “I'm glad you don't carry a gun.”

He didn't look particularly hurt or even particularly taken aback, but more amused than anything. “Stop following us,” Gabriella said. Her knees were shaking, and her hand hurt.

Lizzie grabbed her arm. “It's okay, Gabriella. Let's go.”

“Mr. Darrow,” Gabriella said, breathing hard, “if I catch you following either of us again, I'll speak to Joshua and Titus Reading or I'll call the police. You've overstepped your authority. This is harassment. You do
not
have the right to follow either of us.”

“Gabriella,” Lizzie warned, tightening her grip.

Darrow leaned back on his heels, studying first Gabriella, then Lizzie, through dark, half-closed eyes. “Joshua asked me to be here to pick you up, Lizzie,” he said finally, his voice low and steady. “That's all. He said you spent the night on Beacon Hill and walked down here this morning. But you two go ahead and think what you want to think. You just might think things through next time you do something stupid.”

His eyes fell one more time on Gabriella, apparently the one in serious danger of doing something impulsive and stupid.

“Lizzie and I were just going to a cafe—”

“No, it's all right, Gabriella,” Lizzie said, pulling herself together. “I'll go with Pete.”

Darrow patted Gabriella on the shoulder. “Relax, sweet cheeks. Neither of us will tell your boss you just nailed his security man in the gut.”

“I don't care if you do. You deserved it.”

But he and Lizzie had already started down Newbury, leaving Gabriella to figure out whether Lizzie was doing what she felt she had to do or what she wanted to do. And not just in climbing into a car with Pete Darrow. Also, Gabriella thought, in marrying Joshua Reading. What had happened to change Lizzie overnight?

Perhaps a talk with Cam Yeager was in order, in case he knew.

 

Cam fell in beside Gabriella when she turned down Commonwealth Avenue. She was walking at a brisk pace, oblivious to his presence. The famous magnolias on the mall had gone by, their leaves budding out now, the grass a plush green. People were out walking their dogs, sitting on the benches reading the newspaper, making the bet that winter, finally, was over.

“Wishing you'd hit Darrow harder?” Cam asked, getting her attention.

She glanced at him, her deep, dark eyes registering only the faintest surprise at finding him next to her. “You saw?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why didn't you do something?”

“Like what?”

“Like—I don't know what.”

“Be glad he didn't decide to hit you back.”

She made a face as if she'd just had to taste something nasty. “It was awful. I was out of control. Lizzie was so upset, and there he was. I thought he was following her again.”

“He was,” Cam said.

“But he said—”

“He was following her, Gabriella, and I was following him.”

Her look turned even more distasteful. “You two.”

“Yeah, us two.”

“He says Joshua asked him to pick Lizzie up.”

“Maybe he did.”

Gabriella stopped abruptly, her dark hair glistening in the late-morning sun. “Are you suggesting
Joshua
is having Lizzie followed?”

Cam shrugged. “It's possible. It's also possible Darrow's exceeding his mandate to make sure his boss's fiancée stays safe. Or he has no mandate and he's just being a jackass.”

“I wouldn't want
my
fiancé to keep tabs on me,” Gabriella said with a shudder.

Cam gave her a long look. “I'll bet when you were two you told your mother you can handle things from here on out on your own, thank you very much.”