A Rare Chance (6 page)

“I was just going to call you,” she said. “I wanted to make sure you got home all right.”

“No you didn't. You'd have called last night.”

She gave him a cool look. “You don't give anyone room to maneuver, do you?”

He grinned. “Not an inch.”

“How's your ankle?”

“It hurts.”

He took in the crowded greenhouse with a quick glance. “Quite the orchid nut, aren't you?”

“They're a harmless enough hobby.”

“For most people.”

She swallowed. Did he know about Scag?

He regarded her with an efficiency she'd come to expect from him, his sweeping, penetrating glance taking her in from head to toe. She was relieved she'd changed from her gym clothes for her lunch with Lizzie. Even so, her casual jeans and sweater weren't a business suit, weren't a dinner dress. She felt more exposed, more vulnerable to whatever Cam Yeager wanted to see in her.

He ran a thick finger along the delicate edge of the orchid nearest him. “Some of these guys aren't much to look at, but this one's okay. What's it called?”

“A brassavola glauca. There are about fifteen species of brassavola. They can grow as either epiphytes or lithophytes.”

“You're losing me.”

She smiled. “Epiphytic orchids grow on other plants, usually trees. Lithophytes grow on rocks. Then there are terrestrials, which grow in the ground.”

“Opportunistic little devils, aren't they? You know,
orchid
comes from the Greek word
orchis.
”

“Yes,” Gabriella said, deliberately matter-of-fact. She would not let this man rattle her. “It means testicle.”

He glanced at her. “I don't see the resemblance myself.”

“The resemblance isn't in the flower. It's in the roots.”

“Ah.”

“Are you fluent in Greek, or is
orchis
just one of those things that's stuck in your mind?”

“The benefits of a classical education. I had three years of Greek in high school. Certain words have stood the test of time better than others. Sixteen years old, I'm going to remember
orchis.
”

Gabriella gave him a steady look. “I hope you're not going to make me regret rescuing you last night.”

“I don't know. Do you have a lot of regrets, Gabriella Starr?”

She maintained her poise despite the slight darkening of his eyes, the shift in his stance as it became not menacing so much as exceedingly confident. As if he had charge of their conversation, even if she might not know it. The suspect under the hot light. His irreverent talk had been a deliberate way of softening her up, taking her off guard.

“We all have regrets,” she said.

“Yeah. I guess we do.” He didn't push, but Gabriella had no illusions he'd backed off. “You made it home all right last night? No trouble from Darrow?”

She shook her head. “I saw him briefly. He gave no indication he suspected I'd rescued you.”

“Means nothing. He hasn't followed you today?”

“Not that I know of.”

Cam nodded. “Right. Come on,” he said, turning on his heels, “you can show me what's through this door. More orchids, I presume?”

He went ahead of her through the aluminum door into Number Three, walking with a very slight limp. This last section of her greenhouse was like a jungle, warm, humid. Scores of orchids hung from hooks, drooped from shelves, crept along tree ferns and bark slabs. Many were blooming, many were not. Few had felt the effects of Scag's loving, skilled care.

“If I weren't already curious about you,” Cam Yeager said, glancing back at her, “I would be now.”

Already taken aback by his presence, Gabriella felt her throat go tight and dry. She could barely breathe in the cloying, warm air. She watched Cam walk down the aisle, touching orchid leaves, pseudobulbs, blossoms. He seemed alternately amused and impressed by her collection.

“I doubt you're here to look at orchids,” Gabriella said.

He came back toward her. “You know a lot about orchids?”

“A fair amount. My father and mother both taught me. My mother was a florist on Cape Cod. She died three years ago. My father's Tony Scagliotti. He's one of the world's foremost experts on orchids.” She regarded Cam with a determined steadiness. “But I think you already know that.”

He smiled. It wasn't a gentle or disingenuous smile. He didn't mean to make her feel better. He meant simply to let her know that now, finally, they were on the same wavelength. “Yep.”

“It's not a secret, you know.”

“I could have asked and you'd have told me all about yourself?”

“I didn't say—”

“Right. You didn't say. You let me find out on my own, which I did. I checked with my trusty computer.”

“But you didn't know his name. You only had my name.”

“Oh, that part was easy. Basically I fed your name into a computer and out popped your mother's name, your father's name, your date of birth—”

“God, I hate computers.”

She flew around, suddenly uncomfortable, unable to get a decent breath in the cloying air. She stormed back up the aisle toward Number Two, not caring if Cam Yeager followed. How dare he investigate her like a common criminal? If they were in this mess together, his idea of “together” and hers were entirely different. He wasn't even close to treating her like an equal partner.

“Helps to be an ex-cop,” he said behind her, unrepentant.

She tore open the door to Number Two, holding on to it as she glared back at him. “Did it say Scag and my mother never married?”

“Pretty much.”

Groaning in frustration, she pushed through into the middle section of the greenhouse. She stood in the narrow aisle of pebbles, letting the drop in temperature and the steady flow of cooler air from the fans calm her. She could sense Cam's presence behind her, hear the creak of the aluminum door as it shut. He was in full control of himself, maybe in his view of her too.

“I suppose your computer also told you I got a C-plus in Algebra II in high school.”

“No, but you graduated college magna cum laude.”

She fastened her gaze on a perfect oncidium. Its sprays of small, delicate flowers, its symmetry and beauty, all helped ease the tension that had gripped her. It was inexplicable, uncontrollable. What did she care if Cam Yeager knew about Scag? If he saw just how incorrigible she was when it came to orchids? She needed only to focus on what he was up to regarding Pete Darrow and the Readings, not on what he knew about her and her past. She didn't care if he approved of her. She didn't care if he understood her.

Slowly, her muscles loosened, her breathing calmed, and she was able to unclench her jaw.

Cam Yeager was a challenge. He was not a crisis.

“The bosses know Scag's back in town?”

She shook her head, still unable to speak. Was Yeager determined to stay one step ahead of her? Or would he level with her one of these days, tell her everything he was holding back?

“What about Pete Darrow?” he asked.

“I don't think so,” she said.

“He's going to find out. Count on it. Look, Gabriella, I have nothing to gain from shooting your star out of the sky.” His voice softened, and he moved closer, not quite touching her. With the orchids, the narrow aisle, the close confines of the small greenhouse, she was even more intensely aware of him. “I'm just trying to keep an old friend from self-destructing, if that's what he's doing. But you need to know what you're up against. If you have anything to hide, Pete Darrow's going to find out what it is.”

“I have nothing to hide.” She brushed back her hair, perspiration dampening her forehead. Why did she feel as if she
did
have something to hide? “Pete Darrow can dig all he wants. He won't find anything.”

“Any reason he might think you know anything about Joshua Reading's attempted kidnapping that you haven't mentioned?”

“No. I resent your even asking.”

He shrugged. “I'll go up any dark alley, Gabby Starr. You might as well learn that about me. If it'll get me where I want to be, I'll go.”

“Must have been a real treat being your partner.” She felt lightheaded, everything on the verge of spinning out of control. “Look, the only ‘secret' I have is that I haven't told anyone my father's in town. Frankly, it's nobody else's business.”

“Would the Reading brothers think they ought to know?”

“They might. It's not that they object to Scag, but they wouldn't like the publicity he could generate. They prefer to control when and how their names get in the paper. They know that part of the way I go about things can be attributed to my background. But they don't want it coming back to haunt them.”

Cam touched the foliage of a cattleya, inadvertently brushing her fingers with his. “Tough to explain to those bankers you negotiate with that you served time in prison.”

So he knew about that too. “It was just for a few weeks.”

“You and Scag got tossed in the slammer plenty of times for breaking the law.”

She shrugged, wishing she felt as nonchalant as she was trying to look. “Rarely more than for a night or two, until we could get things straightened out.”

“You'd been working in finance here in Boston, showing no inclination to go traipsing off with your loony father. What changed your mind?”

“My mother's death.”

He nodded, his sea-blue eyes softening. “That'll do it.”

“I'd made some good investments—lucky ones, actually—right after I earned my MBA. So I could afford to succumb to the fantasies I had of Scag's life. I'd always considered it too nomadic for me, unstable, even irresponsible. My mother never bad-mouthed him or sugar-coated what he was, just let me figure it out on my own. After she died—” She breathed out, remembering. “Scag had gotten this grant, and I had this money, and somehow life suddenly just seemed too short. So off we went.”

“No regrets?”

“I learned a great deal during those two years. I'm better at what I do because of them. I might be a little more unorthodox than in the past, but it works.”

“Sweetheart, if you're like your old man, ‘unorthodox' is an understatement. He's been arrested dozens of times for trespassing, harassment, being a general pain in the ass. He's been kicked out of countries and thrown into jails all over the world, fined right into bankruptcy. And for two years, you with him.”

“I'm not bankrupt,” she said lightly.

But he didn't smile. She could feel his eyes on her, feel their intensity. She couldn't let his natural irreverence lull her into thinking he wasn't alert, thorough, absolutely tenacious. A former police detective. A man clearly determined to get to the bottom of his friend's decision to go to work for Joshua Reading, no matter what it cost.

She sighed. “My father's uncompromising when it comes to protecting orchid habitats and stopping orchid poachers.”

“Poachers?”

“People who would steal endangered orchids and sell them abroad. It's illegal, but that doesn't stop someone truly determined to get his hands on a particular species. Some orchid aficionados have to have every wild species in their possession, no matter how endangered. Most of the orchids the average person would recognize—the ones I have here—are produced from seed or by division, which can be tricky, or through cross-breeding and cloning. They're not wild.”

Cam drew back, eyeing her. “I'll bet Scag's tough on poachers.”

She licked her lips, remembering to whom she was speaking. Cops, Scag liked to say, were pretty much the same the world over. “He never hurt anyone or seriously damaged any property.”

“So what's he doing here?”

“He fell. He injured his knee. A friend of mine brought him back here. She's often rescued him in the past. Me too, for that matter. From afar, anyway. Lizzie doesn't like slipping her neck into the noose.”

“Unlike Tony Scagliotti and daughter.”

She gave him a mock bow, refusing to apologize for who she was—or who her father was.

“Having your old man back in town's not like having a dead body under the sofa, but I can see it might keep the Reading boys awake nights if they knew. Weird having to explain to the press about having someone on the payroll who nearly got herself shot in the behind by some Venezuelan banana grower.”

“That's an exaggeration. I got stuck up in a tree and he sent an armed guard after me.”

“Sounds like nearly getting yourself shot to me. Where was Scag?”

“Getting help.”

“In other words, making a fast exit.”