Tempting Fate (16 page)

The kitchen was bright, airy, functional and spotless, with open shelves, pots hanging from cast-iron hooks, stacks of pure white cotton towels and aprons, white cabinets and miles of countertop. Kate was decorating petits fours at her butcher-block table.

“Egad, Dani,” Kate said, putting down her frosting bowl, “you look like the whirling dervish. What's up?”

“I need to know if you've found anything else out about Zeke Cutler.”

“Aha.” She wiped her hands on her apron and gestured to a chair across from her, but Dani didn't sit down. “Well, for starters, you didn't tell me the man's a stud. I saw him with my own two eyes, and he—Hey, are you blushing?”

“It's hot in here. Where did you see him?”

“Outside your grampy's place last night. Told him not to pester you or he'd have me to deal with. Didn't seem to bother him much. But as you can imagine, I've plumbed my sources for any information I can on the man.”

“And?”

“And I've come up with precious little beyond what I've already told you.”

“But you have something,” Dani said.

Kate sighed. “Yeah, but what about you? Are you going to tell me what's going on?”

“I will, Kate—you know that. But right now I just don't have time to go into all the boring details.”

“I can't imagine that any details about you and our white hat would be boring. But before you whirl out of here, I will tell you what remarkably little I know.” She frowned at Dani. “Will you please eat a petit four or something and calm down?”

Realizing she'd been pacing, Dani did grab an unfrosted petit four and pop it in her mouth, but she didn't even begin to calm down. She needed to find Zeke and get some answers. Maybe she'd wring his neck while she was at it. She wouldn't think about his dark eyes and strong thighs. She'd just kick his sneaky butt out of her life. He had invaded her territory, her life, and she'd bet everything she owned he hadn't begun to tell her what he was doing in Saratoga. And it wasn't the kind of risky gamble three generations of Pembrokes had lost their shirts on. It was a sure bet.

“Have you talked to Mattie?” Kate asked quietly.

Dani shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Are you going to?”

She felt the weight of the book on Joe Cutler in her bag. She already suspected that Mattie—her own grandmother, the one person she'd always trusted and believed in without question—hadn't told her the truth when she'd given no indication she knew Zeke. Maybe she hadn't lied outright. But she'd held back, and that Dani found disturbing.

“As soon as I know more,” she said. “Zeke could just be using me to get to Mattie—for what reason I can't imagine, except that she's a reclusive, world-famous movie star.” She tried to control her impatience. “Look, Kate, I know I owe you an explanation, but—”

“But you're going to start spitting blood if I don't talk.”

“I'll tell you everything, I promise.”

“Yeah, yeah. Meanwhile, would you like to know where our white hat's sitting at the Chandler this afternoon?”

The weather at the Saratoga Course was dry, clear and warm, perfect for watching skinny-legged racehorses run around in circles. Zeke had borrowed a private box on the clubhouse balcony. By the sixth race of the afternoon, he'd drunk one large, lukewarm beer, watched all the people he cared to watch and decided that horse racing had to be more exciting if you knew what was going on. He didn't. The people around him, however, clearly did. They seemed to be having a grand time for themselves.

The track's shaded grounds were jam-packed, the fifty thousand or so who'd come to see the Chandler Stakes running the gamut from shabby pickpockets to the superrich in their straw hats and panamas. Zeke had already checked out the Chandler box. Sara and Roger were there with old Eugene and a few guests. He was quite sure none of them had seen him. He was good at not being seen when he didn't want to be seen.

He had a decent view from his seat, but the backstretch was still a blur, and everything happened so fast that by the time he figured out which horse was which, the race was over. Most of the people around him had come prepared with binoculars and well-marked programs. Strategically placed monitors and an announcer helped make up for what Zeke couldn't see or understand, but the truth was, he didn't care which horse won any particular race. He was there for the atmosphere, for a sense of what drew people here year after year. It wasn't just the racing, which was supposedly impressive. It was more—in his opinion, at least—the history of the place, its continuity, its sense of its own past. The graceful iron fences, wooden grandstand and clubhouse, the red-and-white awnings, the flowers and trees and fountains and ultragreen grass, the well-dressed crowd—they all provided a tangible link with a bit of America's colorful past. Television couldn't capture that feeling. Neither, Zeke had to admit, could it fully capture the breathtaking beauty, the awesome power and speed, of a dozen thoroughbreds thundering around one of the world's great tracks.

He sipped his second beer. Since the average race lasted less than two minutes, most of the afternoon, technically, was between races. In his next life, Zeke thought, he'd run a racetrack concession stand.

Then he spotted Dani threading her way up the aisle, and the afternoon suddenly got a lot more interesting.

She had on a simple short white dress and no hat, and a pair of binoculars hung from her neck.

She looked even sexier than she had last night in Mattie's sleek dress.

As she moved closer, Zeke saw that she was also on a tear, hanging by her fingernails. Irritated about something and getting more irritated the more she thought about it.

She dropped into the seat beside him, a jumble of nerves, determination and energy. He could smell the clean fresh scent of the same soap in his room at the Pembroke. The bruise on her wrist had turned to a splotch of red, purple, blue and yellow. Her shins still looked sore. She sat for a few seconds without saying a word.

Finally Zeke said, “Afternoon, Ms. Pembroke.”

She cut her black eyes at him. “Mr. Cutler.”

Her tone was frigid, and she inhaled through her nose, one angry woman. Zeke took another sip of beer. “I'm just one among tens of thousands here. How'd you find me?”

“I looked for your shining armor.”

For a no-nonsense entrepreneur, she was good at sarcasm. “Well, it couldn't have been that difficult—the guy I borrowed this little box from is fairly high profile.”

“Someone you rescued from the jaws of death.”

“You don't sound impressed.”

Those eyes were on him again, telling him she'd just as soon go for his throat as sit there and talk. But there was fear there, too. She'd had her world turned upside down before, and now it must have seemed to her it was happening again. And maybe it was. He suddenly wished he'd told Sam to take the first eastbound plane he could get. With his ability to zero in on a person's insecurities, fears, strengths, the sources of his or her anger and frustrations, Sam would know what to say to a scared, angry, hotheaded ex-heiress. Zeke sure as hell didn't. Likely enough, whatever he said would only irritate her more, or, worse, suck her deeper into whatever was going on.

She stared down at the empty track. It was, of course, between races. “Who's your pick for the Chandler?”

“Dani,” Zeke said carefully, “you didn't come here to talk horses.”

“I'd stay away from the favorite. The Chandler's done its fair share over the past hundred years in helping Saratoga earn its reputation as the ‘graveyard of favorites.'”

But underneath her rigidity and distance, Zeke sensed just how upset and vulnerable Dani was. He could see her twenty-five years ago, a nine-year-old waiting for her mother to come home, trying to make sense of what was going on around her.

Zeke became very still, blotting out the sounds and commotion of the milling crowd. He didn't take his eyes off her. “Tell me why you're here,” he said.

“The Chandler and the Kentucky Derby are both one-and-a-quarter-mile races for three-year-olds. Since the Chandler's run in the summer instead of the spring, the horses are a few months older, more experienced. Many experts think that added maturity makes the Chandler a better race.”

Zeke decided to go along with her, play her game, for now. “What do you think?”

“I don't care about the Chandler.” She turned to him, her face white and her eyes huge and aching. It wasn't easy for her to be there. “I never have.”

“I'm not much on racing myself. The horses are just names and numbers to me. I haven't placed a single bet. Still, it makes for a pleasant afternoon.”

“You're just the opposite of Nick—my grandfather. He'd come to the track and not watch a single race, just sit in front of the monitors as close to the betting window as he could get.” Her tone was neither affectionate nor bitter, simply matter-of-fact. But her skin was still pale, and Zeke could feel her emotion like a hot, dangerous breeze. “I want you off my property by six o'clock.”

But something had changed since last night. There was more at stake now. She hadn't just found his car in the Pembroke lot and decided to hunt him up and personally give him the boot. “That's all?” he asked, dubious.

She said tightly, “Yes.”

“Dani, you're not telling me everything.”

She shot him a look. “And you've told me everything?”

Among her very high standards, Zeke suspected, was a profound distaste for people who neglected to tell her everything she thought she had a right to know. And he hadn't even begun.

She looked down at the track, still quiet. With her angular Pembroke features, she cut a handsome profile, but Zeke could see the fatigue, the shadows under her beautiful, dark eyes, the straight, uncompromising line of her mouth. He thought of the woman with tears on her cheeks as she cut her kite loose at dawn. How to figure Dani Pembroke?

“Your lifestyle's caught up with you,” she said without looking at him.

Zeke felt himself tense. “What do you mean?”

“I mean—” and now she threw the full force of her black eyes on him “—that your room at the Pembroke has been turned upside down.”

Falling back on his training and experience, Zeke let his muscles relax, kept his face impassive. “Was anyone hurt?”

“Not that I know of.” In the bright sun, her eyes had narrowed to two black slits. “None of the other rooms were touched. It wasn't a random act of violence. It was deliberate. Whoever got into room 304 was specifically looking for your room—or for you.”

“And you think that someone was maybe the same person who knocked you three ways from Sunday—”

“I think there's a high probability of a connection.”

No doubt she was right, not that Zeke had any intention of telling her so. This wasn't her territory. She bottled water and made people feel good for a living. She didn't deal with the likes of Quint Skinner, who, Zeke had no doubts whatsoever, had tossed his room. It was a message.
You're not the big shot you think you are. I can reach you.
Or just Skinner's way of trying to find out what Zeke was really doing in Saratoga.

“So you think this break-in was aimed at me personally and not at you or your company?” he asked calmly.

“You're the expert.” She gave him a look that made him realize how she'd succeeded in the competitive beverage and hotel businesses, how she'd gone on with her life after her mother's disappearance, her father's embezzlement, her war with the Chandler half of her family. Dani Pembroke was a survivor. She added smoothly, “After you're off my property.”

He'd tackle that one later.

She jumped up, turned to him, her black eyes challenging. “I'm going to find out what you're doing in Saratoga.”

Before he could decide whether or not to grab her and level with her, she was off, her small size helping her speed through the crowd. If he was to have a prayer of catching up with her, he'd have had to leap over seats and generally make a scene. He'd done that sort of thing before, gun in hand, even. But right now he wasn't sure what good it would do.

He made himself settle back in his seat. He sipped his warm beer and listened to the people around him, the idle chatter, the laughter.

And he reminded himself of his mission in Saratoga.

He was to find out if the gold key Lilli Chandler Pembroke had worn the night she disappeared was the same gold key in the recent photograph of her daughter twenty-five years later. He was to find out if the blackmail letter Joe had given to Naomi had anything to do with Lilli's disappearance.

If his brother had died knowing what had happened to the missing Chandler heiress. If he'd been a part of it.

That, Zeke thought, was his mission in Saratoga.

As she made her way through the packed clubhouse, Dani tried to blot out the sights and sounds and smells of the track, whose history and traditions were as personal to her as a family picnic. She remembered her mother's blond hair shining in the bright afternoon sun and her gentle smile as she'd held her young daughter's hand walking down the steep aisle.