Tempting Fate

She also didn’t need that kind of publicity.

But she’d have to tell Ira a thief was skulking about the premises. As Pembroke manager, he needed to know such things. She’d tell him…later.

First she doctored the worst scrape on her shin with a dab of antibacterial goo, then put two 7.7-ounce bottles of Pembroke Springs Mineral Water into an ice bucket, filled it with ice, got out a tall glass and went out to the terrace.

Her garden was bathed in cool afternoon shade, a hummingbird darting among the hollyhocks. Dani opened a bottle of mineral water, took a sip and poured the rest in her glass. Her wrist ached. So did her elbows. Her shin plain hurt.

Setting her bottle on the umbrella table, she pulled out a chair so she could sit and think and regain her composure before she did anything.

Something moved in the garden to her left.

Adrenaline pumped through her bloodstream with such velocity that she ached even more. She flew around, hoping she was overreacting, that it was just a bird or a squirrel.

It wasn’t.

A man materialized from behind the dogwood. Dani reached for her empty Pembroke Springs bottle. He was strongly built, around six feet, striking but not exactly handsome. He had very alert dark eyes and a small scar under his left eye.

He looked capable of coming at a woman half his size from behind and giving her a good shove.

“Afternoon,” he said. “I didn’t think the cottage was occupied.”

Nice try. Her fingers curled around the cool neck of her green bottle. “Who are you?”

“I’d be happy to tell you if you’ll think twice about throwing that bottle at me.”

But Dani had grown up in New York City and knew better than to think twice or give anyone a chance to explain something like pitching her across her own bedroom.

She whipped the bottle as hard as she could, aiming for the man’s head. Before it could strike its mark, she spun around and bolted for her kitchen.

Behind her, she heard a distinct curse as the bottle hit its target or came close.

She grabbed her car keys off their hook in the kitchen and, while she was at it, the eight-inch cast-iron frying pan soaking in the sink. Water spilled out over her legs, stinging her scraped shins. She raced through the dining room and into the living room, surprised at how clearly she was thinking. She’d get to her car, head for the main house, alert security. Ira would say she should have called him or the police in the first place….

She scooted out the front door, bounded down the brick walk with her frying pan and came to the gravel driveway where she kept her very used car parked.

The man from the garden was leaning against the door on the driver’s side, looking unhurt and in amazingly good humor.

Dani raised the frying pan.

“Throw that thing at me,” he said amiably, “and I’ll duck. You’ll break a window. Won’t accomplish much. Besides, I’m harmless.”

She kept the frying pan raised high. “You don’t look harmless.”

He smiled. “I consider that a gift.”

What kind of man was he? She lowered the frying pan a fraction of an inch. She thought he noticed. But it was heavy, and her wrist hurt. “Who are you, and what were you doing in my garden?”

“I didn’t mean to startle you.” He hadn’t moved off her car and didn’t seem particularly worried that she might decide to bonk him on the head after all. It didn’t appear her bottle had struck home. “My name’s Zeke Cutler. I would have taken more care if I’d realized the cottage was occupied and you’d just been robbed.”

She almost dropped the frying pan. “How do you know I was just robbed?”

“A woman throwing bottles and arming herself with an iron skillet is usually a dead giveaway.” But his smile and the touch of humor in his dark, dark eyes gave way to a frown and a squint, a serious expression of determination and self-assurance. He seemed to know of what he spoke. “So are bruised wrists, skinned elbows, scraped shins.”

“You’re very observant.”

“However,” he said, the humor flickering back to his eyes, “if you’re Dani Pembroke, and I take it you are, you could have gotten banged up fetching a kite down from a tree or climbing rocks.”

She straightened, suddenly acutely aware of the position in which this man had found her. Bruised, scared, robbed. “Are you a reporter? Can’t you guys leave me alone? Look, I haven’t admitted anything—”

“I’m not a reporter.” Zeke Cutler pulled himself from her car. His eyes never left her. He was, she thought, one intensely controlled man. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Did you get a good look at the man who attacked you?”

She refused to answer. What if this was an act and he was the one who’d attacked her? What if he really was a reporter?

“You didn’t call the police,” he said.

“What makes you so sure?”

His expression was unreadable now, any humor gone. “It’s an educated guess.”

“Well, Mr. Cutler, I appreciate your concern, but if you don’t mind, I’d like you off my property. Under the circumstances, you’re making me nervous. I’m sure you understand.”

“Suit yourself.”

Without further argument, he started down the driveway. His running shoes scrunched on the gravel. Dani made herself notice his clothes: jeans and dark blue pullover. Black sport watch. No socks. He looked clean enough. And he moved with a speed, grace and economy that struck her as inordinately sexy and not entirely unexpected. It suddenly occurred to her that he could be a lost guest from the Pembroke. But he didn’t seem the type to stay at a spa-inn, nor, certainly, the type to get lost.

He seemed more the type who could have pitched her across her room and lied about it.

She waited until he was out of sight. Then she returned to her cottage, pried the frying pan from her grip and picked up the phone again.

This time she didn’t stop dialing until she’d finished. But it wasn’t Ira she called, or the police, or Pembroke security, or any of her friends, or, God knew, her father or grandfathers or her sweet aunt Sara. She called the one person she could always call when she found her house ransacked and a strange man in her garden, and that was her grandmother, Mattie Witt.

Dani Pembroke wasn’t what Zeke had expected.

He entered the rose garden, figuring that if he’d just robbed Dani Pembroke, it was where he’d head. But as he stepped through the iron gate, memories—dreams that were dead and done with—assaulted him. He pictured how the garden had looked twenty-five years ago, with Mattie Witt sitting in its overgrown midst, wearing her orange flight suit as she’d worked on the basket of her hot-air balloon.

He’d been a fool to let the past determine his actions. He couldn’t afford to make that kind of mistake again.

But there was a lot of Mattie in her granddaughter, in her dark good looks, her independence. And with her zest for a fight—an iron skillet, for pete’s sake—a flash of Nicholas Pembroke.

Instinctively Zeke knew all those qualities were what Dani wanted people to see in her. She wouldn’t want them to see the mystery and vulnerability he’d detected behind her direct manner, the parts of her she held back, the parts that would remind people of her gentle, sensitive, lost mother. Her eyes, as black as Lilli’s had been blue, said she had secrets and knew you knew she had them but wasn’t going to tell you what they were anyway.

There was a lack of self-pity about the owner of Pembroke Springs that Zeke could admire.

And, given the circumstances, a hotheadedness that worried him.