“Honey, a lot of people know an awful lot about you, so that’s no big deal.” He was on his feet. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride.”

“I really don’t think-”

“I’m harmless,” he said.

“So you told me yesterday afternoon. And as I said then, you don’t look harmless.”

He shrugged. “Given my business, I suppose that’s just as well. My car’s in the Pembroke lot.”

“I have no intention of driving anywhere with you.”

“Sure you do.” He glanced down at her, noticing that the luscious red of her lips only made her skin seem paler and her eyes blacker. “It’ll save you having to park your car and risk spoiling your entrance.”

Her mouth snapped shut. “I was planning on walking.”

“And risk getting caught by the paparazzi in holey yellow sneakers?”

“Mr. Cutler-”

“You’ve got to stop that mister business.”

“I’m not going to hire you.”

“Fine, but will you let me drive you to your granddaddy’s mansion?”

“It’s a cottage.”

“Where I come from,” he said, “it’s a mansion.”

And he wondered if someday he’d tell her where he came from, or if she’d find out on her own, if Mattie would tell her, or someone else who knew about Joe and him and the ugly possibilities of their trip to Saratoga twenty-five years ago. But he couldn’t think about that now. He had to concentrate on the present, on the job he’d come to do. As he’d told Roger Stone last night, Dani Pembroke wasn’t his problem.

They headed together down the brick walk, and when the walk divided, one way going toward her cottage, the other toward the main house and the parking lot, she stayed with him. Zeke made no comment. When they came to his rented car, a nondescript midsize sedan, he unlocked the passenger door, opening it for her. Minding her feather, she slid in.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she said, pulling the door shut herself.

Her cheeks, he noticed, had gained some color.

She played tour guide on the drive up Union Avenue and Broadway, pointing out where the gargantuan United States Hotel had once stood-“It was built in 1874 and occupied seven acres”-and the Grand Union and Congress Hall, where the wealthy and famous of that earlier time had played. The massive hotels were all gone, burned or torn down.

“The Adelphi survived,” she said, gesturing to a Victorian hotel in the middle of Broadway. “It’s small by the standards of nineteenth-century Saratoga-it’s been completely restored in keeping with the era. I love having wine in the courtyard with friends.”

Zeke tried to imagine having a quiet glass of wine with her, amid flowers and greenery, with no agenda. But, with practiced skill, he shoved the image aside. He wasn’t a dreamer. Not anymore.

He drove straight up Broadway, through the light where the wide, busy street became North Broadway, quiet, residential, lined with Victorian mansions. He pulled up in front of the cream-colored Italianate that a Chandler had built. A couple hundred people had gathered on the side lawn. From what Zeke could see, they were dressed for a good time among their fellow rich. He could hear the soft strains of a jazz trio.

“To think,” Dani muttered, “I could be picking beetles off my rosebushes.”

The mystery and vulnerability that he’d detected in her that afternoon were there once again, playing at the edges of her eyes, at the corners of her frown. The smart comeback he had ready slid right out of his mind.

She already had her yellow sneakers off and was slipping on her red high heels. Her black eyes, liquid and maybe a little afraid, fastened on him. “Thank you for the ride.”

“Knock ’em dead, angel.”

Her smile was full of mischief and pain as she climbed out of his car, teetering a moment on her too-high heels. Then she started down the sidewalk in her saucy vintage dress and ostrich plume, a slim, fit, dark-eyed, dark-haired woman who didn’t look anything at all like the tall, fair, proper, ever-gracious Chandlers.

Zeke had never seen anyone look more alone.

“Yikes,” Kate Murtagh said. “Your checkbook must be as moth-eaten as that dress.”

She planted a tray of skewered tortellini, drenched in a spicy-smelling sauce, onto a server’s outstretched arms. Dani felt a touch of relief at Kate’s blunt words; she was among friends again. She wished she knew what had gotten into her to accept Zeke Cutler’s ride. Of course, she wished she knew what had gotten into her even to be here tonight.

“You’re just mad because I didn’t take your advice.”

“Aaron,” Kate said to one of her cohorts, a paunchy man arranging nasturtiums on a pasta salad, “make sure the shades are up when this crowd gets a load of this outfit. Everybody may drop dead, and we won’t have to serve dinner.”

Dani laughed, trying to stay out of the way as servers flowed in and out. “Do I look that bad?”

“You amaze me sometimes. Can’t you look in the mirror and tell you look terrific? A little bizarre maybe, but terrific. Honestly, Dani, I’ve never met anyone as gorgeous as you are who has no idea-maybe who doesn’t want to have any idea…” Kate glared at her, as if Dani had done something particularly annoying. “You could have your pick of men.”

“Maybe it’s lousy pickings.”

“And maybe you’re just too afraid to let anyone care about you.”

“How can you deliver a lecture while serving two hundred?”

Kate grinned, unembarrassed. “Talent. Where’d you get the shoes?”

“I bought them.”

“Mark the calendar, Aaron.”

The teasing loosened the tightness in Dani’s stomach, not just from having to face the Chandlers and the crowd, but from having spent fifteen minutes in a car with her mysterious guest.

“Kate, I need a favor. A guy’s been following me around.”

“Who?”

“His name’s Zeke Cutler. He’s some kind of professional white knight-he’s staying at the Pembroke.”

Kate wiped her hands on her oversize apron. “Is he here?”

“I don’t know. He drove me over-”

“Oh-ho.”

Dani felt her cheeks burn. “It’s not what you think. I just thought with your sources you could find out more about him.”

“The name’s familiar, but I don’t know why. I’ll see what I can find out.” A woman who missed nothing, she indicated Dani’s bruised wrist with a curt nod. “He do that?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Dani, what-”

“It’s a long story, and I know you’re busy. Later, okay?”

“You’re damn right later.”

A server raced over for more tortellini, and while Kate got to work, Dani made her exit. Soon, she thought, she’d tell Kate about the burglary, about finding Zeke in her garden, about Mattie’s reaction. But first she had to concentrate on tonight.

Memory took her back through the house. She hadn’t been there since Mattie came to take her back to New York while the search for her mother continued. Nothing in the big, elegant house seemed to have changed.

Outside, the breeze held the fragrance, still familiar to her, of the Chandler flower gardens, and she remembered the girl she’d been, so feisty and determined and free, willing to take on her grandfather or the whole world, it didn’t matter. She’d had a mother who’d loved her and a father who’d been honest, and she’d adored them both, at nine not seeing them as flawed human beings, and never feeling alone. But that was then.

She rounded the curved front porch with its baskets of pink-and-white petunias, heard someone whisper her name, and people began looking in her direction. In seconds a hush had come over the two hundred Chandler guests.

Dani hesitated, her resolve wavering. She knew these people. They’d been her mother’s friends. They’d helped look for her-they’d joined search parties and talked to the police and called everyone they knew for any possible tips, any hints about Lilli’s state of mind, where she might have gone. What might have happened to her. In the ensuing years they’d cooperated with the scores of private detectives Eugene Chandler had enlisted to find his missing daughter.