“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.”