“My dear, it’s not poison, but I intend to give only a very small quantity of water from that particular spring. It’s quite strong and really more suited to bathing. No, the water I intend to give away is from the springs on the other side of the woods. Its waters are far tastier.”

All in all, John hadn’t been impressed with Ulysses Pembroke and, gradually, had come to admit his own father wasn’t much better. Cut from the same cloth, his mother liked to say. John, however, had been determined to be different. He’d do something positive with his life.

Tired of the Pembrokes, he’d asked if he could investigate the track.

Mattie had scrutinized him with a care and closeness that was unusual for her. Her child-rearing philosophy was laissez-faire, sometimes bordering on neglect-which she considered quite healthy. “Since you’re too young to gamble, I suppose it’s all right.”

Small for his age, John had managed to slip onto the grounds unnoticed and soon found himself at the paddocks, staring up at the shiniest, most beautiful horse he’d ever seen. A girl a couple of years younger than he came up to him. Her neatly curled blond hair was parted in the middle and held off her face with mother-of-pearl barrettes, and she wore a blue-flowered dress and navy buckled shoes.

“I don’t know you,” she’d said.

“Well, I don’t know you, either.”

She’d laughed. “Everybody knows me.”

He couldn’t tell if she meant to sound snobby or if she really thought everybody knew her. “Well, everybody knows my mother and father. My mother’s a movie star, and my father’s a famous movie director-and my great-grandfather was a train robber. I’m staying at his estate.”

“I know all the estates in Saratoga.” Her blue eyes had glistened as she took up the challenge. “You don’t have one.”

“The Pembroke-”

“Oh, that. It’s all boarded up. Father says it has rats.”

John had felt his first sting of real humiliation. “We just keep it that way so no one bothers the treasure.”

From her expression, he knew he had her interest, but her father, tall, fair and imposing, showed up and, with just a look, managed to scold her for running off by herself. “Lilli, I’ve warned you to stay away from the stable boys.”

“He’s not a stable boy. His mother’s a movie star and-”

“A movie star?” Eugene Chandler had turned and appraised John with such frank distaste he could still feel his cheeks burning decades later. He’d felt shabby in his jeans, in contrast to the rich man’s handsome gray suit. “You’re Mattie Witt and Nicholas Pembroke’s boy. Well, run along. You’ve no business here.”

Mattie had been unsympathetic to her son’s dejection. Why on earth should he care what the Chandlers thought of him? She was truly and honestly mystified. Only much, much later did John come to understand that his mother’s fierce independence hadn’t come naturally to her, that she’d had to fight and sacrifice-and suffer-for her treasured freedom.

That lonely summer, he’d only understood how much he’d wanted the Chandlers to approve of him. For the rest of that first August in Saratoga, he’d explored the Pembroke estate and Saratoga’s library and all its museums and streets, not just for a sense of the Pembroke past, of their abused energy and promise, but for a peek at his own destiny.

He knew he’d be different. He had to be.

Ten years later he and Lilli were married. Eugene grew fond of his son-in-law. “I swear, John,” he would say, “sometimes I forget you’re even a Pembroke.”

He’d lived to be reminded.

Now, so many years later, John ran his hand through his thinning gray hair and wiped the sweat from his brow, pushing aside thoughts of what might have been. He had to focus on what was. His wife had disappeared ten years into their marriage, and he’d become a bum and a wanderer and no kind of father to their only daughter.

Looking around him, he realized he’d missed the hundredth running of the Chandler Stakes. He glanced at the scoreboard. The homely bay had won. If he’d bet just fifty bucks…

“Look at yourself,” he whispered. “What’s become of you?”

He pulled himself away from the fence and almost ran straight into a brick wall of a man. He started to apologize, then the fellow said, “John Pembroke,” as if he were a ghost.

John squinted. “Who are you?”

The man smiled, not a particularly friendly smile. “I take it you don’t recognize me. I’m not surprised. It’s been a while.”

But John only needed a minute, a chance to pull himself back out of his memories and self-recrimination. He was good at faces, and he’d read the book on Joe Cutler, and had heard his younger brother had quit college and gone into security work.

“Zeke Cutler,” he said. “You and your brother came to my office looking for my mother.”

They’d refused to tell him why, and he’d sent them packing. A couple of country boys from Cedar Springs, Tennessee. Mattie didn’t need them pestering her. She’d never mentioned if the two brothers from her hometown had found her, and he’d never mentioned he’d seen them. Mattie was entitled to her discomfort with her past. John had enough with his.

He looked at the man Zeke Cutler had become. It couldn’t be easy being Joe Cutler’s little brother. “What do you want with me?”

“I thought,” Zeke said in his calm, efficient way, “you might want to walk up to the Pembroke with me.”

Given his daughter’s disposition, John decided having a security and protection consultant at his side was a pretty good idea. Besides, he wanted to talk to Zeke, find out if they were in Saratoga Springs for similar reasons.

Scratching his head, John appraised Cutler’s impressive physique and hoped to hell they were on the same side. Slaying dragons had never been his long suit.

“This way,” Zeke said.

“Yes,” John said, stupidly irritated at being treated like a stranger. “I know the way.”

Ten

Dani didn’t relax until she was on her pine-scented driveway. When she reached her cottage, she paced in the garden, debating all the different reasons her father could be in town that didn’t have to do with her, her missing keys or Zeke Cutler.

“You should learn to relax.”

She whirled around at the sound of her father’s voice. He walked through the gate, looking as devil-may-care as ever. “Pop,” she said. “How can I relax with-”

But she stopped midsentence when Zeke followed her father into the garden.

Her father walked past her to the kitchen door. “Sit down before you run out of gas, Dani. I’m going to get something to eat. Then you can skewer me, okay?”

He disappeared into the kitchen, and Zeke came onto the stone terrace, moving with that surprising grace and economy. “We walked up together from the track,” he said. “Your father’s an interesting man. He told me he used to play spy in the rose garden when he was a kid.”

“I don’t understand him.”

“Oh, I think you do. Maybe too well.”

“Are you packed yet?”

“Haven’t even seen the damage. Think I should sue the Pembroke?”

The humor danced at the back of his eyes and played at the corners of his mouth. He had a way of making her think things and notice things-about him, about herself-that she’d prefer not to think or notice.

When she got rid of him and her father, she’d call Mattie and insist they have a heart-to-heart talk about the Cutler brothers of Cedar Springs, Tennessee.

Her father emerged from the kitchen with a peach, a paring knife and a paper towel. “You know, you don’t have much over me in lifestyle. I scoured the entire kitchen for a napkin and had to settle for a paper towel.”

“I only have cloth napkins.”

“La-di-da.” He plopped down at her umbrella table and ate a slice of peach off the end of the paring knife. He’d lost weight in the months since Dani had last seen him. He had a gaunt look that made her wonder if he shared her affliction of insomnia. His clothes seemed even more threadbare than usual. “Place looks good. First time your mother and I took you up here after you could talk, you said you’d paint the cottage purple. You were just a little tot. How the hell old are you now?”