“Thirty-four.”

He shuddered. “I must be getting old. Well, kid, it’s good to see you. Going to have a seat, or are you planning to give me the third degree standing up?”

Zeke appeared to be observing the proceedings between father and daughter with great amusement. He’d already taken a seat at the table.

Still keyed up, Dani brushed crumbs off the table.

“You’ll give yourself ulcers,” John said.

She shot him a look. “Why are you here?”

“In Saratoga?” He lifted his bony shoulders in a shrug that was not convincingly innocent. He’d always been a notoriously rotten bluffer, in life and in poker. “It’s blistering hot this time of year in Arizona.”

Weak, Dani thought. Very weak. “You could afford a plane ticket?”

“I’m here.”

“It was hot in Arizona last summer and the summer before.”

“The truth is,” her father said, “the thought of coming here used to scare me to death. I had enough reminders of your mother in my life. Lately, though…” He leaned back and stared up at the clear, beautiful blue sky. “I don’t know. Reporters have been pestering me for a quote about Lilli, the Chandler Stakes, even that gold key you found. I suppose it’s all been working on me. I woke up the other morning and thought, my God, it really has been twenty-five years.” He set his paring knife down on the table. “So I booked a flight and here I am.”

“Nice try, Pop,” Dani said.

He ignored her. “This place-” Squinting, he looked around the transformed garden, then waved one hand, as if to take in all of his great-grandfather’s property. “It isn’t what it used to be. It’s changed. Everything around here’s changed. I don’t feel as if I’m stepping back into my past.”

He was lying. Dani knew it, and so, she felt, did Zeke. It wouldn’t have surprised her if her father had already told Zeke the real reason why he was in Saratoga. He had always found it easier to talk to anyone but his own daughter. They were so different. For years she’d struggled to embrace the past-to remember her mother in every detail, to relive every moment of their too-short time together. All her father wanted was to run as far as he could from the past. Yet now here he was in Saratoga, immersed in it.

But Dani didn’t press the point. “Did Mattie send you?”

“I haven’t talked to her in a couple of weeks.”

“Then she called Nick about the burglary, and he sent you.”

John sighed, but it couldn’t have been a surprise to him that she understood the peculiar dynamics between him and his parents-and where and how she fit into their jumbled worlds. “They’re worried,” he said.

“Nobody needs to worry about me.”

“But they do. We’re your family, Dani.”

Quietly, without a word, Zeke retreated to the kitchen. Dani appreciated the gesture. But she was still determined that he leave the Pembroke.

She changed the subject. “Grandfather said he spoke to you.”

They both knew she was referring to her Chandler grandfather, not to Nick. “Yes, he was cordial. Of course. He invited me to join him for dinner tonight. I refused, but he knew I would.” He grinned, his dark eyes sparkling. “Haven’t had dinner with the old fart in over twenty years. He’d slip me a batch of poisoned mushrooms and bury me in the backyard with that dead mole you found when you were six or seven.”

Dani laughed, surprising herself-and, she could see, her father. She’d carried the mole on a spatula she’d fetched from the kitchen and showed it to her grandparents at tea. They’d been apoplectic. Her mother had quietly maneuvered her out to the garden, where they’d had a proper burial. Lilli had cried. Dani, who’d adored small fuzzy animals, had wanted to find the culprit who’d killed the poor ugly little thing.

“When did you get in?” she asked, less confrontational.

“Early this morning.”

“Where did you sleep?”

“Didn’t.”

“Pop, why didn’t you knock on my door? You know I’ll always take you in-” She broke off, thinking her life-and maybe his, too-would be easier if she didn’t love him. It was that way with Pembrokes and their fathers. “Mattie’s room is free.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” John said, “I’ll just find something in town. I stayed with a trainer friend last night, but he’s having company tonight.”

“You don’t know Saratoga in August anymore. It’s me or the gutter.”

He made a face. Since her mother’s disappearance, she and her father under the same roof hadn’t been a winning combination. “Not much choice, then, is there?”

She looked at him. “Nope.”

“Well, you might not be welcoming me with open arms, but at least you haven’t told me you hope I fall into a well and drown. Not, I understand, that the thought hasn’t crossed your mind.”

She started to argue with him but realized he was just trying to jerk her string to keep her from asking questions-demanding answers-about what was really at stake. Zeke came out of the kitchen with her last beer but didn’t sit down. Dani looked from him to her father and back again. “You two know each other,” she said, and it came out an accusation.

Neither man answered right away. A squirrel ran up the crabapple tree at the edge of the garden, and a breeze cooled the suddenly very warm late-afternoon air.

Finally her father got up, threw his peach pit over the fence, stretched and yawned. “I’m beat-really, this trip’s taken everything out of me. I don’t travel the way I used to. Why don’t you two go to some nice, quiet place for dinner, and I’ll take a walk and get some sleep. We’ll have plenty of time to talk.”

“Pop-”

“Sounds fine to me,” Zeke said.

Her father planted a quick kiss on her cheek. “Good to see you, kid.”

It was two against one, and her father was adept at getting himself out of a tight spot. And he was fast. He was out the garden gate before Dani had figured out a good counterargument and worked up the energy to make it.

She was intensely aware that she was alone in her garden, again, with Zeke.

“I’ll walk back to the inn with you and see that you check out,” she said stiffly.

“That line’s wearing thin, Dani. I think we should do as your father suggests and head to town and a nice, quiet restaurant for dinner.”

“Why should I do that?”

“Because,” he said, “we need to talk.”

Zeke turned down Dani’s offer to cook on the grounds that he’d seen her kitchen, but agreed to ride with her in her car to town. She was a good driver. Even as distracted as she was, she concentrated on what she was doing. She found a parking space on Broadway in front of an attractive downtown restaurant with sidewalk tables that were tempting on such a beautiful day. But Dani led the way to a table inside, where it was quieter, pleasantly informal. A waitress brought them a small, steaming loaf of bread and dots of herbed butter.

“Is this all right?” Dani asked.

“It’s fine.”

She ordered a glass of the house red wine, and he did the same, watching her make a show out of examining the menu. She probably knew every item on it and had already decided what she wanted, but he figured she needed something to do besides look at him. He had no problem at all looking at her.

Their wine arrived. Dani immediately took a big drink of hers, then held on to the glass. “You don’t mind having a blocked view of the entrance?”

It was an obstructed view, not blocked, but he didn’t argue the point. “No, do you?”

She shrugged. “I’m just trying to figure out what kinds of things security consultants know, what they look out for. If I were to hire you, what would you tell me?”

Oh, sweetheart, he thought, if you only knew.

But he tried his wine and decided to take her question relatively seriously, even if it was intended to distract him. “I would teach you the basics of personal safety.”

“Which are?”