Mollie emerged from the brick walk and joined them on the terrace. She wore a little black dinner dress with a jacket that hid her bruised neck. Simple earrings, no rings, no bracelets, no necklace. Hair brushed out, pale and shimmery in the fading light. She was, Jeremiah thought as she gave him a curt nod, more stunning than she realized.
Also not sure about having him behind her gates. “As you can see, I’m running late.” Without waiting for a reply, she turned to Deegan. “Stay as long as you like. You remember how to lock up?”
“Yep. Have a good time. Griffen and I will make sure the silver stays safe.”
Mollie gave a mock shudder. “I’m beginning to understand why my parents don’t own anything. It’s too complicated.”
“What’s so complicated about locking the door and turning on the alarm system?” Deegan was highly amused. “Ah, the different worlds we live in. See you in the morning, Mollie.”
“Thanks for letting us hang out here,” Griffen said.
“No problem.”
“If the phone rings, do you want us to answer it?”
Mollie hesitated, then shook her head. “Let voice mail take it.”
Griffen nodded, and from the seriousness of her expression, Jeremiah assumed Mollie had told her about the threatening call earlier that afternoon. But she started out briskly on the walk, and he followed. “They’re madly curious about us.”
“I didn’t expect them to be here when you arrived.”
“I’ll bet. They’re going to grill you tomorrow. They might even stick around until you come home tonight. Doesn’t help that you look as if you’re going off with the devil himself.”
She cocked her head at him. “Who knows? Maybe I am.”
“Ah,” he said, “this must mean I’m not getting dinner.”
“Explaining you to my intern and my best friend is one thing.” The garage door was already open, and she unlocked the passenger door to the Jag. “Explaining you to Leonardo’s friends is quite another. And I don’t want to be duplicitous and let them believe you’re someone you’re not.”
Presumably that would be someone she’d kiss on the hood of a car in a Miami parking garage. “Then why am I going?”
“Because the dinner party is in a large house with extensive grounds. I can drop you off at the end of the driveway, and you can skulk.” She smiled at him, coolly, and Jeremiah realized on some level she was enjoying herself. “I imagine you’re good at skulking.”
He climbed into the passenger seat. “Save me a doggy bag?”
The smile wanted to become genuine, but she’d had a hard day. “I’ll slip an éclair in my handbag.” She went around and climbed in behind the wheel. “Shall we?”
“I’m game.”
She turned the key in the ignition and backed out, reshutting and locking the gates with a flick of a button. She sighed, her grip visibly loosening on the wheel. “This is crazy. You and I both know the thief isn’t going to strike tonight, not at a small dinner party in a private home, even if I am the common denominator. It’s not as if he’s struck every time I’ve gone anywhere.”
“True.” Jeremiah watched her gnaw on a corner of her lower lip, imagined himself doing much the same. It could be a long night.
“Which means you’re here on my account.” She glanced over at him, her eyes clear and focused. “You don’t want me out alone. Am I right?”
“You’re right.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Aren’t you going to elaborate?”
“Elaborating,” he said, “would only make you nervous, and I don’t want to ruin your dinner.”
Her eyes, lightly made up in a way that emphasized their blueness, narrowed on him as she slowed for a stop sign. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jeremiah settled back in the comfortable, expensive seat. “It means I think you wanted me here tonight because you don’t want to be out alone, and I happen to agree.”
“Oh. You’re still being protective.”
He bit back his amusement. “And you, Mollie, are being deliberately dense. If I were just being protective, you wouldn’t give a damn. You’d dismiss it as Tabak-the-SOB-reporter. What gets you is that I care.”
“About your work,” she said stubbornly.
“About you.” At her flush and abrupt pull-out from the stop, Jeremiah laughed outright. “You see? Bad enough you’ll have to eat dinner with me hovering in the bushes. Now you’ll have to fret about someone caring enough about you to risk Dobermans and electric fences.”
She frowned. “I have a lot of friends who care about me.”
“Trust me, darlin’,” he said, laying on the accent, “I’m different.”
Leonardo’s friends lived in a pale coral stucco house on the water. Mollie dropped Jeremiah off at the end of their winding, narrow driveway, where the grounds were thick with palms, vines, banyans, and live oaks. The property was unfenced. He could go unnoticed for days, never mind an evening.
She buzzed down the passenger window and said across the seat, “By the way, there are no electric fences. And no need to worry about the Dobermans.”
He frowned at her. “What Dobermans?”
“Mozart, Ludwig, Cosima.”
“Cosima,” Jeremiah repeated.
“Wagner’s wife.”
“Mollie, that’s three Dobermans.”
“Yes, and they’re all sweethearts. They’ll probably be inside tonight,” she added, “because of the rain. So, not to worry.”
He looked at her darkly, no doubt reconsidering his role as her musketeer, but she resumed her trip up the driveway, leaving him to whatever he planned to do with himself for the next two to three hours.
Within five minutes of her arrival, Mollie knew she wasn’t going to relax and forget about Jeremiah outside, listening to the crickets and on the alert for Dobermans and God only knew what as he kept her-and by extension Leonardo’s friends-from the clutches of a jewel thief. A jewel thief, she reminded herself, who had never, once, broken into one of the parties he’d robbed. What he was doing was making sure he hadn’t made a mistake about her after all and she wasn’t the thief herself.
She was absolutely sure of it, no matter how convincing he was about caring about her.
No matter how much a part of her wanted to be convinced.
If his peculiar sense of honor had misled her into believing the worst about him ten years ago, it could just as easily compel him to keep an open mind about discovering the worst about her now.
Fortunately, Leonardo’s friends were so boisterous and fun, so much like him, that she had a hard time sulking about Jeremiah’s motives. She did feel an occasional pang of guilt at having dropped him off on their property, but she knew, too, that they would understand. She was blessed, she thought, with indulgent family and friends.
And she was proud of herself for resisting a giggle of pure delight when it started to drizzle, and another when they let out the three Dobermans. They were well-trained, beautiful dogs who wouldn’t hurt an intruder, although they might converge on him if they found him, which could be scary. Apparently they didn’t, because after a few minutes, they bounded back to the roofed terrace overlooking the water, where their masters’ guests had gathered for dessert and after-dinner drinks.
It wasn’t until Mollie was halfway through her chocolate mousse cake that the subject of her Friday evening attack came up. One woman, a tireless volunteer for virtually every arts organization in Palm Beach, said Diantha Atwood was still upset about what had happened. “You can imagine how personally she would take having one of her guests attacked. It must have been horrible for you, Mollie.”
“And I understand Jeremiah Tabak was the first on the scene,” the woman’s husband said. He was a high-profile attorney, and he spoke of Jeremiah with a measure of grudging respect.
As subtly as she could, Mollie encouraged her fellow diners to tell her what they knew about him-which, she quickly discovered, was a fair amount, certainly more than she did. They said he kept reptiles and lived beneath his means. He was a frequent, popular guest on national television news shows, especially when a Miami story broke, but had no interest in television work on a full-time basis. He was known as an opinionated, irascible speaker on the rare occasions anyone got him to speak in public. He’d been linked with a number of women, but had never married. His lifetime commitment, it seemed, was to his work. He was doing what he wanted to do, and he did it well.