Crane shook his head. “Sounds like a plan.”

“Should work,” Kaminsky agreed.

“You brought cameras?” Charlie hadn’t seen any such equipment.

“iPhones,” Kaminsky replied impatiently. Then Bartoli was on his feet pulling back Charlie’s chair for her. See, he’s a gentleman, too. Relationship material if I ever saw it. She stood up, and when he held out his hand she placed hers in it. His grip was warm and strong, and he held her hand firmly as he pulled her after him toward the dance floor. Strictly business, she knew, but it felt personal.

She liked holding his hand, she discovered.

I should definitely pursue this.

“Aren’t they such a cute couple?” Kaminsky trilled behind her. Charlie knew that the comment was part of their cover, that Kaminsky had her phone out and was filming as she followed them, that it was all in service of the urgent cause of finding Bayley Evans, but still she cringed inwardly. With what felt like all eyes on her, she felt slightly uncomfortable and way too conspicuous. “Won’t Aunt Bessie be excited when we show this to her? Are you getting them, Buzz?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Apparently Crane was enthusiastically filming, too.

Charlie felt about as relaxed as a taxpayer undergoing an audit. She wasn’t used to being in the spotlight. In fact, she had spent years deliberately avoiding it. Add to that a degree of shyness about her newly minted possible attraction to Bartoli, and her near certainty that Garland was there somewhere, and the very last thing she wanted was to be the object of attention.

But there didn’t seem a whole lot she could do about it.

A moment later they were stepping onto the dance floor. There were maybe a dozen couples on it, gliding around the smooth wooden surface to the torchy strains of “We’ve Got Tonight.” People stood around the edge of the dance floor, sipping colorful cocktails and chatting in groups and watching. Tightly packed tables ringed the area: more watchers. The band, the buffet line, the layers of tables on the terraces, and even a nearby parking lot that, from the looks of the vehicles in it, was reserved for the use of service trucks, were within view. Kaminsky and Crane should be able to capture almost everything going on outside with their cameras. Of course, it was dark now, but the moon hanging just above the horizon was as round and full as a glow-in-the-dark tennis ball, and between it and the garden lighting and the tiki torches, visibility wasn’t really a problem.

“I warn you: I’m not much of a dancer.” Bartoli smiled at her as he pulled her into his arms.

“Me neither.” Smiling back at him, Charlie settled a hand on his wide shoulder, and found herself appreciating with a kind of half-amused irony the fact that what her hand was resting on was a suit jacket. What you want is a man who goes to work every day wearing a suit, she could almost hear her mother (who had never—that Charlie knew—taken her own advice) saying. Not that she meant to be influenced (ever) by her mother; but still, she would be the first to acknowledge that stability was a good thing in a man.

“Last time I danced like this was at my wedding,” Bartoli said.

Charlie stumbled a little. Her eyes flew to his face. “I thought you weren’t married.”

He steadied her. This wasn’t the plaster-yourself-against-the-guy-and-sway kind of dancing that she remembered from high school. This was more formal, with a few inches of space between them and one of his hands holding hers while the other rested on the small of her back. During medical school and her residency, she had attended enough formal events, including enough of her classmates’ weddings, that she was familiar with the steps. Still, she had to dredge them up from deep in her memory, and pay attention, or Ms. Klutz came back. She’d been doing her best not to reinforce the too-clumsy-to-live image that the incident with the banana pudding had probably permanently solidified in his mind, but his announcement had caught her by surprise.

“I’m divorced. Married my college sweetheart when we graduated. It lasted a little over a year.”

“I see. Was it a bloodbath that had you swearing off women for the rest of your life?” She was trying for light, but maybe that came off as a little flirty. For whatever reason, his hand tightened on hers.

“Not at all.” There it was: the same sort of awareness of her in his eyes that she was experiencing for him. A preliminary, maybe-this-could-go-somewhere kind of thing. “It was all over a long time ago. We were just too young.”

“So who’s the special woman in your life now?” That was subtle. Well, maybe not, but before she made up her mind whether to explore a potential romantic connection with him further, she needed to know certain essential facts.

“There isn’t one.” He smiled at her, and Charlie was once again struck by how good-looking he was. “What about you?”

“You two! Look this way and smile,” Kaminsky called before Charlie could reply. A little startled, glancing around, Charlie discovered that she and Bartoli had danced about a quarter of the way around the floor, which had brought them within close range of Kaminsky. She was smiling and waving—and filming—from the sidelines. Charlie suddenly wondered if any of what she’d been thinking about Bartoli had registered in her face, and if so, if it had been caught on film.

Just considering the possibility made her go warm with embarrassment.

“Kaminsky and Crane are having way too much fun filming us.” Bartoli’s tone was rueful. She got the feeling that he knew exactly what she was thinking, which didn’t help. “Tomorrow, I guarantee you, when we’re taking this thing apart, they’ll have even more fun with the play-by-play.”

With her gaze still on Kaminsky, Charlie made a face. “Let’s hope we get something usable out of it.”

“I’m hoping we might.” There was a note in his voice—something warm and almost humorous—that drew her eyes to his face. “But we don’t want to talk shop right now. Too many ears.”

“I—” she began, meaning to finish with something like couldn’t agree more. But instead of Bartoli’s lean, dark features, the face she found herself looking up into as she spoke was the sex-on-the-hoof gorgeousness that was Garland.

The smile he gave her as their eyes connected chilled her blood. “New boyfriend, Doc?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Of course she couldn’t acknowledge that he was there.

Charlie just remembered that in the nick of time and snapped her teeth shut on the startled squeak on its way out.

Luckily, shock rendered her incapable of jumping, because she definitely would have jumped.

Go away crowded against her lips, but she swallowed it with Herculean effort.

No glaring allowed, either.

Garland had insinuated himself between her and Bartoli, so that it was Garland she was dancing with, Garland who was holding her hand, Garland who was looking down into her face, she realized with a galvanizing sense of panic. Her hand now rested on Garland’s wide, white T-shirted shoulder. His powerful arm curved around her waist. She could feel him there, against her, his essence as tangible as an electric field. Her skin prickled as if lightning was about to strike in her vicinity. Her vital functions—her heart rate, her breathing—sped up.

“Cat got your tongue?” Garland’s eyes mocked her. She had forgotten how tall he was, or maybe she hadn’t really gotten the full effect before because this was the closest she had ever been to him. She had to look way up.

How did you get back? But she dared not say anything out loud.

“So much for voodoo, huh, Doc? I’m still here. Tough luck for you that your woo-woo stuff didn’t work.”

She almost jerked herself out of his arms, only she remembered at the last minute that they weren’t his arms, but Bartoli’s. It was Bartoli she was dancing with, Bartoli who was speaking to her, Bartoli who was waiting for her reply.