A Rare Chance (19 page)

“Christ.”

He could see Joshua swallow as he turned back toward the unlit fireplace. Outside, Boston Harbor was coming to life. The spring sunshine sparkled on the water. “I found out about it over the weekend,” he said.

Darrow didn't react. A journal.
Well, Lizzie, you do have your surprises.

“She's been keeping a journal for years,” Joshua went on, his voice tortured but relatively calm. “She says it helps her stay creative. I'll say. What she wrote about our relationship is highly creative. She made up personal details that could prove embarrassing for us both, not because we did anything wrong but because of how she depicts what we did. She makes it all sound incredibly lurid. She wrote her fantasies, really.”

“What else?” Darrow asked.

Joshua turned back to Darrow, his face pale, his eyes even more sunken looking. “What do you mean? There is nothing else.”

It was a lie. It was all Darrow could do to not grab the stupid bastard by the throat and choke the truth out of him.

Lizzie must have found Joshua's weapons collection. She must have included details in her journal.

That was why she'd run.

And now she was in danger, Darrow thought, no doubt in his mind. Joshua would view her actions as treachery and feel justified in responding in kind. He wouldn't tolerate such a personal betrayal. If Lizzie tried to use what she knew against him—even tried to use it as collateral to save her skin—Joshua Reading would have her head.

Darrow knew he was right. Lizzie Fairfax would be able to tell him everything he needed to know about her fiancé's private arsenal.

“I asked her to give me the journal and to stop keeping a record of our private relationship,” Joshua said. “I gave her permission to write anything she wanted about herself but not me. She promised to cooperate. But then she took off.” He shook his head, self-pitying. “I only want to protect my privacy. I have that right.”

“Think she'll do anything with it?” Darrow tried to keep his own sense of urgency in check. “Sell it to the tabloids, pop off a copy to your big brother?”

Joshua gave him a cold look. “If you do your job, she won't have that chance, will she?”

Darrow shrugged. “Guess not.”

“I just want her back.” Joshua sighed, the anger that had pumped him up gone out of him. He sounded like an aggrieved ten-year-old. “I want to talk to her, explain. She promised to never show anyone, even that bitch Gabriella, what she wrote. But she knows I can't take that chance.”

“She's your fiancée. Why not?”

“I wouldn't expect someone of your background to understand. If the garbage Lizzie wrote comes out and people don't realize it's total nonsense, untrue, fabricated…” His eyes fastened on Darrow, his expression hardening. “And they won't, you know. People always believe the woman. I could be utterly humiliated.” He inhaled. “Just find Lizzie and her damned journal.”

That, Darrow thought, he would. “Any ideas where to start?”

“I suggest you begin by leaning on Gabriella Starr. She has to know something. She and Lizzie have been friends since they were kids. She'd like nothing better than to see me discredited and out of the picture. She wants Titus and TJR Associates all to herself, without me in the way. My brother doesn't see through her the way I do.”

If Darrow had felt about someone who worked for him the way Joshua Reading did about Gabriella Starr, he'd have popped the bitch into the ocean or made the brother fire her. Poisoned her tea. Something. He wouldn't just rant and rave and hope his security chief, a guy he thought was a dirty cop, produced something he could use against her. But he and Joshua Reading had a different way of looking at the world.

“I'll do what I can,” Darrow said.

He started across the deep-pile white carpet toward the gleaming foyer. It was so quiet he could hear his own footsteps.

“There's no advantage here for you,” Joshua said suddenly. “I hope you see that.”

Darrow turned. “I don't think there's an advantage here for anyone.”

G
abriella sat in the center of a long, buttery leather sofa in Titus Reading's office. He and Joshua sat on matching chairs opposite her. A square walnut table was between them, a vase of beautiful miltonias—pansy orchids—on its gleaming polished surface. Their meeting had been called abruptly, and Gabriella suspected it had nothing to do with business and everything to do with Lizzie Fairfax.

Titus shifted position, clearly uneasy in the role circumstances had forced him to play. “I'm sure you're aware, Gabriella, that no one's heard from Lizzie in the last day or so. We're very worried about her.”

Gabriella picked an imaginary bit of lint off her black skirt, which she'd paired with a plaid jacket in bright spring colors. She needed to choose her response carefully. This wasn't in the same category as fibbing to Pete Darrow or Cam Yeager. “Then she hasn't contacted anyone yet this morning?”

“Not that we know of,” Titus said.

Joshua leaned forward. He looked exhausted, worried, angry, like a fiancé terrified he'd been jilted—and a man afraid for the woman he intended to marry. Gabriella could understand his conflicting emotions. Lizzie's complexities and insecurities often brought about a torment of emotional responses in the people who cared about her.

“I haven't seen her,” Joshua said. “She hasn't called. I had Pete Darrow check out her parents' place on Beacon Hill—” He broke off, sucked in a pained breath. “To no avail. She's gone. We've checked with her neighbors in Miami. They haven't seen her. I'm worried about her. If there's anything you can tell us—anything at all—I hope you will.”

Gabriella wanted to reassure him, but she could think of nothing to say that wouldn't violate Lizzie's trust or wouldn't just make him suspicious.

Before she could speak, Titus stepped in. “We're especially concerned in light of the kidnap attempt on Joshua last month. Right now we have no reason to believe there's a connection to Lizzie's disappearance, but since it was never resolved—no suspect was arrested, virtually no explanation offered beyond the obvious speculation—I don't think our concern is unreasonable.”

Gabriella could feel her pulse quicken, the palms of her hands dampen. Lizzie, Lizzie. Had it even occurred to her when she'd bolted that Joshua and Titus would think she could have been kidnapped? But it wouldn't. She'd been thinking only of how best to break her engagement with the least amount of confrontation. Gabriella understood, even if she would have handled the situation differently herself.

“Have you thought about going to the police?” she asked.

Joshua nodded. “We've thought about it, but right now we think it's premature. We wanted to talk to you first.”

“I wish I knew something,” she said, which was technically true, “but I don't.”

Joshua collapsed back in his chair, visibly upset, but his older brother showed no obvious emotion as he studied Gabriella. She averted her eyes, glancing out the windows of his third-floor office. Fair-weather clouds were shifting in an otherwise clear blue sky, promising a beautiful spring day. Across Boston Harbor, a plane was climbing up out of Logan Airport. Gabriella pictured its passengers, entrusting themselves to a flight crew they didn't know—a flight crew that had accepted that responsibility and the dedication and work and commitment it entailed. She and Lizzie had been friends since the third grade. They had a long history together.
We're like sisters,
they'd told each other at nine,
only better.
She wished Lizzie had confided in her about what was wrong between her and Joshua, what role, if any, Pete Darrow had played in her abrupt departure, where she was headed, what was in the package. But she hadn't. And Gabriella couldn't betray her confidence. She'd promised.

Yet she wasn't convinced Lizzie had been forthright even with what she
had
told her.

Gabriella had replayed their conversation dozens of times through her near-sleepless night. She had no proof Lizzie had called from the airport. No proof she'd boarded a plane. No proof she'd put the package in the airport locker yesterday morning or even recently.

No proof, even, that she hadn't been coerced into making that call.

What if she
had
been kidnapped?

I'm not marrying Joshua…

Titus emitted a small, impatient sigh. “Gabriella, we understand you're in an awkward position. Lizzie Fairfax is a friend. But if there's anything you can tell us that would ease our minds…”

“Titus, I don't know anything. I'm sorry.”

He fixed his gaze on her. “You're not worried about her?”

“Of course I'm worried! But she's done this sort of thing before. I don't mean disappear.” Gabriella hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “I mean she's gotten involved with someone and then pulled back abruptly when she thought—when things got going too fast for her.”

“That wasn't the case here,” Joshua said stiffly.

“Maybe not. I don't know. I'm just trying to suggest she might have gone off on her own, just to get some space.”

“I see,” Titus said. “I'm certainly not resistant to the idea of Lizzie having taken off on her own accord, but if she did, she could at least have left a note.”

Joshua seemed to take his cue from his older brother. “If she did take off because we were going too fast,” he said quietly, haltingly, “if I did something, disappointed her in some way—well, I hope you'll tell her that I'd like to talk to her.”

Gabriella managed a weak, sympathetic smile. “If I see her, I'll tell her.”

“Your friendship with Lizzie goes back a long way,” Titus said, his tone clinical, as if they were discussing a business deal. “But I don't recall you mentioning her or seeing her, at least in Boston, since you've been with us. That's a year.”

“We hadn't seen each other since I came to Boston.”

“But her parents live here.”

Gabriella nodded. “Yes, but she tends to visit them when they're at their home in Florida. This is her first visit to Boston in a year.”

Titus's eyes narrowed. “Did you two have a falling out?”

It was one thing to keep her promise to her friend, Gabriella thought, but with Lizzie gone, her relationship with Joshua in tatters, there was no good reason not to tell Titus and Joshua about Scag's unexpected return to Boston, thanks to Lizzie Fairfax. “I didn't have a falling out with Lizzie so much as with my father.”

“Right,” Titus said with a small, forced smile. He had never been sure, Gabriella knew, what to make of her relationship with the infamous Tony Scagliotti. “But what's he got to do with Lizzie?”

“She was a part of our argument. I believed she was enabling my father to continue with what I'd come to consider a self-destructive lifestyle. She always came to his aid, so he never had to face the reality of his advancing years, his lack of a stable income, a pension, savings. Lizzie was always there for him.”

Joshua shifted in his chair, but a quick glance from his brother kept him quiet.

Gabriella continued in a steady, even voice. “Anyway, Scag was injured a few weeks ago. He wrecked his knee. I don't know how serious his injury is—he still won't see a doctor.”

“You've spoken to him?” Titus asked.

She nodded. It was time to be out with it. “Lizzie brought him up here while he recovers and figures out what to do next. Ordinarily he would probably just have stayed in Miami, let Lizzie put him up for a couple weeks, but he knows—I think he knows—he might not be able to go back out into the field.”

Joshua was looking confused, but Titus was alert, focused on her words and their meaning. “Then your father's in Boston?”

“Yes, he is. He's tending my orchid collection while he's on the mend. Lizzie wasn't sure when she brought him up here how long she'd stay.”

“Why would she keep something like that a secret?” Joshua demanded impatiently. “She's never mentioned a word to me about your father. Not a word.”

Titus gave Gabriella a pointed look. “And why would you keep it a secret?”

She shrugged, careful not to let her own tension make the situation worse. “I don't think either of us meant to keep it a secret as such. It just ended up sort of looking that way. I wanted to give Scag some time to figure things out for himself before leaking word that he's back in Boston.”

Joshua frowned, jumping to his feet in a surge of impatience and impotent frustration. “You must have insisted Lizzie keep quiet. Otherwise she'd have told me. God, I can't believe that lunatic's in town. Just what I need on top of my fiancée skipping out on me.”

Titus regarded Gabriella more calmly. “Then I take it your father's been keeping a low profile?”

She tried not to take offense at Joshua's open animosity, blaming it instead on his concern for Lizzie. “I don't think he has anything to do with whatever's going on with Lizzie. I just wanted you to have all the facts.”

“Finally,” Joshua said sarcastically.

Gabriella ignored him. What would he say if he knew she wasn't telling the truth even now? She hadn't given him and Titus “all the facts.” Not even close. She hadn't mentioned—and wouldn't—Lizzie's call yesterday or her package or Pete Darrow or Cam Yeager, all of it pertinent, perhaps, to Lizzie's behavior.

“I just wanted you to know before you decide what to do next,” Gabriella said, with only the slightest twinge of guilt.

Titus too had gotten to his feet. “But you think it's possible her disappearance could have something to do with you and Scag rather than with Joshua?”

“I don't have any idea, really. I don't know where Lizzie is.”

Joshua had begun to pace back and forth across his brother's elegant office, giving up any attempt at self-control. “I don't believe you. I think you know more—far more—than you're saying.”

Titus remained pensive, not responding at once. Finally he gave Gabriella a grave look. “This is a difficult situation for us all. I wish you'd come to us right away with news your father was in town. But you didn't. Now I—well, I think Joshua has a point. We can't be sure you've told us everything.”

“Look, I—”

“No, Gabriella. I want you to take a few days off and sort out your priorities. When you've decided to tell Joshua and me everything, come back and we'll talk.”

Gabriella swallowed, uncertainty gripping her. “All right, if that's what you think's best.”

Joshua flew around at her. “You don't have a choice in the matter.”

Titus gave her a pained look but agreed with his younger brother. “Take some time off, Gabriella. Figure out your priorities. We'll talk.”

 

Scag looked up from his worktable when Gabriella walked into the greenhouse shortly after one. “What happened? You get fired?”

“I told Joshua and Titus about you. They think—I don't know, I guess they think you might have snuck Lizzie out of town.”

He grunted. “That wasn't me. That was you.”

“That was not me, that was her. I had nothing to do with it. Look, they're just worried about Lizzie. She hasn't been in touch. With that kidnap attempt on Joshua—”

Scag raised a hand, stopping her. “Don't get ahead of yourself. Speaking of knotty little problems, Yeager came by this morning, said he wanted to talk, but I think he was just hoping I'd leave him alone for a while, get the place to himself. Does he think you're hiding Lizzie here?”

Gabriella sighed. “I don't know what he thinks.”

“Makes for an interesting relationship, doesn't it?”

She made a face, and her father grinned, knowing, she suspected, that her feelings toward Cam Yeager were both complex and confusing. Yes, it was true—just as he'd said—that a warning bell had gone off in the back of her mind when they'd been so close to making love last night. She hadn't liked the prospect of him searching her apartment—and her roof—while she was dead to the world, done in from the exercise of pure lust.

Except, of course, it wouldn't have been an exercise merely of lust. The alarm bell, she knew, hadn't been just about Lizzie's package and her loyalty to her friend. She was reasonably confident that even an experienced detective like Cam Yeager would have difficulty finding it in back of the fan in Number Three—at least not before she caught him. No, the alarm bell was also about herself. A night devoted to the physical release of the sexual tension that had built up between Cam and herself had its allure. But kissing him, feeling his mouth on her breasts, she'd realized, with a jolt like none other she'd ever felt, that she wanted more from Cameron Yeager than a casual, throw-away night together.

Damnit, she thought, she was falling for him.

“He's gone now, isn't he?” she asked Scag.