White Hot

2

Mollie flung herself out of bed fifteen minutes before her alarm was set to go off at six and staggered to the bathroom in the guest quarters above Leonardo Pascarelli’s garage. The master suite all by itself was bigger than her entire apartment in Boston. She splashed her face with cold water and stared at her reflection in the mirror above the sink. Dark circles, puffy eyelids, little red lines in the whites of her eyes. Nope. She wasn’t in her twenties anymore.

“Hell’s bells,” she groaned. “What a night.”

She stumbled back into the bedroom, with its warm, soothing colors, and made herself pull on shorts, a tank top, and running shoes. A run along the beach would help put her long night of tossing and turning and bad dreams-very bad dreams-behind her.

She had one nightmare about living in south Florida, even about visiting south Florida, and last night, long before she’d fallen asleep, it had come true.

She’d run into Jeremiah Tabak.

Taking deep breaths, she did an abbreviated series of stretches before heading into the kitchen and downing a perfunctory glass of orange juice. She was shaky and jumpy, and she tried to tell herself that Tabak hadn’t necessarily seen her leaving the Greenaway or, if he had, recognized her. And it was nuts to think he’d had her staked out. That was pure paranoia, the stuff of 3 A.M. sweats. She and Jeremiah operated in completely different circles and knew virtually no one in common-and why on earth would he care about a new publicist specializing in arts and entertainment?

Damned if he’d care about an ex-lover. He’d need more reason than that to track her down.

The first light of morning streamed through the windows of her cheery, honey-colored kitchen, making rational thought at least slightly less elusive than it had been during the night. Then, she’d easily manufactured a dozen reasons-none of them good-why Jeremiah Tabak of the Miami Tribune would hunt her down.

She’d left the charity dessert concert early to make several calls to the West Coast and clean up her e-mail. After just five months in business, she had a college intern working for her ten hours a week but still couldn’t afford full-time help. That meant she typed, filed, answered the phone, did all the bank and post office runs, swept the floors, and made the coffee-in addition to strategizing, brainstorming, applying her experience and energy on behalf of her clients, all of whom had made a leap of faith in hiring her.

She had, therefore, to be deliberate about her use of time. But spotting Jeremiah at the Greenaway had done her in for the evening. She’d recognized him instantly, her visceral reaction alone enough to convince her she hadn’t made a mistake.

“But maybe you did make a mistake,” she said aloud as she slipped out the kitchen door, in no mood for a run anywhere, except maybe far away. “Maybe it wasn’t Tabak you saw.”

It could be like her first days in Palm Beach when she’d expected alligators, lizards, and fat, hairy spiders at every turn. Once she’d mistaken the shadow of a passing seagull for a snake. Maybe it was that way with her and the man last night.

Except it wasn’t, and she knew it.

She made her way along a brick path to the front of the garage. Leonardo had expected her to use the main house, but it was so big and sprawling she decided she’d feel like a pea rolling around in the bottom of a barrel. The guest quarters were just fine. She’d converted the living room into an office and still had plenty of room to stretch out and feel as if she were living in the lap of luxury, which she was.

Hard to believe, she thought as she punched in the code to open the front gates, that a year ago she was ensconced in her job with the Boston branch of an international communications firm, safe, satisfied, even a little smug. She’d planned on upgrading to a condo and taking a trip to Australia. Then two things happened that caught her by surprise and forced change upon her. First, her thirtieth birthday came and went without fanfare. A non-event. She had dinner with her parents and sister and drinks with a sometime boyfriend, a guy her age just as immersed in the status quo. There was no bow from the universe, no bolt of lightning, no tip of the hat that today she’d turned thirty. The next morning she got up and went to work, thirty years old instead of twenty-nine, and that was that.

Second, Leonard Pascarelli blew into town three days later, when she was still trying to sort out why she’d gone into a funk. They cooked dinner together in her apartment-the world-famous tenor, son of a Boston butcher, and his urban, upwardly mobile goddaughter-and he’d drawn her out, urged her to pour out her soul, insisted on it.

She was thirty, she’d said. She had no man in her life she gave a real damn about or who gave a real damn about her. She had a job she loved but didn’t absorb her as it once had. She had a great apartment and a nice wardrobe, but so what?

“That’s my life,” she’d told Leonardo. “A big ‘so what?’ ”

He was a big man, black-haired, clean-shaven, round-faced, with dark, penetrating eyes and a keen intelligence that people often underestimated because of his passionate nature. He loved to eat, drink, fall in love, sing. He seemed to fear nothing-loss, failed relationships, disease, old age, death. Yet his singing betrayed a deep, intuitive understanding of all life offered and all it demanded. He was a complex man who cared very much about other people, even as, in his late fifties, he was alone, without wife or children.

“Is this self-pity I’m hearing from you?” he’d asked without a hint of criticism.

“Just honesty. I can’t delude myself anymore.”

He’d removed his wooden spoon from his bubbling saucepan and pointed it at her. “What do you want from life, Mollie? Now, at this moment. Don’t think, don’t hesitate. Just answer.”

“Adventure,” she said immediately, surprising herself. “Something new and exciting and different. Something that engages my heart, my mind, my soul. You know, I always thought I’d be in business for myself by thirty.”

“And why aren’t you?”

“It’s not that easy. I’ve got a good job. I’d have to give up the security, the benefits. If I fell flat on my face, how would I pay my rent? What would I do for health insurance? There’s something to be said for a steady paycheck, you know.”

“Ah. If you left this job and found that you didn’t want to be out on your own after all, or you failed, you’d never find another job?”

“No, of course not. I’m good at what I do-”

“Then what’s stopping you?’

She didn’t know. Fear of failure? Fear of success? Inertia? In the end, Leonardo decided she just needed a kick in the pants, and so he offered her use of his Palm Beach house. He was doing a mammoth yearlong tour of Europe and Russia and could get to south Florida for only brief spells. He couldn’t see leaving the place closed up.

That was Leonardo. Boisterous, generous, egotistical, and unconditionally in Mollie’s corner.

“You’ll have your adventure and your fresh start,” he’d said. “And no overhead.”

Mollie had stared at him. “You’re asking me to jump off a cliff.”

He’d smiled, his dark eyes intense and gleaming. “Then jump.”

And so she had, quitting her job, vacating her apartment, and moving south. She printed up business cards and stationery and let her contacts know she’d put up her own shingle in Palm Beach, Florida. It was slow, steady going, but she was making money and establishing a reputation for herself as a creative, inventive, ethical publicist.

Until last night, she’d even thought she might like to stay in south Florida permanently.

With a groan, she set off on her run. The air was still a bit cool and crisp, a perfect day in the making. She headed for the beach. Leonardo had refused to buy a house directly on the water out of deference, he said, to hurricanes. As if living a quarter-mile “inland” would make any difference. But Mollie had learned as a tot not to quarrel with his incomparable logic. In Leonardo’s mind, he’d made a prudent decision in choosing his lovely, tasteful home tucked between, rather than on, the Intercoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean. It didn’t matter that he could smell salt in the air on his terrace, even hear the waves washing the nearby beaches, or that shorebirds regularly visited his yard.

Mollie jogged along A1A, past resort hotels and condominiums on the water, until her legs were screaming and her mind was clear. It was early enough that traffic was light and the only other pedestrians were fellow runners and a few bleary-eyed couples pushing very awake babies in strollers. She stifled a jolt of loneliness before turning back, jog-walking to Leonardo’s, her run having had the cathartic effect she’d hoped it would.

Her shorts and top clung to her, her arms and legs glistening with sweat as she rounded the corner to her street. Leonardo’s house wasn’t ostentatious or even that big by Palm Beach standards, but its Spanish lines, red tile roof, and lush, tropical landscaping made her feel as if she were living somewhere exotic and deliciously different. Coral bougainvillea dripped from the balcony of the guest quarters. She couldn’t begin to afford such luxury herself and meant to enjoy it while she had the chance.

She ducked through the front gates, which she’d left unlocked while out on her run. House-sitting for Leonardo involved learning to deal with his extensive security system, his housekeeper, his gardener, his poolman, his bug man, not to mention neighbors curious about the thirtyish blonde who’d taken up residence above his garage. Mollie was accustomed to managing with three locks on her door in Boston and a primitive intercom system-and no household help.

A few cool-down stretches, she thought, a shower, and breakfast on the terrace by the pool and she’d be ready for her day. If Tabak had been at the Greenaway on her account, he’d have followed her home last night. She felt quite certain he would still be a man of incredible wiles and gall.

An engine rattled on the street, and she glanced up, going still, as if she could somehow camouflage herself, when she saw a brown pick-up paused at the end of Leonardo’s driveway.

It had to be the brown truck from last night. Tabak’s truck.

A dark-haired man in sunglasses peered across the seat and out the passenger window, his features not quite distinguishable from where Mollie stood. Unfortunately. No way could he miss her in her sweaty running clothes. Her heart beat wildly. She was breathing hard from her run, but she wasn’t so low on blood sugar that she’d be hallucinating. No, it was eight o’clock in the morning, and Jeremiah Tabak was on her doorstep. There was no getting around it.

“Well, well, well. Mollie Lavender.” It was his lazy, easy, rural Florida drawl, laid on thick and twangy. She hadn’t forgotten it. She hadn’t forgotten how it could melt her spine. He grinned at her. “Ain’t you a sight for these poor, sore, old eyes.”

“Excuse me? May I help you?”

She squinted at him, as if he were a tourist stopping to ask directions to the Breakers. Her profession often required her to think on her feet and be coherent under pressure. If he thought she didn’t recognize him, maybe he’d just go on his way.

But, of course, this was Jeremiah Tabak she was dealing with. He climbed out from behind the wheel and studied her over the roof of his truck. Sexy, confident, absolutely convinced she knew who he was. He adjusted his sunglasses, his amusement easy to read even from where she was standing. “Hi, there, darlin’. It’s been a while.”

Mollie blinked in the bright sun. She’d shoved her own sunglasses up on her head a mile into her run, after they’d slipped down her sweaty nose. She tried to look as if she hadn’t thought about him in ten years and couldn’t figure out who he was. It might not be an effective strategy, but it was the only one she had. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

He laughed. No hesitation, no doubt, no guilt. His natural cockiness had to help him do the kind of work he did, sorting through muck and crime and corruption and making people see the tragic complexity of it all, confront the unsettling, contradictory, complicated emotions that clarity brought. He was a good reporter, even if he’d stepped over the ethical line with her.

Not that it mattered. Right now, she’d have given her soul to the devil for something to hurl through his windshield.

He patted his truck roof with the palm of one hand, and she had the uncomfortable feeling he was reading her thoughts. He kept on with the exaggerated drawl. “Sweet Mollie, you’re not going to pretend you don’t remember me, now, are you?”

Remember him. As if she could forget. Even now, with him yards away, with his touch a decade past, she could feel his mouth on hers, his palms opened on her breasts.

She banked back her emotions, continuing to squint dumbly. Maybe he’d take her reaction to him as a hint and clear out. “Really, I’m sorry, I-”

“Ten years ago. Spring break. Miami Beach. Your parting words: ‘I hope you rot in hell, Tabak.’ Well, I expect you got your wish, sweetheart.” A half beat’s hesitation, a slight lessening of the good ol’ boy act. “If you read the Trib, you know I spend a lot of time in hell.”

Beneath his easy grin, she could see he was only half teasing. He wasn’t unaffected by his work. Even ten years ago, objectivity hadn’t come easily, a vulnerability Mollie had later tried to dismiss as a put-on for her benefit, another bit of manipulation so Jeremiah Tabak could get his first big story.

Naturally, he took advantage of her moment’s puzzlement. “Mind if I come in?”

That snapped her back to reality. She gave up the act. “Look, Jeremiah, we haven’t had any contact in ten years. Let’s just leave it that way, okay?”

“But I want to hire you.”

She stared at him. “You want to what?”

He walked around the truck, nothing in the way he moved indicating he’d changed one whit. “Hire you. I’ve decided I need a publicist.”

“You?”

“Sure. I’ve become something of a star reporter these days. I’m inundated with requests for my presence at various functions, speaking engagements, interviews, appearances. It’s pretty irritating.”

“I would think it would be flattering,” Mollie said stiffly.

“That’s why you’re a publicist and I’m not. I need someone to run interference for me. What do you say?”

“I say you’re not serious.”

He eyed her, within touching distance now. He was still trim and well-muscled, a flat six feet tall. Mollie tried to ignore the flutter in the pit of her stomach. He wore his near-black hair shorter, but he had the same blade of a nose, the same thin, hard mouth and dangerous sexiness. She didn’t need him to take off his sunglasses for her to see his eyes. They, too, would be unchanged, the same mix of grays, greens, and golds that had intrigued and fascinated her right from the start.

She inhaled. “Tabak…”

“Ten minutes to make my case,” he said.

“You have no case.”

He tilted his head back, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Don’t trust me, Mollie?”

“With good reason.”

“Ah. Then you haven’t forgotten me.”

She sighed. “All right, I’ll give you ten minutes, but only because you’ll hound me until I hear you out. And I don’t want anyone to see us out here arguing.”

“No?”

He seemed amused. Mollie could feel her tank top clinging to her in the warm sun. “No one knows about our little week together, Jeremiah. No one. I want to keep it that way.”

He wasn’t chastened. Not Jeremiah. Their affair hadn’t even been a blip on the horizon for him. He had gone on to become one of Miami ’s most respected, hardest-hitting reporters, just as he’d planned.

“That’s good, Mollie.” He grinned that slow, lazy, mind-bogglingly sexy grin. “I like being your deep, dark secret.”

Mollie raced through her shower while her unwanted guest made himself at home in her kitchen. She quickly pulled on khaki shorts and a white shirt, unconcerned about her professional image because she and Jeremiah weren’t going to have a professional relationship. Or any relationship. She was going to hear him out and get rid of him.

She slipped on sandals and pulled her damp hair back in a clip before sucking in a breath and venturing down the hall. Jeremiah had installed himself on a stool at the breakfast bar and had a pot of coffee brewing. Mollie gave him a brief nod and fetched down two mugs from the honey-colored cabinets.

“Nice place,” he said. He wore a close-fitting, dusk-colored shirt, chinos, canvas shoes. Casual, not inexpensive. Deliberate. He was, Mollie remembered with a hot jolt, a very deliberate man. “I suppose it comes in handy having a world-renowned opera singer for a godfather.”

“I’m house-sitting for Leonardo.”

“Of course.”

She bit her lip, wondering why she’d felt the need to justify her acceptance of her godfather’s generosity. She was just on edge, she decided, and bound to snap at everything. She filled the two mugs. Jeremiah, she remembered for no reason whatever, took his coffee black. She shoved the mug across the bar to him.

“Is he the reason you moved to south Florida?”

“Jeremiah-”

“I’m just curious,” he said.

She sighed. He was naturally curious, and he would pounce if he believed she had anything to hide. Which she didn’t. “I was looking for a change, and Leonardo’s on tour this year. He offered me use of his house, I accepted, and here I am.”

“Why your own business?”

She shrugged, sipping her coffee, trying not to look at his eyes long enough to see if the mix of colors was still so apparent. “I like being my own boss, doing everything from soup to nuts. It’s challenging, and it’s fun. I don’t think I’ll stay in Palm Beach after the year’s up, but I like south Florida.”

Jeremiah drank more of his coffee, studying her with a calm she found faintly irritating. He was an accomplished journalist, she reminded herself. He was accustomed to keeping his emotions under check. But he didn’t seem to be suffering any of the shock, self-consciousness, awareness, or simple embarrassment she was at being thrown back together.

“What happened to your flute?” he asked quietly.

She stiffened, not wanting to go down that road. “Nothing. It still plays just fine.”

“You didn’t join an orchestra after all?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Because I went into communications instead,” she said briskly and changed the subject. “How did you find me?”

He didn’t answer right away. She could see him calculating just how far he could push her before she chased him out. Finally, he said, “Coincidence. A colleague on the paper happened to mention you. Don’t worry,” he added with a quick smile, “I didn’t let on about our ‘past.’ She said I might talk to you about publicity. Here for the past ten years I’ve been picturing you in a concert hall with your flute and a black dress, and it turns out you’re a publicist.”

Mollie wasn’t sure if she detected a note of disdain for her profession or if she was simply being defensive. Jeremiah was hard news all the way. He would consider publicists roadblocks thrown between him and the truth.

“She warned me your client list is a little weird,” he said.

“Weird?”

“She said unusual. Same difference.”

Mollie set her mug in the sink and regarded him with a cool, measured look. He was lying. Flat out, one hundred percent, no doubt in her mind. The only question was, what was his motive? He would, she knew, have a reason. “So why would a hard-hitting, award-winning investigative journalist like yourself want to join such a list?”

His eyes narrowed on her abruptly, a shock, an almost physical reminder of this man’s relentless drive and intensity. Then it was gone, and he sat back, everything about him relaxed and even somewhat amused. “Seems you doubt my sincerity, Miss Mollie.”

“And why would I?”

“Because you hold a grudge against me for ten years ago,” he said flatly.

“No, because you didn’t come here to hire me, you came here because you couldn’t stand not to. You saw me last night, and you couldn’t resist. You did your reporter thing, found out I’d set up shop as a publicist, and had to see for yourself.” She took a breath. “And I haven’t thought about you in ten years.”

“Ah. Then you don’t believe a colleague put me onto you.”

“Jeremiah, I want to be there the day, one, you want to hire a publicist, and, two, you find one who’d take you on as a client.”

He grinned, entertained. “Think you know me pretty well, don’t you?”

“Some lessons I never forget.”

The phone rang, and Mollie snatched up the kitchen extension, prepared to get rid of whoever was on the other end. But it was Boca Raton magazine returning her call, and she knew she had to take it. She looked at Jeremiah. “This is someone I’ve been trying to reach for two weeks. I need about two minutes. Would you mind-”

“No problem.”

He slid off the stool and headed into the den off the back of the kitchen. It was usually off-limits for business, but she didn’t bother directing him to her living room-office. Instead she put him out of her mind and focused on her call. “Hi, I’m so glad you called. I’ve been-”

The den!

Mollie choked and gripped the phone, calling upon every ounce of professionalism and her limited experience as a performing artist. “Excuse me, something’s just come up. I’ll call you back in five minutes.”

She hung up, steadied herself, and rushed into the den.

She was too late.

Jeremiah glanced back at her from his position in the middle of the room. His eyes gleamed with humor, and his straight mouth twitched. “Haven’t thought about me in ten years, have you, Mollie?”

She stood very still. The den was small and cozy, with simple, comfortable furnishings. She’d added a few personal items brought down from Boston: two photo albums, photographs of her family and Leonardo, movie videos, her CD player and CD collection.

And her dartboard.

She’d nailed it to the wall above a rattan chair in the corner. She’d started playing darts shortly after her Miami spring break and first and only fling on the dark and dangerous side. The game relaxed her and helped her process her emotions, even think.

Two weeks ago, something had possessed her-she now couldn’t imagine what-to enlarge a black-and-white photo of Jeremiah and staple it to her dartboard. It was a candid shot from a South Florida magazine piece on Miami’s star reporters. He’d refused to pose for the story, preferring to be the one doing the interviews, not giving them. And he had no patience with celebrity.

“That was just…I was just amusing myself.” She tried to sound as if she wasn’t choking from embarrassment. If he’d changed in any significant way-gained weight, lost some of his intensity, started wearing dopey clothes, anything-she might not have felt so exposed. “I was bored one night, and I saw that picture, and…” She took a breath, summoning the last shreds of her dignity. “I have no animosity toward you.”

“That why most of the darts landed between my eyes?”

She forced a laugh. “I’m a good shot.”

He settled back on his heels, glanced again at the dartboard, having a hell of a good time for himself. “I guess I should consider myself lucky you aimed for my forehead.” He shifted back to her. “At least most of the time.”

“Look, don’t go thinking that just because I threw a few darts at your picture that I’ve been carrying a torch for you or plotting revenge or even thinking about you for the past ten years. I haven’t. I saw your picture, and it amused me, and-”

“And you stuck it up on your dartboard.”

“Yes. Exactly. You shouldn’t feel flattered or insulted.”

“What was on your dartboard before me?”

“Nothing. It was just a regular dartboard.” She licked her lips, feeling somewhat less self-conscious. “No one comes in here but me. I’d never leave your picture up for company to see.”

“Because I’m your deep, dark secret,” he said, taking a step toward her.

Before he could come any closer, she gave up trying to explain and charged back into the kitchen. Why had she agreed to let him make his case? He’d never meant to hire her. She’d known that. He’d just had to see for himself if she’d gone to pieces after he’d admitted he was a heel who’d used her to get a story and then sent her home to Boston. This little visit was an exercise in male ego. Nothing more.

He rejoined her in the kitchen, and she flew around at him. But before she could get a choked word out, he picked up his sunglasses. She noticed the blunt nails, the dark hairs on his forearms, the taut muscles. And the eyes, probing, assessing. “Coming here was a bad idea, Mollie. I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.”

Her anger went out of her even before it had a chance to take firm hold. She brushed back a strand of hair that had come loose in her mad dash from the den. “You haven’t, not really. You never meant to hire me, did you? You just wanted to see what’d become of me?”

“I’m a reporter,” he said dryly, heading for the door. “I have an insatiable curiosity. Good seeing you again, Mollie.”

“You, too.”

He winked. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”

“Maybe.”

The door shut, and he was gone.

Mollie let out a long, slow, cleansing breath and collapsed onto a bar stool. There. She’d survived. The encounter she’d dreaded since agreeing to Leonardo’s proposal had come and gone, and here she was, intact, sane, her own curiosity satisfied. As she’d predicted, Jeremiah hadn’t changed at all. Not in ten years, not in a million.

And he hadn’t figured out the impact he’d had on her life. After their affair, she’d returned home questioning herself, her life, her commitment to music, everything. She could no longer just drift along in currents not of her own making. So she had dropped out of the conservatory and given up her dream of becoming a world-class flutist. She simply didn’t have the drive, the talent, the desire. Her week with her dark and dangerous reporter, for all its drama, had forced her to look inside herself and see what was there.

For that, she thought, she couldn’t hate him.

For betraying her, she could. He had used her shamelessly to get his first big story, sitting next to her on the beach, inviting her out, even going to bed with her because he thought she had something to do with the drug dealers operating practically at her toes.

She had to admit that from what she’d heard and read about him since her arrival in Florida, such unethical conduct didn’t seem to be part of his current modus operandi. But that didn’t mean she had to forgive him.

She returned to the den and peeled his picture off her dartboard. It had been stuck with darts so many times it didn’t come easily. She crumpled it into a tight ball and charged to the kitchen to toss it immediately into the trash, hesitating at the last moment. She didn’t know why.

Muttering to herself, she smoothed out the picture and shoved it into her thick Miami Yellow Pages. Later she’d burn it while she was grilling chicken or roasting marshmallows on her deck. Make a ceremony out of it. A cleansing ritual. Prove to herself that Jeremiah Tabak was well and truly out of her life.

Twenty years old, on her first trip over spring break and just so sure she was in love.

Don’t think. Don’t remember.

But she couldn’t stop herself.

She’d spent previous spring breaks in Boston, playing flute in dingy, windowless, sound-proof practice rooms. That week, she’d indulged in Florida sun and sand…and a young, hungry, impossibly sexy reporter. Their relationship was improbable from the start, a future together impossible.

He’d used her to get his drug story, not realizing, until it was too late, that she didn’t even smoke or drink, much less use drugs, and barely knew anyone who did. Her life was music. Hours and hours of daily practice alone and in ensembles and orchestra. Classes in music theory, music composition, music history, all in addition to her regular academic classes.

And, of course, there was her family. Her parents were violinists, her older sister a cellist, her godfather a world-famous tenor. Mollie remembered trying to explain the nuances of Lavender family life to Jeremiah in the predawn darkness after they’d made love, when he’d seemed so attentive and empathetic, so certain of himself. The rivalries, prejudices, expectations of classical musicians-their drive and ambition-mystified him. “Your family and friends back in Boston sound like a bunch of flakes to me,” he’d pronounced, inoffensively.

They were. They were loving, tolerant, devoted to their work and their families and friends, but not tuned into the world in any conventional way, in the way, Mollie finally realized, that she wanted to be.

She smiled, thinking of them.

After Miami, after Jeremiah, she could no longer pretend she shared their passion for music. She was different. She’d packed up her flute, quit the conservatory, and entered the world of communications, expecting never to see her ex-lover again.

She realized she was trembling. Damn. Thirty years old, trembling over a man she’d known for only a week and hadn’t seen in a decade. She’d convinced herself Palm Beach was well removed from the world of crime and corruption in which Jeremiah operated, that she needn’t worry about running into the Miami Tribune’s star investigative reporter.

So why had she?

Why had he been parked outside the Greenaway Club last night?

She frowned, not liking the direction her thoughts were taking. He had to have his share of ex-lovers. Why such curiosity about her?

Jeremiah Tabak, she remembered, didn’t do things for personal reasons. Not ten years ago, not now.

And that could mean only one thing: he was on a story.