White Hot

7

They ate sandwiches at the kitchen table. Turkey and lettuce on sourdough with pickles on the side. Although she knew she needed to eat, Mollie’s stomach had turned midway through fixing them. “I wonder what they’re having at the ball,” she said. She’d thrown a sweatshirt over her dress to ease a sudden chill; she’d deal with her bruised, raw neck later, after Jeremiah left. “I could have made it through dinner if they were having something good.”

But she could only get halfway through her sandwich. Her stomach clamped down. Nerves. Jeremiah finished off her second half while he stood up and rummaged in her freezer. Without a word, he got out a tray of ice, set it on the counter, found a dish towel, dumped most of the ice in it, tied it up, and handed it over to Mollie. “Put this on your neck. First aid stuff in the bathroom?”

“The hall bathroom,” she said, pointing.

He withdrew down the hall. She could hear him rattling around in the medicine cabinet. She didn’t have much by way of first-aid necessities. A box of Band-Aids, antibiotic ointment, aspirin, a thermometer. She’d been blissfully healthy since her arrival in south Florida.

Jeremiah returned with a tube of antibiotic ointment and a dampened face cloth. “You want to do this or shall I? I’ve had basic first aid, but I haven’t had to use it since I dropped my turtle in the kitchen sink while I was cleaning his cage.”

“I’ll do it.”

She took the face cloth first and gently wiped off her neck, which didn’t sting when she touched it nearly as much as she’d anticipated. That finished, Jeremiah squeezed out some of the ointment on her finger, and she dabbed it on.

“You need a mirror-you’ve missed a couple of spots,” he said, and proceeded to squeeze goo on his own finger, then dab it onto her neck. His touch was gentle, functional, but still sent warm, welcome tremors through her. “I’d leave it uncovered.”

“I’ll do that. Thanks. I guess I know a little of what it feels like to be garroted.”

“Nasty business,” he said.

“Yes, it is.” She narrowed her gaze on him. He was still standing, not pacing, but not at ease, either. “You’re not going to tell me how you got involved in this story, are you? How you found out I was your ‘common denominator’?”

He didn’t hesitate. “I can’t.”

“You’re protecting a source?” But he didn’t answer-didn’t need to answer-and she said hotly, “But if you have a conflict of interest because of me and can’t do the story, why do you need to protect this source?”

“Because that’s how I operate.”

And because he didn’t owe her an explanation, she thought.

“Mollie, pour yourself a glass of wine, keep the ice on your neck for as long as you can stand it, and try to put tonight out of your mind and get some sleep.” He walked over to her, tucked a fat lock of hair behind her ear. “If you want, you can call me tomorrow.”

“Will you tell me anything then that you won’t tell me now?”

“Probably not. But you’ll take it better after you’ve rested.” He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “Now, I’d better get out of here while I still can.”

“Wait.”

She placed her towel of ice on the table and took his hand, pulling herself to her feet. She brushed his mouth with the tips of her fingers, cold from the ice, and then followed with her lips, kissing him softly, sinking against his chest just for a moment. His arms went around her, and she could have stood there all night.

He kissed the top of her head, said, “Mollie, you need that glass of wine.”

“And the good night’s sleep.” She smiled, pulling back. “I know. Thanks for your help tonight.”

“We’ll talk soon.”

She nodded, and he left. She wondered if his sense of honor was at work again-she was in pain, in shock, out of balance, and he wasn’t going to take advantage-or if he simply wanted to make sure she hadn’t ripped a necklace off her own neck before he got into bed with her. The Tabak-as-rogue of her imagination would have capitalized on her trauma and stayed the night, eliciting every bit of information he could in the process.

This complicated, honorable Jeremiah Tabak had her mystified. And frustrated. How much easier to get her addled brain around a driven, unethical skunk of a reporter than the man she’d encountered tonight. Irreverent, suspicious, intriguing.

She returned to the kitchen and added more ice to her sopping towel before wandering into the den, not sure what to do with herself. She put on the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Leonardo as the tenor soloist. She turned up the volume, the entire apartment pulsating with the rich, swelling sounds of orchestra and chorus, the emotion and passion and wonder of a piece written more than two hundred and fifty years ago by a dead man.

Tears streamed down her face.

She collected up her darts and threw them one by one, hard, her aim off, but she gathered them up and threw them again, harder this time, her aim truer. It was the aftereffects of the shock of the attack, the confusion of dealing with Jeremiah and his jewel thief, the realization that she was alone, alone, alone.

At the end of the symphony, she was singing along like a maniac, and it was just as well her godfather was on another continent.

But she felt better. This, she thought, was what she’d needed. And maybe Jeremiah knew it.

She aimed a final dart, threw it, and stuck out her tongue in defiance when it went wild and hit a lamp. She returned to the kitchen, poured herself a glass of wine, and sat out on her deck, letting the sounds of the Palm Beach night soothe her tattered nerves and absorb her soul.

When she finally ventured to bed, she had it solid in her head once more: It would be stupid to fall for Jeremiah Tabak all over again.

Griffen and Deegan stopped by first thing Saturday morning with muffins, coffee, and the Palm Beach Daily News, or the Shiny Sheet, as the locals called it. They dragged Mollie out to the pool and made her sit in the sun. She noticed how the morning light intensified the yellows, pinks, oranges, and reds of the impatiens, hibiscus, begonias, and bougainvillea and brought out the nuances in all the different shades of green of the palms and live oak and shrubs, even the grass. She seemed hyper-aware of everything, and the smell of fresh, warm blueberry muffins struck her as perfection.

Griffen spread the muffins and coffee on a small table and mock-slapped Mollie’s hand when she started to serve herself. “You are going to sit back and be pampered-at least for ten minutes. Let’s see this neck,” she said, and winced when Mollie peeled back her polo shirt. “Ouch.”

“It only hurts when I touch it.”

Deegan made a face. “Nice color, anyway.”

“I consider myself lucky,” Mollie said. “He could have slit my throat.”

Griffen shuddered. “Don’t even think about it. I’m sorry we weren’t there to provide moral support, but we’d already made our exit. I’ve had my fill of Granny Atwood, that’s it, I’m on the move.” She handed Mollie a generously buttered muffin, coffee, and a napkin. “Sorry the napkin’s not cloth, but we have to work with what we’ve got.”

Deegan helped himself to a muffin. “You must have been scared shitless, Mollie. I can’t imagine. I’ve never been attacked like that.”

“It was pretty scary, but I’m feeling much better now.”

“Here we were thinking we had kind of a fun jewel thief on our hands-daring but nonviolent. Nobody sees him, nobody gets hurt. Now…” He shrugged, tearing open his muffin. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” Griffen said, “last night changes everything. I don’t think this guy’s in it for the money. It’s not greed with him, it’s the thrills. Maybe he changed his MO to get a bigger thrill. You know, go extreme.”

“What’s the Shiny Sheet say?” Mollie asked, biting into her muffin, trying to stay focused on the present, not relive last night.

Griffen showed her the article, which was short, stuck to the facts, and had nothing to report that Mollie didn’t already know. “It was silly of me to wear that necklace,” she said.

Griffen didn’t argue. “Have you told Leonardo?”

“Not yet. He’ll be very understanding-this’ll just confirm his suspicion that that necklace was jinxed. Deegan, how’s your grandmother? The attack really ended her party on a sour note.”

“I haven’t talked to her, but she’s an old pro. She’ll find a way to work it all to her advantage. My bet is she’ll throw it off onto the hotel. You’ll notice the article says you were attacked at the hotel, not at Gran’s pre-ball cocktail party. It doesn’t even mention the party, just says you were at the Sands for the charity ball.”

“I keep thinking if I’d been more alert…” Mollie sighed, sinking back into her chair with her muffin and coffee, the warmth of the sun on her. “If I’d at least gotten a good look at him.”

“Did you see him at all?” Griffen asked.

Mollie shook her head. “There wasn’t enough time. I tried to get back up on my feet-” She stopped, her stomach lurching at the memory. “I guess I didn’t really know if he was finished with me.”

Griffen shuddered, plopping down on a chair next to her. “Jesus, Mollie.”

“Well. It all worked out in the end.”

“I heard Jeremiah Tabak got to you first.” She angled Mollie a look. “You sure there’s nothing between the two of you?”

“Yes, I’m sure there’s nothing between us, but I guess-well, we did meet before, when I was in Miami on spring break in college. It was pure happenstance that we ran into each other again.”

“You’re kidding.” Instantly intrigued, Griffen sat up straight, muffin crumbs falling on her lap; she had on one of her many sundresses, looking exotic and beautiful even on a Saturday morning. “Must have been a hell of a spring break for you to remember each other.”

Mollie ate more muffin, welcoming the sweetness of the blueberries, noticing everything about this moment. The flowers, the sun, the slight breeze, the birds. If she could stay in the moment, she could keep herself from spinning totally out of control. She debated how much to tell Griffen about her past relationship with one of Miami’s more famous reporters, “I sort of got caught up in a drug-dealing story he was working on. I wasn’t involved or anything. Anyway, it ended up on the front page after I headed back to Boston.”

“I see,” Griffen said, dubious.

“It’s true.”

“I’m sure it is, as far as it goes.” She reached for another still-warm blueberry muffin and placed it on Mollie’s lap. “You need to eat. You’re still pale as a damned ghost. I wished I’d run into that thief last night.” She squinted up at Deegan, who was eating his muffins and drinking coffee on his feet. “We’d have nailed his ass, wouldn’t we, Deeg?”

He grinned at her. “I’d have let you have first crack at him.”

“And relax, Mollie,” Griffen said, giving her a friendly pat on the knee, “I’m not getting out the thumbscrews to find out the rest about you and Tabak, although, I don’t know…I think I can see you two together…”

“Griffen!”

She laughed. “You can be such a Boston prude, you know that? Honestly. However, we didn’t come here to harangue you. The police will step up their investigation now that this guy’s shown a capacity for violence. The Palm Beach crowd won’t stand for a cocky thief waltzing into their parties and ripping necklaces off their throats. I expect they’ll beef up security, too. In fact, I’m catering a luncheon on Tuesday on that very subject. One of the women’s societies is sponsoring it. You should come.”

“I might,” Mollie said.

They finished the muffins and coffee, chatting about the weather and the weekend goings-on and a little bit about work. Griffen and Deegan were off to the beach for a couple of hours before she had to pull together a small dinner party up in West Palm that evening.

After they left, Mollie found herself wandering around on the terrace and in the yard, smelling flowers, trying to stop herself from shaking. She’d thought she’d be fine this morning. And she wasn’t. She kept thinking of the gloved hand on her neck, of her relief when Jeremiah came to her side, of his questions and suspicions and his damned open mind.

“Damn it,” she said aloud, charging across the lawn. She didn’t stop at the pool’s edge. She just thought, to hell with it, and jumped in, clothes and bruised, cut neck and all. The muffins and coffee churned in her stomach, but the water was just cool enough, refreshing, swirling around her and slowly, inexorably easing out the accumulated tension in her mind and body. She swam until her muscles cried out in protest, then crawled out of the pool and lay on her stomach on the warm terrace, letting the sun dry her, telling herself if Jeremiah had stayed last night, they’d both be regretting it now.

Finally, she headed upstairs with a vague plan for the rest of her Saturday. First, she would report the stolen necklace to Leonardo’s financial manager and let him deal with the insurance company and the hotel. Second, she would grit her teeth and call Leonardo and talk him out of taking the next plane out of Florence-she thought he was still in Florence-to see her through this crisis.

If her conversation with Leonardo didn’t totally exhaust her, she would do a little work before lunch. Then she’d go for a long walk on the beach, take a nap, and afterwards see which of her new friends were around for dinner.

With any luck, the police wouldn’t call, and Jeremiah wouldn’t show up at her door.

Or, she thought, she at his.

Jeremiah knew this whole damned jewel thief nonsense, and maybe his life as a reporter, was really falling apart when he found himself back in Helen Samuel’s office. It was Saturday, and he ought to be cleaning his apartment, listening to tunes, and whittling with the boys-and if he was going to work, find a damned story he could actually write.

Helen was hammering out her column a half-hour before the midnight deadline for the Sunday paper. “Goddamned computers,” she said, cigarette hanging from her lower lip as she pecked on the keyboard. “No satisfaction hitting a ‘delete’ button. Give me a bottle of Wite-Out any day.” She glanced up at him with a skeletal grin. “I miss the fumes.”

“Why not do your column from home? You could just-”

“Modem it in?” She snorted, setting her cigarette on her overflowing ashtray. “Modems scare the shit out of me. Trust me, Tabak. I was right about television. I’m right about modems.”

Jeremiah didn’t ask her to elaborate. Her predictions on televisions or modems no doubt included the end of civilization as she knew it. Helen was even more doomsday about human nature and the future of mankind than the average reporter-which in Jeremiah’s experience was saying something.

“You want to know what I keep deleting?” She didn’t wait for his answer, her beady eyes boring into him. “Your name. I type, ‘The Tribune’s own Jeremiah Tabak was the first to rush to Mollie Lavender’s aid,’ and I delete it. Then I hit ‘redo’ and stare at it awhile, and delete it again.” She picked up her cigarette, inhaled, set it back down. “I kind of like that ‘redo’ button.”

“I’ve never known you to be indecisive, Helen.”

She squinted at him. “What have you gotten yourself into, Tabak? I can sit on this for a while, but you’re up to your nose in stink.”

He sat on the edge of a ratty chair. Fatigue gnawed at every muscle. He hadn’t slept last night. He doubted he’d sleep tonight. He’d spent the day plumbing every source he had. Police, lawyers, street informants, fellow reporters. He’d lost hours wandering around on the Internet for anything on Mollie, Leonardo Pascarelli, Blake Wilder, recent jewel heists, cat burglars. Helen would tell him he’d have been better off hitting the streets himself. She might be right. At least he would have been physically as well as mentally exhausted. Now every nerve ending seemed to twitch.

“That’s one way of putting it,” he said. “I wish I knew what I’ve gotten myself into.”

“Brass find out you were at the Sands last night and didn’t report the story?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“They won’t like being scooped by the freaking Palm Beach Daily News.” She grabbed her cigarette case and tapped out a long, slim cigarette, the other one still burning in her ashtray, smoke curling up from its inch of ash. “I don’t like it, either.”

“You had the story last night?”

“Of course. Just think, Tabak, you and I could have written the same story at the same time.” She gave a hoarse laugh. “Scares the shit out of you, doesn’t it?”

“We’d have come at this thing from different angles,” he said.

“I’m not so sure about that. You think Mollie Lavender is in the thick of this cat burglar/jewel thief business, and so do I.” She settled back in her chair, her coral lipstick bleeding into the tiny vertical lines in her upper lip; she wasn’t beautiful or young, and her chain-smoking had taken its toll in wrinkles and skin texture, but she was, Jeremiah thought, a handsome and complex woman, and more astute than he’d ever realized. She said calmly, “How hard have you fallen for her?”

He bit off a sigh. “Helen, Jesus.”

“Okay. Here’s the way it is, Tabak. We’re living in a celebrity culture. You’re damned near a celebrity reporter, which should be an oxymoron, but isn’t. So. That means if you get involved with a flaky arts and entertainment publicist who also happens to be the only goddaughter of a world-famous opera singer, people are going to notice, and they’re going to want to know more.”

“It’s none of anyone’s damned business.”

“Doesn’t matter. And if she turns out to be a jewel thief, you’re in the middle of a scandal. If you withheld information from the public, your goose as a credible reporter is, as we say, cooked.”

“For one thing, not that I need to explain to you or anyone else, what I have isn’t solid-”

“You were there last night, Tabak.”

He ignored her. “For another, I’m not in a position to withhold anything from the public. It would be a conflict of interest for me to write this story.”

“That’s what I was going to say in my column.” She held the fresh cigarette tight in one hand. “But that’s too damned subtle. I’ve been at this job a long time, and I’m smelling a scandal. My advice-not that you’re asking-is to pass the baton and bow out.”

“Let someone else do the story,” Jeremiah said.

“That’s right.”

He sighed.

“I know, I know.” She tucked the unlit cigarette on her lower lip. “You’re not on the freaking story. This is personal, between you and Mollie Lavender. Well, keep in mind it could cost you your credibility. And that’s your stock in trade, my boy.”

“Thanks for the lecture.”

“You’re welcome.” She dragged out a lighter and fired it up, her moves almost ritualistic as she lit her cigarette, inhaled, and blew out a cloud of smoke. “You didn’t risk coming down here and getting tongues wagging just to hear me lecture you on maintaining your reputation. What’s up?”

“You’ve followed this jewel thief probably even more closely than I have.”

“Right from the beginning. I’m not a Johnny Come Lately.”

“Okay. Last night’s attack-” Jeremiah paused, past knowing if he was making any sense. He studied Helen, the cursor blinking obnoxiously on her monitor, her old cigarette burned out, her new one angled rakishly between her middle finger and forefinger. “It’s either our thief getting violent and even more daring-”

“Or it’s someone else. A copycat of sorts.”

“What are your sources telling you?”

She tilted her head back, eyeing him through lowered, blackened eyelashes, debating whether she needed to tell him, a colleague who for eighteen years had hardly given her the time of day, anything. Finally, she said, “Nothing. Not one damn thing. And I’m only telling you because you’re not doing this story. Silence,” she added, raising her cigarette to her lips, “can be very intriguing.”

“Helen-”

“I’ve got a deadline, Tabak, and an empty paragraph to fill where I should be telling my readers that you and Leonardo Pascarelli’s goddaughter are the talk of the town.”

Jeremiah glared at her. “We’re not.”

“You will be,” she said, and swiveled around to her monitor.

Dismissed, he headed out of her office and kept walking until he reached the parking garage. He sat in his truck. There were times he wondered why he hadn’t just stayed in the Everglades with his father. This was one of them. He could have been a guide, a loner like his father, except by choice rather than by the cruelty of fate. His mother had been snatched from husband and young son by a deadly cancer that had moved fast and furiously. In Jeremiah’s experience, true love-the kind of love his parents had had for each other-couldn’t last, was doomed by its own perfection.

He remembered sitting out on the still, shallow water not far from home, swatting mosquitoes, thinking that if his parents had loved each other less, his mother might have been allowed to live. The tortured logic of a twelve-year-old. But it had stuck, and on nights such as this, when sleep had eluded him for too long and answers lay outside his grasp, he couldn’t escape that one great fear of loving someone so much that it simply couldn’t last.

He started up his truck and drove back to his building. The old guys had all gone in for the night, no eighty-year-old insomniac up whittling. Jeremiah went upstairs, got his knife, and came back down. He found a small piece of discarded wood and sat on one of the cheap lounge chairs, imagining his father alone at his isolated outpost, listening to the Everglades night as he smoked his pipe and whittled until the wee hours, perhaps thinking of the woman he’d loved and lost, perhaps not.

Mollie slid into a booth in a corner of the posh Fort Lauderdale jazz club where Chet Farnsworth, her astronaut-turned-pianist client, was playing for a late Sunday afternoon crowd. Not much of a crowd, actually. And those who were there were mostly elderly, not that Chet, a true pro, would care. He was grateful for the opportunity to play and an audience who connected with his music. Mollie had promised to attend as a show of support and for her own research, to help her better understand his particular needs as a client and how she could best address them as his publicist.

She’d already offered an apology for not making the charity ball, which Chet had received with a complete lack of grace, barking at her for even thinking she needed to explain.

Appreciating the quiet atmosphere of the club, Mollie ordered a non-alcoholic margarita. No one could rip any jewelry off her this evening because she wasn’t wearing any. She’d slipped on a simple navy silk dress and inexpensive silver earrings. When she’d finally caught up with Leonardo, he had, of course, offered to fly immediately to Miami to be with her. And he’d given her until tonight to call her parents. As for the necklace-“good riddance,” he said.

Chet gave her a quick wave from the baby grand piano. He was as at home there, she thought, as aboard a spacecraft. An astronaut taking up jazz piano as a second career would be a challenge for any publicist, but one with Chet’s curt personality made it that much more interesting. He wasn’t unfriendly, she’d learned, so much as self-contained and disciplined-a man who didn’t suffer fools gladly. Her personal experience with eccentric musicians gave her insight and credibility that another publicist might have lacked.

But ultimately, Chet Farnsworth had to be good. And he was. His outward self-control and rigidity, his crew cut and ubiquitous coat and tie, made his audience expect the precision of his playing, but not the heart. At the piano, he allowed people a peek into the soul of a man who’d been to the moon and back, whose unique view of himself and his place in the world his music somehow communicated. Mollie listened from her dark corner, mesmerized.

When she finally became aware of her surroundings again, she noticed the crowd had picked up. Chet seemed to be having a good time, although it was hard to tell with a man of his control. He was the consummate professional, impossible to rattle. He caught her eye, and she smiled her approval, but he frowned and pointed.

She turned in her chair, and there was Jeremiah at the bar.

Chet had taken it upon himself to warn her about Tabak, having heard, of course, that Jeremiah had run to her side after the attack. He knew about single-minded, driven men, he said. He’d been one himself. “You should have no illusions about Jeremiah Tabak, Mollie.”

He was sipping a martini, and he wasn’t watching Chet at the piano. He was watching her. Her reaction was immediate and intense, and so unexpected she couldn’t stop it before it took on a momentum of its own. Her body turned liquid. It was as if she were melting into the floor. Chet’s music, the dark, sexy atmosphere of the jazz club in contrast to the bright, sunny day, and Jeremiah-his unsettling mix of hard edges and casual ease-all came together to assault her senses, her nerves. If she had even guessed he might be here, she could have prepared herself, steeled herself against just such a reaction. As it was, there could be no more denying that he had the same effect on her now as he’d had when she was twenty, that nothing had changed.

He knew she’d spotted him. He tilted his glass to her in a mock salute and drank. She attempted a cool smile. He climbed off the bar stool and walked toward her. He wore a black canvas shirt and pants, and the dim light reflected every color in his eyes. She noticed the few flecks of gray in his close-cropped black hair as he slid into the booth opposite her. He’d been only twenty-six himself ten years ago. Not so old.

“Afternoon,” he said.

“I take it this isn’t a coincidence.”

He sipped his martini, smiled over the rim of the glass. “You don’t think I’m out on a Sunday afternoon to hear an astronaut play jazz?”

“Did you follow me here?”

“No need. I saw Chet in the Trib’s listing of weekend events and figured you’d be here, good publicist that you are. Also, you’re too stubborn to stay home.”

“I stayed home yesterday,” she said.

He smiled. “I rest my case. I see you skipped the fancy jewelry. How’s your neck?”

Mollie ran one finger along the rim of her empty glass. “Healing nicely, thank you. It only hurts when I touch it. All considered, I was lucky.”

His gaze settled on her. In the background, Chet segued into a mournful piece. “Mollie, I need to be straight with you and very clear about why I’m here.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“I spent all day yesterday and most of today pulling together every fact I could find on this jewel thief story. There’s not much, you know. The police are stymied. The rumors are all over the place, nothing I can grab hold of. The jewelry hasn’t shown up for sale in any of the expected places.”

“Must be frustrating for you,” she said, willing herself back into solid form. He was here on business. The man breathed, ate, drank, lived the next story, whether it was one he could write or not. And she didn’t even have the satisfaction any longer of knowing he could make a serious ethical mistake. As far as she knew, Jeremiah was exactly the reporter his reputation said he was. Tough, honest, ethical, probing, and determined not just to get the story, but to get it right.

“Yes, it’s frustrating, but probably not for the reasons you imagine.” He swallowed more of his martini, seemed to hate saying what he’d come here to say. “Mollie, I’m on this thing because of you and I’ll see it through because of you.”

“Wait just a minute-”

He held up a hand. Now that he’d started, he wasn’t going to let her stop him. “I wouldn’t have touched this thing if your name hadn’t come up as the only person my source could find who’d attended every event the thief’s hit. He-my source-thinks you’re involved somehow.”

“Involved? Involved how? Who is this guy?”

“Mollie, I didn’t come here to upset you or to divulge information I’m not in a position to divulge. I just think you should know why I’m on this thing.”

“Because of me,” she said.

“Yes. Because of you.”

His voice was deep and low and could liquefy her bones if she let down her guard. It seemed to blend with Chet’s music, seeping into her soul, lulling her into a state of tranquillity she hadn’t felt in days.

Then his words penetrated the fog and registered in all their starkness, and her chin shot up.

Jeremiah was already on his feet. Smiling, he touched her cheek, then bent down and kissed her lightly, his lips soft, tasting of martini. “I’m relentless when I’m focused on something,” he half-whispered into her mouth, “and right now, I’m focused on you and this jewel thief. If you’re involved, think about telling me how, and why, and what you plan to do about it. Because I’ll find out, one way or the other.”

She pushed him away and shot to her feet, her pulse racing, every nerve ending in her aching to smack him, even as the rest of her reeled at his kiss, wanted more, wanted all of him. “You are off base, Tabak, and way ahead of your precious facts. I’m not involved. And if I were, damned if I’d tell you.”

He frowned. “You know, darlin’,” he said in his twangy, exaggerated drawl, “you don’t make it easy for somebody to care about you.”

“Accusing me of being involved with a jewel thief is caring about me?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just letting you know where I stand.”

As he hadn’t, not with any honesty, ten years ago. He’d let her believe the worst about him. Now, he was getting it all up front and center. “You’d better leave now, Tabak, before I…” Too incensed to think clearly, she didn’t know what she’d do. “Well, you can imagine.”

“I sure can, sweet pea.” He smiled sexily, knowingly, incensing her even more. He touched her cheek with the back of a knuckle. “If you’re in trouble, you have my number. You have my address. Call me, find me. I’m after the truth, and if it hurts you, it hurts you. But I’ll still be there for you.”

“Lucky me,” she said bitterly.

A glint of humor sparked in his eyes. “You’re right on there, darlin’. Right on. I owe you for lying to you ten years ago. It’s a debt I aim to pay.”

He blew her a kiss, and Chet’s fingers stumbled on the keyboard. He recovered quickly, and again the room filled with his music. But Mollie was still reeling.

Jeremiah, in total control, left.

After a few seconds, Mollie was able to return to her booth. Well, she thought. Didn’t that serve her right? She’d been starting to think of Jeremiah with a soft and tender side, and he’d just shown her. Probably acted out of a sense of honor. Had to let her know up front what was what. If she was guilty, she’d hang. But he’d feel bad about it.

During his break, Chet beelined for his publicist’s table. “What the hell was that all about?”

“I don’t know.” She’d ordered another margarita, this one with alcohol. “I’m as taken aback as you are.”

“Should have slapped the son of a bitch.”

“I thought about it.”

His eyes narrowed on her. He was stocky, fit, in his late fifties. “There’s a history between you two.”

Mollie felt her shoulders sagging. A history. She’d talked herself out of believing a weeklong affair was any kind of history. But there was something about Jeremiah, something about their history, that still ate at her, still intrigued and agonized her.

“It’s none of my business,” Chet went on, “but guys like that, they feed on vulnerability. They can’t help it. They sense it, they swoop in for the kill. It’s just the way they’re made. Tabak knows every button to push to get the information he wants. He’s on this jewel thief story, isn’t he?”

“It’s not his sort of story-”

“He’ll make it his sort of story. Mark my words, he’ll find an angle that’s pure Jeremiah Tabak.” Something caught his eye, and his face lit up. “Ah, here’s my bride. Excuse me, Mollie, won’t you?”

“Sure, Chet.”

She watched him greet his wife, who sat with Mollie and didn’t ask about Jeremiah or Friday night. But after Chet had played the first piece of his second set, Mollie gave up on returning to solid form and just went home.

Driving north on 95, she played Leonardo’s collection of his favorite tragic, romantic arias and turned up the volume high. At first she blinked back the tears, then she just let them flow as her godfather’s incredible voice filled her soul and forced out all the emotions she’d bottled up since first spotting Jeremiah at the Greenaway. Frustration, loss, fear, anticipation. She even cried for the young woman she’d been at twenty, the path not taken, the dreams not realized. Her week with Jeremiah had slammed her up hard against reality. She didn’t want a career in music. She didn’t have good judgment in men. She wasn’t as worldly and sophisticated as she’d thought.

Now here she was, ready to make the same mistake all over again. Wanting a man she was crazy to want. Desperate to trust him, even when he suspected her of knowing something about a jewel thief, even when he promised if the truth led him where she didn’t want him to go, so be it.

She reminded herself that love and romance and physical attraction didn’t necessarily respond to logic and will. If she’d once loved Jeremiah, if a part of her loved him still, there was nothing to be done about it beyond accepting it and moving on.

And not giving in, she thought.

Never giving in. She was thirty, and she liked her life, and she wasn’t in the mood to let falling for the wrong man turn it upside down all over again.