But of course it hadn’t been love. It had been infatuation, obsession, hormones, a dip into the kind of life she didn’t live. And chose not to live. She didn’t do torrid affairs. She wasn’t even much of a party girl, not at twenty, not at thirty. She worked hard, but she didn’t play hard. Her appearance at the Greenaway last night had been for the music and her work, her need to establish a presence and a reputation in the area-the fun of it was just a pleasant by-product.
It was Jeremiah’s work, too, that had led him to the Greenaway. He had staked out last night’s party in case the jewel thief showed up. Which he had, the police apparently arriving not long after Mollie had headed home.
She gasped, choking on a mouthful of pool water as she shot to the surface.
Of course.
She leaped out of the pool, wrapped up in her towel, slipped on her flip-flops and stalked upstairs. Before she could think, analyze, or calm down, she’d pulled out the phone book and dialed the Miami Tribune’s number. The switchboard put her through to Jeremiah, and finally he answered. “Tabak.”
“I don’t know anything about your jewel thief,” Mollie said, breathless from her swim, her mad dash upstairs, her indignation. “I didn’t see anything last night, I didn’t do anything last night, and I don’t know one damned thing. I don’t have access to him, I don’t have any information about him, I didn’t even know he was on the loose until twenty minutes ago.”
“You doing anything for dinner?”
“What?”
“I’m in Palm Beach. The call got put through to my truck phone. The miracles of modern technology, eh? I’ll be there in two minutes.”
He hung up.
Mollie stared at her phone. How had that just happened? Given Leonardo’s state-of-the-art security, she didn’t have to let him in. But she didn’t think she could explain two altercations in her driveway with a man in a beat-up brown truck to her neighbors. That left her less than two minutes to get into dry clothes before he arrived on her doorstep.
She raced down the hall, pushing back images of Jeremiah peeling off her wet bathing suit and making love to her at the same time.
“This is not good,” she muttered. “Not good at all.”
But like ten years ago, she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
4
Mollie personally ushered Jeremiah through the gates and almost made him park in Leonardo’s garage. She wasn’t up to explaining him to any friends and neighbors who happened by, but decided sticking him in the garage would only encourage him to stay longer.
“Hop in,” he said through his open window. “We’ll walk on the beach and talk.”
“You mean you’ll talk. I have nothing to say.”
He gave a curt nod. “Fine.”
She eyed him suspiciously. Something had changed. The earlier cockiness and game-playing had disappeared. She wouldn’t say he looked guilty, but something was different.
“Mollie,” he said, “get in. I’d like to say what I have to say on neutral ground.”
“You want witnesses?”
He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses, and his eyes sparkled, sending a tremor of awareness through her. “Witnesses would be nice.”
Neutral ground just might be to her advantage, too, she decided, and went around and climbed up into the passenger seat without a word. He had his phone, steno pads, maps, phone books, pencil stubs, and an array of newspapers and magazines tucked on seat and floor. A Post-it note with “lizard food” scrawled across it was stuck to the glove compartment. Jeremiah saw her staring at it and said, “It’s a reminder. There’s no lizard food inside.”
“I see.”
“You spoiled by Pascarelli’s Jaguar?”
She attempted a smile, too uptight still to relax. “Not yet. I admit I’m enjoying it.”
“Well, this old heap suits me. It doesn’t stick out in the neighborhoods where I usually hang out, and I won’t lose any sleep if it gets stripped.” He backed out into the street, and Mollie pulled on her seatbelt, trying not to dwell on the play of the muscles in his arms, the shape of his hands on the gearshift. “What about the gates?”
“I’ll leave them unlocked. I’m sure we won’t be long.”
He didn’t argue, just shifted into first and rolled down the smooth, sunlit road. Mollie sat with her hands fisted on her thighs. If only he’d lost his appeal, she told herself, this wouldn’t be so difficult. He wasn’t handsome in any traditional sense. He was possibly more cynical, harder-edged. But he was also every bit as edgy and sexy as he’d been when she’d first realized he would be her first lover, and time hadn’t tempered her reaction to him. If anything, it was more uncontrollable, more dangerous. She’d had the illusion of her safe world in Boston then. Now, no more. Nothing seemed safe or permanent, which only left her feeling more vulnerable.
“I’m going to have to put your picture back on my dartboard,” she said half under her breath.
He grinned over at her, a touch of this morning’s irreverence back. “And adjust your aim?”
She didn’t answer, just felt herself sinking into her seat high above the road. He drove the short distance to the water and pulled into a narrow parking strip. He got out without comment, and Mollie was still fiddling with her door when he came around and opened it for her. “Watch your step,” he said, staying close as she stepped down.
A stiff wind had kicked up off the water, which lay a good fifty yards down a set of wooden stairs and across the width of sandy beach. The lot was almost full, but she and Jeremiah were the only people around. She took a breath, keeping tension and frustration at bay. “We can talk here.”
He looked out at the sparkling water, the beach that was only lightly dotted with bright umbrellas, sunbathers, kids running with plastic buckets. “I don’t get up here that often. Let’s go down by the water.”
“Jeremiah-”
“I’ve got something I need to say, Mollie. I don’t want to say it in a parking lot.”
“If it’s about this jewel thief, it can be said right here.”
“It’s not.”
He walked out ahead of her, leaving her little choice but to follow. They headed down the sand-covered steps to the beach. The wind must have pushed the crowds off the water, but Jeremiah seemed undaunted as he walked across the sand to the ocean’s edge. The air was cooler, the wind stiffer, penetrating the lightweight khakis and black henley Mollie had pulled on in haste. She wished she’d brought her windbreaker. She reminded herself she was with a man who’d always lived in this ecologically complex maze of water, land, wildlife, and people. She remembered walking on the beach on a late afternoon such as this, with gulls wheeling in a clear sky as he’d told her about growing up in the Everglades, an only child with a widowed father, his soul as tangled up with exotic birds and tall grasses and mysterious waters as hers was with music.
If he was to be believed. For all she really knew, he’d grown up in Buffalo.
The tide was going out, wide stretches of sand dampened and packed down from the recent influx of water. That was where they walked, leaving footprints. The wind whipped Mollie’s hair into tangles, but she had to admit it felt cathartic, as if it were trying to whip some of the anger and confusion out of her.