“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?”