White Hot Page 2

  But he hadn’t, and she’d returned to Boston, where she belonged.

  It hadn’t been an amicable parting. He’d let her believe he had deliberately used her to get his first front-page story. It was on drug use and drug dealing among college students on spring break, and it had helped launch his career as an investigative reporter. He had fallen for Mollie accidentally, unintentionally, without motive, while covering the story, not as a way into it. Acting on a tip about where the dealers were selling their stuff, he’d spread his blanket next to hers. At first he hadn’t realized she was a college student. Her poise, her intelligence, her sense of humor, and her self-awareness distinguished her from the loud, fun-loving students who’d flocked to the beaches. Lunch led to dinner, and next thing, they were in bed together.

  He’d told her he was a reporter, although not any details of the story he was working on. By its conclusion, he’d realized that the drug use and dealing had occurred right in front of her, and she’d been oblivious, not because she was naive, but because she was so intensely focused. Music was her life. Nothing else could get in. He had, for that week. She’d responded hungrily, gobbling up everything she could about him, the passion of sudden romance, the excitement and energy of everything they’d been together for those seven memorable days. But when they ended and she had to go back to her conservatory in Boston, Jeremiah felt an obligation to make sure she did.

  Now she’d moved to south Florida, and Croc thought she was a jewel thief.

  “It’s a strange world,” Jeremiah muttered, and climbed out of his truck, restless and not at ease with what he was doing.

  He stood on the smooth, unpocked sidewalk, debating his next move. Knee-high impatiens in a half-dozen colors and squat, well-trimmed palms softened the imposing austerity of the iron fence. Inside the fence, strategically placed ground lights illuminated the sprawling lawn with its impeccable landscaping, and royal palms lined the long driveway to the main entrance. He supposed he could find a way inside if he put his mind to it. He received invitations and complimentary tickets to benefits, parties, and every manner of south Florida do on a regular basis. Unless it was a command appearance, he tossed them. He didn’t like parties. He didn’t like small talk. He didn’t like the encroachment of celebrity status onto his role as a serious journalist.

  And he didn’t know if Mollie was even at this particular party on this particular night. She could be at Leonardo Pascarelli’s practicing her flute, or working up copy for her astronaut-turned-pianist client.

  He shut his eyes, his gut twisting, his mind flooding with the memory of a sweet, airy tune she’d played after they’d made love their last time, when she’d had no idea what was coming, when he refused even to fathom that what they’d had that week was anything that could last.

  Two more minutes, he decided, and he was heading home.

  He watched a dark, gleaming Jaguar roll through the gates ahead of the crowd. No, this wasn’t his territory. The car stopped, the driver checking for oncoming traffic. He caught the toss of pale blond hair of the woman behind the wheel, then, as she turned in his direction, her face. The mouth, the straight nose, the high cheekbones.

  His stomach knotted.

  Mollie.

  So Croc hadn’t been kidding. She was in south Florida.

  Jeremiah remembered eyes that were a clear blue with flecks of ice white, intelligent, cool, yet sparkling when she laughed. He stiffened, willing away the sudden surge of regret. Whatever had existed between Mollie and himself had been meant to last only a week.

  The Jaguar turned up the street and sped off.

  Jeremiah returned to his truck and quickly checked his watch. He would stand there for five minutes before he permitted himself to leave. Otherwise he might run into the Jaguar and be tempted to follow it.

  In precisely four minutes and forty-two seconds, a police car arrived with lights flashing and went through the gates of the Greenaway Club.

  Jeremiah gave a low whistle. He got on his phone and called the paper, had the desk check into why the Boca Raton police had just arrived at the Greenaway Club. He would hold. He stood outside his truck and waited, impatient, phone stuck to his ear, until he got his answer.

  It looked as if a jewel thief had struck a dessert concert at the Greenaway.

  “Well, well, well,” Jeremiah said under his breath as he tossed the phone back into his truck. “Croc, my friend, you could be on to something.”

  And whatever it was, Mollie Lavender just could be in the thick of it.

  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?”