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  I was going to have to call my assistant, Savannah, and tell her the Tahoe job was going to be a bigger problem than we’d thought. And she’d already thought it was going to be a big problem.

  “And here is the pavilion we’re building to accommodate the guests,” she announced, turning the corner and flinging out an arm at the huge lawn and an open-walled structure. “All custom-made, of course.”

  “It’s beauti— Wait. What? Accommodate guests?”

  She looked at me. “Put them somewhere.”

  “Put them somewhere?” I said, low and suspicious. Was I being filmed? “We already have a ‘somewhere.’ Your neighbor’s huge, glass-walled conservatory. The one with the center courtyard and the commercial ovens. And the air-conditioning.”

  I threw out my hand like I was throwing dice at a craps table, pointing fiercely down the sunny green hill. “Down there.”

  Mrs. Peter J. shielded her eyes from the blazing sun. “Yes, that was the plan, but our neighbor declared bankruptcy and moved south rather suddenly. Belize, I think. So hard to extradite.” She smiled. “So we have to make do.”

  “By adding thirty more guests?”

  “By building the pavilion.” She pointed again. “Mahogany beams.”

  “Mahogany,” I repeated weakly, touching the dark wood.

  “Sustainable and stunning.”

  “Mrs. Sand— Lovey. Adding thirty people and a new venue are rather large last-minute changes,” I said, matching her perky smile for perky smile. Except I had my eyebrows raised, which was like upping us to a double-dog dare.

  She raised hers back, then laid a hand on my arm. “I know, Jane. You’re right. We’re in trouble. We need you to save us.”

  Triple dog. She won. I sighed and turned to the pavilion.

  It actually could work, if we forgot that there’d be thirty extra bodies. Open-aired, with a high-peaked roof, cool, dark shade beneath, and huge supporting pillars that allowed views of the sweeping green lawns and two stone fountains to the east. A steep drop-off down to a ravine on the west side promised gorgeous sunset views.

  I began mentally measuring how much material I’d need to pipe and drape the place and deciding whether the ceiling beams looked strong enough to support scarf dancers. I was already moving into disaster-response mode, which simply meant seeing the potential in all things.

  If you did it right, it could be a religious experience.

  Or not.

  I turned back. “Mrs. San— Lovey. That pavilion, beautiful though it is, will never fit a hundred and ten people.”

  She laughed. “Of course not. I have an idea.”

  I stilled. “Idea?”

  “Come with me.” She took off for the house. “I’ll show you. I think you’ll be impressed.”

  I turned on my heel, popping out a deep divot from the lawn, and followed her back to the house, where she apparently had an idea lying in wait.

  I was about to step through the French doors into the air-conditioned house when Mr. Sandler-Ross stepped into the doorway.

  He was tall and handsome and knew it, with a politic smile and hair gone tastefully gray. He propped one hand on the doorjamb and flashed me a thousand-watt smile.

  “Jane, right?” He emitted an odor of seafood and gin.

  I pressed a smile onto my lips.

  “I’m Sandler-Ross.” Another grin. His hand slid closer. “But you can call me Peter.”

  “And you can call me Ms. MacInnee,” I said, stepping backward and bumping into the rose trellis. Tiny barbed roses bit me. I had a fleeting urge to rip the trellis out of the ground and whack him across the side of the head with it, but I didn’t deface garden displays. Smile and conquer, that was my way.

  “So, how ’bout those Nationals?” I feinted. “They won last night, huh? That’s four straight.”

  He stepped through the door. “You’re talking to a Yankees man.”

  Figured. “Oh.”

  He backed me up another step, coming forward like a linebacker. “My wife’s very pleased with you, Jane.”

  I pressed into the trellis. “Speaking of your wife.”

  He took another step forward, smiling that bright, awful smile.

  Mrs— Lovey hurried back onto the hot patio then, rescuing me by planting an absent kiss on her husband’s cheek and thrusting a brochure at my chest.

  “Tents,” she said with an unsettling intensity. “What about tents? We can fit more people with tents, right?”

  What kind of rescue was this?

  “We can do tents,” I replied cautiously. “They’re just…tricky.” Bastards. Tents were tricky bastards. Like Mr. Peter J. “But if you want more people….”

  Mrs. Lovey smiled. “I want more people.”

  I smiled back. “Tents it is.”

  Now, delayed by a discussion on the merits (few) and pitfalls (many) of tents, I sat adrift in traffic on a network of detours that went, apparently, nowhere, in a cloud of construction dust that was sticking to the sweat on my neck and arms.

  Also, the hook on my bra strap was about to bust off.

  A bead of sweat tickled down my temple.

  I leaned forward and narrowed my eyes at myself in the rearview mirror. If someone didn’t watch out, whoever had posted all these damned detour signs was going to be very, very sorry.

  Also, my forehead was shining like glass.

  I dug through the briefcases and messenger bags slouching on the passenger seat beside me, reaching in for the tissues I took everywhere. You never knew when a client was going to break down in tears.

  Instead, my hand fell on the note I received last night from another client, Mrs. Richard P. Bass III, a friend of, and referral from, Mrs. Lovey. The note was penned on creamy stationary and carried a faintly perfumed odor and bad news.

  For opaque reasons, it reminded me that while the organically raised bourbon-whisky meatballs had been divine and the bacon-wrapped scallops inspired, there had been that small, unfortunate leak in the tent (Curse Angelo and his Tent-of-All-Trades Rentals, I thought, not for the last time) directly next to the guest of honor and her endless updo. And then there’d been all those extra guests who’d shown up, which would almost make one think I’d overbooked, but Mrs. Bass III would never dream of relaying that to the Thompsons, should they inquire about a recommendation for an event planner for their daughter’s upcoming wedding.

  Also, parenthetically, my payment was going to be delayed. Again.

  By a month. Or perhaps two.

  The opaque became transparent—she wouldn’t tell if I wouldn’t.

  With juvenile satisfaction, I wiped the note across my forehead, smearing its swooping black ink. Then I ripped it away. What if the note were needed as evidence in court?

  I snorted. As if I could afford to take someone to court.

  I was successful, so successful I couldn’t afford to anger anyone. It took hard work to make it in this business—hard work, a kickass assistant, unrelenting control, and the ability to exude. The fancy shoes, the expensive clothes, the luxury car (even in a rental)—everything was constructed to project the right image. Fake it till you make it. Success breeds success. People love a winner, and a mouthful of other platitudes that boiled down to the same thing—you were never what you seemed. It was all a show.

  It had to be. My reputation, my career, my financial security—everything—rested on people’s good opinion of me. And then sharing that opinion with others.

  The smallest thing could change what they said, or if they said anything at all. Either could spell career death.

  Some days, I felt as though I was walking down a long hallway balancing a book on my head. Wrapped in explosives.

  But that was about to change. The Sandler-Ross job was going to catapult me onto radars aimed at an atmosphere so rarified I could hardly catch my breath. Not the flashy wealthy, but the quiet wealthy, the blow-your-mind wealthy. I was going to keep this job if it killed me. Or someone else. For instance, Mr. Pe
ter J.

  I smiled briefly.

  Because if I handled this job right, I’d have made it.

  I was quiet a moment, then scowled into the rearview mirror at myself, irritated that this thought hadn’t encouraged me. It actually made me feel a little…hopeless. A sliver of cold shot through my body, almost as if….

  Almost as if I was having a chilling thought.

  I tipped forward and rested my forehead on the hot steering wheel. I was just tired, that was all. Tomorrow, I’d get back in the saddle. Tomorrow, I’d redo my makeup and square my shoulders and smile when hurricanes blew through town.

  For what was left of today, though, I was going to relax a little. Stop worrying.

  Take off my bra.

  A shiver of excitement tickled over my skin, cutting through the sweltering heat of the rental car. Nothing could be done about the pale pink silk blouse I’d been sweating in since six o’clock this morning. But the bra, that could go.

  For now.

  A small rebellion, but rebellion nonetheless.

  I leaned forward and peeled it away from my skin—I could feel the imprint of it on my sweaty back—then slid it down my belly and out the bottom of my shirt. Then I looked in the mirror and smiled.

  What next?

  Maybe I could go have a drink in the hotel bar.

  I raised my eyebrows at myself in the mirror. Really? I was pathetic. I couldn’t even come up with a good miniature rebellion.

  I slumped back in my seat. A movement out of the corner of my eye made me turn and look out at the low, battered red truck parked beside me.

  A man sat inside, one tanned arm slung along the backrest, looking at me from behind dark sunglasses. His hair was dark, short, his face covered with end-of-day shadow. A thin blue cotton shirt pressed against the muscles in his arm, slick with perspiration.

  “Hi,” I said, deep in my rebellious mode.

  A slow smile curved up a corner of his mouth. “Hi.”

  A shiver raced through me. That smile, that voice…. That shiver. I’d know it anywhere.

  Finn Dante.

  What were the chances? I asked myself. Zero, I answered. This wasn’t a function of probabilities.

  This was voodoo.

  A stream of excitement trickled through my belly.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Finn Dante,” I said, real slow and cool.

  “Janey Mac,” he murmured back.

  Another shiver went through me. The good kind. The kind I’d got when his fingers brushed my wrist at Emily’s party, the kind when he’d bent his head to mine down by the river, the kind when he’d looked at me and seen something different than what anyone else had ever seemed to see.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” I said.

  “Fancy,” he agreed.

  It wasn’t fancy at all. It was dangerous. Because I was at the end of my rope with my bra unhooked, looking for trouble, and Finn Dante was here, more hot and sexy and dangerous-looking at thirty than he’d been at nineteen.

  I did what I shouldn’t have done. I smiled.

  I leaned my arm out the window. The heat of the metal almost scalded me, and I yanked it back inside. “So what are you doing around these parts, Finn?”

  “I live here.”

  “Wow.” I was a complete idiot.

  “You?”

  “Work. I have work here.”

  “Wow.”

  I smiled into his grin. “You haven’t changed, Mr. Dante. Trouble and charm all the way.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “You think I’m charming?”

  I snorted. “I think you’re troubled.”

  He laughed, low and rumbly.

  Behind his sunglasses, his gaze trailed down me again. I knew it because I felt shivers across my chest. “So you got out of Dodge after all,” he said.

  I nodded. “I left a week after our...talk.” Calling it a talk was like calling politicians public servants. Lies, all lies.

  “Right. Our talk.” The low vibration of his irony rode all the way to my car. “So what kind of work you doing, Janey? Is there a game in town?”

  I shook my head. “I gave up cheering for sports teams. Now I cheer for rich people. Whip them into shape.”

  “In what capacity?”

  “Event planner for the rich and wanna-be famous.”

  He gave a low whistle. “Who’re your clients?”

  “The Sandler-Rosses.”

  “Ah.” A little pause. “Nice.”

  “It is.” Except when it wasn’t. But I didn’t talk about that. I smiled more brightly.

  “Swanky,” he said.

  “That’s my way. Redneck swank.”

  A smile creased the five o’clock shadow covering his jaw. He glanced through his windshield. “Yeah, Dodge had pretensions it could never achieve.”

  “You bet we did. And I helped create them. What about you? What sort of mayhem do you wreak nowadays?”

  His sunglasses came back my direction. “Did I wreak mayhem?”

  “You most certainly did. Girls, vacant buildings, the county criminal code. Nothing could stand against you.”

  He laughed. “Nowadays I do a little bit of a lot of things. Buy things, sell things, build things, smash things.”

  “How eclectic of you.”

  “Renaissance man.”

  I squinted at him. “What kinds of things do you smash? Hearts? The knees of your boss’s enemies?”

  “Buildings mostly. Why, you need something smashed?”

  A brief flash of the Sandler-Rosses’ new pavilion appeared in my mind. I brushed it away. “I’ll let you know.”

  The sun was going down, shifting the shadows into long, stretched-out things so I couldn’t see his eyes anymore, couldn’t see where he was looking. But his head hadn’t turned away from me.

  “So what are you doing tonight?”

  I squinted at the glow of him, then, in a burst of uncharacteristic forthrightness, leaned my arm out the window, not caring that the metal scorched my skin.

  “If you want to know the truth, Finn, it goes downhill from here. I’m sitting in a puddle of my own sweat, covered in construction dust, and if I ever find my hotel, I’ll spend the rest of the night trying to contact various vendors and alert them to the last-minute changes they’ll have to institute immediately, including thirty new guests and a new venue, as well as outdoor service in a setting that, while beautiful, is not air-conditioned. Or big enough.

  “The kitchen contains a single, household-size oven, and we need to change the menu to items that don’t require refrigeration. Also, I need tents. And somewhere for my flair barman to do his stuff. Like a bar. And I don’t know where to find a portable bar company locally. Also”—I sat back—“I almost brained my boss’s husband with a garden trellis, so I need to come up with a plan of action there.”

  He let me vent in silence, just like he had down by the river.

  Don’t go there, I warned myself. Last time I spilled my guts to Finn, I ended up with my hand down his pants.

  “Pete Sandler is an ass,” he said after a moment.

  I brightened.

  “I know someone who has portable bars.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know such a thing?”

  “I know Dan. He owns Extreme Rentals.”

  I stretched out my hand into the narrow space between our vehicles. “You know Dan who owns Extreme Rentals.”

  A smile touched his mouth. “I know Dan.”

  “Personally?”

  “We play together.”

  “Playdates,” I breathed. “What do you play?”

  He grinned. “Music.”

  “How much?”

  “For what?”

  “Access to his personal cell number.” I squinted at him appraisingly. “Firstborn child? Designer drugs? My secret recipe for blueberry-pear daiquiris?”

  He looked at me a second more, then flipped his phone open and tapped away at it, then shut it. “I told him to call me
. Had an event-planner emergency that could make him a lot of money.”

  “I owe you.”

  This smile was slow and dangerous. “So come out with me.”

  I felt a vibrating cord of, well, happiness shimmer through me. That couldn’t be good. I cleared my throat.

  Car engines began firing to life. Far up the line of traffic, cars began moving forward. I sat back and swallowed.

  “What else are you going to do tonight, Janey? Worry?”

  “I don’t worry. I consider. All the possible catastrophes.”

  He smiled faintly and shrugged. “Your choice.”

  Engines revved to life, and the bright red brake lights of the cars in front of us started to blink out, little ripples of darkness dotting down the line of cars.

  “What do you say, Jane?”

  My heart hammered. “Yes,” I said.

  What had I just said?

  He turned the key in his ignition. “Follow me.”

  My head felt spinny. “To where?”

  “It depends on what you want to do.” He paused. “You hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Thirsty? The cars in front of us began to move. “No.” Oh boy, I was in trouble now.

  I could feel him watching me. “Want to see my place?”

  Now we both knew very well what he was offering. It was time to inject some reality into this moment.

  So I took a deep breath and said, “Absolutely.” Because if I was going to be bad, I was going to be very, very bad.

  He grinned as he shoved on the gearstick and put his truck into first. “Follow me, beautiful.”

  And I did feel beautiful, gorgeous and dizzy and reckless. This was much better than taking off my bra. Much better than anything I’d done the last few years of my life. Maybe the last five years.

  Okay, maybe seven.

  Okay, eleven. And about seventy-two days.

  I gestured wildly at the person driving the car behind Finn, and he let me in. I could have kissed him but settled for a huge wave, and slid my car in behind Finn’s battered red truck.

  Screw the maps. For tonight.