Tempting Fate. Carla Neggers
Praise for
CARLA NEGGERS
“Neggers’s engaging romantic mystery neatly blends fiction with authentic detail.”
—Publishers Weekly on Tempting Fate
“Carla Neggers is one of the most distinctive, talented writers of our genre.”
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber
“When it comes to romance, adventure and suspense, nobody delivers like Carla Neggers.”
—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz
“Neggers has created yet another well-matched pair of characters and given them a crackerjack mystery to solve—complete with a seriously creepy villain.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Abandon
“Neggers keeps the reader guessing ‘whodunit’ to the end of her intriguing novel.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Widow
“A keen ear for dialogue and a sure hand with multidimensional characterizations are Neggers’ greatest gifts as a storyteller…. By turns creepy and amusing, the story engages on several levels.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Breakwater
“[Neggers’s] skill at creating colorful characters and deliciously twisted story lines makes this an addictive read.”
—Publishers Weekly on Stonebrook Cottage
“Neggers’s brisk pacing and colorful characterizations sweep the reader toward a dramatic and ultimately satisfying denouement.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Cabin
“Suspense, romance and the rocky Maine coast—what more could a reader ask? The Harbor has it all. Carla Neggers writes a story so vivid you can smell the salt air and feel the mist on your skin.”
—New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen
Carla Neggers
Tempting Fate
Dear Reader,
If you’ve ever been to Saratoga Springs in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains, you know it’s a great place to be. I’ve spent many days there enjoying its beautiful Victorian streets and sidewalk cafés, its colorful history, its incomparable mineral springs—and breakfast at the Saratoga racetrack in August is an experience not to be missed.
All these elements are the perfect backdrop for Tempting Fate, a favorite novel of mine that I’m delighted to see back in print—updated, even better than the original! I loved diving back into this story and revisiting its colorful cast of characters and the dangers they face. They’ve stayed with me from the moment they started percolating in my head on a pleasant stroll in downtown Saratoga, and I hope they stay with you, too.
Enjoy!
Carla
www.carlaneggers.com
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
One
Before she could change her mind, Dani Pembroke cut down a narrow side street in downtown Saratoga Springs, New York, and joined the line outside a small theater.
It was a beautiful August evening, the start of Saratoga’s racing season, a tradition since 1863, when, just a month after the bloody Battle of Gettysburg, John “Old Smoke” Morrissey and Cornelius Vanderbilt had brought twenty-six horses to America’s favorite spa for four days of racing. Dani loved the energy, the excitement, that she could feel in town. People jammed the pretty streets, the shops and restaurants were crowded and the sidewalk vendors were out in full force.
The Chandlers would have arrived by now, she thought.
My family.
Dani fought the urge to head up to the restored Victorian house they owned on North Broadway, Saratoga’s “Millionaires’ Row.” She could see if the wraparound front porch had the hanging baskets of pink and white petunias and antique wicker furniture she remembered as a little girl. If the gardens still smelled of summer roses and lilies.
If the place still reminded her of her mother.
For twenty-five years—ever since she was nine years old—Dani had avoided Saratoga in August. Her one searing memory was of watching her mother take off in a hot-air balloon, never to return.
More people fell into the line. The August factor at work, Dani thought. Usually the theater had to scramble for a crowd. But today, a hundred people would pack the house.
Then someone said, “It’s twenty-five years this month that Lilli Chandler Pembroke disappeared,” and Dani felt herself go cold. But she did nothing to draw attention to herself. The theater was showing a double feature of Nick Pembroke’s masterpiece, The Gamblers, and its sequel thirty years later, Casino. The owners had gotten hold of the old posters. The one of The Gamblers showed a smiling, black-eyed Mattie Witt.
She’s so beautiful, Dani thought, staring at her grandmother, a young woman in the picture—dazzling and mysterious with her midnight-black eyes and glossy black hair. Even then, before she’d become a star, her famous mystique was in place. Mattie Witt had made her last movie, given her last interview and abandoned Hollywood long before Dani was even born.
Her grandmother had also been long divorced from Nick Pembroke by the time her one and only grandchild was born. But as reckless as she was feeling, Dani didn’t want to think about her grandfather, a talented, scoundrel Pembroke if there’d ever been one.
Her gaze shifted to the second poster, and her chest tightened at the image of her mother. It wasn’t the original Casino poster. It was the one the studio had made after Nick Pembroke admitted that the unknown young blonde in the movie-stealing scene in the second act was his daughter-in-law, missing heiress Lilli Chandler Pembroke. He’d given her the part when he’d filmed Casino on location in Saratoga the previous August, days before she disappeared.
Her photograph captured not the mother Dani had known and loved and lost, but the woman Lilli Chandler Pembroke had longed to become: vivacious, sexy, independent—someone else. She had a completely different look from Mattie Witt thirty years earlier. Lilli was all Chandler, slender, fair, patrician, pretty but not exotic. She’d believed her destiny was to be the proper heiress, always gracious and elegant, never taking a wrong—a daring—step.
Until her father-in-law had cast her in his comeback movie.
Lilli’s