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Formula for Danger
Camy Tang
Someone wants dermatologist Rachel Grant's latest research, and they'll do anything to get it. Including trashing the plants needed for her breakthrough scar-reducing cream–and trying to run Rachel down.Desperate for help, she turns to Edward Villa, the only man she trusts. But the greenhouse owner knows too much about Rachel's research, and now he's a target, too. Break-ins, muggings, murder…the would-be thief is getting desperate–and getting closer. Edward vows to protect Rachel at all costs. Yet with time ticking away, Edward knows they have to uncover the madman shadowing Rachel before their chance for a future is destroyed.
“Rachel, earlier tonight, someone broke into greenhouse four.”
“Greenhouse four? My greenhouse?” Technically, it was his greenhouse, but the only things in it were her Malaysian basil plants. “Were you there? Are you okay?”
Edward paused, and his searching gaze made her stomach flip. “I’m fine. I wasn’t there when it happened. I left my cell phone in greenhouse six, so I went to get it. I noticed movement in the yard, and when I went to check the greenhouses, I found yours unlocked. Someone trashed all your plants.”
She gasped. She needed Edward to cultivate a certain number of plants so she could make the extract for her scar reduction cream, scheduled to launch in only five months. She couldn’t be late. The spa depended on her new product launch. “Why didn’t the alarm go off? I thought the greenhouses all had security alarms in place.”
“They do,” Edward said. “But the system in greenhouse four didn’t go off. I checked it, and it looks like the thief tampered with it. Whoever did this was a professional, not your average thief. The thief entered only greenhouse four, Rachel—the thief was only after your plants.”
CAMY TANG
writes romance with a kick of wasabi. Originally from Hawaii, she worked as a biologist for nine years, but now she writes full-time. She is a staff worker for her San Jose church youth group and leads a worship team for Sunday service. She also runs the Story Sensei fiction critique service, which specializes in book doctoring. On her blog, she gives away Christian novels every Monday and Thursday, and she ponders frivolous things like dumb dogs (namely, hers), coffee-geek husbands (no resemblance to her own…), the writing journey, Asiana and anything else that comes to mind. Visit her Web site at www.camytang.com.
Formula for Danger
Camy Tang
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.
—Psalms 24:1
To Danica and Cheryl. I thought I could never find two people as sick and twisted as myself, but I have in you two. Thanks for being my friends.
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
LETTER TO READER
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
ONE
Dr. Rachel Grant had walked only a few feet out the back door of her family’s Sonoma day spa, Joy Luck Life, when the patter of running footsteps behind her made her turn.
She had only a glimpse of a dark hoodie and a tall, lanky figure before a shove sent her sprawling onto the sidewalk. Thwack! Her left cheekbone collided with the cement, sending pain lancing through her head.
Snow clouded her vision and she struggled to open her eyes. Her heart pounded in her throat, making it hard for her to breathe. Frantic, she opened her mouth wide but no sound came out.
She glanced up. The backsides of dirty sneakers filled her field of view as they trotted away from her. Then a hand scooped up the bag strap of her sister Naomi’s laptop computer, which had flown from Rachel’s grip to land on the edge of the pool of light from the parking lot streetlamp. The sneakers hustled away.
Breathe! Rachel forced her wooden lungs to fill and tried to scream, but only a harsh croak came out. Where were the security guards? They should have seen the attack thanks to the outside video cameras. How long would it take for them to run out here?
Even worse, Naomi would be devastated to lose that laptop, which she’d bought barely five hours ago.
She heard the creak of the spa’s back door, then more footsteps. “Rachel! Rach, are you okay?” Naomi fell to her knees beside her, hands on Rachel’s shoulders. “I was talking to Martin, and we saw it all on the security camera.” Martin, one of the security guards, raced past them, pursuing the stranger and the laptop.
In the distance, a woman’s voice screeched, “What are you doing? Don’t leave me!” It sounded as if it had come from the front of the spa.
Who was that? What was going on?
Rachel pushed herself up, her cheekbone throbbing as she rose. She squeezed her eyes shut to the wave of pain and paused on her knees, her head bowed.
Naomi put her arm around her. “Where are you hurt?”
“Just my cheek.”
Naomi pulled Rachel’s hair away from her face to look at her. Rachel had a hard time opening her eyes again as the pain splashed across her forehead, trickling back inside her skull. “How bad is it?”
“You’ll have a black eye, that’s for sure. We need to get you to the hospital.”
“No, I’ll have Monica look at it first. If the family nurse says so, then I’ll go to the hospital.” Just the thought of all the people in a crowded emergency room made Rachel cringe. She only wanted a quiet place to lie down and recover. “I’m sorry about your laptop.”
“Forget the laptop, I’m worried about you.”
“I only took a fall, nothing worse. But that laptop was new—”
“I can buy a new one. Besides, I’m almost glad it was new because it didn’t have anything on it, so the spa didn’t lose any sensitive information. That would have been worse.” Especially since Naomi still managed the spa while their father recovered from his stroke. Naomi had bought the computer to help her with the spa’s accounting.
“We should call the police and report it stolen.”
“We should call Dad and Aunt Becca first.” Naomi dug her cell phone out of her pocket.
“Call Aunt Becca. Aren’t she and Detective Carter out to dinner tonight?” The two of them were dating again after an argument that had kept them apart for a few months. It was almost 10:00 p.m., but they might still be together at a movie.
As Naomi talked to Aunt Becca—who indeed was with Detective Horatio Carter—Rachel managed to sit up, although the evening sky spun around her. She clutched her hands together, trying to stop their shaking. She’d been attacked in the spa parking lot!
Clicking heels made Rachel look up. Gloria Reynolds, one of Naomi’s massage clients, tripped toward them. “Dr. Grant, are you all right? Did that man hurt you?”
“Ms. Reynolds, you’re still here?” Not the most tactful thing to say, but her headache was making it hard for her to be polite.
“Ms. Reynolds was my last client for tonight,” Naomi told Rachel as she ended her call with Aunt Becca.
Gloria flipped her highlighted hair with a manicured hand. “The security guard was walking me to my car when he saw that person running away. Miss Grant,” Gloria said to Naomi, “you really should talk to that guard. He ran after the person and left me by myself. Even when I called to him. And it was obvious the other guard was after the man, too, so there was no need for him to give chase.”
Naomi smiled politely and responded with amazing courtesy when Rachel knew she must be rolling her eyes inside.
A flash of car headlights made Rachel wince as a vehicle headed down the spa driveway.
Then alarm jolted through her. The spa was closed, and the security guards, running after the thief toward the driveway, would have stopped the car from entering. Were the guards okay?
The car maneuvered into the staff parking lot, then stopped right next to them. A door opened and slammed shut. “Rachel!”
Edward Villa’s voice made her heart leap into her throat, then settle back down in her chest, racing. Edward was here. Suddenly everything seemed okay.
No, she had to stop reacting this way to him. He didn’t think of her as anything other than a client.
“Are you all right?”
She smelled him—pine, a hint of the orchids he worked with at his greenhouses and earthy musk—before her eyes registered that he was crouched in front of her, edging out Ms. Reynolds.
“The guards told me what happened when I drove in.”
She had been able to keep it together when talking to Naomi, but somehow, his concern for her undermined her control over her emotions, and she steeled her jaw against a sudden onslaught of wild sobbing. Casting herself into his arms would only solidify his cool opinion of her, which he had made abundantly clear a couple months ago.
“Rachel.” He reached out for her.
She held up a hand to stop him.
He grasped her hand, engulfing her fingers. His callused fingers rubbed her knuckles. His touch made her head spin.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, breathless. She pulled her hand away.
The security guards walked up to them. “I’m sorry, Miss Grant, he got away. He ran up the driveway, and there was a car waiting for him at the end of it. They took off.”
“Dr. Grant, are you okay?” the other guard asked, peering at Rachel.
She felt like a bug on display. “I’m fine.” She heaved herself to her feet, but it made the blood pound painfully in her head. She swayed.
Edward’s arm wrapped around her, making the earth stand still again. It felt good to be held by him. It felt…
Too good. She pulled away from him.
Edward paused a moment, then he bent down and collected her purse, which had dropped and scattered its contents when she fell. As he handed it to her, his eyes were calm, but somehow she could sense a fire burning behind them. As if other emotions ran deeper.
She didn’t understand. While they had been working together for the past year on Rachel’s new product for the spa, they had gotten closer, and she had felt free to be herself with him. But then, in the past couple months, he had withdrawn from her, become distant and polite.
Maybe he had seen who she really was…and he hadn’t liked what he saw.
The thought was like a punch to her gut, every time she thought it. Which had been often in the past two months.
No, maybe he had never been interested in her, and he’d suddenly become aware that he was leading her on. Regardless, recently he had been clear in showing that he had no interest in her beyond a good business relationship.
She was just imagining the emotion in his eyes was deeper than natural concern. “Thank you.” She took her purse from him, avoiding touching his hand again.
The silence was thicker than cold cream.
“Rachel—” he began.
“Here you go, Miss Rachel.” Martin, a security guard who had been with them for years, handed her an ice pack he must have gotten from inside the spa. “That’ll keep the swelling down from that shiner.”
His light words made her smile, made the situation not seem so horribly violating. “Thanks, Martin.” She pressed the cold pack to her eye, and found that it enabled her to avoid looking at Edward.
“Ms. Reynolds,” Naomi said, “let me escort you back inside. We can wait for the police in one of the lounge rooms.”
Rachel stayed outside and watched them reenter the spa. She tried not to remember what had happened, but it came to her in flashes. She shivered. She’d been bullied in grade school because she’d been a geek and a bit odd, but no one had ever assaulted her. Even bickering with her sisters Naomi and Monica had never gone beyond a little hair-pulling.
But tonight, someone had deliberately hurt her. It made her feel weak and vulnerable. Not in control.
And she didn’t like it.
She especially didn’t like that it had happened here, at the spa.
She suddenly realized that Edward had no reason to visit her here. They usually talked on the phone about the basil plants he was growing for production of her new spa product and met at his greenhouses. Why was he at the spa this late at night? “Edward, what are you doing here?”
His eyes were deep obsidian pools as they studied her, then he surprised her by looking away. “Edward?”
He sighed. “I called your home and your sister Monica said you were still here.”
“Did you try calling my cell phone? Did I not hear it ringing?” She fumbled in her purse and grasped the rubbery edge of her rugged waterproof cell phone—a necessity since she’d ruined two phones by using them while working in the lab with chemicals.
“No, I didn’t call.”
Avoidance wasn’t Edward’s style—neither was this vague evasiveness. “Then what…?”
He didn’t answer immediately, and his face was grave. “I came to the spa to tell you something you’re not going to like.”
Her heart beat hard, once. But really, how could her day get any worse? “Lay it on me. I’m ready.”
“Earlier tonight, someone broke into greenhouse four.”
“Greenhouse four? My greenhouse?” Technically, it was his greenhouse, but the only things in it were her Malaysian basil plants. “Were you there? Are you okay?”
He paused, and his searching gaze made her stomach flip. But she lifted her head and tightened her muscles to keep her molten insides in place.
“I’m fine. I wasn’t there when it happened.”
“Oh. Good.” She tried to slow her racing heart. “Did you call the police?”
“Yes. I left my brother, Alex, to meet with them while I came to talk to you. On the way, I called Horatio Carter, who said he was also headed here with your aunt, so that was fortunate. I’m hoping he’ll come back to the greenhouse with me tonight.”
“How did you find out about the break-in?”
“I left my cell phone in greenhouse six, so I went to get it. I noticed movement in the yard, and when I went to check the greenhouses, I found yours unlocked.”
Her headache became a jackhammer against her skull. “Was everything okay?”
The lines deepened around his mouth. “No. Someone trashed it—all your plants.”
She gasped.
“Don’t panic too much. Alex is moving the plants to greenhouse seven right now, and I can salvage most of it.”
“Most of it?” She needed Edward to cultivate a certain number of plants so she could make the extract for her scar-reduction cream, scheduled to launch in only five months. She couldn’t be late. The spa depended on her new product launch. “Will you be able to grow more? I need…” She faltered at the shadow that crossed his eyes.
He replied evenly, “Your research will be fine, Rachel.”
His distant tone confused her. What had she said? She switched tactics. “You left your cell phone in a greenhouse? You never do that. If you hadn’t forgotten it…”
A half smile twitched at his mouth. “God was watching over your plants, I think.”
The familiar way he said it made something squirm inside her. Edward had always had such a different relationship with God than she did, and it seemed to widen the gap between them. “Why didn’t the alarm go off? I thought the greenhouses all had security alarms in place.”
“They do—to monitor temperature and humidity, and also to alert when a window or door is opened. But the system in greenhouse four didn’t go off. I checked it, and it looks like the thief tampered with it.”
“Aren’t those security alarms top-of-the-line? High-tech?”
He nodded. “Whoever did this was a professional, not your average thief.”
The mild California fall breeze was suddenly frosty against her skin. “How about the other greenhouses?”
“I checked them all. Only yours was broken into.”
“Only mine?” This was a blow she didn’t know if she could bear, not on top of everything that had happened tonight. She bit her lip.
It almost looked as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands, finally resting them on his slim hips. “I don’t understand it. Some of the plants in my other greenhouses are extremely rare and valuable, but whoever came by didn’t even touch them.”
She’d seen those plants—exotic orchids and rare rain-forest species, mostly commissioned by wealthy clients because of Edward’s reputation for cultivating delicate tropical plants. “None of them were taken?”
If the burglar could have dismantled the security alarm for one greenhouse, surely he could have dismantled the security alarms for the others. Or maybe he hadn’t had time to because Edward had discovered the thief’s activities. But why bother with destroying her plants when he could have more quickly gotten into the other greenhouses and stolen the rarer species?
Edward’s eyes pinned her with concern and gravity. “The thief entered only greenhouse four, Rach—the thief was only after your plants.”
Edward hated chaos, and it surrounded him in greenhouse four—broken pots, torn leaves and potting soil dusting everything. He stood in the midst of the destruction and sighed.
It wasn’t actually that bad. He’d discovered the open door before the temperature had dropped too much, and now Rachel’s plants were all in greenhouse seven. He was also planning on paying for an evening guard to walk the greenhouses—at least until the person responsible for this was caught.
Detective Carter glanced up from where he surveyed some toppled tables. “It would have been better for me if you’d left the scene as is, Edward.”
“Sorry, Detective, but Malaysian basil is extremely sensitive to temperature and humidity. The plants could have died within the hour.”
Detective Carter shrugged and went back to taking notes.
“Thanks for convincing Rachel not to come out here tonight, Horatio,” Edward said.
The detective shook his head, his thinning red-gold hair glinting dully in the fluorescent light. “She didn’t need to see this. She’s had a bad night already. How many plants survived?”
“Almost all of them, actually.”
Horatio grunted.
“My brother, Alex, and I counted as we transferred the plants. We’re only missing about twelve of them, and I’m sure there are a couple lost in the piles of dirt. Some will die later, but we’ll try to prevent that.”
“I’m about done here.” The detective flipped his notebook closed. “You mentioned Alex took pictures of the greenhouse before you two moved the plants?”
Edward nodded. “He’s in greenhouse seven right now.”
“Good. I wanted to talk to him anyway.”
It always amazed Edward how Alex had become such good friends with Detective Carter, who had been the man who had arrested his brother all those years ago for robbing a convenience store.
“I hope not too many plants die because of tonight.” Horatio paused as he pulled open the door. “Rachel has been working pretty hard on this new product.” He left the greenhouse, heading toward the south side of the property.
Edward’s jaw tensed. “Yes,” he said softly to himself. He knew exactly how hard she’d been working. At least, how hard she’d started working three months ago. She was probably driving herself into the ground by now.
And why should he care?
He was fooling himself if he thought he didn’t care. Seeing her on her knees, her eye swollen and red, had shot him through the heart.
For the past year he had been growing the special Malaysian basil plants she used to create the scar-reduction cream that she planned to launch in a few months. During that year they had grown closer, but a couple of months ago she had discovered how truly revolutionary her product was. She had then thrown herself into her research with single-minded purpose and insanely long hours.
She had spent less time with him, and he had tried not to let it bother him at first—after all, Rachel’s cream, thanks to the Malaysian basil as the secret ingredient, was truly a breakthrough product in reducing scarring, and they were only working together, not dating. But up until that point they had been getting closer, and he had wanted to see if she would take their relationship beyond a professional one. He had asked her to dinner at his mother’s house, to meet his family.
She had been pleased and excited, which got his hopes up. But the night of the dinner, thirty minutes late, she had called to say she had found a new formulation and wanted to test it. That she was sorry to have to cancel last minute. Maybe next time?
Mama had been disappointed. For Edward, Rachel’s phone call had caused a twist of pain in his gut because it had reminded him of Papa’s excuses, the way Papa would cancel last minute, the way Papa would put work before his relationships and all the bitterness and pain coloring Edward’s memories of his father.
To protect his heart, he had made a decision to back away from their friendship before it became more than that. He’d thought a couple of months of polite phone conversations and professional meetings here at the greenhouse meant he had distanced himself emotionally.
He’d been deluding himself.
He threw himself into the cleanup work, trying to sweep away the vision of her bruised face. After clearing a path through the dirt and pottery shards on the floor, he righted the tables that had been knocked over, making a mental note to fix the broken leg on one of them.
Snap!
His heart stopped in his chest. The sound had been too loud—like a heavy foot stepping on a branch.
Horatio had left several minutes ago to talk to Alex in greenhouse seven, which was in the opposite direction of where the sound had come from, so it couldn’t be either of them. Which meant…
An intruder was outside in the darkness.
He exited the greenhouse as casually as he could, listening for sounds of running footsteps just in case the intruder had seen him leave through the glass of the greenhouse windows and was now escaping. No sounds except a soft rustle of tree leaves in a stray night breeze.
It took too long for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He moved away from the greenhouse door by feel and smell more than sight, his shoes padding against wet leaves and grass.
The crickets from the pond were loud. He hunkered down near a tree, still and tense.
Suddenly he saw a shadow move.
He circled around, avoiding patches of dry leaves that could give him away, keeping the shadow in sight.
Then the man stopped moving.
Had the figure heard him? Edward froze, trying to pick the intruder out from the darkness. It was almost impossible—he had to wait until the figure moved again.
Nothing stirred in the darkness for what seemed like hours. His hands started to numb from the cold night air, so he eased them into his pockets to warm them, never taking his eyes from where he’d last seen the intruder. This was private property, and he resented this invasion.
Edward saw a slight movement. The man was short and stocky, or maybe he was hunched down. He almost didn’t seem to be trying to stay out of sight. He had stopped under an orange tree, and the overhanging branches partially hid him from sight and protected him—Edward couldn’t grab him while the arms of the tree circled him.
Then the man moved.
The stranger eased closer to the greenhouse and seemed to be trying to peer inside. He had to be up to no good. He moved slowly, as stealthy as a coyote.
When the intruder had fully cleared the branches of the orange tree, Edward leaped at him.
They went down in a whirlwind of dead leaves and the stranger’s thick jacket. The man was smaller than he had anticipated, but wiry and quick. Edward got a glancing blow to the jaw from a flailing fist that made him jerk back slightly.
The stranger took advantage of the pause to scramble away, or maybe to grab a branch as a weapon. Edward didn’t want to find out—he dived for the figure, using all his weight to pin the man to the ground, reaching to capture scrabbling arms and twist them behind the man’s back.
“Eep!”
He stilled. Male trespassers didn’t eep.
He loosened his hold, and the person flipped over.
“Rachel!”
She stilled the moment their eyes met. The light from the greenhouse windows gave her face a pearl-like glow, and he caught a whiff of her perfume—lavender and citrus. She was beautiful, ethereal. The first time she’d come to his greenhouses to hire him, over a year ago, the sight of her had sucked the air out of his lungs. Like now.
No, this was dangerous territory. Edward stood and gave her a hand up.
She busied herself dusting the leaves from her jeans, but at the same time, she seemed to be trying to shrink inside her bulky winter jacket.
“What are you doing, Rachel? Detective Carter said you didn’t need to be here.”
“Yes, I did.” Her eyes, wide, determined, but fighting tears at the same time, met his. “I did. I couldn’t stay home and just…” She bit back a sob.
He could understand her need to see for herself the damage done to the plants and how that sight would somehow make her feel more in control of the whole situation. She had been working long hours to develop her scar-reduction cream, and this kind of setback would have thrown her for a loop.
He wanted to hold her, comfort her, tell her it would be all right.
No, he had to keep his distance from her. He and his family had already lived through the broken promises and hurt from a workaholic father. He had vowed he would never neglect his own children for his work, he would never make them feel like a secondary priority in his life, he would never make them feel as if their graduations and work successes were not important enough to attend, as Papa had done to Edward. Therefore, he wouldn’t even consider getting involved with a woman who would cause the same sort of pain in her children.
So he’d withdrawn from Rachel. He had to remember why he’d done that.
She shivered, despite her jacket.
“Come inside the greenhouse.” He led her into the warm, moist air. The sight was going to upset her, so he watched her closely.
She surprised him. She went completely still as she surveyed the mess. Her bottom lip trembled once. Her hands pressed to her stomach as if to keep herself from falling apart.
Her silence filled the greenhouse, so he spoke tentatively, reiterating what he’d told Detective Carter. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
No answer. Her unfocused gaze told him that he’d lost her to her own thoughts.
“Rachel?”
She started, then darted a sideways glance at him. She took a deep breath and adopted a more businesslike demeanor. “What do you want me to do?”
“You’ve had a tough night. Are you sure you want to help clean up? Why not come back tomorrow—”
“No, if I go home, I’ll just lie awake worrying about it all.” She gave him a small smile. “I’m fine, really. The black eye looks worse than it feels.”
Actually, it hadn’t colored much yet. It only looked like a trick of the shadows. “Did Monica look at it?”
“She sighed in exasperation and said something like, �If you insist on gallivanting around Sonoma County with a black eye, don’t come crying to me if you faint or get blurry vision. Go to some other nurse, because you won’t get sympathy from me.’”
Edward laughed. “Which means, in Monica-speak, that you’re okay but she doesn’t want to say so.” He handed Rachel a broom. “I’ll clean up the broken shards. You sweep the dirt into the bin. And look for any plants I might have missed.”
They worked in silence for a moment. Then Rachel asked, “Did Detective Carter already leave?”
“No, he’s in greenhouse seven. He needed to talk to Alex.”
Rachel hesitated a moment before asking, “Is your brother in trouble?”
Edward blinked at her. “No, why?”
“Why would Detective Carter need to talk to him?”
“Oh. Horatio and Alex are friends. Horatio is the officer who arrested Alex for the robbery.”
“The robbery? The one that sent Alex to prison? That makes no sense.”
Edward laughed. “After Alex received Christ in prison, he went straight to Horatio once he got out on parole and thanked him for arresting him. And apologized for giving him so much grief for so many years.” He’d have given anything to have witnessed his tall, 220-pound brother apologizing to Detective Carter, who, while steely-eyed and intimidating in his own way, was still five inches shorter than Alex.
“Wow.”
“They’ve become friends in the years since. I think Alex occasionally helps Detective Carter on some of his cases, because of his past experiences and connections he still has.”
“Not illegal connections?”
“No, he gave those up. But he still visits several of his old friends asking them to come to church with him.”
“Oh.” Her eyes skittered away as she renewed her sweeping.
There was only silence for a moment, then Edward said, “Alex said to tell you he was praying for you—”
“Tell him thanks.” But her words were curt.
He tried again. “He also said that if you wanted him to pray for anything in particular—”
“No.” Her voice was sharp, and she started sweeping the floor with short, jerky movements. The conversational topic was clearly over.
Strange, she seemed even more uncomfortable talking about her faith now than three months ago, when they had been closer and chatting together more often. They’d rarely discussed God, but she’d never avoided the subject. She had said she was a strong Christian. Was her faith wavering in the face of all the recent problems?
She suddenly stopped and stared at the ground, her broom lax in her hands. He caught the sheen in her eyes, the painful way she pressed her lips shut. Even the red tinge of her nose made his concern well up in him, and before he knew it, he’d crossed the room to gently grasp her shoulders. “Rachel, it’s okay.”
The smell of her perfume brought it all back to him. He was surrounded by lavender-citrus—the way it melded with her musk made it distinctly Rachel. It brought back the memory of dinners spent talking and laughing. The unique way she viewed the world made him think, made him laugh. Being this close to her, he missed that.
She relaxed under his touch, but her head dipped down. He peered over her shoulder at what had caused her distress—a mangled uprooted basil plant, its leaves dark green with damage, the roots tangled into a brown yarn ball. Forlorn and dying.
“Stupid,” she whispered. “Crying over a plant.”
“It’s not just a plant.” He knew it was the crux, the “secret ingredient” of her scar-reduction cream, which made it like gold to her.
He gently lifted his hands from her shoulders and stepped back. “Don’t worry. You’ll have more than enough basil for the product launch.”
“How can you be sure?” Her voice was worrying.
“Because I’m the one raising your plants.”
“But you can’t guarantee I’ll have enough. This product launch is important.”
Edward couldn’t understand why this launch was everything to her. “Rachel, the world is not going to end if your product launches a month later.”
She shook her head. “You never understood the kind of pressure I’m under as the spa’s dermatologist.” Her shoulders had become stiff again. “You’re the good son, the oldest of two brothers, successful and confident.”
What? He frowned at her. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“You can’t understand what it’s like being the oldest of three sisters and yet not as successful as the two of them.”
“What do you mean? You are successful. You create innovative products for your father’s spa, which has international renown.”
She was shaking her head. “In company, my father praises Naomi for her management of the spa while he has been recovering from the stroke. He praises Monica for her nursing helping him recover so quickly. But he bemoans the fact that my last research project had to be canceled because it wasn’t going well. He worries that my last product launched isn’t selling as well as he had hoped.” She rubbed her forehead.
“Have you talked to him about it?”
“I try, but he just doesn’t listen. He doesn’t understand me.” Her voice cracked.
Her unexpected vulnerability shocked him. Her frailty made him want to wrap her in his arms. In the year they’d been working together on her basil plants and growing closer as friends, she had never been this emotional with him. Then again, she hadn’t been suffering under this kind of setback before, either. “I want to understand you, Rachel. If you’d only let me.”
She met his eyes, touching him with her gaze like a caress to his cheek. But then her eyes wavered, doubt filling them, stress drawing lines down her face, and she turned away.
He’d lost her.
She turned quickly and grasped a basil plant, shaking it loose from the clumps of dirt on the floor, but holding it so tightly that she bruised its leaves.
Despite the fact that he didn’t agree with her workaholic tendencies, they had been more than researcher and gardener. They had been becoming friends. He couldn’t deny that this kind of brutal attack on her, leaving her shaken and vulnerable, made him want to help her.
He put his hand over hers, taking the forlorn basil plant from her fingers. “Don’t worry, Rachel. Things will turn out fine.”
She shook her head, biting her lip. “I’ll never find out who did this.”
“Yes, you will. Because I’ll help you.”
TWO
Rachel’s stomach was a block of ice despite the sun warming her back and the sweat dripping down her neck. She pedaled harder, making the wind sting her face as her bike tires ate up the sun-bleached asphalt of the Sonoma country road.
Yesterday had been awful. She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t been safe in her own spa parking lot. The attack on her plants at Edward’s greenhouse felt like an even deeper violation—not just against her, but against her research, against her family’s spa.
And last night in the greenhouse, she’d wanted Edward to protect her—to hold her and make everything all right. She’d wanted to unburden herself and wrap herself in his concern.
But she didn’t have the right to ask that of him.
Her father had been concerned, but even more than that, he’d been worried about the research, about the product launch. As usual. Unspoken was the specter of her last disastrous venture, and how he’d blamed her for it.
Four years ago she had developed a grape-seed extract moisturizer for the spa to launch as a new product. A month before Joy Luck Life spa released it, Avignon spa in New York happened to release a grape-seed extract moisturizer, as well. It wasn’t the exact formulation, even though it also used a grape-seed extract ingredient, and Rachel hadn’t thought it would be a problem to continue with their product launch. Plus, it was too late to stop it. But then Internet news reporters had accused Joy Luck Life of “stealing” Avignon’s formula. The spa received a lot of bad press and had been subjected to false rumors, which her father had taken hard, asking her again and again why she had suggested they continue with the product launch.
And now this sabotage of her basil plants, causing a setback for her latest product launch.
She’d considered skipping her daily bike ride this morning, but aside from a low-level headache and some tenderness around her eye, she felt fine. She needed to be alone with her thoughts.
As she neared the base of an upcoming hill, the hum of a car engine came from behind. Her heartbeat sped up for a second as the gleam of chrome seemed to appear directly next to her, blinding her—the vehicle was too close!
Then the auto blazed past her, whipping her in the wind of its wake, making her wobble a bit. She caught a glimpse of the bright sticker of a car-rental company on the bumper before it disappeared over the hill.
Another tourist, viewing the sights of Sonoma County or maybe getting a very early start on a wine-tasting tour. She couldn’t complain, since the tourists contributed to the spa’s popularity, but their recklessness on the roads sometimes made her hug the sides more than normal.
She struggled up the winding hill, the breeze dropping with her dwindling speed. The sun warmed her head inside her bike helmet. Her lungs heaved, and she welcomed the exertion, trying to somehow purge her body of all the confusing, frightening feelings of last night.
The greenhouse destruction made it obvious that someone else knew about her research and wanted to stop the product launch. While anyone could have followed her to the greenhouse at any time, they couldn’t know how central those plants were to her current project unless they’d somehow gotten her research notes, which were only on her computer at work.
She couldn’t take the chance someone had hacked into her work computer, or could do so in the future. This morning she had called her cousin Jane, a computer expert, to ask her if she could come to the spa to upgrade the security on Rachel’s work computer and see if someone had breached her system.
Jane was the main reason she had developed the scar-reduction cream, and she could barely repress her desire to present it to her, to feel that she had somehow atoned for what she had done to Jane all those years ago.
When Rachel and her cousin were eight years old, Rachel had inadvertently started a fire in Jane’s playhouse, causing scarring along Jane’s cheek and jawbone. Jane said she forgave Rachel, but Rachel couldn’t forgive herself. When she’d realized how incredible the results of the cream were, she had doubled her efforts to perfect the formula, thinking of Jane’s scars the entire time.
She reached the crest of the hill, her heart pounding. Her entire body was tired today, probably from the stress of last night, getting home so late only to face her father’s heavy disapproval, and then rising early to go for a bike ride. Maybe she’d cut her ride short today so she could get into work early. She coasted down the hill, the breeze cooling her, the wind filling her lungs.
Another car engine sounded behind her, ruining the feeling of freedom and being alone out here in the crisp air. She damped down her irritation and, mindful of the last car, moved closer to the side of the road.
The engine seemed abnormally loud—and close. She glanced over her shoulder.
Her movement caused her bike to slip off the asphalt and skid a little in the gravel bordering the road.
Suddenly she felt as if the car behind her had bumped into her back tire. The bike bucked her off and flung her upward.
She screamed.
For a stricken heartbeat she hung poised in midair, staring at the ground sloping from the road to a field of grapevines. And then she plummeted down, rocks and juniper bushes rising up to meet her.
She curled as she landed, striking her right shoulder with a crack! that trembled through her entire frame. She rolled and pitched, head over heels, sideways and underways and every which way. She finally landed with a jarring thud! to her spine that snapped her head back into the ground.
For long, excruciating seconds, she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t make her diaphragm move. She stared at the pale blue sky, misted with incoming clouds, and struggled to make her body obey her frantic mind.
Then she gasped long and hard. She coughed, hacking up dust from her lungs, burning her throat. And pain exploded in her bones.
She curled onto her side, thorns pricking her cheek. She could suddenly hear the whistle of the wind, and the receding sound of a car engine.
Someone had hit her—and was driving away.
He’d come. The one man she wouldn’t have expected but wanted.
As soon as Edward’s truck pulled alongside her and she met his fierce gaze through the windshield, she relaxed muscles that she hadn’t realized were tight.
She had never been more thankful for her rugged waterproof phone—it had been unscathed from her accident. After calling Aunt Becca, she’d made her way back to the road and moved away from the sloping hill so that she’d be out of range of any cars speeding down. Also, a stubby tree that she could lean against grew a few feet in from the road. She still felt as if her bones were creaking, but at least she could walk.
She vaguely registered Naomi, Monica and Aunt Becca also getting out of the four-door truck, but Edward filled her vision. He reached her first, folding her in his tanned arms, strong and warm, smelling of earth and pine.
He had never embraced her before.
She never wanted to move again.
“Are you all right?”
“Where’s your bike?”
“You look awful. Let me look at you.”
This last was from Monica, who wedged between them so she could stare critically at Rachel’s face and her limbs. “Any pain when you walk?”
“No.” She glanced around Monica’s head, but Edward had already walked away, his back to her.
Her sister touched her at various places on her body. “How about your arms? Ribs?”
“My shoulder hurts.” It throbbed, actually, as if the blood would pulse right out through her aching muscles.
“Hmm, doesn’t look dislocated.” Monica gave a few experimental touches.
“Ow!” Pain lanced through Rachel’s shoulder.
“Hold still,” Monica said grimly.
“Did you call the police for me?” Rachel asked Aunt Becca through gritted teeth.
“I spoke to Horatio personally. He’s on his way.”
“What happened?” Naomi demanded.
Rachel relayed what she could remember, trying to block out the memory of her terrifying flight and painful tumble.
Monica shook her head in disbelief. “Not to be mean, but you’re not hurt very much considering you were rammed by a car. You should be grateful it’s not worse.”
“Well…” She remembered the jumbling of the bike frame as her tires skidded. “I turned back to look at the car, and my bike ran off the road because I was hugging it too closely. Maybe that made the car only sideswipe me rather than hitting me full on.”
“Praise Jesus!” Becca said. “He took care of you.” She wrapped her in a hug against Monica’s protests.
Had God been taking care of her? Did He really care so much about her that He’d do something small like making her bike skid? Was He really orchestrating her life like that? Rachel wondered.
Her mind shied away from the thought. She had never really thought of God as that intimately concerned about her. She had always thought of God as a distant, powerful figure who didn’t bother Himself much about her, which was a view of Him that was easier for Rachel to understand and fit into her life. Did God really care about her like that? The idea seemed foreign to her. A God who cared about her might require more of her than she’d been used to giving Him—more than going to church with her family, reading her Bible once in a while, praying once in a while. And she wasn’t sure she was ready to do that.
“Did you see anything about the car?” Edward approached her again. “Make, model?”
She could barely remember that Naomi drove a Lexus and Aunt Becca drove a pink Cadillac. “No. I didn’t get a good look at it.”
“That’s too bad.”
The disappointment on his face made her spirits sink a fraction. She racked her mind, but couldn’t remember more than a flash of chrome. Or was that from the first car that had passed her?
“Why are you here?” she blurted out. She wanted him here, but felt shy about telling him so, and it came out awkwardly. She’d never be as smooth with her words as Naomi or Monica.
“I went to your house this morning with a report for you about the greenhouse,” Edward said. “Don’t worry, I also spoke to your father about it. To reassure him.”
Had he thought she couldn’t relay the information herself accurately? Or had he wanted to spare her and instead put himself in the line of fire—her father’s detailed grilling? Edward’s closed expression couldn’t tell her anything.
She opened her mouth, but the words didn’t form. I’m glad you’re here but you didn’t have to tag along sounded ungracious, and her mixed emotions seemed perversely paradoxical today.
He was obviously reading her mind, because he said, “Don’t worry, Rachel, I’m glad I was there when you called and could see for myself that you’re okay.”
His words made a smile rise to her face. “Thanks.”
“There’s Horatio,” Aunt Becca said. She and Rachel’s two sisters walked toward a car in the distance, waving their arms.
Edward glanced at their backs and leaned closer to Rachel. “I do want to ask a favor, however.”
“What?”
“I want you to come with me to talk privately with your father.”
Privately? “About what?” she asked, bewildered.
He glanced at her mangled bike. “About protection. For you.”
“For me?”
“You’re not safe. Someone may be out to kill you.”
Edward followed Rachel into her father’s study. Augustus Grant looked up quickly from his desk, and his body seemed to relax at the sight of her striding into the room with only a barely noticeable limp.
He navigated his wheelchair from behind the desk toward them.
“You don’t have to move, Dad—”
Augustus grasped her arm and pulled her down to embrace her tightly. It seemed to surprise her, from the start she gave and the pink in her cheeks. “I’m fine, Dad.”
“Well, what did you expect me to think when you call home talking about �riding your bike’ and �car’ and �accident’?”
The man had a point. If Edward had received that kind of phone call, he’d have expected Rachel to come home looking more battered than she did.
“Edward.” Augustus extended his hand to him. “Thank you for going out there for me.”
Augustus’s grip was still weak, but much firmer than it had been a few months ago. He seemed to be progressing steadily since the stroke.
“It was no trouble.”
Rachel rolled her father to the fireplace, and she and Edward settled into chairs. Augustus settled back and rested his hands at his stomach, his gray-blond hair catching the light from the open windows.
“Augustus, I wanted to run an idea by you to get your opinion.” And his permission, although Edward would find a way to go through with his plans even if Augustus protested.
“Dad, for the record, I don’t think Edward’s idea is necessary,” Rachel said.
The older man cocked his head in question.
“There are two things about the greenhouse break-in that bother me,” Edward said. “First, the man—or men, because I think there were at least two of them responsible, were professional enough to dismantle a very sophisticated security system. Second, they not only trashed the plants, I think they stole a handful of them. We’re a few short.”
Augustus frowned thoughtfully.
“And there’s no way the thief knew the computer belonged to Naomi and not Rachel. Rachel had been carrying it and it had been stolen from her.”
A deeper frown.
“Then the accident today—”
“You can’t assume it was deliberate,” Rachel interrupted. “This is Sonoma, with a winery on every corner. It’s entirely possible it was a car full of tourists who were imbibing a little too much.”
“This early in the morning? Most wineries don’t open until 10:00 a.m.”
Rachel opened her mouth, then closed it again. With her usual candor, she relented, “You’re right. I don’t think it was drunk tourists, either. But I also don’t think I need the kind of protection you’re suggesting.”
“Protection?” Augustus asked.
“All these things happening makes me think someone is after Rachel’s research…and maybe her life,” Edward said.
Augustus nodded. “Although I’m not sure why they tried to hurt her. All they have is a basil plant, not the scar-reduction cream itself or the formulation for it.”
A shadow crossed Rachel’s face, and Edward thought he could read her mind—Except that they might have the formulation, in which case they don’t need me.
“If they were only trying to injure me, not kill me, it would set back development enough for a rival company to release their own scar-reduction cream,” Rachel said.
“Regardless of whether they were trying to kill you or injure you, you need protection so they can’t do it again,” Edward said. He turned to Augustus. “I want to stick close to her for the next few days.”
“I think it’s unnecessary,” Rachel said. “I’m perfectly safe inside the spa. There are card-key locks on the doors, security cameras surrounding the perimeter of the building so no one can approach without being filmed and two security guards on duty at all times.”
“Which was why you were mugged right outside the back door?” Edward pointed out.
“I think the guards will be more aware and that won’t happen again.” But Rachel’s cheeks flushed and she looked away from him.
He wondered if the real reason she was putting up resistance was because she didn’t want to spend time with him. They’d been cool and polite to each other, but closer quarters might be too awkward. Nevertheless he had to do something to protect her, no matter if she didn’t want him to.
“What about driving to and from the spa?” Edward asked. “Half the time you drive separately from Naomi and your aunt Becca because you need to stay late to work.” He couldn’t help himself—his voice had an edge to it when he mentioned her work.
Augustus cleared his throat. “Rachel, would you leave the two of us alone?”
She looked stung as she stared at her father, but silently obeyed, closing the library door with a crisp snap.
The man pinned Edward with steely blue eyes. “You seem rather concerned for a man who only works with my daughter.”
So Rachel hadn’t told her family about how they’d been slowly growing closer—at least until he’d deliberately withdrawn from her. He didn’t blame her, but he also wasn’t going to apologize. He had never crossed the line between them.
Until today. He’d embraced her today because he hadn’t been able to help himself. “When Rachel and I were in high school, we didn’t hang out together, but we knew each other. And then a year ago, she hired me to grow her basil plants, and we’ve gotten closer as friends.” He couldn’t control the tic at his cheek as he spoke the word. “I simply can’t stand by and do nothing when I know a friend’s life could be in danger. Would you?”
Augustus eyed him steadily, then sighed. “I have to admit that having you drive Rachel, Naomi and Becca to and from the spa would ease my mind. You won’t need to stay with them all day because the spa has security, but if you could be with Rachel outside the building, I would be in your debt.”
“I’d also like to ride out with her every morning so she’s never alone again while biking.”
Augustus’s eyebrows rose. “She’s not going to like that.”
“True, but she’s a scientist. She’ll eventually see the logic behind it.”
But Edward wondered if it was really logic that made him want to spend this extra time with Rachel. Why did the prospect of starting his day with a bike ride with her suddenly make his days seem brighter?
THREE
“I think that car is following us.”
Rachel didn’t know if it was her paranoia, but it did seem that the blue car was tailing them. Every turn on the winding Sonoma roads would hide the car briefly, but then it would appear around the next bend.
Granted, these roads saw lots of traffic because there were dozens of wineries along it, almost all of them open for wine tasting to tourists. The Joy Luck Life spa itself sat in the middle of rolling hills covered with grapevines, neighbored by wineries with sometimes hundreds of visitors a day, especially in summer.
But somehow this car seemed almost sinister. Or maybe she was just being fanciful—her sisters always told her that she was too imaginative.
Edward, who was driving her to work, kept glancing in the rearview mirror for another mile. Then he said, “I think you’re right.”
Her stomach lurched as if they’d hit a pothole. Except they hadn’t. “What? Are you sure?” She hadn’t really wanted to be right.
“I think so.”
She twisted around to glance through the back window. “The blue one?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t make out who’s driving it. Too much shadow on the road from the trees.”
“We’re coming up to a bright patch,” Edward said.
She peered intently at the windshield of the blue car, but the sunlight glinted off the glass. “Too much glare, but I think it’s a man.” What was happening? First the laptop was stolen, then she was run off the road, now someone was following her.
She spared a fleeting thought that she was glad she’d over-slept this morning—if she had gotten up on time, Edward would also be driving Naomi and Aunt Becca to work with her. As it was, they were both already at the spa, having driven there earlier this morning because Naomi had paperwork to do.
They were safe.
But she and Edward weren’t. Initially, she’d been peeved at her father’s insistence that Edward be her temporary bodyguard, but then logic reasserted itself and she was glad for his protection.
Except now she realized that if someone was really after her, it put him in the line of fire. And she didn’t want that.
“Let me see if I can lose him,” Edward said. “Hang on.”
Edward’s truck suddenly veered, throwing her against the window because she had loosened the seat belt and twisted around in her seat. Dust clouded around them for a moment before they continued down the new lane, a dirt track that was smaller than the main road they’d been on.
The car didn’t follow them.
“It kept going.” Rachel’s heart settled back down into her chest. “I feel silly, I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place.”
“I don’t blame you, after everything that’s happened.”
His approbation warmed her chilled heart.
Edward knew the Sonoma roads well enough to circle back around to the highway without needing to do a three-point turn. They were just entering the spa driveway when Rachel gasped. “There it is.”
Directly in front, heading toward them from the opposite direction. As if it had driven past the spa and then turned around.
As if it had been waiting for them to arrive.
“Let’s get you inside the spa quick,” Edward said. He jammed the accelerator and hustled down the spa’s long driveway to curve around to the staff parking lot behind the building.
“It stopped.” She pointed out the back window at where the car had angled into the entrance to the driveway, but then paused. “It’s not within range of the outside surveillance cameras.”
“Naomi never ordered that the angle be increased?” Edward asked. “After the two murders that happened at the spa last year?”
Rachel glared at him. “We didn’t exactly expect any more situations where we’d need to videotape a car before it entered the spa driveway.”
He parked the truck, but they still had a view of the driveway around the trees guarding the opening and the bushes lining the staff parking lot. However, neither of them moved from their seats.
She squinted at her limited view of the car, which included only a piece of the passenger side. Then she saw the door swing open. “They’re getting out.” Her heart rate sped up.
“Inside the spa,” Edward barked.
“No, wait. They’re not getting out. They just dumped something on the ground. Now they’re leaving.” The piece of the car that Rachel could see backed out of view, then she saw a flash of blue as the car sped down the highway.
She exhaled long and slowly, while her heartbeat thrummed against the base of her throat. Now she understood why excitement could make someone have a heart attack—hers was in overdrive. She inhaled deeply, willing herself to relax.
“What did they drop?” Edward got out of the truck and headed for the driveway.
“Wait, is that safe?” Rachel said, also getting out.
Edward returned holding aloft a laptop case. “Let’s get inside.” He hustled her indoors.
Naomi’s office was open, and she and Aunt Becca were there enjoying a cup of tea. Naomi read Rachel’s face and abruptly stood. “What happened?”
“We think we were followed.”
Aunt Becca gasped. “Are you all right?”
“We’re fine.” Rachel took the case from Edward and laid it on Naomi’s desk. “A car dropped this at the entrance to the spa driveway and took off.”
“Is that our laptop?” Aunt Becca leaned over to peer at it. “The one that was just stolen?”
Naomi opened the case. The computer inside certainly looked like the one they’d just bought. On top was a note, handwritten in what seemed a childish hand.
My mom made me give this back. I’m sorry.
“Aw.” A half smile softened the corners of Aunt Becca’s mouth.
“Aunt Becca…” Rachel remonstrated.
“He stole the laptop to begin with,” Naomi added.
“But he returned it.”
“We should call Detective Carter,” Naomi said.
Aunt Becca laid a hand on her arm. “Do we need to? The thief seems sorry.”
“Just because he returned it doesn’t mean he’s sorry. Maybe the laptop was broken when it fell.”
“Fire it up and see.”
Naomi and Rachel peered at the start-up screen, but the two accounts Naomi had created—hers and Rachel’s—appeared without problems. Naomi logged in and opened the few files she had on the hard drive, which wasn’t much. “It seems okay.”
“See? No need to call the police.”
“No, you should call them anyway,” Edward chimed in. “You never know.”
Naomi flipped open her cell phone. “I almost have Detective Carter on speed dial,” she muttered.
Aunt Becca heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I still think this is unnecessary. That poor boy, to think he had to steal. At least he listened to his mother.”
“Aunt Becca, we still don’t know why he returned the laptop, and there’s no proof his mama made him do it,” Naomi said.
Rachel privately agreed, but on the other hand, she could relate to her aunt’s feelings that it seemed a bit mean to report a laptop that was stolen but returned.
“Hello? Detective Carter? Yes, ahem…it’s Naomi Grant….”
Rachel listened with half an ear, chewing her lip while faintly squirming inside at the Grant sisters needing to call the police yet again.
The greenhouse break-in had made her irrational. In light of the returned laptop, the blue car this morning made sense—the car was probably not following them at all, but had instead been heading to the spa to return the laptop. It had most likely overshot the spa driveway and turned around, appearing just as they pulled in.
And the bike accident yesterday probably had been drunk tourists, or tired ones.
As for the greenhouse, why was she surprised? The industry was cutthroat and her scar-reduction cream promised to be revolutionary. Dad was right, she should have taken greater precautions in the first place to guard the plants.
Naomi clicked her cell phone shut and gave Aunt Becca a superior look. “Detective Carter thanked us for telling him about the laptop.”
Aunt Becca sniffed and rolled her eyes.
“But he also said it would be difficult to find out who stole it. They don’t have enough manpower to investigate, and since it was returned, it’s a low priority.”
“Now I feel rather silly for being so nervous in the car,” Rachel said. “I’m the one who first thought we were being followed—”
“It’s nobody’s fault,” Edward interrupted. “We were just being cautious.”
A knock at the door made them all turn. Gloria Reynolds, one of the spa’s longtime clients, peered in. “Miss Grant? I wanted to see if I could schedule my appointment for an earlier time slot. But I arrived at the spa so early that the receptionists aren’t at the front desk yet, so I thought I’d come here…”
Naomi had her professional smile in place as she hurried toward Gloria. “I apologize that the receptionists aren’t there, Ms. Reynolds. I’m certain we can schedule you for an earlier appointment. A manicure, was it?” They disappeared from the doorway and could be heard heading down the hallway, toward the entrance foyer.
“I have a lot of work to do today,” Rachel said and noticed Edward’s eyes flickered away from her. The gesture was familiar to her, but she couldn’t understand how or why.
No matter, she had to get to work. “Thanks for the ride, Edward.”
He smiled at her, but seemed to be avoiding her eyes.
“Well, that was a bit of excitement to start the day,” Aunt Becca said as he left.
“That’s enough excitement for me,” Rachel said as she headed toward her lab. “I’ll stop being so paranoid from now on, or else I’ll start thinking everything that happens to me is a threat to my life.”
FOUR
“So you’re driving Rachel to and from work?” Alex asked his brother.
“And any of her family who needs a lift at the same time,” Edward replied.
“Do you really think she’s in danger?”
Edward navigated the turn out of his farm’s driveway onto the highway. “I’m not sure. But I also don’t want to take any chances.” Regardless of how he felt about her, he couldn’t do nothing.
Alex had wanted to come along with Edward while he picked up Rachel from the spa because Alex wanted to check whether the truck’s engine whined when it went over a certain speed.
A smile as bright as the July sun lit Rachel’s face when she saw Alex in the truck. “Hey, stranger.”
Alex got out to buss her cheek in greeting. “You don’t come to the greenhouse often enough.”
“I get there plenty—you’re just always busy avoiding me,” Rachel said playfully.
“Do your aunt and sister need a ride?” Alex asked as he got into the backseat.
“No, Aunt Becca drove them this morning. Naomi had to get to work early,” Rachel said as she climbed into the truck. “They actually just left. I had to finish an experiment.”
On the drive to her home, Rachel turned in her seat to talk to Alex, who was sitting behind them. As they bantered back and forth, the way they always did, Edward tried to concentrate on the traffic, which was almost nonexistent, and the road, which was smooth.
He and Rachel used to banter together before he’d started distancing himself from her.
And now he was jealous of his younger brother. He snorted in self-disgust and sped up. The faster he got her home, the better.
He pulled up to the front door and reached over to touch her arm before she climbed out of the truck. “I have something to talk to you about.”
Her smooth skin contrasted with the callouses of his fingers. They were too different. He had good reason to keep his emotions in check.
She rubbed at her eyes. “Sure, but could I take my contacts out first? They’re killing me.”
“I’ll walk you to the house.”
“I’ll stay in the truck,” Alex said from the backseat.
“Don’t be silly, Aunt Becca would love to stuff you with whatever our housekeeper baked today.” Rachel shut the truck door and headed inside the Grants’ large home with Edward and Alex following her.
While Rachel hurried up the wide staircase to the second story, Edward and Alex waited in the foyer.
Augustus Grant emerged from one of the doorways flanking the foyer, his wheelchair rolling smoothly on the marble tile. “Edward, Alex. How are you boys doing?”
Alex shook the man’s hand first, then Edward reached out to do the same.
And jumped when he heard the scream.
The house alarm blared a half second after the scream and persisted thereafter.
Edward took the stairs three at a time. He’d never been upstairs to Rachel’s room, so he hoped it was easy to find in this huge house.
It was. She stood in the hallway outside her room, frozen. She turned when she saw him, and seemed to snap out of her shock. She pointed into her room. “A man! He’s escaping out my window!”
Edward glanced inside in time to see a man’s booted foot disappear below her bedroom’s window ledge. The intruder was diving off the sloping roof from the second story to the ground.
“What’s going on?” Alex shouted over the alarm.
“An intruder.” Edward ran back through the hallway, leaped down the stairs in three bounds and pelted out the front door, aware of Alex close behind him.
They rounded the front corner of the house, but Edward lost precious seconds fumbling for the latch in the wooden gate that led to the backyard.
“Never mind that,” Alex said, tugging at him. “He won’t stay in the garden—he’ll be headed for the woods out back.”
Cursing himself for not thinking, Edward followed Alex along the wooden fence that hemmed in the Grants’ extensive rose garden, toward the grove of apple trees that stood on the back end of the property. Sure enough, the man had run through the rose garden and leaped over the fence and was now hurrying toward the grove. He was only a blur—medium height, not large, but quick.
“Hurry!” Edward shouted to his taller brother, who had a longer stride. “There’s a road on the other side of the grove!” Little used and perfect for parking a getaway car.
Alex obeyed and picked up speed, inching away from Edward, although he tried to keep up. They lost time weaving in between the apple trees. Edward stepped on a fallen apple and stumbled, slamming a hand against a tree to right himself, but kept going.
He emerged from the grove seconds behind Alex, just in time to see taillights heading down the road in a cloud of dead leaves and debris.
Her entire bedroom was in shambles.
Rachel had to sag against the door frame to keep herself upright. Her entire body was shaking. She felt violated.
“Oh, my goodness.” Aunt Becca’s voice floated to her. “Rachel, your room…”
“What happened?” roared her father from downstairs, panic and frustration in his tone.
She felt rather than saw her sisters on either side of her. Monica grabbed her arm as if to keep her standing.
“I’ll turn off the alarm,” Naomi said. “Aunt Becca, call the police.”
Rachel rolled around and leaned against the wall outside her bedroom. She didn’t want to see it. No one said anything—they could barely hear over the ear-piercing alarm.
Where was Edward? Did he capture the intruder?
Finally, the alarm shut off. The silence was almost louder.
“How did someone get in the house?” Monica demanded.
“The window’s open,” said Aunt Becca.
The man had pivoted and thrown it open just as Rachel entered her bedroom. She hadn’t seen his face. In her first shocked glimpse of her room, she’d only seen the mess—clothes scattered, mattress upturned and slashed, drawers in splinters, book pages littering the room. She shuddered.
“Rachel!” Edward called.
She reached for Edward automatically, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his shoulder. He was warm from running, musky with the scent of pine and a thread of orchid. The smell wrapped around her, a shelter in the midst of the chaos she’d seen.
His embrace was tight, protective. She just wanted him to keep holding her. She wanted him to take the ugliness away and make everything okay again.
Except that nothing would ever be okay again.
“Dad! How did you…?” Monica’s shocked voice made Rachel look up.
Her father wheeled toward them, with Alex, Naomi and the housekeeper following. He hadn’t been upstairs since his stroke. “Alex carried me up the stairs, and Evita and Naomi carried my wheelchair,” he said. Then he saw Rachel’s room and paled.
It was the only thing that could have made Rachel move away from Edward. Her father wasn’t going to have a relapse, was he?
“You shouldn’t be here,” Monica said fiercely, reaching her father at the same time as Rachel and Naomi.
He took a few deep breaths. “I’m fine. Just surprised.” He looked at Rachel then, and she thought he might have said something more to her, or maybe might have even embraced her, but then he cleared his throat and the moment was gone.
She straightened and turned away. She shouldn’t have hoped for his comfort. Her father had never been very affectionate.
Evita gasped as she looked in the room. “How could this have happened?”
“We chased a man.” Edward explained what had happened when he took off after the intruder who exited her room. “No one heard him ransacking her room?”
The housekeeper wrung her hands. “I was in the kitchen all afternoon. It’s too far away—I wouldn’t have heard anyone in her room.”
“I was with Evita,” Monica added. “I didn’t hear anything, either.”
“Me, too.” Dad pounded a fist against his wheelchair. “I was in my bedroom for a few hours, then my study. The bedroom’s on the opposite side of the house, and the study’s on the first floor near the kitchen.”
“If you keep the house alarm on, how did he get in?” Edward asked.
Naomi’s brow furrowed. “Yeah, someone coming in the window would have tripped it the same way he tripped it going out.”
“Wait, there was that UPS man,” Monica said. “He dropped off something for Naomi.”
The housekeeper nodded. “I turned off the alarm when I answered the door, but I turned it on again after he left.”
“That’s probably when the intruder came in.” Monica said.
Despite the alarm on the house, someone had violated Rachel’s private bedroom. Despite the security at the spa, someone might have infiltrated her lab and computer and stolen her research formula. And despite the alarm at the greenhouse, someone had tried to destroy her plants, crippling her product launch. She still didn’t know how many of the basil plants would survive.
Her cousin Jane had said she’d finagled her boss to give her some time off from work, and she would come by tomorrow to look at Rachel’s spa computer, but even with that precaution Rachel was taking, it seemed like too little, too late. Security and alarms hadn’t stopped whoever was after her and her research.
She couldn’t stop them.
“Where’s that UPS package?” her father demanded.
“In the kitchen,” Evita said. “I’ll make some Japanese tea…” She eyed Edward and Alex. “And maybe some coffee, too?”
Edward seemed to hold back for a moment as they all trooped downstairs. Rachel glanced up at him, suddenly self-conscious about the way she’d hurled herself into him. “Edward?” Maybe he felt it, too, this awkward aftermath. No, he snatched at her hand.
“Are you all right?” Edward asked.
She shrugged, not wanting him to worry about her. But she also knew him well enough to know that if she didn’t tell the truth, he’d worry even more. “I’m still a bit shaken, I think. It’s hard.” She swallowed and glanced at the open doorway to her room, unwilling to look inside again.
He squeezed her hand, then let go. “A mug of tea will warm you up.” He ushered her downstairs.
When they entered the kitchen, at first Rachel thought something was wrong because everyone huddled around the breakfast table. She peered over Naomi’s shoulder and saw Alex tinkering with a gilded porcelain confection. “What is that?”
“A music box,” said Aunt Becca. “It came in the UPS package for Naomi.”
“Was there a note?” Edward asked.
Naomi nodded. “Just a short typewritten one. �From an admirer.’”
Rachel eyed the box with incredulity. “Did they hope we wouldn’t connect the package with the break-in?”
“It might be unrelated,” her father said slowly. “Whoever broke into your room could have simply been waiting for anyone to turn off the alarm so he could sneak in.”
“A bit risky,” Edward speculated. “If no one had showed up all day, the only time the alarm went off would be when Rachel got home.”
Dad shook his head slowly. “I usually go out into the garden in the early afternoon. I didn’t today because I had too much work to do.”
Rachel shuddered. Monica voiced her thoughts. “If you had, the man would have entered sooner, with just you, me and Evita at home.”
“Then praise God,” Aunt Becca said. “At least this way, he tripped the alarm when Edward and Alex were here and could at least catch a glimpse of him.”
“It wasn’t much of a glimpse,” Edward muttered.
“I think I found something,” Alex said.
They leaned in to see. He held out his hand, in which rested some small electronic device that reminded Rachel of a crumpled metallic spider. “What is that?”
Alex shook his head. “Not sure, but it doesn’t belong in the music box.” He gestured to the mess on the table—the porcelain housing, an assortment of gears and screws and other things Rachel didn’t understand.
“Are you sure?” Aunt Becca asked.
“Alex is a whiz at electronic and mechanical things,” Edward said.
Rachel nodded. At the greenhouse, she’d seen him repair both delicate electronics and tinker with his car engine. “I trust his judgment.”
The doorbell rang. Everyone froze for a moment, then Aunt Becca laughed at herself. “That’s probably Horatio. He mentioned he was nearby when I talked to him.”
Rachel gave her statement to Detective Carter, whose gentle gray eyes seemed to understand how terrible she felt about everything that had happened. At one point, he even touched her arm briefly. “I hate to ask this, but have you looked through your room to see if anything is missing?”
“I haven’t even gone inside yet,” she whispered.
He gave a small smile. “After my officers have collected any evidence, try to steel yourself and start cleaning up. And let me know if you notice anything unusual.” He squeezed her forearm. “Buck up, Rachel. It’ll be okay.”
His kindness buoyed her.
“I’ll check on the UPS truck, too,” he promised her.
“Thank you, Detective.”
As he was leaving, he saw Edward hovering nearby. “Edward, I forgot to call you to ask—did you get around to figuring out if any plants were taken from your greenhouse?”
“Actually…” Edward’s face vacillated between pale and red. He placed his hands on Rachel’s shoulders as if to brace her. “I, uh, was going to talk to you about that before…”
Yes, he had wanted to speak to her when they first drove up to the house. She tried to answer, but her throat had dried. She swallowed painfully. “Well?” she croaked.
His eyes were pained—for her. “There are three plants missing.”
“Three? Are you sure?” Detective Carter asked.
“Alex and I cleaned out greenhouse four, and counted all the plants several times. We checked the grounds around the greenhouses, in case the plants were dropped by the intruders or by one of us.” His thumbs rubbed her skin once, twice. “There are three plants gone.”
As the shock wore off, Rachel became aware of a rising sense of hope. “They stole three plants. They needed to steal three plants.” Her breath started to come quickly. “That means they didn’t know what strain of basil it was. That means…”
Edward caught on. “We thought they only intended to sabotage your product launch. They shouldn’t have needed to take samples.”
“If they already had my research notes, they’d already have known the basil strain. Edward, that means they don’t know. That means they might not have stolen my research yet.” Rachel’s hands flew up to grip his forearms. “We still have a chance to save this product launch.”
FIVE
She had a chance, and she wasn’t going to waste it.
Rachel approached her research associate, Stephanie, where she was doing quality-control tests on the last batch of scar-reduction cream at her lab bench. “Stephanie, I need to use your computer.”
Stephanie paused in her pipetting and peered up at her through her owl-like glasses. “Jane is still working on yours?”
Rachel nodded and held up a flash drive. “And I have new clinical trial data to sort through that can’t wait.” Especially not now that time seemed to be slipping away like sand in an hourglass. She needed to finish the final verification on the formulation’s efficacy and ready it for mass production soon.
Stephanie gestured toward her computer at her desk. “Go ahead. Although I’ll have this quality-control data ready to download in a couple hours.”
“I’ll be done by then.” Rachel sat at Stephanie’s desk, amazed as always by the Spartan neatness. She could barely see the surface of her own desk for all the papers littering it.
After she’d been working for a little while, she heard the centrifuge fire up. Then a shadow fell across the screen and Stephanie leaned against the desk edge, obviously waiting for the separator to finish its run. “So, how’s the formulation coming along?”
For some reason, the innocent question jangled through her. Don’t be silly. Rachel had worked with Stephanie for two years, now, for goodness’ sake. Everything was making her paranoid. “I’m almost done. It’s hard to scale it up for larger production.”
“I figured.” Stephanie smiled. “This will be the first product launch that I have worked with you. The last formula didn’t make it this far.”
The ill-fated diamond-dust cleanser. Rachel couldn’t help the cloud over her soul at the remembrance of her father’s bitter words after that failure. “This is ten times better than that cleanser.”
“Seems that way. You spent an awful lot of time on the formulation for this.”
Again, that frisson of distrust that ran through her. Rachel glanced up at her assistant, but Stephanie had the same placid smile. Was it just her imagination that there was a faint edge to that smile, some tension around her eyes? Rachel’s hand gripped the computer mouse, her nails scraping the plastic. “The time I put in will be worth it,” she said mildly.
“Did you need any help?” Stephanie asked.
Something inside Rachel stilled for a long moment, her heart seemed to pound harder and faster than before.
Stephanie was a good research assistant, but never proactive or inquisitive about the formulation process. Her background was Quality Control and Quality Assurance, not chemistry or formulation, and certainly not dermatology.
And she had never asked to help before.
Rachel faltered. She should just be polite, tell her no and forget about it. But she didn’t want to forget about it. She wanted to ask Stephanie why she was suddenly so interested. The question bubbled up in her gut until it was almost at her lips. Then her office door opened.
“Rachel? I finished.” Jane’s smiling face peered around the door.
Rachel took the time to remove the clinical data from Stephanie’s computer even though it didn’t have anything critical, but her suspicions were buzzing too loud in her ears for her to ignore.
She closed the office door behind her and sat next to Jane in front of her computer. “So, what did you find?”
Jane bit her lip and glanced at Rachel. “I hate to tell you this, but your computer was hacked into two years ago.”
At first, the word hacked seemed to cut into her chest, but then she registered two years ago and breathed easier. “Not recently?”
Jane shook her head, her straight chin-length hair swinging against her jaw, drawing Rachel’s attention to the scars there. Or maybe Rachel was just sensitive to them.
After all, she had caused them.
But this scar-reduction cream would make up for that fire in the playhouse.
“I couldn’t find out who had gained access to the computer,” Jane was said, “and I couldn’t figure out which files.”
“I would just assume the hacker stole all my research notes.” Why else break into her office and her computer? She glanced at the door, guarded only by a doorknob lock. Stupid! Why hadn’t she gotten a dead bolt, or even better, installed a heavy card-key door like the ones guarding the lab area at the back of the spa from the front clientele areas?
“Whoever did it, however, didn’t erase the time stamp. A little over two years ago, September 19, 9:07 p.m.”
Rachel wrote it down, but as she did, each letter and number seemed to burn into the page.
Her greenhouse. Her bedroom. Her office.
Her life.
“This isn’t happening.” She was surprised at how tight her voice was, then realized her teeth were clenched.
Jane’s eyes and mouth softened. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’ve been talking about it, and it hasn’t helped. Because no one can do anything about it.”
“God can do something about it.” Jane touched her hand. “You’re not all alone in facing this.”
Rachel shifted her hand away. “I feel alone in this. My life has been violated and there’s nothing I can do to change how that makes me feel.”
“There is something you can do. You can pray.”
“How would that help anything?” Rachel retorted fiercely. “Why would God even care?”
Jane swallowed. “He does care, Rachel.”
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