A Rare Chance Read Online Free Page B

hadn’t.
    Lizzie oohed and aahed over the kitchen, opening cupboards, checking drawers, taking the kind of liberties only a longtime friend would take. Gabriella felt a stab of nostalgia and recognized that what she’d felt on her walk home was loneliness. She had an ex-cop hired by her bosses following her, another ex-cop following him, and no one but friends she’d known less than a year to tell.
    But then her father and her best friend had materialized on her front stoop. It didn’t matter how mad they’d all been at each other when they’d parted a year ago. Scag had called her a conventional bore for wanting to go back to Boston. Gabriella had called him an irresponsible idealist. She’d called Lizzie an enabler who was doing him no favor by constantly rescuing him. She’d refused to budge from her desire to have some stability in her life, property, a job. Lizzie, of course, hadn’t called anyone anything, but Gabriella had known she was mad. It just wasn’t in her nature to dwell on anything unpleasant. Best just to put irritations out of her mind and pretend all was well. It was a character trait Gabriella found both frustrating and appealing, since she herself was always one to look reality stubbornly in the eye. In Gabriella’s place, Lizzie Fairfax would simply have pretended Pete Darrow wasn’t following her.
    Yet there was no one in her life, Gabriella thought, who’d known her for as long, or now knew her as well, as Lizzie Fairfax and Tony Scagliotti. No one who would forgive her so readily, or whom she would so readily forgive.
    Lizzie checked out the locked door next to the kitchen closet. “Where’s this go to?”
    â€œThe roof,” Gabriella said. She’d filled three wineglasses with a chardonnay.
    â€œYou’ve got a rooftop deck?”
    She nodded.
    â€œWonderful! Mind if I take a look?”
    Scag had hobbled to the kitchen doorway, where he leaned heavily on his cane. “What else you got up there?”
    Gabriella eyed him. He was suspicious. During their two years together, she’d reread all of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels. She’d loved the idea of his rooftop greenhouse, one far more elaborate than her own. “We should eat. The soup’s hot.”
    But her father wasn’t going to let her off the hook. “You’ve got orchids up there, don’t you, kid?”
    She sighed. “Yeah, Scag, I’ve got orchids.”
    Â 
    Pete Darrow walked out onto the deck overlooking the water at Joshua Reading’s sprawling house on the North Shore. Built at the very tip of Reading Point and surrounded by the Atlantic on three sides, the house was all weathered shingles and glass, designed to look as if it had sprung naturally from the landscape of rocks, pines, birches, wild roses. Darrow had moved into an apartment above the detached garage. Even it was bigger, fancier than anything he could have afforded as a detective.
    â€œCool night,” he said.
    Joshua Reading glanced back at him. “I hadn’t noticed.”
    Darrow shrugged. Joshua prided himself on loving the elements: the raw wind off the water, the crashing surf, the taste of salt in the air. A man’s man. He had his own yacht, kayaks, a speedboat. He liked to run on the rocks. He could identify every goddamned bird, plant, fish, and crustacean on the place. To Darrow, a snail was a snail. Not to Joshua Reading. He was a good-looking bastard, almost as tall as Darrow, dark, fit. Gray eyes with flecks of blue. Angular features just sharp enough to give his face character, keep him from being cover-model material, too perfect.
    â€œGabriella Starr saw you,” he said.
    Darrow zipped his windbreaker against the stiff breeze off the water. “I know.”
    â€œShe was asking questions this afternoon. She tried to be subtle. She knows hiring you was my idea.”
    â€œGood. Maybe she’ll be rattled into