you’re thirty.”
“Humph,” Sunni snorted. “And when I’m a hundred I’ll look like I’m eighty. What good will that do me?”
The waiter silently set their drinks on the table. Isabel rolled the first sip of wine around her mouth like the connoisseur she was. “Okay, now tell me what’s wrong,” she said.
“I saw him at the wedding. This drunk guy tried to attack me in the bathroom and suddenly there he was.” Sunni took a big swig of her margarita. “My guardian angel.”
Isabel’s eyes widened. “Someone tried to attack you? Are you okay? ”
“Fine.”
“Did he save you again?”
“Actually, no, I took care of the guy myself. Kneed him in the balls and then punched him in the neck.” She smiled at the memory.
“You didn’t,” Isabel gasped.
“I did. It was so weird. I got this burst of adrenaline, and then everything was moving really slowly, well, I was moving normally but everything else slowed down. It was so easy to take the guy down. It felt like I was made to do it. ”
“And your guardian angel? What was he doing?”
“Nothing. Just watching. ”
“He didn’t step in?”
Sunni shook her head. “No, but when it was over he tried to leave, so I grabbed him.”
“You actually had your hands on him? He’s a real, flesh and blood person?” Isabel asked.
Sunni’s jaw dropped. “Izzy! Did you think I made him up?”
Isabel looked guilty. “Not that you made him up, exactly, but that maybe you were exaggerating a little.”
Sunni thought about it. Had she been that extravagant in talking about the man? She thought she’d been entirely straightforward. She saw him a few times a year, and he seemed to be watching her. He’d saved her from a mugger once. He was extraordinarily handsome, and extremely tall. What had she exaggerated?
“Anyway,” Sunni said, a little huffily. “He said his name was Jacob Eddington.”
“He told you his name? So you have something to go on!”
Anger boiled in Sunni’s gut, filling her body with a tension that had no outlet. “No, I don’t. I’ve already looked him up, Googled him, what have you. Jacob Eddington doesn’t exist, at least not in California.”
Isabel watched a rowdy group of men in suits toast each other loudly. “Did you follow up on some of the ones in other states?”
Sunni pursed her lips. “Yes, Izzy, I called Iowa, Nevada, and Rhode Island. As you can imagine, no one said they’d spent the last ten years following me around San Francisco.”
Isabel sipped her wine, her eyes wide with amazement. “How did it end?”
“He tried to hypnotize me.”
Isabel choked, sending a spray of wine flying onto the table. “He did not!”
Sunni nodded. “That’s what I think it was. But it didn’t work.”
“Well, at least you know he means you no harm. Maybe you just have to take a religious-type attitude toward this. Just accept that he’s here for you, watching over you.” Isabel checked her watch. “I have to go, Sunni. I’m meeting Daddy for dinner at the Ritz. We’re wining and dining some clients from Japan.”
In the ten years since her mother died Isabel had slowly become Dennis LaForge’s surrogate wife, eventually performing all the spousal duties except conjugal ones. She lived with him, picked up his dry-cleaning, entertained the clients of his real estate development company, and attended his charity galas. It was a peculiar relationship, and probably one of the reasons Isabel was still single.
The LaForges had changed Sunni’s life. After her discharge from the Ashwood Institute, they moved her into their Russian Hill mansion and became her foster parents. They helped her to go to college, and when she decided she wanted to open an art gallery Dennis bankrolled it and became her first and best customer. She would always be grateful to them. It was weird to see your almost-sister essentially marry your almost-father, but they were both adults and it was their choice, so Sunni stayed out