A Rare Chance by Carla Neggers

Author:Carla Neggers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1996-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Ten

I’m not marrying Joshua.”

Lizzie’s voice was firm but barely audible. Gabriella had her cordless phone in the living room, where she’d been doing yoga after a particularly unnerving day at work. Titus had been tense and uncommunicative all day, for no apparent reason. Gabriella didn’t mind bad moods if she understood their source, but Titus’s was inexplicable to her. He’d never once in her year with TJR Associates let any family strife follow him into the office, at least not that she’d noticed, and she knew of no current or even impending business crises. Joshua, meanwhile, had shown up for a few hours at midday, and Gabriella had never even seen him. She wondered if she were more attuned to emotional nuances—even prone to projecting her own anxieties—because of her own situation with Scag, Lizzie, Pete Darrow, Cam Yeager, and mysterious, incomplete tales of blackmail.

When she’d arrived home, she’d scrubbed off her makeup and pulled on her sweats and planned for an evening contemplating just how over her head Lizzie was with Joshua, just how over her head she was with Cam Yeager, and what Cam knew about Pete Darrow and the Reading brothers that he wasn’t saying.

But ten minutes into her yoga session, the phone had rung.

She leaned back against the couch, stretching her legs out on the carpeted floor and trying to remain calm. Her entire living room was done in shades of beige and cream, very soothing. “Lizzie, are you okay? Do you want to get together? I can come to you—”

“I can’t. I’m leaving. My plane boards in a few minutes.”

“Your plane—”

“Please don’t, Gabriella. No questions. Nothing.” Lizzie sobbed just once, as if she had to let off that little bit of panic and grief or she’d explode. “I’m leaving the country. I’m not taking a direct route and I’m not telling anyone where I’m going. I don’t want to put you in an even more awkward position than you already are.”

Gabriella scrambled to her feet, ready to act. “You’re at Logan, right? What airline? I can be there in half an hour.”

“No!”

“It’s Pete Darrow, isn’t it? He did something?”

“It’s me, Gabriella. Just me. Please don’t ask any questions.”

“Lizzie—” Gabriella stopped herself, running a hand through her hair, pacing, knowing that in a crisis she always preferred to act, not think. But she needed to penetrate Lizzie’s turmoil of emotions and get her to think before she did anything impulsive. “Lizzie, you can’t just run away.”

It was as if she hadn’t spoken. “I need you to do something for me, Gabriella. If you can’t, it’s okay. I’ll make other arrangements. I’ve left a key with the croissant cart near baggage claim with instructions that it be turned over only to you.” She talked fast, gulping for air, as if she couldn’t believe she was doing what she was doing. “Only to you.”

“A key? For what? Lizzie—”

“It opens a locker here at Logan. I’ve left a package there. I want you to put it in a safe place and forget about it.

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