The Senator’s Daughter Read online

  When he pushed open the door to his laboratory, the big room reminded Lyle of high-school chemistry—stone-topped counters, gas jets, deep set sinks, and glass beakers—with a snap of fingers, he recalled the name for the ones with the narrow necks: Erlenmeyer flasks.

  Sample bottles filled with water covered one countertop.

  Andre gestured toward them. “Once a week, we send the water from Lava Springs that we use in wine making down to Palisades Pure Water for chemical analysis. Their atomic absorption spectrophotometer can detect impurities in the range of parts per billion.”

  “Bacteria?” Lyle inquired.

  “Metals. Chromium, lead.”

  “Why would the spring water have chromium?” Sylvia looked puzzled.

  “Why not?” Andre waved his arm up toward the higher mountains. “There could be any number of heavy metals, zinc, even mercury.”

  “But it only takes a tiny trace of mercury and they close off fisheries,” she said.

  Andre nodded. “It takes only two parts per billion in drinking water to trigger the mercury alarm.”

  Sylvia put up a hand. “Why do you have to keep checking? If there haven’t been any heavy metals, why would they suddenly appear?”

  “That’s a question I do not know a lot about. But people with the United States Geological Survey, as well as Buck, tell me we have to keep on top of the water chemistry in case things shift around in the earth.” He frowned. “Frank Fiamma down at Palisades Pure tells me that the Old Faithful Geyser has been going a lot longer between eruptions than its usual forty minutes. He and Buck both say that in the past, that has predicted a significant earthquake within two days to two weeks.”

  Lyle’s stomach tightened.

  Turning away to hide his reaction, he noticed an apparatus on one of the stone counters. A black plastic box with a hinged lid was open to reveal a metal cage framing one of the sample bottles. Uncapped, the bottle’s mouth pressed against a round of mesh fabric membrane.

  Memories of chemistry lab and of other visits to wineries didn’t conjure up any ideas. A small metal plaque indicated that the manufacturer of the black box was Eco-osmotics.

  “What’s that do?” Lyle asked.

  “Just some test equipment.” Andre lifted a small device from a counter. “This refractometer is used to measure Brix, the sugar content of the grapes.”

  Lyle’s antennae went up at what looked like a diversion. For whatever reason, the naturally voluble Andre did not want to show them the black box.

  “The refractometer is seldom used here,” Andre went on. “Any winemaker worth his or her salt can tell by tasting when the grapes reach the ideal Brix.”

  Andre took Sylvia’s arm again and Lyle wanted to knock him down on the scrupulously clean tile floor.

  Chapter 11

  On the driveway in front of his mansion, Andre looked at Sylvia in a way that left no question as to his desire. If it had come her way before she planted a kiss on the man standing beside her, she might have gone for it.

  “Sylvia.” Andre took both her hands.

  Where he touched her, there was no magic, while merely standing close to Lyle made her stomach do funny things.

  “It would be an honor if you would stay for dinner. My chef can prepare whatever you desire, and we will share a bottle of my best Chardonnay.”

  His invitation clearly excluded Lyle.

  If Andre knew who she was, he must be playing some kind of game. If he didn’t, he was hitting on a poor girl who made beds for a living, no doubt expecting that for the price of a visit to the castle he’d have her.

  Trusting her gut, she withdrew her hands from Andre. “It’s kind of you, but I need to be getting back … to work.”

  Andre affected sadness. “Then I will have to persuade Buck to give you some time off.”

  She refused to rise to that. “Thank you for showing me … us … around.”

  “Yes.” Lyle stepped forward.

  The two men shook hands.

  “Actually,” Lyle said, “I came up here from the City with the idea of seeing you. Your rent-a-cop said you were out earlier today.”

  Sylvia thought Andre tensed. “He told me you were here yesterday, as well.”

  “I was waiting to see you drive up,” Lyle said, “but you must have come in on the helicopter I heard.”

  Andre’s face went stony. “I am afraid Luigi was mistaken. I was here all the time.”

  Sylvia’s instinct for untruth, honed on the dating scene, set off alarms.

  Lyle must have noticed, but he ignored Andre’s explanation and made an appointment to see him Monday—Andre professed to be tied up tomorrow.

  Then she and Lyle were walking away from Villa Valetti. Though they were at least six feet apart, Sylvia almost believed she could feel Lyle’s heat, as though she stood near a furnace. The hollow place in her suggested she was about to give a public speech or had jumped off the high dive.

  It wasn’t too late to turn back and accept Andre’s invitation. It might look funny, but it was doable.

  “Don’t even think about it.” Lyle’s voice was soft, but she heard steel in it.

  She kept walking, trying her yoga breathing from the abdomen.

  Neither of them spoke while they passed Luigi in his guard shack and started down the road. The sun was low in the western sky.

  Lyle stepped out into the vineyards and stopped between the rows where the shadows were deep and bluish. Sunlight caught him from the torso up, illuminating his red shirt, turning his hair to spun gold.

  Sylvia met his gaze. “How did you …?”

  “What in hell…?”

  “…find me?”

  “…are you doing here?”

  Talking over each other, her dark eyes met his. The blue had darkened to indigo, and she sensed the anger he restrained. If she hadn’t trusted him to keep it in rein, she might have been frightened.

  “I didn’t find you. You heard me say I came up here to see Andre.”

  “It’s hard to believe you’d show up here on a fluke.”

  “Believe it.”

  “What if I don’t?” Her fists went to her hips.

  “Fine.”

  God, he looked magnificent in the autumn sunlight, a Norse god come down to a mountaintop. Sylvia’s breath caught and she couldn’t say another word.

  Lyle continued to stare at her as though deciding. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me these last weeks?”

  “Done?” she managed.

  “I’ve been worried sick about you.”

  She felt as though his words hit her in the chest. “Worried? You don’t even know me.”

  His expression shifted to something that looked like pain. “I thought I did, but that goes to show you can’t base your opinion of someone on how they kiss.”

  Lyle marched away, while the lowering sun went behind a cloud.

  What a fool he’d been to think he had the inside track to the real Sylvia Chatsworth. She was nothing but a spoiled rich bitch, out slumming with her “job” at the Lava Springs Inn. And lying about what she’d been through to Buck and Mary Kline, pretending to be a battered woman on the run.

  He should leave. Come back Monday to meet with Valetti.

  Striding out with his long legs, his heels sinking into the soil, he headed for the inn. He’d grab his bag, check out, and be back at his loft in time to meet Cliff for a stiff martini.

  No, the first thing he had to do was phone Senator Chatsworth and tell him where Sylvia was. In fact, he ought to stick around a few hours and give her father a chance to run up here and surprise her. That way, Lyle would be sure to get his money.

  Still in the plot of Sangiovese, he pulled his cell from the holster at his belt.

  No signal.

  He’d call from the inn.

  Sylvia watched Lyle go in disbelief. A moment ago, she would have sworn he cared, the way he lashed out at her for putting him through hell.

  Watching hi
s strong thighs pump and his broad back recede into the twilight, a sharp stab went through her. If you couldn’t tell a man or woman from their kiss, then why did it seem to be a universal litmus test?

  In seventh grade, when earnest Harold Lowenstein had walked her out beyond the softball field and planted a squishy one on her closed lips, he’d struck out. Her senior year in girls’ school she’d dated blond quarterback Steve Austin from the public high school and wondered if she loved him … but because his kisses didn’t make her feel the way she did when she fantasized about the ideal man, she’d moved on.

  With Lyle, she’d been shocked to her bones by the heat of their kiss. She had thought it meant something.

  So, was she going to stand here like a lump and let a man, the mere thought of whom could turn her inside out, walk away without a fight?

  When Lyle reached the border between the Sangiovese and the Chardonnay, he heard the soft pounding of footsteps. Before he could turn, he felt his forearm grabbed and yanked to spin him around.

  Sylvia held on, panting from running, her face flushed. She lasered him with a look that could only be described as dangerous, as evidenced by the strength with which she’d changed his direction. “This is crazy!” she cried.

  “Pretty much,” he agreed, having distanced himself with his decision to make the call.

  “You’re saying you came up here to see Andre on business and just happened to check into the place I’ve been staying. You didn’t know I was here.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “But that’s so …”

  Preposterous. Yet, as soon as the word popped into his mind, he thought of another. And couldn’t help but put it out there. “Romantic?”

  For an instant, he thought Sylvia was going to hit him.

  Then, incredibly, she started to chuckle.

  He stifled himself; if he joined in too soon, she probably would deck him.

  The wintry chill in her black eyes dissolved into a twinkle, and she looked up at him with a child’s pure joy.

  Lyle snickered. And got away with it, as Sylvia let go of his arm and hugged herself, laughing louder.

  For the first time in weeks, he burst out with a joyous sound.

  “Romantic?” she sputtered.

  Whoa, was she laughing with him or at him?

  “Yeah,” he confirmed. “Romantic. Like that flying tackle on the sidewalk where I saved you from … getting wet.”

  “Right. We were both soaked to the bone.”

  As suddenly as the laughter had come upon them, they sobered.

  The sun slid down from behind the cloud into a gap of clear sky above the horizon. In the mountainside vineyard, golden light and sharp shadows etched each vine and grape cluster. Lyle and Sylvia’s shadows stretched long down the row.

  They stood face to face, and the magic was upon Lyle. He wished to God Sylvia found this as romantic as he did. Or was he playing “nice guys finish last” again?

  The sun’s rays deepened to crimson and made a last stand on the hill; everything below was in shadow. As one accord, Sylvia and Lyle began a slow walk toward the inn. Every now and then their shoulders brushed, though there was room between the vine rows for two to pass.

  “Were you really worried about me?” Sylvia’s hair swung over her shoulder as she turned to look at him.

  “I thought about you every day.” His voice was husky. “Looked for clues, asked the cops about you.”

  She held his gaze a moment, then nodded and started walking again.

  The stars brightened in the eastern sky.

  Chapter 12

  It was full dark when Lyle opened the door for Sylvia and followed her into the foyer of the Lava Springs Inn. While common sense told him to carry on with his plans to call the Senator, he heard himself saying, “My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.” Knowing from the previous evening that the Klines didn’t offer dinner, he suggested, “How about if we go down to Calistoga and find a pizza?”

  “No need for that,” said a cool voice behind him.

  He turned to find Mary Kline on the top step leading down to the lower floor where she and Buck lived. With one sun-weathered hand on the carved newel post, she regarded him with a neutral expression that did not cancel the distrust in her sharp blue eyes. “There’s homemade pizza in the freezer.”

  Though Lyle suspected her hospitality was to keep him from getting Sylvia alone and harming her in some way, so much the better.

  “Oh, Mary,” Sylvia protested, “you don’t need—”

  “You don’t need to go anywhere.” Mary spoke with emphasis.

  “Round food would be great,” Lyle told both women. He’d had some the other night with Cliff, but as far as he was concerned pizza was a staple food.

  While Mary and Sylvia went into the kitchen to get things started, he muttered something about washing up and started toward his room.

  It wasn’t that easy. Buck lounged on the pillowed sofa in the lobby, his booted feet stuck out, head bent over the Napa Valley Register. Though Lyle aimed for the hallway where his room awaited, the older man cleared his throat and set the newspaper aside. “You know, Sylvia has been through more than a woman should have to.”

  Walking on as if he hadn’t heard wasn’t an option. Lyle considered saying, “As a matter of fact, I do know what she’s been through. Do you have any idea who she is?” but decided better of it.

  Instead, he said, “I don’t know if your wife told you. I’m with the San Francisco DA’s office.”

  Buck rose and stood eye to eye with Lyle. “People in high places can be just as ugly as someone with empty pockets.”

  “No argument there. I’ve prosecuted people you’d never have suspected.” He spread his hands. “But the woman working in your kitchen does not, and never has had, anything to fear from me.”

  Lyle left the innkeeper behind and strode to his room, but he couldn’t help challenging himself. If Sylvia had nothing to fear from him, then why was he considering betraying her in the basest manner?

  A tough question with an easy answer …

  Money.

  But was it so simple?

  Something in the Sylvia who’d danced on a table and thumbed her nose at the world had changed. That woman would never have cooked breakfast for strangers.

  Lyle’s spacious room, with a brass-framed king bed and antique armoire, seemed to close in on him. The largest thing in here was suddenly the telephone, set on an old-fashioned round walnut stand.

  He procrastinated by going into the bath, relieving himself, and washing his hands before the lavatory mirror. His familiar reflection stared back … everyone acted as though his azure eyes, blond hair, and strong-boned features spelled handsome. And though he didn’t think he was too hard on the eyes, to him the figure in the glass was just Lyle, working his way up from the bottom.

  A man who could use a half-million dollars. Hell, he could have used the money he pushed back across Chatsworth’s desk.

  Yet, how was he going to look at himself if he sold Sylvia back into the spotlight?

  Drying his hands on an embroidered towel, Lyle sighed. In his mind’s eye, he saw her look up at him with trust. And a gleam in her eye that said she might like kissing him a second time.

  Sylvia gauged how the pizza cheese was bubbling through the glass oven door. On instinct, she’d decided Lyle was probably a pepperoni man and dug out extra from the fridge.

  Both Mary and Buck hovered, as if he would come into the kitchen and slap her around. They couldn’t know her reason for not wanting to go into town on a Saturday night was that the bars and restaurants would be hopping, and she would run a greater risk of recognition.

  On the other hand, she couldn’t hide forever. Lyle’s apparently genuine anger at her for running away, along with his serious confession that he’d worried about her, made her once more aware that others wondered where she was tonight.

  The swinging door pushed open, and Lyle leaned against t
he jamb, arms crossed over his broad chest. “Smells great.”

  Seeing him again after only a few minutes started her heart beating a little faster. If she accepted his story that finding her was a coincidence, then it was a fortunate one … one that she was glad for.

  “Why don’t we eat out on the back porch?” Lyle suggested.

  Though his suggestion of a more private venue made Mary’s brow wrinkle, Sylvia agreed. She reached to the inn’s wine rack, procured a Villa Valetti Merlot, and held it out to Lyle. “Do the honors?”

  “Only if Mary puts in on my bill,” Lyle replied.

  The older woman nodded.

  He stepped up and showed off his prowess with the corkscrew Sylvia handed him from a drawer.

  Mary continued to watch with troubled eyes, while Sylvia wished her folks showed half the parental instinct that she and Buck exuded.

  Pulling the pizza at the precise moment when the cheese and crust looked perfect, Sylvia was happy to find Lyle a team player. He held the plates while she offloaded, grabbed paper napkins, and helped her carry the meal out to the porch.

  Tactfully, though nervously, Buck and Mary stood down.

  When Sylvia followed Lyle outside, the damp scent of the spring-fed river and surrounding forest competed with the aromas of homemade dough, rich tomato sauce, and extra pepperoni. Lyle poured the wine into broad-bowled glasses, filling them about a third of the way and twisting the bottle like a sommelier to prevent drips.

  Sylvia reached for hers and hesitated.

  He raised his, and though he didn’t say anything corny like, “To us,” she felt like he had.

  Somehow, she didn’t think it would be corny.

  Relaxing in a cushioned chair facing the wilderness, Lyle savored the mixed flavors of cheese, tomato, pepperoni, garlic, and basil.

  Sylvia slanted him a look. “It’s nothing fancy.”

  He chewed and swallowed. “So much the better.”

  “I was sure you liked fancy things.” She set aside her plate with a couple rims of crust remaining. “You wear designer suits and a Rolex, you go to Ice and the Pearl, you drive a Mercedes …”