“And you go to your ball,” he said.
“Love you,” she stated quickly.
“Same here,” he answered. Then the line went dead.
She pushed the phone’s Off button, then gripped the steering wheel again, the diamond on her ring finger glittering in the low light. She held her hand up in front of her. Ryan’s grandmother’s engagement ring, the Baron diamond, was on her finger now. Four carats, marquise cut. And sometime, somewhere down the road, his grandmother’s wedding band with inset diamonds in platinum would join it.
It had been a good decision to accept his proposal. In a few years, they’d get married, and that would be a good decision, too.
They hadn’t told too many people about the engagement, not even her brother or her parents. Megan told herself she wanted to give them the news in person, but she knew she was hesitant to tell them at all because they’d ask all the wrong questions. Quint especially. He’d had a bad marriage early on, and hadn’t been terribly romantic. But when he’d met his new wife, the man had turned into a moonstruck Romeo. All he did was talk about Amy and the two kids they had.
And their mother would go on and on about “being in love” and how exciting and wonderful it was. Being in love was nice, Megan thought. Nice and sensible. That’s what she and Ryan had. Nice and sensible, and if people found that boring, so be it. It worked for them.
She glanced at the clock on the dash of the rental car and grimaced. Mr. Lawrence had requested her presence at the ball by “no later than nine.” It was already eight-thirty, and she still hadn’t found the right exit to get to the E. J. Sommers’s estate. She’d been born and raised in the Houston area before leaving six years ago, but she hadn’t recognized the name of the road to the estate from the directions she’d been given.
“Meet me on the lower terrace,” had been included in the note, too. She didn’t know where the lower terrace would be. She’d never met Wayne Lawrence. But she’d find both the man and the lower terrace as soon as she found the estate.
She shifted, adjusted the hem of her dress, then glanced at herself in the rearview mirror. She’d chosen simple over fussy, confining her shoulder-length blond hair in a French twist held by diamond clips. She’d brushed color on her lips, put on a hint of mascara, and her only jewelry was the ring.
She looked ahead and saw a sign. The right road. She took the off-ramp onto a narrow, two-lane highway and turned the only way she could, south. As she drove around a curve, she sighed with relief when she saw the glow of lights ahead on the right, at the same moment she noticed a sign by the side of the road: Charity Ball, with an arrow pointing straight ahead.
She followed it, and pulled into an expansive entry space paved with cobble stones and faced by massive wrought-iron gates framed by stone pillars. She stopped by another sign: Check In Here. But she didn’t see anything except a security keypad. She hadn’t been given a code of any type. She looked through the gates and saw the glow from the main house. Even from this distance she could see a lot of activity going on.
She reached for her purse to get out the embossed invitation Mr. Lawrence had sent over for her, figuring there might have been a code on it she’d missed when she’d read it earlier. She skimmed the card, but didn’t see anything that resembled a code. All it said was: “Valet service at the ballroom entrance.”
She pushed it back in the envelope, rolled down her window and heard the faint sounds of music and voices drifting on the evening air. She looked at the security pad and spotted a phone by the keys. She was reaching for it when a deep male voice startled her.
“Good evening.” She turned to see a security guard on the other side of the gates, a tall man in the shadows, moving toward the left pillar. “I’ll be right there,” he said, then disappeared, only to reappear out of a gate set into the fence on the other side of the pillar.
He came toward her, backlit by the lanterns that framed the entry. “Am I glad to see you,” she said as he got within a few feet of the car. She could see now that he was carrying a clipboard in one hand, and there were a gun and two-way radio at his waist.
“Sorry for the wait.”
She had to crook her neck a bit to look up at him. He was probably over six feet, lean, in a tailored uniform, but between the night shadows and his uniform cap, his face was almost indistinguishable. “I just need to get in to the ball.”
He came close enough to touch the frame of her window with one hand, and leaned nearer. “Okay, no problem,” he said as she noticed how strong his hand looked, tanned, with square, short nails and a simple gold wedding band on the ring finger. “What’s the name?”
“Megan Gallagher.”
He pulled back and scanned the clipboard. “Sorry, ma’am, but you’re not on my list.”
“Look again. It’s Gallagher,” she said, then spelled it out for him very slowly.
“There are two Gallaghers on here and you’re not one of them. In fact, they’ve already left.”
She knew the two Gallaghers—her brother, Quint, who’d been doing work for LynTech for a while, and Amy. Megan had thought they were in New York, but they must have come back for the ball. “Look again,” she said, feeling a bit irritated that someone had forgotten to put her name on the list, and that she was now at the mercy of this guard. It was almost nine and she was going to be late.
She wasn’t aware she’d said anything else out loud, but he stated, “If you’re not on the list, you’re not,” as he hunkered down by the door. “Sorry.”
The dim glow from the inside lights of the car touched his face, and she saw she was being assessed by dark, dark eyes under a slash of equally dark eyebrows. His clean-shaven face looked almost ethnic, with high cheekbones, deeply tanned skin and a strong jaw. And it fell just short of being handsome. No, it was more disturbing than handsome, and she didn’t know why. “I need to get inside,” she said with more bluntness than she’d intended.
“Not without your name being on this list.”
“Oh, just let me in,” she said.
“Sorry, I have strict orders not to let anyone in without being on the list.”
He was like a broken record. Then she had an idea. She grabbed the invitation off the seat by her purse and turned to where he still crouched by her door. She thrust the printed card at him. “Here, this proves I’m supposed to be in there.”
He took it from her and read it, while she frantically looked at the clock again and realized she was now officially late for her meeting. Then he held it back out to her. “Your name’s not on this,” he said. “You could have picked it up out of the trash.”
That was it; she’d had enough. She opened the door, not caring if she hit him in the process, and climbed out. Her first realization when she faced him was that he was big. The security guard was over six feet tall, with broad shoulders well defined by the tight, tailored uniform. And he was annoyed. It was obvious by his stance and by the way his right hand clenched at his side. He let the invitation fall to the ground between them, then he crossed his arms on his chest, a power pose if ever she saw one. At least he didn’t pull his gun.
“What’s your name?” she asked, lifting her chin slightly and fighting the urge to cross her arms the way he had.
“Rafe Diaz,” he said, then slowly spelled it out, letter by letter, as she had done with her name earlier. Then he asked, “Is this a standoff?”
“No, it’s a problem,” she said.
“I agree,” he murmured without any sign of hesitation. “It’s your problem.”
“No, it’s yours. You’re being paid to let in guests, to be polite and make life simpler for the people going through these gates tonight,