If Pete Darrow were skulking about out on Marlborough, she didn’t want him to see them and report back to Titus and Joshua Reading until she had more information. She’d promised the Readings she was through with Tony Scagliotti. He wouldn’t come back to haunt her, embarrass her, or spirit her off to faraway places in search of rare and endangered orchids. He had his life. She had hers. That was that.Except, of course, that wasn’t that. Scag was still Scag, and graceful exits weren’t his style. Deep down, Gabriella had known he would turn up again. It had been like that her whole life. He would go away; he would come back. Before she had died, her mother, who had been a talented Cape Cod florist he’d never married, had helped her to accept Scag for who he was, even as she’d encouraged her only child not to be like him. He was a world-renowned expert on orchids, an eccentric, opinionated crusader on their behalf More than thirty thousand species of orchids existed, and Tony Scagliotti had devoted his life to seeing them all, discovering new species, protecting those that were rare and endangered.
