Ira shrugged, irreverent as ever. “You could admit you’re lucky to have me. Am I not one of the few people you know in my line of work who’d put up with a boss who flies kites at lunch? Who just two weeks ago was caught by several guests rescuing one of her kites from the tippy-top of an oak tree and asked me-me-to lie to these guests and tell them that no, that wasn’t the owner of the Pembroke but some stray kid?”

“You are, Ira,” she said with a straight face, “one of a kind.”

“But I’ve gone too far?”

She smiled. “You always do.”

When he left, Dani found herself restless, unusually irritated by the false rumors, the constant battle to get people not to see her as a Pembroke or a Chandler, but simply to see her. Dani Pembroke.

“Most people look at this place and see disaster and folly. I see someone’s dream.”

Her mother’s words, spoken in the overgrown Pembroke rose garden just days before she’d disappeared.

At nine, Dani had been confused. To her, dreams weren’t real.

“Sometimes you can make them real,” her mother had said. “Not all dreams, of course. Only the best ones. The ones you cherish most, the ones that come back to you again and again.”

She’d stopped at a crumbling fountain. Her vivid blue eyes had mesmerized her small daughter with their intense yearning.

“It’s far better to have tried to make your dreams come true and failed than never to have tried at all. Longing isn’t enough.”

But what of the people hurt in the process?

Fighting a sudden, searing sense of loneliness, Dani sneaked out through her private terrace so she wouldn’t have to face Ira down the hall.