PART THREE

1993

5

The memory of her fight with her mother was vivid. It had started as an argument about a boy Adria had been seeing on the sly and accelerated quickly to a full-blown battle.

“The Lord thy God is a vengeful God, Adria-”

“He’s not my God,” Adria, then eighteen, had said. “He’s your God, Mom. Yours. But he’s not mine!”

The slap had been one of the few blows Sharon Nash had ever inflicted upon her adopted daughter and it had stung deeper than Adria’s skin; the pain had reached the thick hide that covered her soul.

“Don’t you ever, ever talk like that again.” Sharon’s breath, bitter from the coffee and tinged with the underlying odor of gin, had drifted over Adria’s face. “Now, go wash up, and you forget about ever seein’ that boy again. He’s trash, y’hear. Trash. Just like his ma. Bad blood flows through his veins, girl.”

“And what kind of blood flows through mine?” Adria had demanded.

“We don’t know-you don’t need to.”

“Of course I do!”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways-he brought you to us for a reason. You’re not to question His wisdom, y’hear?”

Adria had turned on her heel and fled to her little bedroom tucked under the eaves of the second story.

Years ago. But it seemed like yesterday and the argument seemed to ring through the tiny motel room near the airport.

She’d remembered the fight because of Zachary Danvers, another rogue, another man she should avoid. Though she’d only talked with him for a few minutes, she’d read all about him and his family, her family, and she hadn’t been disappointed.

He was the black sheep of the family-kicked out of the house and cut out of his father’s will more often than not. He did things his own way, didn’t give a hang that he was born rich, and he was cursed with an irreverent spirit that just might want to help her find the truth.

Or maybe not. In the year before his father’s death, Zach and Witt had seemed to bury the hatchet. Nonetheless, she knew instinctively that he would be her only ally in the family; the others appeared to be ready to pick at the old man’s bones and take his fortune.

Maybe Zachary was like the rest.

If so, her battle would be harder than she’d thought.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror over the sink in the bathroom and bit her lip. Was she on a fool’s mission? How could she ever hope to battle the powerful Danvers family? And why was Zachary Danvers-her half-brother, for crying out loud-so attractive?

Adria had always been drawn to the kind of men her mother despised-the rebels and misfits and loners whom Sharon Nash found repulsive. The Zach Danvers of the world.

Yet Zach was the one member of the Danvers family she instinctively turned to, the only one of her siblings she felt she could trust. Trust! She snorted a laugh at her own foolishness. Zachary Danvers was about as trustworthy as a hungry rattler with a trapped mouse. She walked into the bedroom and found a copy of the videotape that had led her to Portland and tucked it into her bag. As she snapped the purse closed, she wondered why she never seemed to learn that very important lesson about men.

Just because Zach might be her half-brother didn’t mean he was safe. He was a predatory man, a man who would take any challenge, a man with a wild streak that he hadn’t yet tamed, a man who wouldn’t care one bit if she were his half-sister. There was an animal side of him-pure male and extremely lethal-that defied the bounds of kinship. He was sexy and rough and seemed about as stable as a blasting cap.

No wonder she was attracted to him. It had been the flaw in her character to be attracted to rough-and-tumble, irreverent boys and men all her life.

“You’re an idiot,” she told her reflection as she stood barefoot on the tan carpet that had worn thin near the door.

So if she couldn’t trust Zachary, who in the family could she trust? No one. Just as they couldn’t trust her.

Half dressed in her lacy slip, she walked back into the tiny bathroom where her dress hung on a hook in the door. She’d found the dress in a boutique that handled “previously worn” items. A white, silky confection with a designer label, the gown fit her perfectly. She’d never owned such a creation before, never spent so much money on one dress-and a used one at that!

Her adoptive mother had been a frugal, God-fearing woman who didn’t believe in women wearing ornaments of any kind-no jewelry save a gold wedding band or a gold cross suspended from a necklace and clothes that were practical, shoes that were sensible and sturdy.

Not so her father. Unlike his wife, Victor had been a dreamer, always expecting a larger crop than the land would yield, always certain that the next year, life would become easier.

And she’d believed him. When she’d discovered his secret, that he thought her to be London Danvers, she’d grabbed that gold-plated carrot he’d swung before her nose and held on with a death grip.

She’d done her research, read every clipping on the Danvers family and the kidnapping, searched through all the old papers in her father’s desk, called her deceased Uncle Ezra’s secretary, searching, digging through every scrap of information, praying she’d find some irrefutable evidence that either proved or disproved that she was the little lost princess. Ezra Nash, a lawyer known to bend the law, had handled the adoption. Either he hadn’t bothered with records, or they’d long-since been destroyed, or there was a secret surrounding her birth that he’d wanted to keep hidden.

She’d fought the anticipation that had raced through her bloodstream when she’d learned that she might be London Danvers, that she might finally discover her true identity. She told herself the chances that she was the missing heiress were a billion to one, but in the end, she’d followed her heart-her father’s dream-and driven her beat-up Chevy steadily westward to Portland, London’s hometown. She’d nearly convinced herself that she was London Danvers, believed that she would finally find her family, and after the initial shock had worn off, they would welcome her with open arms. Now, as she tilted her head and screwed on the back of her zirconium earrings, she bit her lower lip. The teardrop earrings sparkled in the light, as if they were diamonds, but they were fakes, made to look like expensive jewels when they were really cheap and common.

Like you.

No! She wouldn’t believe the speculation she’d heard all her life from the people in the small town where she’d grown up. Wouldn’t!

She ran a brush through her hair and started working with the long, black curls. Wild, “witchy hair,” her adoptive mother had often called the long, riotous waves that Adria didn’t bother taming, and she was right.

She planned to crash the party celebrating the grand opening of the Hotel Danvers. It was time to face the family. She’d tried to call Zachary Danvers after their first meeting in the ballroom, but hadn’t been able to get past the hotel reception desk and though she’d left messages, Zachary hadn’t seen fit to call her back. She hadn’t bothered trying to reach anyone else in the family. She knew too much about them to try and trust any of them. Zachary was the one with the least to lose, the only one of Witt’s children to make something of himself on his own; the others-Jason, Trisha, and Nelson-had, from what she’d read, been content to stay in Witt’s shadow, doing his bidding, waiting, like vultures, for him to die.

But Zach was different and had been from the beginning when there had been speculation about his paternity. He’d been in trouble with the law and he and the old man had been rumored to be at each other’s throats. When Zach was still in school, there had been a major blowup and rift, though she never found out why, and Zach had been thrown out of the house and disowned. Only recently, before Witt’s death, had he been back with the family.

Adria figured that someone who had been on the outside so long would be her most likely ally. So far, she’d been wrong. So tonight, she’d make public her claims and if nothing else, get the Danvers family’s attention.


She was a fraud.

Zach could smell a fake a mile away, and this woman, this black-haired woman with the mysterious blue eyes and hint of irreverence in her smile when she claimed to be London, was as phony as the proverbial three-dollar bill.

But he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He’d tried, but she kept swimming to the surface of his consciousness, toying with his thoughts.

Already in a foul mood because of the grand opening, he poured himself a drink from the bar in the suite he’d called home for the past few months, the very same set of rooms he was to have slept in on the night London had been kidnapped. The suite on the seventh floor looked different now, as the decor reflected the turn of the century rather than the 1970s, but it was still eerie remembering that night. Witt had raged, Kat had wept, and the rest of the children…the survivors…had cast suspicious glances at one another and the police.

He ran a finger along the smooth surface of the window, then pocketed his hotel-room key. He didn’t have time to reminisce and he resented Adria for brining back the pain of his checkered past.

Right now, Zach just wanted out. He’d held up his part of the bargain, which was to renovate the hotel, and now he wanted his due-the price he’d extracted from the old man before Witt had died.

It had been a painful scene. His father had tried to break the ice and admit that he’d been wrong about his faithless wife, but the words had gotten all tangled up and once again they’d ended up arguing. Zach had nearly walked out, but Witt had enticed him back.

“The ranch is yours, if you want it, boy,” Witt had declared.

Zach’s hand rested on the doorknob of the den. “The ranch?”

“When I die.”

“Forget it.”

“You want it, don’t you?”

Zach had turned and skewered his father with a stare intended to cut through steel.

“You always take what you want, if I remember right.”

“I’m outta here.”

“Wait,” the old man had pleaded. “The ranch is worth several million.”

“I don’t give a shit about the money.”

“Oh, right. My noble son.” Witt was standing near the window, one hand in his pocket, the other wrapped around a short glass of Irish whiskey. “But you still want it. What for?” His white eyebrows had raised a bit. “Nostalgia, perhaps?”

The jab cut deep, but Zach didn’t so much as flinch. “It doesn’t matter.”

Witt snorted. “It’s yours.”

Zach wasn’t easily suckered by the old man. He was smart enough to know the ranch had a price-a high one. “What do I have to do?”

“Nothing all that hard. Restore the old hotel.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t act like I’ve asked you to fly, damn it. You have your own construction crew in Bend. Move them over here or hire new people. Money’s no object. I just want the hotel to look as good as it did when it was built.”

“You’re out of your mind. It would cost a fortune to-”

“Indulge me. It’s all I’m asking,” Witt said, his voice low. “You love the ranch, I’m fond of the hotel. The logging operations, the investments, they don’t mean much, not to me. But that hotel has class. It was the best of its kind in its day. I’d like to see that again.”

“Hire someone else.”

Witt’s eyes narrowed on his son and he swallowed the last of his whiskey. “I want you to do it, boy. And I want you to do it for me.”

“Go to hell.”

“Already been there. Seems as if you had something to do with that.”

Zach’s throat tightened. He’d never seen eye-to-eye with the old man, but knew an olive branch when it was thrust under his nose. And this particular branch was attached by a silver chain to the deed to the ranch.

“Don’t let your pride stand in the way of what you want.”

“It won’t,” he lied.

Witt extended his big hand. “What d’ya say?”

Zach hesitated just a fraction of a second. “It’s a deal,” he’d finally said and the two men had clasped hands.

Zach had started to work on the hotel and Witt had changed his will. The project to reclaim the Hotel Danvers and refurbish the old building to its earlier grandeur had lasted over two years, and Witt had died long before it was finished, never realizing his dream. Zach had been able to spend most of his time at the ranch, until a year ago. Then the job had become so involved that he’d been forced to move to Portland to ensure that all the finishing touches were just right.

Now, he tightened the knot of his tie around his throat. He had to get through the grand opening, check a few last bugs, and then get the hell out of Dodge.