by Lisa Jackson
“I’m not-”
She held up a hand before opening her eyes. “Please. Give me some credit, will you?”
When she looked up, Jason was smiling that waxen, tight little grin that she’d grown to hate over the years-the smile he seemed to reserve just for her. “The skillet suddenly too hot for you, darling?” he said, and her insides revolted at the endearment.
How far they’d drifted apart over the years. Too far to ever find each other again. “What’s too hot isn’t the skillet, or the fire, it’s that damned little mistress of yours,” she said evenly though her insides churned. She’d thought she’d quit loving him years ago, but still the lies hurt.
At least he had the decency to blanch.
“She called here. Kim, isn’t it? The little blonde with legs that won’t quit and no breasts?” Nicole applied a little night cream to moisturize her face and hopefully forestall a few of the determined little lines that remained on her skin as the years crept by. “You really didn’t believe I didn’t know, did you?”
He seemed to puff up a bit-like he used to do when he practiced law and stood in front of a particularly recalcitrant witness on the stand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come off it, Jason.” She wiped off the excess cream. “Contrary to what you would like to think, I’m not stupid. And I know what’s going on with this London thing. You’re running scared, aren’t you?” She tossed her pale hair over her shoulders and removed her earrings, diamonds that sparkled in the soft lights arranged over her vanity. She’d picked out the earrings herself, though Jason had bought them for their fifth…or was it their sixth?…anniversary. “This new little London, she just could be your sister.”
“I don’t think so.”
Sometimes, when the pain wasn’t too great, when she could distance herself from him, it amused her to watch him lie. He did it so well, with such grace and such…conviction, as if he really believed himself.
“Zachary wouldn’t be hanging around if it weren’t serious,” she said. “Nelson looks like he’s hiding something, Trisha’s worse than ever-I shudder to think what she’s on these days-and your mother, usually so remote, she seems to have taken a sudden interest in the family. Oh, you’re worried,” she said, dropping her earrings into a velvet case and snapping it shut. “All very worried.”
“And you’re not?” He walked up behind her and placed his hands lightly around her throat. Their gazes locked in the mirror and she tilted her chin up a fraction as she felt him squeeze, ever so slightly. It would be so easy for him to cut off her wind and strangle her, but Nicole wasn’t afraid. She slid a meaningful glance to the framed eight-by-ten picture poised on the corner of the vanity.
Their daughter, Shelly, laughing, her hair windswept in the breeze rising off the ocean that day, gazed back at her. Shelly was the one thing that both she and Jason cared about. The only thing.
Jason’s gaze dropped to the picture and his fingers relaxed.
He would never do anything that might cause him to lose his daughter, for, as overly doting as Witt had been with London, so was Jason with Shelly. In his eyes, his daughter could do no wrong. The little imp had him wrapped around her slim little finger.
“You know, I’d hate to see anything happen to us,” Nicole said softly, though there was a steel thread running through the words. “It would be devastating to Shelly.”
Jason’s smug smile faltered. “Kids are survivors.”
“Are they?” she asked pointedly. “What about you?”
“I’m doing okay.”
“Are you? I’m not so sure. Then there are your brothers and sister…”
His gaze met hers again in the mirror. “Zach always seems to land on his feet. The others…who can say?” He turned away from her and started for the door.
“I won’t be publicly humiliated, Jason. If your little girlfriend wants to get down and dirty, I won’t be a part of it and neither will Shelly. Either stop seeing that little bitch or control her-I don’t really care which.” That was bending the truth a little; she did care-it bothered her to think that another woman, a younger woman, could turn his head, but she was shrewd enough to understand that Jason needed more than just a wife. He needed to be adored and fawned upon and he always needed a hot little number warming his bed and stroking his male ego.
The thought made her sick, but she’d live with it. For Shelly. As long as one of his slutty little mistresses didn’t go public. Nicole had never before been concerned, not really, but she was worried about this Kim. It took nerve-hell, it took brass balls-to call up Jason Danvers’s wife and start issuing orders.
Things had changed since Adria Nash had waltzed into town. And not for the better.
She heard a pounding on the front door and her heart leaped to her throat. Now what? For a foolish split second her fears took hold and she thought Kim had become desperate enough to show up here. Jason probably had given her the code to the gate and the little slut had just enough nerve to confront her lover and his wife.
Shelly! Her thoughts flew to her daughter. She couldn’t let Shelly meet the woman! Grabbing the satin robe left at the foot of her bed, she slid her arms through the sleeves and hurried down the hall, looping the belt; damned if that little tramp would meet her daughter. Jason was two steps in front of her and he opened the door, letting in the slice of wintry cold wind that preceded his brother.
Zachary, in jeans and a denim jacket, looked out of place in the house where he’d grown up. He was tense and the restless energy that Nicole had come to associate with him was evident in the way he paced the room, the manner in which his eyes took in everything at once, the feel of electricity that he generated. His hair was a little too long, uncombed, and he looked as if he could use a shave-like he’d just come in off the range. He was so innately sexy that Nicole tried to avoid looking in his eyes for fear she would see the promise of sweet seduction lingering in those hot gray orbs.
She offered him a chair, but he shook his head and stared at his brother. “I want Sweeny’s number.”
“I was just on my way out-” Jason said.
“Now?”
“Late meeting.”
Zach didn’t press it, as if what Jason did with his own time was his business. “Fine. Go out Just give me the number.”
“Sweeny’s out of town.” Now it was Jason’s turn to be nervous.
“Then tell me where he can be reached.” There was a desperate edge to Zach’s voice, one that dared to be defied.
“He’s in and out-you’ll never catch up with him,” Jason said, and his voice sounded strangled. Out of control. All that practiced courtroom poker face shot to hell. He was lying again, Nicole surmised. And the untruths seemed to come harder when they were told to his steel-jawed brother. Would this chain of deception never end?
Zach’s eyes grew dark. “Give me the number, Jason, or place the damned call. I want to talk to him.”
Jason backed off. “You look like you could use a drink. I’ve got a bottle of-”
“I don’t need a drink,” Zach snapped. “Just give me the number.”
Jason eyed his brother and finally relented. “All right. Come on. In the den.” He checked his watch. “You know it’s nearly two o’clock in Memphis.”
“Good. He should be in.”
“Sweeny could be asleep.”
“Then it’s time to wake up,” Zach said, unable to tamp down the raw, naked tautness that had been with him ever since he’d kissed Adria and held her in his arms. He was frightened for her. Afraid that whoever was stalking her would up the ante. But he couldn’t confide in his family. Not when one of them could be the sicko. And there was the other problem of his feelings for Adria. Her lips had offered such sweet promise, her head thrown back in absolute abandon, her breasts straining against that little scrap of a bra. He’d come close to making love to her, so damned close, and it had been all he could do to break it off. She’d been willing and soft, her body yiel
ding to his. He’d argued with himself as he’d kissed her, sworn at himself when he touched her breasts, and nearly lost all reason as she’d cradled his head to her nipple. He’d never been so hard in his life. Never wanted anything more. Never been so repulsed by his own desires.
Just thinking of it now caused the beginning of an erection to swell in his jeans. He stuffed one hand into a front pocket as Jason showed him the numbers scratched on a pad across the desk. Cradling the receiver with his shoulder, Zach punched out the numbers and waited impatiently, tapping the fingers of his free hand on the corner of the desk. “Come on, come on,” he muttered as Jason closed the door to the den.
Sweeny’s groggy voice answered on the seventh ring. “Yeah.”
“This is Zachary Danvers.”
“Jesus, do you know what time it is?”
“What’ve you found out?”
“I was gonna call Jason in the morning.”
Zach glanced at the clock. “You’re in luck. It is morning and Jason’s right here.”
“You’re a fucking prick, Danvers.” The voice cleared and he heard the sound of a lighter clicking. “Okay, it’s not much, but a start.” Zach’s stomach twisted. If Sweeny confirmed the fact that Adria was a fraud, then she was little more than a cheap hustler-a gold digger. But if he’d discovered she was London…hell, that would be worse because he’d be related to her. His heart drummed frantically in his chest. Either way, he was bound to lose. “It’s kind of been like lookin’ for a needle in a haystack,” Sweeny was saying, “or trying to find that damned guy in the puzzle, you know what I’m talking about? The guy in the red stripes? Where’s Whosit?”
“Waldo,” Zach said tersely.
“Right. That’s it. Anyway, I narrowed it down and it looks like the guy who was married to Ginny Watson moved to Kentucky a while back. Lexington, in the seventies sometime, near as I can tell. I’m gonna visit him tomorrow.”
“You got his phone number?”
Zach heard nothing but silence for a few seconds.
“Well, do you?”
“Sure, I got it, but I figured a visit in person would be better. Seeing people face-to-face makes it impossible to hang up.”
“I want to speak to him.”
“Easy, boy. You’ll get your chance,” Oswald said smoothly. “Just let me break the ice. I’ll call you as soon as I have more news. I’ll leave the message with Jason.”
“Where will you be staying?” Zach demanded.
“Where will I be staying? That’s a good one. Maybe at the Ritz? Or how about the Hotel Danvers? You got one over in Kentucky? Shit, how’m I s’posed to know?” He hung up and the phone clicked loudly in Zach’s ear.
“What was that all about?” Jason asked, pouring two glasses from a bottle of Scotch he kept in the bar. His eyes were trained suspiciously on his brother.
“I’m just tired of waiting around and I don’t trust Sweeny.”
“Neither do I, but he keeps his mouth shut and if he finds out something, he’ll let us know, but it’ll cost. Now, where’s Adria? Are you hiding her somewhere?”
Zach didn’t answer and his older brother’s lips curved into a hard little smile. “Keeping her all to yourself?”
“I thought you wanted her low-profile.”
“She’s already been on the news and in the papers. Hardly low-profile.” Jason walked to the desk, opened the drawer, and flipped out clippings and copies and faxes. “She’s made the national news, you know…and I mean more than just the little blurb that was reported through the AP. The networks are beginning to call and even a few papers back East are showing a little interest. Every time I turn on the television, someone seems to be talking about her and during the day, at the company, there’s a fucking siege in the lobby.”
“Free publicity,” Zach said sarcastically.
“Go to hell, Zach.” Jason tossed back his drink. “It’s started here, too, at the house. It upsets Nicole and Shelly and…I feel like I did when London was kidnapped-all the reporters camped out at the gate.”
Zach remembered the throng of newspeople that had pummeled the family with questions, called at all hours, crowded around the gates to the house; he’d heard from his crew still cleaning up at the hotel, that the press had been ever-present in the lobby. Even his office in Bend wasn’t immune; Terry had phoned and told him that a few reporters had shown up looking for him ever since Adria’s meeting with the press.
“It’s worse than I’d imagined,” Jason was saying as he reached for the bottle again. “Even the lawyers are beginning to worry. They want to talk to Ms. Nash, but I advised them to wait a while.”
“Just let me handle her.” He didn’t want her hustled away by a herd of bloodsuckers like the attorneys for the Danvers family. Impatiently, he jammed one hand through his hair.
“Has she hired an attorney yet?”
Zach lifted a shoulder. “I don’t think so. But she’s with Mario Polidori tonight.”
“Polidori?” Jason’s face muscles flexed in disbelief and his nostrils flared in disgust. “Why?”
“Don’t know. She didn’t say.”
“So, the vultures are already circling. Great, Zach, that’s just great,” he said sarcastically, then pointed a finger at his younger brother. “You can’t let him get to her.”
“It’s none of my business.”
“Like hell! Polidori, through a smoke screen of lawyers and holding companies and silent partners, has been trying to buy off chunks of Danvers International for years-waterfront property and the old hotel, downtown real estate, even a couple of sawmills. You name it, he wants it as long as it’s got the Danvers logo attached. He has this thing about acquiring our castoffs-so far we’ve held him off.”
“His money no good?”
“It’s not the money, it’s the idea that he wants it all,” Jason said and Zach smiled at the irony of it all.
“Aren’t you the guy who said ‘it’s always money’?”
“Not with the Polidoris. With them it’s revenge,” Jason said, staring morosely into his glass. Zach didn’t argue; he’d grown up being told that the Polidoris were no-goods, out for blood, the worst of the worst. Zach had changed his mind over the course of the years, but he still didn’t trust them, especially with Adria.
Before Jason could ask a lot of questions Zach didn’t want to answer, he pushed himself away from the desk and left. Jason’s case of nerves was getting to him.
He drove downtown and stopped at the Hotel Danvers, picked up some blueprints that had been left there for him, and grabbed a stack of messages, which he gave a quick once-over, then tossed into the trash. Reporters and more reporters. Jason was right on that score. Once they smelled the blood of scandal, the vultures kept circling until they finally swept in to pick the carcass.
He climbed into his Jeep and headed out of the city. Back to Adria. His foot pressed harder on the accelerator. The truth of the matter was that he was bothered that Adria was with Polidori and it had nothing to do with the feud or the family fortune. It didn’t even have anything to do with London Danvers. The problem was more basic than that. It hit him at a gut level. Like it or not, Zach was jealous. He denied it to himself as he drove hell-bent-for-leather on the winding road to Estacada but when push came to shove and he was honest with himself, the truth of the matter was that he didn’t like the thought of her with any other man.
“Idiot,” he told himself and snapped on the radio. Squinting against oncoming headlights, he listened to a half-hour dedicated to Bruce Springsteen songs, but his mind drifted from the lyrics to Adria. Christ, what was he going to do with her? He knew what he wanted and it was either obscene or just plain stupid, or maybe a little bit of both, depending upon whom she turned out to be.
Adria glanced in her rearview mirror as she drove along the forested road to Estacada. Headlights bore down on her and she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being followed. During her dinner with Mario Polidori she’d been tense. Une
asy. Jumping at shadows, and when she’d left Portland, she’d felt hidden eyes upon her, watching her every move.
“You’re as bad as the Danvers family,” she muttered as the vehicle behind her, a huge pickup raised high off the ground, tore around her, spraying mist and dirt from the road onto her windshield. She flipped on the wipers and attempted to ignore the paranoia that threatened.
The truck, going over seventy on this winding road, disappeared around a corner and the beams of her own headlights splashed against the puddles, wet pavement, and mossy bark of the giant fir trees lining the country road.
She was exhausted, her mind running in crazy circles filled with images of Zachary and bloodied hotel rooms. She’d finally heard from Detective Stinson; the blood smeared on the broken mirror hadn’t been human at all, but rat blood, probably drained from the rodent that had been left for her to find.
Her stomach curdled at the thought. Though she’d grown up on a farm and had dealt with the slaughter of animals each year or had helped butcher deer her father had killed on a hunting trip, or found the corpses of rats and birds caught by the barn cats, this was different. An animal killed, then drained of its blood to be used for the next act of terror.
She shivered and told herself to get over it. She’d known from the get-go that claiming to be London Danvers was sure to meet resistance; she just hadn’t had any idea how much or how macabre.
A headache throbbed behind her eyes. Her meeting with Mario Polidori had turned out badly. His interest in her had changed from curiosity and mild interest to something deeper, something she didn’t want to contemplate. She’d recognized a spark of challenge in his gaze as he’d stared at her, and she’d had the unlikely but unsettling insight that he’d wanted to sleep with her. At first she’d told herself she was imagining things, but as the evening had worn on and he had become bolder, his eyes darker, his smile just a little more wicked, she’d become certain that he wanted to seduce her. Not because he found her infinitely fascinating, but because she was associated with the Danvers family and because she was a challenge.