“My God!” another male voice whispered behind her and Adria turned to find a man, tall, blond, and lanky, with startling blue eyes that widened when he caught sight of her face. “She looks just like—”
“We know, Nelson,” Jason said, obviously irritated.
“Nelson, this is Adria Nash,” Zachary drawled as if enjoying his family’s discomfiture. “She’s here claiming to be London.”
Nelson looked quickly from his oldest brother to Zach. “But she couldn’t be. Not really. Everyone knows that London was killed…”
“Everyone assumed,” Adria cut in.
Jason’s temper snapped. He glared at Zach. “You got her in here, you get her out.”
“Maybe I’m not ready to go.”
“If you want anyone in this family to listen to your story with an open mind, you’ll haul your sweet ass out of here,” Jason ordered.
“I’ll take care of her.” Zach’s hands were coiling around her arm again but she jerked away from him.
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me,” she said, suddenly defiant.
“Then why are you here?” Jason asked. “If not for a piece of the pie, for someone to take care of you, why didn’t you stay wherever it is you came from?”
“Because I need to know.”
“So this isn’t about money?”
She didn’t answer and Jason smiled without a trace of warmth. His companion, the woman he’d called Kim, watched her with interested eyes.
“It’s always about money, Adria,” Jason said as the pianist took a break and the music suddenly stopped. “No reason to lie about it.”
Before she could respond, Zach had grabbed her and this time he didn’t let go. No amount of wriggling could pull her arm free and rather than make a scene, she allowed herself to be shepherded from the familiar ballroom. She knew she’d been here years before; everything was nearly the same. The lights, the music, no…there had been a band instead of a solitary pianist and the champagne glasses had been a different shape. And there were other changes as well: there had been a huge green cake ablaze with sixty candles and the ice sculpture had been of a running horse rather than a rearing stallion. And the rose petals had been cast upon the floor, creating a fragrant pink carpet.
Surely she was remembering Witt’s sixtieth birthday, her last night with her parents—or was she only dreaming, caught in the fantasy that was London Danvers? In the past few months she’d read every newspaper article, studied every photograph, read every word she could find about the Danvers family. She recognized her half-brothers from the pictures she’d seen of them and would have recognized her parents, had they still lived.
Witt had never given up believing that his favorite daughter would return to reclaim her heritage and he’d left a million-dollar reward for anyone who could find her; he’d also provided for London in his will, and his estate was rumored to be valued at well over a hundred million.
The money wasn’t important, she told herself as Zachary retrieved her coat, but she was determined to find out the truth, and damn the consequences.
Gold digger! Bitch! Fraud!
Watching from the shadows of a tiny alley, Katherine LaRouche Danvers’s killer stared after the car that sped away. Rain drizzled relentlessly from the sky, gurgling in the gutters, dripping from the eaves, doing nothing to soothe the white-hot rage that was being experienced by Katherine’s killer.
Hadn’t Katherine’s death been enough?
Why would this spawn of the she-devil show up now?
If Adria Nash did prove to be the bitch’s daughter, then everything would be ruined, the Danvers fortune splintered…but, of course, she was a fraud. She had to be.
The fists of Katherine’s killer were clenched so hard they ached. Near the curb there was the scratch of tiny claws, barely discernible over the gurgle of water in the gutters and downspouts. Glancing down, the killer spied a wet, half-crippled rat, long tail dragging behind, slide toward a crevice in the sidewalk. Tiny eyes caught in the reflection from the street lamps and blood dripped from a wound near one motionless back leg.
“Go away,” the killer hissed, rattled for a second before thoughts of Adria Nash and her outrageous claim returned.
Calm down. Collect yourself. You can handle this. Haven’t you always? The family owes you a big debt and they don’t even know it.
“She’s not London.”
Probably not. Most likely not. But you can’t take a chance. You’ve worked too hard to let it fall apart now. You have to stop her.
“She’s not London.”
Perhaps so, but she’s the right age, isn’t she? And she’s the spitting image of Kat. You saw the features of her face; she has the same bone structure, identical cheekbones and eyes. And her hair. Could it be more like Kat’s? She’s a dead ringer.
Rage curled white-hot at the thought of Katherine. Beautiful. Sexy. Sleek. No wonder she’d turned so many heads. Women had found her strangely fascinating; men had felt the eroticism that was so innately a part of her.
A bad taste crawled up the throat of Katherine’s killer.
It couldn’t happen.
The Danvers fortune couldn’t be destroyed.
A pitiful squeak caught the killer’s attention.
The rat again!
It was too large or wounded to squeeze through the crack in the curb. The frightened rodent was eyed as it hobbled quickly back and forth, searching anxiously for a way out of the alley. Its pinkish nose quivering in the darkness, tiny teeth ready to be bared if it were to be cornered, the rat scurried to the relative safety behind a parked van. With a new deadly calm, the killer moved closer to the drenched beast and it, sensing fear, panicked and slithered into the gutter, searching frantically for a way to escape.
“You can’t get away,” the killer whispered, but wasn’t thinking of this near-dead rat, but about the beautiful woman who had just slipped away into the night.
But she would be back.
It was inevitable.
And one way or another, this new London, whether a fraud or the real thing, would have to be destroyed. If she wouldn’t leave on her own, then she would simply have to die.
So Adria Nash looked like Katherine Danvers?
Enough that she could be considered a dead ringer?
The trapped rat was eyed again.
Exactly.
6
“What makes you think you’re London?” Zachary shifted down for a light that reflected red on the rain-washed streets The engine of his Jeep idled and the wipers slapped drops of water from the windshield.
“I have proof.” Well, that was a little bit of a lie, but not a big one.
“Proof,” he repeated, easing up on the clutch as the light changed. He punched the throttle and the Jeep started climbing through the steep, twisting streets of the west hills. As she gazed out the window, staring past the thick branches of fir and maple, Adria saw the city lights winking far below. “What kind of proof?”
“A tape.”
“Of what?”
“My father.”
“Your father—meaning Witt?” He took a curve a little too fast and the Jeep’s tires skidded before holding firm.
“My adoptive father. Victor Nash. We lived in Montana.”
“Oh,” he said derisively, “that clears that up.”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic.”
He slid her a glance that silently called her a fool as they crested a hill and he turned sharply into a drive complete with electronic gates that whirred open when he pressed a numerical code into a key pad.
He parked near the garage of a rambling Tudor home. Three stories of stone and brick with dark cross beams and a gabled roof, the house seemed to grow from the very ground on which it had been built. Exterior lamps, hidden in dripping azaleas, rhododendrons, and ferns, lined the drive and washed the stone-and-mortar walls with soft light. Ivy clung tenaciously to one of several chimneys and tall fir trees rose above a stone fence that guarded the grounds.
“Come on,” Zach instructed, leaning across her to open the door of the Jeep. He climbed out and led the way up a brick path and through a breezeway to the back door. “Bring back any memories?” he asked as he flipped on the lights of a huge kitchen.