“I already ordered for you,” he said as the bartender, a slim woman with kinky blond hair and red lipstick, slid two frosted glasses of beer to him, then deftly snatched up the bills he’d left on the counter. His eyes met Adria’s in the mirror over the bar and his gaze had become cloudy again. “Come on. Let’s grab a table.” He cocked his head to an empty booth.
Adria tried to put a lid on her simmering temper. Though she was boiling inside, she slid onto the cushions and accepted the beer—his notion of a peace offering.
Zach gulped half his beer in one swallow. “Anything else you’d like to know about the Danvers family?” he asked with a scornful lift of his eyebrow.
“Whatever you want to tell me.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t want to tell you anything. I think it would be better if you just packed it all in and drove off to Bozeman—”
“Belamy.”
“Whatever.”
“Now you’re sounding like the rest of your family.”
“God forbid,” he muttered and drained his glass. He signaled for another drink, which a waitress, a heavier version of the blond bartender, brought over along with menus.
She winked at Zachary as if they were longtime friends, then smiled at Adria. “Refill?”
“Not right now.”
“I’ll give you a few minutes to decide.” She moved to a nearby table and Adria kept her voice low.
“You know,” she said, not really believing her own words, “despite what you said earlier, we could be friends if we tried.”
He made a sound of disgust. “Friends.” His lips curved into a smile without any warmth. “Is that how you treat all your ‘friends’?”
“Don’t do this—”
“You don’t do it! We can never, never be friends—I thought I already made that clear,” he growled, leaning over the table and grabbing her shoulders.
She threw off his hands and glared furiously at him. “Why are you trying so hard to hate me?”
He hesitated, then sighed and looked away. “Maybe it’s just easier that way.” Dropping back onto his bench, he studied the head of his beer and his jaw clenched. “For both of us.”
“You’re afraid I might end up with the Danvers fortune,” she said, realizing he was more like his family than he wanted to admit.
He snorted and rolled his glass between his fingers. “I don’t care if you end up with the whole damned lot of the inheritance—the logging company, the sawmills, the hotel, the house in Tahoe, even the ranch. If you did, I’d say good riddance. I’m not afraid of you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Your prerogative,” he said with a shrug.
“You can be a real bastard, Danvers. You know that, don’t you?”
One side of his mouth lifted insolently. “I work at it.”
“A true Danvers.”
His smile faded. “Let’s order.”
They didn’t say another word to each other and Adria watched while the waitress flirted outrageously with Zachary as she spouted off the specials of the day. In the end, they both ordered steak sandwiches.
Some country song about lost love and broken hearts was overshadowed by the clink of glasses, rap of pool balls, and murmur of differing conversations. More tavern than restaurant, the old log cabin seemed home to a dozen or so blue-collar types. Hard hats had been exchanged for baseball caps and cowboy hats, but it seemed as if the men sitting on stools in the bar were at home. It reminded Adria of Belamy.
“Why’d you bring me here?” she asked as the waitress slid their drinks onto the table.
“It was your idea, remember.”
“But out here—in the middle of nowhere?”
“You’d rather go to some restaurant downtown?”
“Not really.” She took a sip from her beer.
“Thought you wanted to know the real me.” His eyes glinted sensually. “Now you do.”
“I don’t think so. I think you’re hiding something, Zach. Trying to scare me off.” She stared him down. “It won’t work.” Leaning back against the tufted plastic upholstery, she said, “You were raised in Portland.”
“I try to forget about that.”
“Why?”
He hesitated and gazed at a point over her shoulder where, she suspected, he saw his own youth. “I was always in trouble. Gave the old man nothing but grief.”
“And you’re still cultivating that bad-ass attitude, aren’t you?”
He relaxed against the back of the booth and took a long drink from his glass. “Maybe.”
“No maybes about it.”
Lifting a shoulder, he said, “So what’ve you found out about my illustrious family?”
“Not enough.”
He pinned her with a look and she thought twice about answering. Finally, as the meals were delivered, she said, “Okay. The library was pretty much a bust. Sure, the microfilm from the newspapers had information on the kidnapping and on the family, but there wasn’t much…much substance to it all.”
“So you came up empty.”
“Almost. But I’m not done digging.” She started in on her salad and Zach muttered something about mule-headed women under his breath. She let the comment slide.
“Where are you going to look next?”
She smiled and took a sip from her glass, her eyes meeting his over the rim. “Lots of places. I’m going to talk to reporters and the police. Believe me, I’ve only just begun.”
“You’re going to wind up empty-handed.”
“Is that right? Why?”
“You’ve got one helluva hole in your father’s story. It’s about as big as all of Montana.”
“I’m all ears,” she invited, anxious to hear what he thought. Somehow it was important, as if his opinion would help.
He picked up half of his sandwich. “If everything you say is true—why did Ginny Slade take London in the first place?”
“Who knows?”
“No one, I guess,” he said thoughtfully. “But it wasn’t because she wanted a child or she wouldn’t have left you with the Nashes.”
“I know, but—”
“And it wasn’t for the money because she left some cash in her bank accounts in Portland and never demanded ransom.”
“Maybe she was paid off.”
“My father offered a million dollars, no questions asked, for the return of his daughter. In 1974 that was a helluva lot of money.”
“It’s a helluva lot of money today.”
“But Ginny didn’t claim it.”
“She could’ve been worried about prosecution. Your father—our father—wasn’t known to be as good as his word. He had a reputation for retribution.”
“The plain truth of the matter is you might not be London.”
“There is still one motive left,” she said as she finished her beer and set the empty glass on the table.
“Which is?”
“Revenge. Witt had made more than his share of enemies, Zach. He’d walked all over people, didn’t care who he stepped on to get what he wanted. Seems to me there were plenty of people who would have loved to see him hurt. I just have to figure out who it is. I was hoping you would help me.”
“Why would I bother?” he asked.
“Because London was your half-sister and a lot of people in town thought you were somehow behind her disappearance.”
“I was a kid at the time.”
“A kid who was always in trouble. A kid who had more than his share of run-ins with the law, a kid who suffered big-time at Witt Danvers’s hand, and a kid who was involved in some kind of mugging that night.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to London,” he growled, the skin over his cheekbones stretching tight.
“Okay, Danvers, now’s your chance to prove it. All you have to do is help me find out who I really am. If I’m London, then your name is in the clear—the little girl didn’t really die, she was raised in Montana.”
“And if you’re not?”
“You’re no worse off than you were before. At least your family and the people who care will know that you tried to find out the truth.”
“Except—” he said, nudging his plate aside.
“Except?”
“Except I don’t give a shit what the ‘people who care’ think.” He settled back in his chair and regarded her with eyes suddenly smoky with desire. “Your offer’s not good enough, Adria.” His gaze drilled into hers. “I’m not interested.”