Manny was right. The ranch could run itself. Zach didn’t need to be here. Once again he wasn’t needed. The story of his life. He smiled grimly to himself as he walked across the dusting of new-fallen snow to the shed where Manny was repairing a tractor. Tools lined the walls, a stained workbench stretched along a far wall, and the smell of oil and dust hung in the air.
Light flickered from fluorescent tubes and Manny, cursing to himself, was half lying under the tractor’s engine. “Damned fool think,” he muttered, working on the fuel line.
“How’s it going?” Zach asked.
“Like hell.” He gave the wrench another tug, then grunted. Satisfied with his work, he crawled out from under the tractor and pulled himself upright.
A full-blooded Paiute, Manny was a tall man with smooth, burnished skin, long braids beginning to gray, and a face usually devoid of expression. He found his black cowboy hat on the seat of the tractor and plopped it onto his head. “I thought I told you to stay in the city where you belong.” Manny wiped a rag over his greasy hands.
“Couldn’t stand it.”
Manny flashed a grin that showed teeth rimmed in gold. “Don’t blame you. The only reasons to go into town are women and whiskey. You can get those here.”
He thought of Adria. Right now women were dangerous. Especially a woman claiming to be his half-sister. Whiskey was definitely safer.
Together they walked out of the shed. The sky was a gray shade of blue, the air crisp, and dark-bellied clouds collected to the west, hanging along the rigid skyline of the Cascades.
“Family business all taken care of?” Manny asked.
Somewhere in the distance a horse neighed.
“It’ll never be,” Zach said. If not Adria, then another imposter would show up. For the rest of his life Zach would meet women pretending to be London Danvers. He just hoped they didn’t get to him the way this one did. He knew that one of the reasons he’d driven like a madman over the mountains was to put some distance between him and her, to run back here where he could clear his head.
“Got a buyer for the two-year-old steers.”
“All of them?” Zach asked, trying to forget about the woman who claimed to be his half-sister.
“Couple hundred head.”
“A good start.”
“Mmm.”
“Come on inside—I’ll buy you breakfast and you can bring me up-to-date.”
He spent the day at the ranch, reviewing the books, checking offers to buy and sell livestock as well as land, then rode through some of the fields. The water pump for the house and outbuildings was going out, the roof of one of the sheds was leaking like a sieve, there was a fight with the government over harvesting some of the ancient pine, and one of their regular customers who bought hundreds of head of cattle every year was delinquent on his payments. There had been an outbreak of a cattle virus in the next county and several ranchers in the area were concerned. Zach was supposed to attend a local meeting of the Cattlemen’s Association in Bend, and order the feed and supplies to get the ranch through the winter.
“Same old, same old,” Manny said as they drove through the fields and spotted a break in the fence where cattle could escape. It was true. Though there were problems at the ranch, they weren’t insurmountable. Manny and the hands could keep the place going should Zach have to return to Portland.
He stopped by his office in Bend and found that work was slow, as it had been ever since he’d turned his attention to refurbishing the old hotel. He made a few phone calls, met with a couple of realtors interested in starting a new resort development around a golf course, and conferred with his secretary, Terry, a petite, red-haired woman of thirty who was expecting her third child come February. Efficient to the point that she could run the office blindfolded, she knew Zach as well as anyone.
“So how’s city life?” she asked when he walked back into the office. She was seated behind the desk, a pencil tucked over her ear, a neglected cup of coffee near the typewriter. She was studying a bank statement and little lines of worry crinkled her freckled forehead.
“Not great.”
“Jason called.” She sat back in her desk chair and it protested with a groan.
“Here?”
“He tried the ranch. You weren’t in. Manny told him you’d come into town, so he tried tracking you down here. Said it was urgent that he talk to you.”
“With Jason it’s always urgent.”
“He was more insistent than usual.” She set her glasses on the desk, grabbed her half-full cup and stood. Rubbing a kink in her back, she walked to the coffeepot warming on the hot plate and lifted the glass carafe. “Want a cup? It’s just decaf.”
Zach shook his head. “Thanks just the same.”
Pouring some of the weak coffee in to her mug, she asked, “So why does Jason think he needs you back in Portland—the hotel?”
“Yeah, that’s probably it,” Zach said, but he guessed that the problem was Adria Nash. No doubt he’d have to drive back to the city. Resentment boiled through his blood. He didn’t want to see Adria again, didn’t want to deal with all the conflicting emotions she inspired.
He grabbed the handle of the coffeepot and poured himself some of the tasteless decaf as the telephone rang and Terry answered.
With a sweet smile, she said, “He’ll be with you in a second,” and snapped the hold button. “It’s your brother dear again and he’s fit to be tied.”
“Why?”
“Something about ‘the shit hitting the fan’.” She went back to the bank statement and Zach walked into his office. Kicking the door shut, he reached for the phone and sat on a corner of the desk.
“Hello?”
“Where the hell have you been?” Jason demanded, and Zach couldn’t miss the agitation in his voice.
“What’s the problem?”
“You know what the problem is. It’s Adria! I think she’s going to run to the papers with her story.”
“She told you this?”
“In so many words.”
Zach felt his shoulder muscles pull together into hard, tight knots. “What happened?”
“I called her. Offered her a little more money.”
“And she got pissed.”
“Beyond pissed.”
“Christ, Jason, you never back down, do you?” He was on his feet without even thinking about it.
“Just get back here.”
“And clean up your mess.”
“Do whatever it takes, Zach. You’re in this as deep as the rest of us!”
Anthony Polidori didn’t like his breakfast disturbed. In his later years, he felt as if an intrusion upon his meals or his sleep was a personal affront and he left strict instructions with everyone in the household that he was not to be interrupted. Even by his son.
He sat in the bay window of the morning room overlooking the river and picked at his croissant with idle fingers as he scanned the newspaper for sports scores from the day before. The day was bright for late October, and he wore sunglasses to protect his eyes.
Mario sauntered into the room carrying a mug. His hair was disheveled and he hadn’t yet shaved. He looked like hell as he poured himself a cup of coffee from the silver carafe on the table. Mario was uncivilized—he had no manners.
Anthony didn’t bother hiding his irritation. He folded the sports section of the Oregonian and set it by his glass of juice. “What is it?” His son wasn’t usually up by noon.
“Big news.” Mario flashed his killer smile—the one that got him into all the trouble with the women. He walked to the glass wall facing west and watched a barge being pushed upriver by a tugboat.
“It must be, to get you out of bed while the sun’s still up.”
Mario snorted, then plopped into the wrought-iron chair opposite his father. “I think you want to hear this.”
“I’m waiting.”
“Looks like there’s a new lady in town.”
“This is news?”
Mario slowly poured a thin stream of cream into his coffee. “Could be. Claims she’s London Danvers.”