“Do yourself a favor. Forget about Kat. Get laid.” With a friendly smile, Jason headed toward the bar, leaving Zach to clutch the damned hotel key in his clammy fingers. Swallowing hard, he opened his hand and stared down at the key to room 307, the key to his manhood, the key to his freedom from Kat.
Suddenly aware that any number of his father’s guests could have overheard his conversation with Jason, Zach jammed his hands deep into his pockets and wondered how many of the other people at the party had witnessed his humiliation on the dance floor. How many eyes other than his brother’s and his father’s had seen Kat’s lips brush against his ear, or watched as his sweaty fingers had itched to delve beneath the zipper of her dress to grasp one of those firm buttocks? Jesus, he had to quit thinking about her like this! The key felt heavy in his pocket.
The band broke into “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Though his mind was still on the mysterious Sophia, the hooker with a heart, Zach watched as a huge cake in the shape of a fir tree was wheeled into the room on an elaborate cart. Sixty candles arranged in a string, like holiday lights decorating a Christmas tree, had been placed upon the needles of green frosting. Tiny flames flickered and danced as Witt, with Katherine and London’s help, blew out every last spark.
Laughter and applause erupted and Witt, like a bridegroom, cut a fat piece of cake and fed the gooey concoction to his wife. Everyone cheered and Zach thought he might get sick as Katherine returned the favor, then smiling up at her husband, licked her fingers slowly.
By the time London was hustled upstairs to one of the suites reserved for the Danvers family, the old man was starting to look a little tipsy. He hazarded a hard glance Zach’s way, and even in the crowded room, Zach read the warning in his father’s eyes. His heart sank. From years of experience Zach knew that Witt had not forgotten that his young wife had been flirting with his son. Nothing escaped the old man, and sooner or later, there would be hell to pay. Zach already bore several scars on his backside from the slap of his father’s belt. By this time tomorrow, he’d probably wear a few more—at least psychological scars. Witt Danvers was nothing if not brutal. He wouldn’t spare Zach’s feelings and would let his rebellious son know that he was no good, didn’t live up to his expectations, would never amount to anything in life.
So who gave a shit what the old man thought?
The key pressed hard against his thigh.
Witt and Katherine began dancing again and his father’s attention was diverted from his second son to his wife. Zach seized the opportunity for escape. Without a glance over his shoulder, he wended his way past loud groups of guests, slipped through ballroom doors to the landing where he stopped to catch his breath and fight the dizziness in his brain from too much champagne.
What was he doing? He couldn’t just leave the party. The old man would come unhinged.
Good.
Maybe Witt Danvers might even worry a little.
Before he changed his mind, Zach steadied himself against the rail and hurried down the wide staircase.
“Hey, Zach. Where’re ya goin’?” Nelson, his younger brother, demanded. At fourteen, Nelson, now hanging halfway over the rail, his shaggy blond hair flopping over his eyes, idolized his hellion of an older brother.
“Not now,” Zach growled. He didn’t need the kid’s adoration any more than he needed Witt’s disapproval.
“But—”
“Just keep quiet, Nelson. Okay?” Refusing to acknowledge Nelson as the kid ran down the stairs, Zach strode through the front lobby where club chairs, brass lamps, and glossy dark tables were positioned around a massive fireplace. Past the main desk and a forest of potted palms, he walked quickly, trying not to think about the ramifications of his actions when Witt discovered him missing.
Outside, the night was humid. The smell of the river drifted on air so still it seemed to cling to Zach’s skin. He yanked off his jacket and began walking fast, heading north, trying to cool his blood and clear his head.
What he was contemplating was crazy, and yet, he’d consumed enough alcohol to feel bolder than usual. So what if the old man found out? What could he do? Kick Zach out of the Danvers family mansion, force him to live with his mother? That thought was a bitter pill to swallow.
Deep down, a part of him still cared for the woman who had borne him, but she didn’t deserve that love, not after she’d abandoned them all and left them in the lonely house on the hill with Witt. Zach didn’t know the full story, but the gist of it was that Witt had caught his wife in bed with his most hated rival, Anthony Polidori. She’d been carrying on with him for years and rather than expose herself, or her lover, to the media, she’d had no choice but to accept Witt’s terms for the divorce: he’d get the kids and most of the wealth, she’d receive a stipend and be spared the ugly scandal of testifying in divorce court that she was an adulteress. Her social position had been left unscathed; her children’s lives had not.
As much as Zach professed to despise the old man, he did have a grudging respect for Witt Danvers and the power he seemed to possess over the people of this city. As for his mother, Zach felt little but loathing for Eunice. She had shamed his father with an affair that had ripped out the old man’s soul. It had been Eunice who had wounded Witt Danvers’s pride so badly that eventually, though it was years later, Witt had fallen into the open arms of Katherine LaRouche. He’d met Katherine at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia. They had married within the week. Witt had explained to his children that Katherine was from a wealthy Ontario family. Though she was thirty years younger than he, she would become his children’s new mother.
The family had been in shock, the Danverses’ lawyers nearly apoplectic, but the damage had already been done. Katherine LaRouche, whoever she was, had managed to become the bride of one of the wealthiest men in Portland. She’d seemed proper enough then, Zachary thought, remembering back, and the change in her attitude toward him had come subtly over the years. As he’d reached adolescence he’d felt her watching him more closely, caught her eyeing him whenever his shirt was off—either when he was swimming in the pool in his cutoff jeans or riding one of the horses bareback. As his muscles had developed, so had Katherine’s interest in her stepson.
He’d told himself that he was imagining things, that it was only his newfound awareness of his own masculinity that had changed his perception, but now he wasn’t so sure. And Jason had voiced the same suspicions.
Sighing through his nose, he shook his head to clear it. With one hand, he felt the key in his pocket and his stomach tightened into a hard ball of apprehension. What if he actually went into the Orion Hotel, took the elevator to the third floor, rapped hard on the door, and it was opened by a withered old woman without teeth? What if the damned door was opened by a man? A queer dressed up as a hooker? Oh, Jesus! What if this whole arrangement was a setup, the result of Jason’s twisted sense of humor?
He gritted his teeth and glanced behind him as he reached the Orion. No one seemed to have followed him and no one other than Jason would guess that he was here. Somehow he found strength in his anonymity as he lingered on the steps of the high-rise that jutted upward, washed by floodlights, white concrete slicing into a sky as black as obsidian.
Hesitating a fraction of a second, Zachary locked his jaw, squared his shoulders, threw open the hotel’s front door, and decided it was time he became a man.
3
The hotel corridor was empty, a long hallway of gold shag carpeting and metal doors painted to look like wood. The Orion had none of the charm of the Hotel Danvers, but Zach didn’t care. Swallowing back the urge to turn tail and run, Zachary let the stairwell door bang shut behind him and walked, heart knocking, toward room 307. To Sophia. His destiny.
Before he lost his already-faltering courage, he rapped sharply on the door and waited.