“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. Uneasy. 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.
“Just try it,” she muttered, turning on the wipers as the mist thickened.
What she didn’t need was a man—any man—complicating things. Her emotions were twisted enough as it was with her attraction to Zachary. She cringed when she thought how close she’d come to making love to him. How much she’d wanted him.
She’d even told herself that she’d just been overreacting because of the stalker, but it was more than that. Much more, and dangerously unthinkable.
Her headache throbbed when she considered what might have happened, would have happened, if he hadn’t come to his senses and broken off the embrace.