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1993
5
The memory of her fight with her mother was vivid. It had started as an argument about a boy Adria had been seeing on the sly and accelerated quickly to a full-blown battle.
“The Lord thy God is a vengeful God, Adria—”
“He’s not my God,” Adria, then eighteen, had said. “He’s your God, Mom. Yours. But he’s not mine!”
The slap had been one of the few blows Sharon Nash had ever inflicted upon her adopted daughter and it had stung deeper than Adria’s skin; the pain had reached the thick hide that covered her soul.
“Don’t you ever, ever talk like that again.” Sharon’s breath, bitter from the coffee and tinged with the underlying odor of gin, had drifted over Adria’s face. “Now, go wash up, and you forget about ever seein’ that boy again. He’s trash, y’hear. Trash. Just like his ma. Bad blood flows through his veins, girl.”
“And what kind of blood flows through mine?” Adria had demanded.
“We don’t know—you don’t need to.”
“Of course I do!”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways—he brought you to us for a reason. You’re not to question His wisdom, y’hear?”
Adria had turned on her heel and fle
d to her little bedroom tucked under the eaves of the second story.
Years ago. But it seemed like yesterday and the argument seemed to ring through the tiny motel room near the airport.
She’d remembered the fight because of Zachary Danvers, another rogue, another man she should avoid. Though she’d only talked with him for a few minutes, she’d read all about him and his family, her family, and she hadn’t been disappointed.
He was the black sheep of the family—kicked out of the house and cut out of his father’s will more often than not. He did things his own way, didn’t give a hang that he was born rich, and he was cursed with an irreverent spirit that just might want to help her find the truth.
Or maybe not. In the year before his father’s death, Zach and Witt had seemed to bury the hatchet. Nonetheless, she knew instinctively that he would be her only ally in the family; the others appeared to be ready to pick at the old man’s bones and take his fortune.
Maybe Zachary was like the rest.
If so, her battle would be harder than she’d thought.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror over the sink in the bathroom and bit her lip. Was she on a fool’s mission? How could she ever hope to battle the powerful Danvers family? And why was Zachary Danvers—her half-brother, for crying out loud—so attractive?
Adria had always been drawn to the kind of men her mother despised—the rebels and misfits and loners whom Sharon Nash found repulsive. The Zach Danvers of the world.
Yet Zach was the one member of the Danvers family she instinctively turned to, the only one of her siblings she felt she could trust. Trust! She snorted a laugh at her own foolishness. Zachary Danvers was about as trustworthy as a hungry rattler with a trapped mouse. She walked into the bedroom and found a copy of the videotape that had led her to Portland and tucked it into her bag. As she snapped the purse closed, she wondered why she never seemed to learn that very important lesson about men.
Just because Zach might be her half-brother didn’t mean he was safe. He was a predatory man, a man who would take any challenge, a man with a wild streak that he hadn’t yet tamed, a man who wouldn’t care one bit if she were his half-sister. There was an animal side of him—pure male and extremely lethal—that defied the bounds of kinship. He was sexy and rough and seemed about as stable as a blasting cap.
No wonder she was attracted to him. It had been the flaw in her character to be attracted to rough-and-tumble, irreverent boys and men all her life.
“You’re an idiot,” she told her reflection as she stood barefoot on the tan carpet that had worn thin near the door.
So if she couldn’t trust Zachary, who in the family could she trust? No one. Just as they couldn’t trust her.
Half dressed in her lacy slip, she walked back into the tiny bathroom where her dress hung on a hook in the door. She’d found the dress in a boutique that handled “previously worn” items. A white, silky confection with a designer label, the gown fit her perfectly. She’d never owned such a creation before, never spent so much money on one dress—and a used one at that!
Her adoptive mother had been a frugal, God-fearing woman who didn’t believe in women wearing ornaments of any kind—no jewelry save a gold wedding band or a gold cross suspended from a necklace and clothes that were practical, shoes that were sensible and sturdy.
Not so her father. Unlike his wife, Victor had been a dreamer, always expecting a larger crop than the land would yield, always certain that the next year, life would become easier.
And she’d believed him. When she’d discovered his secret, that he thought her to be London Danvers, she’d grabbed that gold-plated carrot he’d swung before her nose and held on with a death grip.
