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“Just get her out of here. I’ll meet you at the house.”
“What about Nicole?” Zach asked and watched his brother’s mouth tighten at the mention of his wife. Theirs was a rocky marriage at best.
“She’s out of town. Visiting relatives in Santa Fe.”
Zach didn’t ask any questions. Why Jason’s wife was away on one of the most important nights of her husband’s life didn’t concern him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Adria stated. “And don’t talk about me as if I’m not here. As far as I’m concerned, I have as much right to be here as the rest of you.”
“She has a point.”
“Get her out of here, Zach.”
“As I said, Jason, I’m not budging,” Adria insisted, unmoved by the older Danvers brother’s anger. She hadn’t grown up on the Montana range without learning a thing or two about arrogant, self-important men. She could be just as headstrong as any man when it came to something she believed in and she was certain…well, nearly…that she was London Danvers.
Adria noticed the glint in Zach’s eyes and she realized that he was enjoying watching his brother lose his cool. Jason, the attorney. Jason who had married well. Jason who seemed to be the one in charge of the family fortune.
“This is not the time or the place—”
“Then name them,” she said firmly and caught a movement from the corner of her eye. Kim, the waif-thin blonde, inched closer, listening to every word.
“What?”
“The time and place, name them.” Adria wasn’t backing down, not after she’d come this far, swallowed all her doubts, and found her nerve.
“My God!” another male voice whispered behind her and Adria turned to find a man, tall, blond, and lanky, with startling blue eyes that widened when he caught sight of her face. “She looks just like—”
“We know, Nelson,” Jason said, obviously irritated.
“Nelson, this is Adria Nash,” Zachary drawled as if enjoying his family’s discomfiture. “She’s here claiming to be London.”
Nelson looked quickly from his oldest brother to Zach. “But she couldn’t be. Not really. Everyone knows that London was killed…”
“Everyone assumed,” Adria cut in.
Jason’s temper snapped. He glared at Zach. “You got her in here, you get her out.”
“Maybe I’m not ready to go.”
“If you want anyone in this family to listen to your story with an open mind, you’ll haul your sweet ass out of here,” Jason ordered.
“I’ll take care of her.” Zach’s hands were coiling around her arm again but she jerked away from him.
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me,” she said, suddenly defiant.
“Then why are you here?” Jason asked. “If not for a piece of the pie, for someone to take care of you, why didn’t you stay wherever it is you came from?”
“Because I need to know.”
“So this isn’t about money?”
She didn’t answer and Jason smiled without a trace of warmth. His companion, the woman he’d called Kim, watched her with interested eyes.
“It’s always about money, Adria,” Jason said as the pianist took a break and the music suddenly stopped. “No reason to lie about it.”
Before she could respond, Zach had grabbed her and this time he didn’t let go. No amount of wriggling could pull her arm free and rather than make a scene, she allowed herself to be shepherded from the familiar ballroom. She knew she’d been here years before; everything was nearly the same. The lights, the music, no…there had been a band instead of a solitary pianist and the champagne glasses had been a different shape. And there were other changes as well: there had been a huge green cake ablaze with sixty candles and the ice sculpture had been of a running horse rather than a rearing stallion. And the rose petals had been cast upon the floor, creating a fragrant pink carpet.
Surely she was remembering Witt’s sixtieth birthday, her last night with her parents—or was she only dreaming, caught in the fantasy that was London Danvers? In the past few months she’d read every newspaper article, studied every photograph, read every word she could find about the Danvers family. She recognized her half-brothers from the pictures she’d seen of them and would have recognized her parents, had they still lived.
