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“You got it, Nelson.” Since the conversation wasn’t going anywhere, she stood. “Look, this doesn’t have to be a battle,” she said.
“Of course it does.” He stared up at her and his eyes seemed suddenly lifeless. She wanted to wiggle away from his dead gaze, but she didn’t. “If you know anything about our family, you know it does.”
“As long as we understand each other.” She motioned toward the bar. “Don’t worry about the bill. I charged it to my room.”
Nelson watched as she walked briskly out the double glass doors. He’d made a mess of things. He’d hoped to befriend her and weasel a little information from her, but she’d turned the conversation around and he’d been nearly tongue-tied. He was usually calm around women, immune to them for the most part, but occasionally he found one who could rattle him and Adria Nash, whoever the hell she was, had done more than her share of rattling.
He had the horrible premonition that she was London. Not only her looks, but her manner spoke of arrogance and power. He’d expected a shy little hick from Montana, a girl interested in scamming a few bucks and beating a hasty retreat, but there was more to her than met the eye and that scared him shitless.
Straightening his collar, he caught his reflection in the beveled mirror over the bar. Another murky gaze met his and locked and Nelson felt the back of his throat turn to cotton. There was passion in that stare—unreined, raw sexual energy that hit him with an intensity that knocked the breath from his lungs. He felt the same dark stirrings he’d tried to deny for years, held the stranger’s gaze for just an instant, and turned quickly on his heel. He didn’t have time for any one-night stands. Besides, they were much too dangerous. He had his career to think about and he couldn’t, for the sake of one wet tongue sliding down his spine, give in to the dark desire that had been his curse for as long as he’d been interested in sex. One night could put his entire future in jeopardy. Especially now.
Ignoring the heat that crept into his loins and brought a sheen of perspiration to his upper lip, he left the bar and hunched his shoulders against the cool October breeze. Briskly, before he gave in to the sexual demons still burning through his mind and he turned around to meet with the sensual stranger, he walked the few blocks to the Hotel Danvers where his car was parked. Without a second’s hesitation, he called Jason from the cellular phone in his Cadillac. “I just met with Adria,” he said, looking over his shoulder as if he expected someone—the potential one-night stand, perhaps—to be staring through the windows. “I’m on my way to your house.”
“Great!” Jason slammed the phone down and rotated the kinks from his neck. It had been one hell of a day. He’d been in meetings all day, but his mind hadn’t been on business. No. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking of Adria Nash—the proverbial fly in the fucking oint
ment.
How could the family get rid of her? There was something about her that got his blood up and he imagined himself either knocking her senseless or making love to her or both. He got hard just thinking of shoving her onto the bed and giving her the fuck of her life. “Get a grip,” he muttered. Even thinking about a sexual involvement with her was a ridiculous, treacherous notion and had probably started because she reminded him of Kat. Guilt, ever his companion, ate at him.
He was waiting for a call from Sweeny and he’d already had a run-in with Kim, who was making demands upon him, begging him to get the divorce he’d so foolishly promised her. He didn’t need the added aggravation and now Nelson was losing it. The kid was about to go around the bend with this Adria/London thing. Usually even-tempered, Nelson was coming damned close to becoming unhinged. Jason checked his watch and frowned. “Come on, Sweeny,” he said before pouring himself another drink and tossing it back.
Ten minutes later the phone rang. Jason picked up the receiver on the second ring and heard Sweeny’s nasal drawl. “I’ve done as much checkin’ in this shit hole as I can,” Oswald announced without so much as a greeting. “Our friend Ms. Nash has been a busy woman. After discovering the tape from her father, she checked out every library book in the county on the timber business and the hotel business as well as shipping and real estate.”
Every muscle in Jason’s body tightened. Danvers International. “So she’s done her homework.”
“Hell, yes, she’s done her homework, even got herself some goddamned extra credit, if you ask me. She ordered books from other libraries all across the Northwest—Seattle, Portland, Spokane, Oregon City, and newspapers, too. Contacted all the majors in three or four states. As I said, the lady’s been busy.”
Jason’s insides seemed to congeal. He’d hoped she was a bimbo, a low-class gold digger out for a quick buck.
Sweeny was still saturating him with the bad news. “Now you have to remember that she graduated with honors from the college she attended. Summa cum laude.”
“Christ!”
“This gal isn’t another one of your look-alike airheads. She’s got brains and it appears as if she wanted to know everything she could about you, the family, and how you go about making your money.”
Jason sagged against the wall and stared out at the night. He felt as if the floorboards were shifting beneath his feet.
“If you look through your list of stockholders, you might find that she owns some stock in Danvers International—not much, mind you, just a hundred shares, enough to get all the information you send to your investors.”
Jesus! Jason resisted the urge to clear his throat. “Anything else?” he asked, his jaw clenched so tight it began to throb.
“Oh, yeah. A lot. And nothing you’re going to want to hear. She’s got the right kind of blood. A negative. Not all that uncommon, but since Witt was O negative and Katherine was A positive, their daughter could very well have been A negative. I never found any records where London was typed, but A negative would certainly have been in the ballpark. It’s just too bad that old Witt or Katherine aren’t around so that we could do a DNA test. Kind of a break for her that she had to wait until both London’s natural parents were cremated, don’t you think?”
“Damned convenient for her.”
“So far, it looks like she’s got you by the short hairs,” Sweeny said, and Jason heard the note of satisfaction in the oily man’s speech.
Jason took in a deep, calming breath. “So tell me the good news,” he said, praying there was a chink in Adria’s story.
“She’s broke.”
“How broke?”
“Broke as in drowning in red ink. Even though she’s leased her farm, looks like she’ll have to sell it and she’s still got hospital bills hammered up her ass. A chunk of Danvers change would definitely keep the wolf from the door.”
That news was encouraging. In a legal fight, Ms. Nash would lose unless she came up with some egomaniac of a lawyer, some renegade who wanted a piece of the Danvers fortune himself and was willing to work on a contingency with no money up front. Jason had a lot of friends in town, attorneys who wouldn’t dare go up against the Danvers family in a court of law, but there were plenty who would—on a contingency basis, just for the challenge and fame of it all. “Okay, what else?”
“That’s it for now, but I plan to come up with something when I get to Memphis.”
