“Shit,” the man muttered under his breath, but stayed atop his perch and turned back to his work. “Damned women…”
Her heart was beating so fast she could hardly breathe, but at the top of the landing, she turned unerringly to the left and shouldered open the double doors. The room was dark. Her throat closed in on itself and with her fingers she fumbled for the light switch.
In a glorious blaze, the ballroom was suddenly lit by hundreds of miniature candles suspended in teardrop-shaped chandeliers. Her heart nearly stopped at the sight of the polished oak floor, the bank of tall, arched windows, the dizzying light from a million little bulbs that reflected in the cut crystal.
Her throat clogged and she blinked back tears. This was where it had all happened? Where the course of her young life had been thrown from its predestined path and into uncharted territory?
Why? She chewed on her lower lip. Oh, God, why couldn’t she remember?
October rain slid down his hair and under the collar of his jacket. Dead leaves, already sodden, clung to the sidewalk and were beaten with the thick Oregon mist that seemed to rise from the wet streets and gather at the corners of the buildings. Cars, delivery vans, and trucks roared by, their headlights feeble against the watery illumination from the street lamps.
Zachary Danvers was pissed. This job had lasted too long, and wasted too much of his time. What little pride he had in the renovation was tarnished. Working here made him feel like a hypocrite, and he was thankful the project was just about over. Muttering oaths at himself, his brothers, and especially at his dead father, he pushed open the glass doors of the old hotel. He’d spent a year of his life here. A year. All because of a promise he’d made at his father’s deathbed a couple of years ago. Because he’d been greedy.
His stomach soured at the thought. Maybe he was more like the old man than he wanted to admit.
The hotel manager, a newly hired nervous type with thinning hair and an Adam’s apple that worked double time, was laying down the law with a new clerk behind a long mahogany desk, the pride of the lobby. Zachary had discovered the battered piece of dark wood in a century-old tavern located off Burnside in a decrepit building. The tavern had been scheduled to be razed, but Zach had decided to take the time to have the bar restored. Now the once-scarred mahogany gleamed under the lights.
All the fixtures in the hotel had been replaced with antiques or damned-close replicas, and now the hotel could boast an authentic 1890s charm with 1990s conveniences.
The advertising people had loved that turn of phrase.
Why’d he’d agreed to renovate the old hotel still eluded him, though he was beginning to suspect he had developed a latent sense of family pride. “Son of a bitch,” he grumbled under his breath. He was tired of the city, the noise, the bad air, the lights, and most of all, his family, or what was left of it.
“Hey, Danvers!” his foreman Frank Gillette yelled from his position on the scaffold twenty feet above the lobby floor. He was tinkering with the wiring of a particularly bad-tempered chandelier. “Been waitin’ for you. There’s a woman here, in the ballroom. She’s been here over an hour.”
Zach’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “What woman?”
“Didn’t give her name. Claimed she had a meetin’ with you.”
“With me?”
“That’s what she said.” Frank started down the ladder. “She couldn’t talk to me as I wasn’t a—and I’m quotin’ here—‘member of the Danvers family.’”
Frank hopped to the floor and dusted his hands. He drew a wrinkled handkerchief from his back pocket and rubbed it under the brim of his hard hat.
From somewhere near the kitchen there was a crash and rattle of silverware that echoed through the hotel.
“Christ!” Frank’s head snapped up, and he narrowed his eyes at the kitchen. “Damn that Casey.”
“Is she a reporter?”
“The woman?” Frank fumbled in his pocket for his cigarettes. “Hell if I know. As I said, I’m not a Danvers, so she wouldn’t talk to me. Not that I wouldn’t mind spending a little time with her.”
“Good-looking?”
Frank said, “Beyond a ten.”
“Sure.”
“Look, all I know is that short of bodily hauling her out of here, we got a problem. No one’s supposed to be on the premises. If she slips and falls and breaks her neck and OSHA finds out—”
“You worry to much.”
“You pay me to worry.” Frank found his crumpled pack of Camels and shook out a cigarette.
“Just finish the job. I’ll deal with the insurance people and the woman.”
“Good.” Smiling as he clicked his lighter, Frank inhaled deeply. “Now, let’s see if this mother works. Hey, Roy, turn on the juice.” Reaching around the desk, he flipped a switch and stared at the chandelier. Lights shaped like candles blazed for a second before flickering and dying. “Fuckin’ wiring,” Frank growled, his face turning red, his cigarette bobbing between his lips. “I told that half-wit Jerry to use…oh, hell!” Exasperated, he shot out a stream of smoke. “Roy, turn it off again!” he roared.
“I’ll go talk to the mystery lady.”
“Do that,” Frank growled as he finished his smoke, then started back up the scaffolding. Zach didn’t doubt that by the grand opening, everything would work perfectly. Frank would see to it, if he had to hold two wires together himself.
From the stairs, Zach glanced around the lobby and thought of his father. Witt Danvers. A royal pain in the ass.
Right now, Witt would have been proud of the son he’d disowned half a dozen times. Not that it mattered. Witt Danvers was dead and cremated, his ashes spread across the rolling forests of the Oregon hills two years ago. A just end to a timber baron who had spent all his years raping the land.
Through the leather of his jacket, Zach rubbed the scar in his shoulder, the result of being the son of Witt Danvers. His jaw tightened. It had taken him years to come to terms with the old man, and now it was too late to make amends.
“Rest in peace, you miserable bastard,” Zachary said, his lips flattening as he opened the doors. His father had always treated Zach differently from the rest of his children. Not that he cared now. Zach had his own business, his own identity. The noose of being the son of one of Portland’s wealthiest men didn’t seem quite so tight.
He took two long strides into the ballroom, then stopped dead in his tracks. The woman was there, dressed in a black long coat and matching knee-length boots. She turned at the sound of his entrance, and before she could say a word he knew why she was waiting for him.
Glossy black curls swirled away from a flawless face. Round blue eyes fringed by lacy black lashes stared straight at him. Thin black brows arched inquisitively. He felt as if his heart had stopped for a second as she smiled, showing off beautiful teeth, finely carved cheekbones, and a strong, slightly stubborn chin.
His breath seemed to stop somewhere in his lungs.
“You’re Zachary,” she said, as if she had every right to stand in the middle of the ballroom—as if she belonged.
Zach’s throat was suddenly dry and hot and forbidden memories struggled to the surface of his mind. “Right.”
“Danvers,” she supplied, her voice low, her lips tightening just a fraction. She smiled slightly, and with her hand extended, walked slowly toward him. “I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time,” she said, forcing a smile. “My name is—”
“London,” he supplied as every muscle in his body grew taut with the pain of the past.
“You recognize me?” Hope lighted those blue eyes.
“There’s a resemblance. I guessed.”
“Oh.” She hesitated, the wind suddenly out of her sails.
“But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You think you’re my long-lost sister.” He couldn’t hide the cynicism in his words.