questions about the Nash family in general and Adria in particular. Sweeny was certain she was hiding something- he just didn’t know what.
The pieces as he’d put them together from the few people in Belamy who were willing to talk to him linked into a straightforward picture. Sharon Nash had once been a pretty girl who had married Victor, a decent farmer a few years older than she. All she’d wanted in life was to be a wife and mother, but her dreams had been stolen away when she wasn’t able to get pregnant and medical research in the fifties and sixties was more interested in preventing births than helping sterile couples conceive. She’d gone from doctor to doctor, becoming more desperate as the years passed. When medical technology had swung around and fertility pills were available, she was too old. Fertility pills didn’t work. She reluctantly accepted the fact that she was barren and she convinced herself that God, in keeping her from having children, was punishing her for not believing more strongly in Him.
The farming years had been lean and no adoption agency would offer the land-poor couple a child they couldn’t afford. A private adoption, because of the cost, was out of the question. It seemed as if Sharon was destined to be childless.
As the years passed, Sharon threw all her energy into the church. Though her husband rarely attended services, Sharon never missed a Sunday or a weekly prayer meeting. As everyone here on earth-her husband, the doctors and the lawyers-had failed her, she decided to trust in God completely and became nearly fanatic in serving Him.
Suddenly her prayers were answered, though not through the church, but through Victor’s brother’s law firm. A little girl-a relative, most people thought-had become available and, if Sharon and Victor asked few questions, the adoption could be handled. Sharon didn’t need to have any answers. There were no questions. In her mind this girl was sent from heaven. Victor was more hesitant, as he and his wife were getting up in years, but as much to help out the struggling mother of the girl-a shirttail relative, Sweeny had gleaned-as to keep his wife happy, Victor agreed. In the end, Adria became the apple of her father’s eye.
Sweeny pulled a small flask from his jacket pocket and took a warming swallow. Everything he’d found out so far was all just town gossip and speculation, the idle talk of neighbors and friends. There were no public records of the adoption and Ezra Nash, the lawyer who had handled the case, was dead, the paperwork in his office in Bozeman destroyed in a fire. It was frustrating as hell. All the information fit neatly into Adria’s story and matched the testimony of the pathetic man in the video, but Sweeny could smell a rat. Something didn’t quite mesh.
And it had to do with money. Money she didn’t have.
Ms. Nash could have all the good intentions in the world, but Sweeny was certain that she was after the Danvers family fortune. Somehow she’d managed to put herself through college and graduated at the top of her class with a double major in architecture and business, but she’d only worked for a construction company after graduation.
Tomorrow he’d ask for a simple credit report that would confirm the town gossip, then he’d request some information from the Department of Motor Vehicles that would give him some personal insight into the woman, help him find out what it was that made her tick.
He took another swallow from his flask and, without removing his shoes, dropped onto the bed. For the next couple of days he was stuck in Belamy, which was little more than a stoplight stuck in the middle of no- goddamned-where. The sooner he was out of here, the better.
His only lead was Ginny Slade, aka Virginia Watson Slade, and he’d have to track her down, but it wouldn’t be easy. It would take time and money. Lots and lots of Danvers money.
Adria rubbed the knots from the back of her neck as she peeled off her clothes. She tossed her sweater onto the bed, then stepped out of her slacks. Finger-combing the tangles from her hair, she walked to the bathroom with its cool marble floor, gold-colored fixtures, and expansive mirrors. Plush robes emblazoned with “Hotel Danvers” in gold script hung on hooks near a shower big enough for two. She twisted on the faucets to the Jacuzzi and added bath oil from the tiny bottles the maid had left earlier.
“A far cry from the Riverview Inn,” she muttered as she unhooked her bra and stepped out of her panties. Within seconds she was immersed in the warm water, letting pulsating jets ease her tired muscles. With a sigh she closed her eyes and tried not to think of Zachary Danvers and the unwanted emotions he evoked in her.
He was too sexy and raw for his own damned good-or hers. She remembered him staring at the portrait of Katherine, his stepmother, in the hallway of the Danvers mansion. There had been secrets in his eyes, and what else-longing? Guilt?
“You’re making too much of it,” she told herself as lavender-scented bubbles surrounded her and the Jacuzzi rumbled, churning the warm water. How long had it been since she’d indulged in a bubble bath? Ten years? Twenty? It wasn’t the kind of luxury Sharon Nash believed in, not even for a child. How different her life would have been had she been raised as a Danvers, in the kind of opulence most people could only dream of, but the family seemed to take for granted. The family. Her family? God, that wasn’t a pleasant thought.
She’d already decided Jason was a snake, Trisha not much better, a bitter woman with her share of secrets. Zach was surly at his worst and sarcastically seductive at his best, and Nelson was unreadable, a man who seemed torn. But then, those had only been her first impressions.
“Probably only gonna get worse,” she told herself and smiled until she considered Zach again. He’d made the mistake of calling her “Kat.” Or had it been on purpose, some kind of test?
She lathered her arms and decided against that particular theory. Zach had slipped. Kat’s name had fallen from his tongue in a heated moment when they’d been kissing and touching…and…
Oh, God, had he done the same with Katherine? His stepmother? She wondered about Zach and Kat’s relationship. Something wasn’t right about it. Not at all. Her mind began to wander down a hot, dark path as she remembered his expression as he’d studied Kat’s portrait. Had it been yearning? Forbidden desire?
“This is getting you nowhere,” she warned herself as she turned off the jets and the room grew quiet. She tried to clear her mind, to stop her thoughts from reverting to Zach. She couldn’t get involved with him. It was suicide to think otherwise. Everyone in the family distrusted her. Even Zachary. She had to remember that. They would do anything to dispute her story, to prove her a fake.
She leaned back again, closing her eyes and letting the warm water lap around her. She just needed some time to relax. Unwind…
She drifted, dozing, daydreaming of Zachary Danvers and what it would be like to be his lover, to feel his strong arms upon her, to touch the naked muscles of his back, to kiss him with a wild abandon without any thought to the consequences, without any concern about her identity, to just love him sensually and totally and feel him straining above her, his body gleaming, his eyes dark with smoky passion and…
Her eyes flew open and she realized she’d been dreaming, asleep long enough for the water to grow tepid. She strained to listen. She’d heard something-the door?
“Hello?” she said, reaching for a towel and standing. Her skin prickled with goose bumps and the air seemed chilled, colder than it should be. “Is anyone there?”
No answer.
And yet she sensed that someone had been close by.
Heart thudding, she threw on one of the robes and slipped quietly into the bedroom. Nothing looked disturbed- her clothes were where she’d tossed them, her shoes near the closet. The French doors leading to the living area were ajar, but she hadn’t closed them. She walked into the sitting room where the furniture was arranged just as it had been when she’d walked in less than an hour earlier.
The door was shut, but she hadn’t thrown the dead bolt.
“Stupid, stupid girl,” she muttered, and hooked the privacy chain that she’d forgotten.
But why would anyone risk coming into her room?
“Stop it,” she whispered under her breath. This was paranoia talking, nothing more.
Still, she eyed the ceiling and walls, checking for tiny cameras, her skin crawling at the thought of unseen eyes
