Sometimes she’d been tempted to stand up in a place like Spago’s, bang on a water glass and announce that to the world.
But she never had.
One of life’s most painful lessons was that denying a lie sometimes only gave it the aura of truth.
Eve had learned that at seventeen, when her foster father had tried to molest her. After months of complaining, someone had finally believed her. Eve had almost wept with relief, but it had been short-lived. Her foster father had pointed an accusing finger at her and convinced his wife and the social worker that it was Eve who’d come on to him.
No, Eve thought as she switched on the bathroom light, no, there was no point in denying the rumors about Charles and her. Ignoring them had been the right thing. The whispers had faded, then died—to be replaced by whispers about Triad and speculation about how long the company would take to fail.
But it wasn’t going to fail. She wouldn’t let it. Hollywood Wedding would save Triad, Eve was sure of it. All she needed was the right cast and location…
The breath sighed from her lungs. All, she thought with a little laugh, all.
Eve lifted her head and looked into the bathroom mirror. Her weary smile faded as she met her own cooleyed gaze. She could do it. She would do it. Charles Landon had handed her a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and she wasn’t going to let it slip away.
Absolutely nothing, and no one, was going to keep her from succeeding.
Deep in the Himalayas, Zach and Keri entered the inn.
“I’ll meet you in the lounge for drinks and dinner after I’ve showered,” he said, with a little smile.
Keri linked her arms around his neck.
“Wouldn’t you rather shower in my room?” she whispered “I’ll phone down for champagne, and——”
“Mr. Landon?” Zach turned. The innkeeper stood a few feet away, his expression solemn. “Sir, this just came for you over the wireless.”
Zach smiled as he took the message from the man’s outstretched hand.
“Don’t look so down in the mouth, Patel. Unless it’s my office wiring me that the market’s crashed…” His voice faded to silence as he scanned the slip of paper again. When he looked up, his smile was gone. “Hell,” he said softly.
Keri frowned. “What’s the matter?”
Zach ignored her. “I’ll need access to your wireless,” he said sharply to the innkeeper. “And I’ll expect the copter to be ready to leave in five minutes.”
“Of course, Mr. Landon. I’m terribly sorry, sir. May I offer my condolences?”
“Zach?” The woman’s voice called after him as he hurried up the stairs. “What’s happened? Where are you going?”
He paused at the top of the steps and looked down at her, his expression blank. Her name had gone clear out of his head.
“Sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid our plans are off.”
A pout spread across her pretty face. “What do you mean, off? You said——”
“I’ve got to fly back to the States. I just got word that my old man died.”
“Oh. Oh, I’m so sorry.”
She waited. Zach knew he was supposed to show something, to feel something. But it was too late for that. It was years too late.
All there was time for now was the long journey home.
SOMEWHERE above the Rocky Mountains, the wild cry of a hawk rose on the early morning air. The sound awakened Zach instantly, just as it always had when he was a boy.
He lay back against the pillows. But he wasn’t a boy now, he thought wryly, he was a man, and as free as the hawk. There was no need to dream of the day he, too, could leave behind the Landon mansion and the valley it commanded.
He had done that, thirteen long years ago, and though he had returned from time to time, he had never missed this place.
With a sigh, he shoved aside the blankets, sat up and scrubbed his stubbled face lightly with his hands.
What time was it, anyway? He peered at the clock beside his bed. Six thirty-seven, said the unblinking red digital face. Zach groaned softly and put his head in his hands.
If he was at home in Boston, he’d have already been up half an hour. By now, he’d be shaved, showered and dressed; he’d be on his way downstairs to the sun room, where Howell would greet him with a polite good morning, a pot of freshly ground coffee and copies of the Boston Globe, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
But he wasn’t in Boston, Zach thought as he rose to his feet and padded, naked, to the window. He was in Colorado. And getting up at six o’clock was no pleasure when you hadn’t gone to bed until someplace after two the night before.
A grin crept across Zach’s face. The evening had been terrific, though. Sitting around, talking and reminiscing with his brothers, was always great.
It never failed to amaze him just how easily he, Cade and Grant fell back into the patterns of their childhood when they got together. Though they were separated by time, by geography and by the demands of their very different professions, all they had to do was meet under the same roof and the years fell away. They were kids again, not just brothers but best buddies, joined by blood, by love—and by their determination to stand up to the common enemy. Their father.
The smile slipped from Zach’s face. The enemy was gone now. Charles had been dead almost a week, the funeral was over, and he still didn’t feel anything. Hell, you were supposed to feel something when you watched your old man’s coffin settling alongside your mother’s in the family mausoleum, weren’t you, something more than a faint sense of regret?
He shook his head as he ran his hand through his chestnut-colored hair. His brothers had been as stonyfaced as he. Kyra had been the only one of the Landon children whose eyes had glittered with tears, but then, his baby sister was as sweet and tenderhearted a soul as had ever lived. That she’d never been one of the old man’s victims, Zach thought wryly, proved that there was a merciful God. Charles’s tyrannical callousness, his authoritarian coldness, had been reserved for his sons alone.
With a sigh, Zach turned away from the window and headed for the attached bathroom. That was all in the past now, he thought as he stepped into the shower stall, and not just because the old man was gone. Charles had lost power over his sons a long time ago. Cade had escaped at twenty-one, giving up the life the old man had picked out for him for the dream of striking it rich in the oil fields. Grant hadn’t lasted that long; he’d made his move at eighteen, going off to the university of his choice instead of his father’s and making his way through it and law school on his own.
Zach smiled tightly as he turned his face up to the water. But he’d had less patience than either of his brothers. At seventeen, he’d walked away from this place and…
He laughed. Hell, no. He hadn’t walked away, he’d driven—in his father’s Porsche. Taking off in the hundred-thousand-dollar car had been his final act of defiance, a kind of in-your-face present from him to Charles as if to prove he was every inch the no-good punk the old man said he was.
Actually, by then, a punk was exactly what he’d become. His grades—except for science, which he loved, and math, which he could do without thinking—were in the toilet. He’d been running with a fast and loose crowd,