She held his gaze for a heart-stopping second, then strode through the ballroom doors and down the stairs. Zachary moved to the windows and watched as she walked onto the street, her strides long and full of purpose, her head ducked against the thickening rain.
She’d be back. They always came back. Until the power and money of the Danvers family drove them away and they gave up their far-fetched dreams of stealing a little bit of the old man’s money.
Good riddance, he thought, but, as she disappeared around the corner, he felt a premonition, like footsteps of the devil crawling up his spine, and he knew with absolute and bone-chilling certainty, that this one-this impostor posing as London Danvers-was somehow different from all the others.
PART TWO
2
“Happy birthday, darling,” Katherine Danvers whispered into her husband’s ear as they danced across the polished floor of the ballroom. From the alcove near the corner, a small dance band played “As Time Goes By” and the melody whispered through the crowd. “Surprised?” she asked, nuzzling him, her satin heels moving in perfect time to the music.
“Nothing you do surprises me.” He chuckled low in his throat. Of course he’d known that she’d reserved the ballroom of his hotel under the fictitious name of some sorority. He hadn’t spent sixty years learning to be the shrewdest businessman in Portland without picking up a few tricks along the way. He gave his wife a playful squeeze and felt her breasts, beneath her black silk dress, press closer to him. A few years before, he would have become aroused just by the scent of her perfume and the knowledge that beneath the gown she wore absolutely nothing-just the dress and a pair of stiletto heels.
She pouted prettily as the pianist played a solo. Her black hair gleamed under the muted lights from chandeliers suspended from the cove-shaped ceiling, and her eyes, a deep blue, glanced coyly at him through the sweep of thick, dark lashes.