Zach didn’t know the full story, but the gist of it was that Witt had caught his wife in bed with his most hated rival, Anthony Polidori. She’d been carrying on with him for years and rather than expose herself, or her lover, to the media, she’d had no choice but to accept Witt’s terms for the divorce: he’d get the kids and most of the wealth, she’d receive a stipend and be spared the ugly scandal of testifying in divorce court that she was an adulteress. Her social position had been left unscathed; her children’s lives had not.

As much as Zach professed to despise the old man, he did have a grudging respect for Witt Danvers and the power he seemed to possess over the people of this city. As for his mother, Zach felt little but loathing for Eunice. She had shamed his father with an affair that had ripped out the old man’s soul. It had been Eunice who had wounded Witt Danvers’s pride so badly that eventually, though it was years later, Witt had fallen into the open arms of Katherine LaRouche. He’d met Katherine at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia. They had married within the week. Witt had explained to his children that Katherine was from a wealthy Ontario family. Though she was thirty years younger than he, she would become his children’s new mother.

The family had been in shock, the Danverses’ lawyers nearly apoplectic, but the damage had already been done. Katherine LaRouche, whoever she was, had managed to become the bride of one of the wealthiest men in Portland. She’d seemed proper enough then, Zachary thought, remembering back, and the change in her attitude toward him had come subtly over the years. As he’d reached adolescence he’d felt her watching him more closely, caught her eyeing him whenever his shirt was off-either when he was swimming in the pool in his cutoff jeans or riding one of the horses bareback. As his muscles had developed, so had Katherine’s interest in her stepson.

He’d told himself that he was imagining things, that it was only his newfound awareness of his own masculinity that had changed his perception, but now he wasn’t so sure. And Jason had voiced the same suspicions.