The entire Danvers clan, Witt Danvers’s first wife and his four surviving children, were rumored to be in town. Good.

A cold fist of apprehension tightened in her stomach. Ever since learning of the hotel’s closure and reopening, she’d planned her introduction to the family, but first, to test the waters, she needed to speak with the man in charge of the hotel’s face-life: Zachary Danvers, the rebel of the family and second son to Witt. According to every article she’d read, Zachary had never quite fit in. The Danvers family resemblance, so evident in his brothers and sisters, had skipped over him, and during his youth he’d had more than one brush with the law. Only the old man’s money had kept Zachary out of serious trouble, and gossip had it that not only was he the least favorite of Witt’s children but was also nearly cut out of the old man’s will.

Yes, Zachary was the man she needed to see first. She’d studied his photographs so often, she knew she would recognize him. A little over six feet, with coal-black hair, olive skin, and deep-set gray eyes guarded by heavy brows, he was the one son of Witt Danvers who didn’t resemble his father. Leaner than his brothers or the bear of a man who had sired him, his features were as chiseled as the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. He was a rugged man, rawhide-tough with a hard mouth that was rarely photographed in a smile. He bore a scar over his right ear that interrupted his hairline, and his broken nose was testament to his violent temper.

In the lobby two men were staggering under the weight of a long couch wrapped in plastic. She heard other workers talking in the background, saw hotel employees and workmen scurrying to and from the dining room and kitchen located opposite the front doors. The smells of cleaning solvent, turpentine, and varnish greeted her, and the whine of a skill saw screaming through the vestibule was muted by the rumble of industrial vacuums.