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.

Sighing through his nose, he shook his head to clear it. With one hand, he felt the key in his pocket and his stomach tightened into a hard ball of apprehension. What if he actually went into the Orion Hotel, took the elevator to the third floor, rapped hard on the door, and it was opened by a withered old woman without teeth? What if the damned door was opened by a man? A queer dressed up as a hooker? Oh, Jesus! What if this whole arrangement was a setup, the result of Jason’s twisted sense of humor?

He gritted his teeth and glanced behind him as he reached the Orion. No one seemed to have followed him and no one other than Jason would guess that he was here. Somehow he found strength in his anonymity as he lingered on the steps of the high-rise that jutted upward, washed by floodlights, white concrete slicing into a sky as black as obsidian.

Hesitating a fraction of a second, Zachary locked his jaw, squared his shoulders, threw open the hotel’s front door, and decided it was time he became a man.

3

The hotel corridor was empty, a long hallway of gold shag carpeting and metal doors painted to look like wood. The Orion had none of the charm of the Hotel Danvers, but Zach didn’t care. Swallowing back the urge to turn tail and run, Zachary let the stairwell door bang shut behind him and walked, heart knocking, toward room 307. To Sophia. His destiny.

Before he lost his already-faltering courage, he rapped sharply on the door and waited.

“It’s open,” a cool, feminine voice called through the metal.

Oh, Christ! Zach’s heart nearly stopped. He reached for the knob with clammy fingers and threw open the door.

The woman was lying with her back to him. Sprawled sensually across the bed, wearing only a black bra and a lacy black belt with long garters that dangled over a scanty pair of panties, she stretched. Zach could see the dimples above her smooth rump and long thighs and his mouth turned to sand. “You’re late,” she reprimanded gently.

Zach’s diaphragm slammed up against his lungs and he could barely breathe. Heat radiated from his groin.

Turning slowly, allowing him a glimpse of full breasts crushed into a bra several sizes too small, she smiled up at him with a come-hither look that evaporated when her gaze met his face.

“Who’re you?” she demanded. Her dark eyes shadowed with fear. “Get out!” She cast an anxious look around, as if searching for a weapon, or clothes to cover her body. “Get the fuck out!” She reached for a pink silk wrapper and started ramming her hands frantically down its sleeves.

“Jason sent me.”

She froze. “Like hell,” she muttered, her black eyes disbelieving. The robe still gaped enough so he had a view of the hollow between her breasts.

Zach’s throat closed in on itself and he prayed to God that his voice didn’t squeak. “He’s still at Dad’s party and-”

“Dad’s?”

“I’m his brother, Zachary.” He started to stick out his hand, knew it to be a mistake and wished he could just drop dead of a heart attack. She was a hooker, for God’s sake, a professional, and he was a bumbling, tongue-tied, green, virgin! She could probably smell it.

Suspicion lingered on her features. “You don’t look like him.”

The bane of Zach’s existence. “I know.” Still he didn’t move.

“Close the door.”

Zach kicked it closed but didn’t bother with the bolt.

Scooting closer to the headboard, trying to hold the robe closed over her skin, looking as if she might bolt for the door at any minute, she asked, “Why’d he send you?” She tossed a thick rope of coal-black hair off her face. “Jesus, you scared the living shit out of me.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Well, come in,” she ordered, obviously agitated.

Carefully, afraid she might jump up and run down the hall screaming rape, he walked across the orange carpet and eased himself onto the foot of the bed.

“Jason sent you?” she asked, reaching onto the nightstand for a crumpled pack of cigarettes propped against a half-finished drink. She shook out an unfiltered Pall Mall and her hands only trembled a little as she struck a match and lit up. “Why?”

“He, um, he had to stick around. Dad wanted him there.”

She arched a fine black brow as she drew on her cigarette again and finally lifted it from her lips. “But he didn’t want you?” she asked skeptically.

“Jason’s the oldest,” Zach said, as if it explained everything, which it did. Jason had been groomed from the day he was born to be heir to the Danvers fortune. Nothing had changed just because Witt had sired a second son.

The hooker smiled. “So he’s the favorite.”

“London’s the old man’s favorite.”

“Ahh. Jason’s talked about her. The little kid. What is she, about three?’

“Almost five.” Zach didn’t see that London’s age mattered at all, especially considering the situation. He was in a hotel room with a prostitute and they were discussing his baby sister! Well, hadn’t Jason said she liked to talk? Somehow he’d expected the conversation to be a little more sensual.

Sophia set her cigarette in the ashtray on the bedstand, then picked up her drink. Swirling the melting ice cubes with one long finger, she stared at Zach, letting her eyes rove up his half-buttoned shirt to his windblown hair.

“Jason wants you to take his place?”

“That seemed to be the plan.”

She took a swallow from her glass and the tip of her tongue rimmed her wet lips. “Are you a virgin, Zachary?”

The question hit him like a slap in the face. “Of course not.”

“Mmm. Then you’ve had…a lot of women?” She sipped her drink, trying to smother a smile.

“My share,” he said, realizing that they both knew he was lying. Hell, what did you say to a prostitute when she asked you things like that?

“You ever had a blow job?”

His head snapped up. Was she for real, or was she teasing him? He stared straight into her dark eyes and wondered if she was laughing at him. His gut tightened as she set the glass on the night table, allowing the robe to gape open and reveal her breasts. He couldn’t help but stare.

He was already beginning to get hard, but he didn’t try to hide his erection. The robe fell off one of her shoulders and her skin looked soft and smooth, moving easily beneath the silky ebony strap of her bra.

“So what’re we going to do about this?” she asked, as she settled back on the bed, the pink wrapper no longer clutched in her fingers, her navel and the top of lacy black underpants visible. When he didn’t reply, she inched closer to him, first with her toe, then with the rest of her, sliding slowly down the bed, rumpling the coverlet with her rounded buttocks. Her eyes were hot, dark mirrors seeming to reflect the torment of his soul. She seemed to stare past all the lies he’d told her as she pulled herself up to her knees and moved her head close to his. She smelled of perfume and smoke and bourbon.

“So you won’t tell me, eh? Well, just let me know when I do something you don’t like, okay?”

She pressed her hot, wet tongue against the shell of his ear and he groaned. The swelling between his legs began to ache and as her tongue dipped into his ear, he wondered if he might embarrass them both by coming in his pants. “Come on, baby, what’re you waiting for?” she whispered in a whiskey-smooth voice.

The invitation was impossible to resist.

He grabbed her and pressed his lips hard to her mouth, smearing lipstick in his anxiety, tossing her back on the bed so he could feel her under him.

“That’s my boy,” she growled as he shoved the robe off her and stared at her beautiful breasts. Round, dark nipples pointed upward through the sheer lace, inviting his hands and mouth and Zachary, finding her so willing, couldn’t stop himself.

His thumb grazed a nipple and she arched, her butt coming off the bed, her naked abdomen slapping against the inseams of his pants. Her fingers found the buttons of his shirt and the wall of skin beneath. She lifted herself up and playfully nipped at his few chest hairs, causing him to lose himself in the wonder of her touch. Already dizzy from the champagne, Zachary felt the room spin as she touched him, her magic fingers caressing his bare skin, her tongue slick and hot as she slid down farther.