See How She Dies

  “Daddy!” He glanced up and found London, her black curls dancing around her face, her chubby arms outstretched. Dressed in a navy-blue dress with white lace collar and cuffs, she ran up to him and threw herself into his waiting arms.

  He hugged her tightly, the velvet of her dress crushed against him, her legs, encased in white tights, clamped around his waist. “How do you like the party, princess?”

  Her crystal-blue eyes were round and wide, her cheeks flushed with the excitement of the festivities. “It’s loud.”

  He laughed. “That it is.”

  “And there’s too much smoke!”

  “Don’t tell your mother. She planned this as a special surprise and we wouldn’t want her to feel bad,” Witt said, grinning as he winked at his daughter.

  She winked back, then snuggled her pert little nose into his neck and he got a whiff of baby shampoo. She tugged at his bow tie and he laughed again. Nothing could make him as happy as this dynamic whirl of precociousness.

  “Hey, that’s my job,” Kat said as she smiled and gently nudged London’s fingers from Witt’s neck. Kissing her daughter’s crown, she said, “Leave Daddy’s tie alone.”

  “How about a dance?” Witt asked his young daughter, and those little lines between Kat’s eyebrows, the ones that suggested silently that she disapproved, appeared. Witt didn’t care. He drained another glass of champagne and twirled a laughing London onto the dance floor. The child, his princess, squealed in delight.

  “Sickening, isn’t it?” Trisha observed from her position near the band. She leaned against the glossy top of the concert grand and petulantly sipped from a fluted glass. She was allowed, having just turned twenty-one.

  Zachary lifted a shoulder. He was used to his old man’s theatrics and he really didn’t care what Witt did anymore. He and his father had never gotten along, and things had only become worse when Witt had divorced his first wife and eventually married a woman only seven years older than his oldest son, Jason, Zachary’s brother. Truth be known, Zach didn’t really want to be here, had only come because he was forced. He couldn’t wait to escape the smoky, loud ballroom filled with boring old people—suck-ups, every last one of them.

  “Dad can’t keep his hands off Kat,” Trisha said, her voice slurring a little. “It’s obscene.” She took another swallow. “The lecherous old fart.”

  “Careful, Trisha,” Jason said as he joined his brother and sister. “Dad probably had this place bugged.”

  “Very funny,” Trisha said, tossing her long auburn hair over one shoulder. But she didn’t laugh. Her blue eyes were flat and bored and she continually scanned the crowd as if she were looking for something or someone.

  Jason’s eyes narrowed. “You know half the people here would like to see the old man fall.”

  “They’re his friends,” Trisha argued.

  “And enemies.” Jason rested a hip against the piano as the band took a break. He watched his father, still holding London, playing the crowd, moving from one knot of bejeweled guests to the other, never once setting London on her feet.

  “Who gives a shit?” Zachary asked.

  “Always the rebel.” Jason smiled beneath his mustache, that know-it-all smile that bugged the hell out of Zach. Jason acted as if he knew everything. At twenty-three, Jason was already in law school and six years older than Zach, a point he never let his rebellious younger brother forget.

  Zach tugged at the tight collar of his tuxedo shirt. He couldn’t stomach Jason any more than he could his sister, Trisha. They both cared too much about the old man and his bank accounts.

  Leaving Jason and Trisha to worry and fret over Witt’s affection for London, Zach walked to the edge of the crowd.

  He managed to grab a champagne glass from an unattended table, then sauntered over to the bank of tall, arched windows that overlooked the city and turned his back on the party. He felt a bit of satisfaction as he stared through the glass to the hot July night and swallowed champagne. Traffic flowed in a steady stream along the street. Taillights winked and blurred as cars and trucks labored through the city and over the yawning Willamette River, a sluggish black waterway that separated the west side of the city from the east. Steam rose from the city streets and the humidity level was high.

  In the distance, beyond the expanse of city lights, a ridge of mountains, the Cascades, guarded the horizon. Thunderheads that had been gathering all day blocked out any view of the stars, and the quick, sizzling forks of lightning added unwanted tension to the brackish night. Zach finished his champagne and, hoping no one would notice, half buried his empty glass in the soil surrounding a potted tree.

  He felt out of place, as he always had with his family. This black-tie affair thrown by Kat made him all the more aware that he was different from his brothers and sister. He didn’t even look like the rest of the Danvers clan, all of whom were fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and were favored with varying hues of blond to dark brown hair.

  He resembled his half-sister, London, more than anyone else in the family. Which didn’t win him any points with Jason, Trisha, and Nelson, his younger brother, all of whom on one occasion or another professed to hate their half-sister.

  With a snort, he considered London. He didn’t care much about the kid one way or the other. Sure, she bothered him. Any four-year-old was a pain in the ass, but she wasn’t as bad as the others made out. In fact, Zach found it amusing that she was already showing some of the traits Kat had perfected over the years. It wasn’t London’s fault the old man treated her like some kind of priceless jewel.

  As if she’d read his mind, London pushed through the crowd and grabbed hold of his leg. He turned to tell her to get lost, but by that time she’d discovered his glass pushed deep into the potting soil.

  “Leave that alone!” he whispered in a harsh voice. She glanced up sharply, a naughty twinkle in her eyes. God, if he could just step out on the balcony and grab a smoke—another vice of which his father and stepmother disapproved, though Kat was never without her gold cigarette case and Witt enjoyed his share of cigars smuggled in from Havana.

  She dropped the glass back into the dirt. “Hide me from Mommy!” With a wicked little giggle, she ducked behind his legs.

  “Hey, don’t get me involved in your stupid games.”

  “Shh. She’s coming!” London hissed.

  Great. Just what he needed.

  “London?” Katherine’s husky voice drifted over the slow strains of a ballad.

  Behind him, London tried to smother a giggle.

  “London, where are you? Come on now…it’s time for bed. Oh, there you are!” Katherine sidestepped a group of men, her practiced smile well in place. Waving her fingers as she passed, she tracked down her wayward daughter with the precision of a bloodhound.

  “No!” London cried as her mother approached.

  “Come on, sweetheart, it’s nearly ten.”

  “Don’t care!”

  “You’d better do what she says,” Zachary offered, his gaze flicking slightly to his stepmother’s. He knew what the old man saw in his young wife. Katherine Danvers was probably the sexiest woman Zachary had ever met. At seventeen he understood about unbridled sexual desire. Hot and thundering, it could roar through a man’s body and turn his brain to mush.

  “Come on.” Katherine leaned down to pick up her daughter. The silk stretched across her shapely rump and her breasts seemed to bulge a bit, as if they might fall out of her plunging neckline.

  “I’ll get her into bed,” another woman, London’s nanny, Ginny Something-Or-Other, offered. She was a small, plain woman in sensible shoes and a drab olive-green suit. Next to Katherine she looked frumpy and old, a dowdy matron, though she was probably just over thirty, not much older than Kat.

  “I don’t want to go to bed,” London insisted.

  “She’s being a brat.” Katherine looked up and noticed one of the waiters motioning toward her. With a sigh, she turned back to her daughter. “Listen, honey, it’s almost t
ime to bring out the birthday cake. You can stay up and watch Daddy blow out his candles, then you have to go upstairs.”

  “Can I have some cake, too?”

  The corners around Katherine’s mouth tightened, though she said, “Of course, darling. But then you go with Ginny upstairs. We’ve got a special room for you, right by Daddy and Mommy’s, and we’ll be up later to tuck you in.”

  Mollified somewhat, London headed back to the party and Katherine straightened, smoothing her dress over her hips as Ginny followed her wayward charge.

  Zach hoped that Katherine would hurry to the bandleader and order the musicians to strike up “Happy Birthday To You,” but she inched her chin up a fraction and eyed her stepson. Zach was three inches taller than Kat. Nonetheless, she had a way of making him feel small. “Stay away from the booze.” She plucked his empty champagne glass from the dirt and twirled the stem between her long, slim fingers. Even while reprimanding him, she was sexy as hell. As if she knew her power over him and any man who wasn’t blind, she puckered her lips sweetly, then waggled the glass under his nose. “We wouldn’t want anything to spoil this party for your daddy now, would we? If you were to get caught with one of these, there could be trouble.”

  “I won’t get caught.”

  “Don’t think you’re so smart, Zach. I saw you swilling champagne, and I don’t think I’m the only one who was looking in your direction. Anyone else could have seen you, including Jack Logan. You remember—he’s with the police department. I think you two have met before.”

  Zach’s teeth clamped together. Hot embarrassment climbed up the back of his neck. “As I said, I won’t get caught.”

  “You’d better not, because, if you land your cute little butt in jail or end up in the juvenile hall again, Witt won’t bail you out. So”—she smiled sweetly—“use your head.”

  As she sauntered away, mingling with one group of guests after another, Zachary seethed. His blood boiled through his veins and he fantasized about wrapping his fingers around her neck and shaking some sense into her, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her ass and the way it shifted beneath the shimmering black silk of her dress. She moved slowly, as if each step were a deliberately sensual movement designed to make him squirm. The rose petals were crushed beneath her heels. Her smooth back, visible to the curve of her lower spine, was unblemished and supple, and he imagined it would arch perfectly beneath the right man.

  He felt an erection beginning, and turned away from her image. Half the time he thought she put on a sexual show for him intentionally. Other times he told himself that it was his imagination, that he was finding sexual overtures in the most innocent of gestures.

  To cool his blood he placed his head against the window. Steam fogged the inside of the glass. The room was so hot he felt that he was suffocating and his blood still pounded at his temples. At seventeen he was still a virgin, which wasn’t a big deal, unless he had to spend any time alone with Kat, something he tried to avoid.

  Stuffing one hand into his pocket to hide the swell in his pants, he walked to the nearest tray of filled glasses, grabbed one and downed it quickly, all the while staring at his stepmother. She didn’t seem to see him. Buoyed by his newfound source of rebellion, he sauntered over to another unattended tray, snatched another glass, and downed the champagne in one gulp. A few drops drizzled along his chin but he didn’t care.

  The room began to get warmer still and he loosened his tie. A flush stole up his face and he felt a little light-headed. He was definitely getting a buzz. Well, good. He didn’t want to be here anyway. Might as well enjoy himself.

  Halfway through his next drink, he felt a smooth hand close over his arm. He jumped and champagne splashed down the front of his jacket and shirt. Kat’s long fingers dug into the muscles beneath his sleeve. Her eyes were dark with rage, her full lips clenched in fury. “You just don’t know when to give up, do you?”

  He shook off her arm. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  “No?” She arched an eyebrow in a sexy gesture that scared him spitless. “Mmm. We’ll see.”

  He finished his drink to spite her, but she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, her face changed into a soft smile and her eyes caught the reflection of the chandelier, sparkling up at him. With an innocent grin, she linked her fingers through his. “Dance with me, Zach.”

  Zach, despite the friendly cobwebs in his mind, smelled trouble. “I…I don’t dance.”

  “Sure you do. It’s easy.”

  “But I can’t—”

  She leaned closer to him, put her lips against his ear. “People are staring. Come on.”

  His throat was suddenly desert-dry. “Katherine, I really don’t want to—” But she was right. He felt the burning weight of the gazes of curious onlookers. He wanted to die. From the corner of his eye, he saw Jason staring at him, his expression unreadable. Trisha was downing champagne and God-only-knew what else. She smiled drunkenly at Zach’s discomfiture. Witt, his father, was still dancing with little London and too busy to notice that Zach was trapped.

  “Really, Katherine. I don’t want to—”

  “Oh, you want, Zach,” she said, leaning to him, pressing her hip against his groin. “I can tell. And I’ll let your father know if you don’t give me just one little dance.”

  Guiltily, Zach glanced at Witt but the old man seemed oblivious to the fact that his son, the one who always gave him so much trouble, was being led to the dance floor like a lamb to slaughter. He couldn’t imagine dancing with Katherine, feeling her body pressed close to his. His blood was already roaring through his system. As they reached the dance floor, she turned, molding her torso to his, beginning to sway in rhythm to the music.

  Her hips were pressed intimately to his and her breasts seemed crushed against his chest. “Now, isn’t this better?” she murmured in a husky drawl and he closed his eyes, fighting the lust that burned through his body, feeling his stiffening erection even as he tried to deny it.

  “Let me go,” he begged.

  “You don’t want to go.” She shifted slightly so that her lower abdomen was hugging his. God, she had to know that he was hard. “I can tell.”

  “Don’t—”

  Holy Christ, his right hand was on her bare back, feeling the silky texture of her skin, the sleek movement of her muscles. Was it his imagination or did she make some low sort of wanting sound deep in her throat?

  “You lied,” she whispered, her breath ruffling the hair covering the tops of his ears.

  He was dying inside. So hard he ached, he couldn’t think straight. A part of him warned him to back off, but the other part puffed up by male ego, champagne, and sexual desire, couldn’t stop fantasizing. He wondered what she would do if he rubbed up against her, let his hand slip beneath the black fabric of her dress. What would happen if he slowly let his mouth and tongue wander down the delicate column of her throat?

  As if she understood his need, she lolled her head to one side, exposing more of her white skin, showing off just a little more of her gorgeous bosom.

  “Mind if I cut in?” Witt’s voice seemed to reverberate through the ballroom and Zachary started, dropping his hands guiltily. He tried to put some distance between his body and Kat’s but she held him close.

  Turning slumberous eyes toward her husband, her lips twisted into a wicked grin, she whispered, “Thought you’d never ask.”

  Witt’s face was flushed. His eyes thinned on his rebellious son as Zachary took a step back and London, who was still clinging to her father, was plopped into Zach’s empty arms. “Stay away from the champagne,” Witt said. “It would be a hell of an embarrassment if Jack had to arrest you here. Now, give London a spin on the floor and ask one of the Kramer girls to dance—they’ve been watching you all night.”

  Gulping, Zachary wished he could knock the old man’s lights out. When he glanced at Kat she was laughing, her eyes twinkling with naughty amusement. At his expense. His fingers clenched into fists and if it wasn’t
for the fact that he was holding London, he might have made an already ugly situation worse. It was as if his father and stepmother had conspired together to make him look a fool.

  His shoulders tensed and heat surged up the back of his neck to spread through his face. Though several girls in expensive dresses were trying to capture his attention, Zach didn’t even give them the time of day. He handed London to her nanny, and wished he could hit something…anything.

  Ripping his tie from his neck, he wanted nothing more than to leave the goddamned hotel and cool off. Spoiling for a fight, he left the dance floor. How could he have been such a fool? How? Because of Kat. Damn the woman! His fists curled in angry impotence. He had to get out of here.

  Jason, drink in hand, found Zach insolently leaning a shoulder against one of the pillars near the door as he plotted his escape. “Don’t let her get to you,” Jason advised.

  “Who?”

  “Kat.” Sipping his drink—bourbon straight up—Jason smiled.

  “What do you mean?” Zach asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  Jason snorted and cocked his head toward the dance floor. “I saw that little exhibition.”

  Mortified, Zach gritted his teeth.

  “Christ, she can be a bitch.” Jason raked an impatient hand through his thick, chestnut-colored hair. “I know what she’s up to, saw her coming on to you. She damned near laid down and spread her legs right in the middle of the dance floor.” He took a swallow of his drink and stared at Kat and Witt. “It’s some sort of game with her.”

  A muscle worked in Zach’s jaw. He felt the angry tic and couldn’t control it.

  “She did it on purpose, you know. Decided you needed putting in your place, which, I might add, she did.”

  “I hate her.”

  “Don’t we all?” Jason replied, his eyes following his stepmother as she danced. “But she might just be the most incredibly sexy woman on this planet. I wonder what she’s like in bed.”

  “I don’t want to know.” Zachary scowled and refused to look at the object of their discussion.