See How She Dies by Lisa Jackson Read Free Book Online

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.
    â€œIt’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.
    â€œWho’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