Hollywood Wedding. Sandra Marton

seventeen, he’d hated himself for what he was turning into, but he couldn’t seem to stop.

      Nothing he did was good enough to please his father. His As in math and science didn’t make up for the Bs (and occasional Cs) he got in dull subjects like social studies and languages. His position on the football team as a grunting, hurt-in-the-dirt lineman was nothing compared to the flash and dash he’d have had as a running back or a wide receiver. And his friends were the wrong ones, local boys instead of snot-nosed brats from the exclusive school the old man insisted he attend in Denver.

      By the time Zach had reached the age of seventeen, it was as if he’d become determined to live down to each of Charles’s expectations.

      “You’ll never amount to anything,” Charles had said, for as long as Zach could remember.

      Looking back now, Zach had to admit that it might have been true. He never would have amounted to anything, not if he’d stayed in this house.

      But the last angry blowup had tipped the scales. It had started over some flippant remark he’d made and quickly escalated to a summary of all Zach’s sins. At the end of it, Charles had given him an ultimatum.

      “Either you live by my rules or you’ll get out,” he’d shouted.

      Zach hadn’t hesitated. Seconds later, he was out the door and in the Porsche, burning rubber as he roared down the driveway and onto the narrow road that led off the estate, driving hell-bent-for-leather into Denver, never stopping until he pulled up at the Army recruitment office.

      A smile twisted across his mouth as he recalled the way the scowling recruiting sergeant had looked him up and down, sucked in his cheeks and asked how old he was.

      “Eighteen,” Zach said, without blinking.

      “Eighteen, huh?” The sergeant smiled. “Tell you what, kid. You bring me your birth certificate and we’ll talk about enlistment.”

      The Marine recruiter down the street wasn’t as picky, especially because Zach, wiser if still not older, had paused just long enough to get his hands on a doctored driver’s license before he put in an appearance.

      The Marine had looked at Zach, then at the license.

      “You got a birth certificate to back this up, son?” he’d drawled.

      “Yes, sir,” Zach had answered. It wasn’t a lie, not when you considered that his order for the certificate was already in the works.

      “And you’ll produce it tomorrow?”

      “Yes, sir,” Zach had said again, his posture erect and his green eyes firmly fixed on the wall just beyond the Marine’s head.

      The recruiter had shrugged and shoved a stack of papers across his desk.

      “Read ’em, sign ’em, and we’re in business.” As Zach had reached for the papers, the man’s callused hand slapped down hard on his wrist. “Just be sure you know what you’re doing, son.”

      Zach had pulled his hand loose and looked up, his eyes suddenly the color of a storm-tossed ocean.

      “I’m not anybody’s son,” he’d said coldly, “and I know exactly what I’m doing.”

      But, Zach thought now, he hadn’t known a damn. He smiled ruefully as he began dressing. Boot camp and Parris Island had seemed a worse hell than the one he’d escaped—except that at the end of it, the Corps had welcomed him to its bosom in a way his father never had.

      For the first time in his young life, Zach had found a home.

      By the time he left the Marines four years later, he had a sense of discipline, a yearning for success and a twenty-thousand-dollar stake. On two continents and in half a dozen Corps barracks, his take-no-prisoners attitude, coupled with his head for numbers, had turned him into a steady winner at high-stakes poker.

      After that, it was easy. The money had seen him through a couple of years of college, where his finance courses had taught him two things.

      The first was that he knew more by instinct about stocks and bonds and market shares than his professors.

      The second was that playing poker wasn’t all that different from playing the markets, it was just that the markets paid off bigger.

      At twenty-three, Zach had left school. He’d dabbled in arbitrage for a year, in high-risk corporate takeovers for another. At twenty-five, with a couple of million dollars under his belt, he’d decided to settle down. He’d bought himself a seat on the Exchange.

      Now, at thirty, he was head of his own firm, one of the most successful young stockbrokers in America.

      And one of the most bored.

      Zach frowned and paused with his hand on the hanger that held one of the three almost identical dark blue suits he’d had Howell express here from Boston. It was the truth. He was bored out of his mind. It was terrible to admit, but if there’d been one benefit to this last week, it was that it had, at least, ripped him away from the unvarying routine of his days.

      He shook his head. What was the matter with him? He’d come here straight from the Himalayas, where he’d been anything but bored, skiing a mountain that pierced the clouds and making it—well, almost making it— with…with whatever her name had been.

      What he needed was to get back to work. He had to get back to work. There were fat-cat clients to wine and dine, a dozen dull meetings to chair…

      “Hell,” he said, under his breath, and he reached quickly past the three suits, hanging shoulder to shoulder like the three Marx Brothers, pulled out the Harris tweed jacket he’d taken with him to the Himalayas and strode from the bedroom.

      The house was quiet, just as it had always been. Even when he and Cade and Grant were kids, they’d tried not to make any noise here, automatically saving their rough-and-tumble for the stables or the endless lawns and pastures. There was something about the Landon mansion, Zach thought as he made his way down the wide staircase, that didn’t inspire the sound of childish voices lifted in glee.

      It didn’t inspire the sound of voices at all, he thought, his mouth tightening. The dozens of guests who’d come back here after the funeral had stood around whispering to each other, and there’d been no doubt in Zach’s mind that it was the house they were deferring to and not the occasion.

      What an incredible circus the funeral had been! Judges, politicos, bankers, CEOs and board presidents from damned near all the Fortune 500 companies in the West had shown up, all of them looking solemn—and all of them trying to figure out which Landon son was the one who was going to take Charles’s place.

      A smile tugged at Zach’s lips as he followed the wonderful aroma of Stella’s coffee toward the dining room. What would all those bigwigs say when they learned that they wouldn’t have the chance to genuflect to any of the Landons? Yesterday, after the reading of their father’s will, the brothers had taken all of two minutes to agree that not a one of them wanted any part of Landon Enterprises.

      Zach would check out Landon’s corporate worth and put a price on its head. Grant would handle the legal end. Cade would decide which lost and forgotten, poverty-stricken dots on the map were most in need of hospitals and schools, courtesy of the sale.

      And that would be the end of it. Charles Landon’s gift to his sons would go the way of the dodo bird, a fate it surely deserved. Zach and his brothers would be free; only Kyra would keep any ties to the old man, but that was as it should be.

      His face softened as he thought of his sister. She was a sweetheart, the light of all their lives. He could hear her voice now, soft and musical, drifting from the dining room.

      “…still can’t believe Father left the place to me,” she was saying.

      Zach smiled as he stepped into the room.

      “Why wouldn’t he have?” He dropped a kiss on the top of her head and made his way toward the coffee urn. “You