LITMIR.BIZ

       One

      Sheets of icy January rain rippled across the Savannah countryside. Lightning exploded in the dark sky. Thunder rumbled through the magnificent oaks that lined the private stone drive, rattled the wide, sweeping branches and shook the moss-covered trunks.

      The night wasn’t fit for man nor beast, but when Abraham Danforth called his family to gather for a meeting, they came.

      Though white-capped waves crashed on the beach below Crofthaven Manor, Reid Danforth was warm and dry inside the comfort of his car. Duke Ellington drifted quietly from the BMW’s CD player, blended with the sound of the pelting rain on the car’s roof and the whish-whish of the windshield wipers. After a long, hectic day negotiating a shipping contract with Maximilian Paper Products, one of Danforth & Co.’s largest clients in Austria, Reid was grateful for the peaceful thirty-minute drive to his family’s house.

      A drive, Reid thought as he pulled in front of the tall, black wrought-iron gates, that was about to come to an end.

      Releasing a long breath, Reid pressed the remote inside his car, watched the massive gates slowly part. A flash of lightning lit the huge Georgian-style mansion at the end of the driveway; thunder boomed like cannon fire. Light shone through large, leaded-glass windows. Even to Reid, who’d been raised here in between semesters away at boarding schools, Crofthaven was an impressive estate. Built in the 1890s by Reid’s great-grandfather, Hiram, the large mansion had been designed to survive. A trait Hiram had also firmly ingrained in his descendants.

      Reid parked between two of the family’s three limousines and shut off his engine, sat for a moment and listened to the rain battering the roof of his car. It always took a few moments to make the transition between the real world and Crofthaven. Tonight his father would expect the entire Danforth clan to be attentive while he laid out the game plan for his upcoming senatorial bid. Family unity and support were critical to a successful campaign. Abraham Danforth did not know the meaning of failure, a fact that had made the already prosperous shipping magnate more wealthy than his forefathers. Wealthy enough to step away from the day-to-day operations of Danforth & Co. Shipping and launch a new career in politics.

      Because he was already late, Reid stepped out of his car into the piercing rain and strode toward the front entry. When he opened the oversize oak door, a gust of wind whistled around him, then swirled inside the white marbled hall. On a table at the base of the majestic sweeping staircase sat a large crystal vase filled with white roses that scented the air, as did the heavenly smell of roast lamb and oregano.

      “Master Reid.” Joyce Jones, Crofthaven’s head housekeeper, appeared suddenly. Concern narrowed her brown eyes as she moved toward him. “I was worried about you.”

      “I’m fine,” Reid reassured the woman he’d known the entire thirty-two years of his life. “Just finishing up some paperwork at the office.”

      Though the sixty-something housekeeper

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