There was no way she was going to be his maid. Ever.

“It’s in the silver dish between the sinks in my bath.” She plugged the dryer back in. “Go see for yourself.”

As he turned around, she noted how baggy the jacket was, how loose the pants were. No matter how much the man paid to have his clothes altered, he always ended up looking like he was wearing his father’s suits. In a wind tunnel.

She turned the hair dryer on again, but kept her head level. Pushing her foot against the cabinet under the counter, she turned the chair so that she could watch him in the mirror’s left flank. Now her heart beat faster.

She’d taken her engagement ring off and put it where she had so that no soap got under the basket of prongs. She had to keep that stone as clean as possible, for occasions just such as this.

Because, yes, she had done exactly what he had said. She had taken out the stone, sold it, and replaced it with a fake—although not for a Birkin bag.

For something so much more important than that.

Richard came back over like a lion tamer. “Put it on.”

Or something to that effect. She couldn’t hear him over the din.

“What?” she said.

As he threw his hand out like he was going to rip the plug free again, she turned off the dryer herself. She wasn’t sure where to find a new one if he broke it. Or how much the damn thing cost.

And who in the world ever thought those two things would ever be an issue for her.

“Put. Your. Ring. On.”

“I have my wedding band on already.” She held up her middle finger. “Oh, sorry.”

As she corrected her “mistake,” he went for her wrist and yanked her arm out at a bad angle. Forcing the enormous solitaire onto her finger, he managed to draw blood across the top of her knuckle.

“Both of them stay on. Next time I catch you not wearing it—”

“You’ll what.” She stared up at him with boredom. “Hit me again? Or do worse? Tell me, do you really want to end up a murderer like my brother? I don’t imagine Edward is enjoying jail very much. Unless your goal is, in fact, to find yourself in the communal showers with a bunch of men?”

“I own you.”

“My father tried that approach. It did not work well for him.”

“I am not your father.”

“You know, your voice is too high for Darth Vader impressions and that line’s wrong anyway. Although you’re correct, he never was a father—and neither shall you ever be.”

She cued the hair dryer back on and met Richard’s eyes steadily in the mirror. When his mouth began to move again, she smiled some more. “What? I can’t hear you—”

“What are you doing today?” he shouted. No doubt because he needed to let his temper out as much as he wanted to be heard.

Gin took her sweet time, allowing him to steam. When she was good and ready, she cut the dryer and put it aside.

Fluffing her hair, she shrugged. “Lunch at the club. Manicure. Sunbathing—which is cheaper than a tanning bed and to hell with skin cancer. Surely you will appreciate the cost savings in that.”

“You forgot something.”

“Not your ring,” she said dryly.

Richard closed in on her like a storm, his rough hands dragging her out of the chair and pushing her down to the white carpet. She had been expecting this. It was why she had goaded him.

She didn’t care what he did to her body, and he seemed to recognize this.

Thus, enduring him in this fashion was yet another way of remaining one up on him, unreachable even as he put his clawing mitts all over her.

Samuel Theodore Lodge III left the woman he had been with all night in his bed and walked naked into his bathroom, closing the double doors behind himself.

He had no interest in showering with her. He was finished, their energetic escapades during the dark hours certainly appreciated and enjoyed, but that was that. She would drive herself home, and he would put off her inevitable phone calls and invitations for as long as it took her to understand that there was no emotional potential going on here. No trajectory for a relationship. No hope of her ever becoming the grand dame of this gracious old manor house with its eight hundred acres of prime Kentucky farmland.

Turning on the six-headed shower, he looked out the bank of windows over the tub. The sun was well-risen above the verdant rolling hills, the intersecting lines of leafy trees delineating crop plots that he had left uncultivated. Perhaps when he retired from the law, some thirty or forty years hence, he would once more call forth from the good earth rows of corn and clutches of soybeans and fat, squeaky-leafed tobacco plants.

For now, however, he was resolute in his destiny to follow the well-trodden legal path of so many men in his long, proud Southern lineage.

While he drank enough bourbon to pickle his liver.

Which was another fine Kentucky tradition.

As he was not a person to move quickly or without deliberation, at least not while sober—or nearly sober—he took his time under the steaming hot rush. He did not shave until afterward, and when he did, it was at his sinks, using a cake of soap, a horsehair brush, and a straight-edged razor that he sharpened on a strop.

With a clean face and body, he felt far more awake, and he went into his dressing room and pulled on one of his monogrammed white button-downs. On the left, his lineup of hanging suits was a subdued collection of grays, blues, and blacks, but not all was dour. On the other side, he had sport coats and seersuckers in every color under the sun.

Today, he wore black, and not with one of his hundreds of bow ties.

No, today, the tie he wore was also black. As were his polished shoes and his nameplated belt.

Back out in his bedroom, he went over to his very messy bed and smiled at his overnight guest. “Good morning, lovely one.”

He used the term of endearment because he couldn’t remember whether she was Preston or Peyton. She’d been given her grandfather’s surname, he recalled that much, but she hailed from Atlanta, which was not where his people were from—so the particulars of the story hadn’t sunk in.

Dark-blond lashes lifted from a smooth cheek and bright blue eyes drifted over. “Good morning yourself, kind sir.”

Her accent was smooth as a sweet tea, and just as pleasing as when she had been gasping his name in his ear.

The woman went for a stretch and strategically pulled the sheets back with her manicured toe. Her body was as supple and well bred as any thoroughbred mare’s, and he quite imagined she would be a fine match for him in so many ways. He could provide her with the Lodge name as well as sons and daughters to carry on the traditions so important to both their families. She would age appropriately and nip and tuck only when necessary, recognizing that the best plastic surgery was that which was never noticed. She would join the gala committees of Steeplehill Downs, the Charlemont Museum of Art, and Actors Theatre of Charlemont. Later, when their kids were off to U.Va., his alma mater, the two of them would travel the world, winter in Palm Beach, and summer in Roaring Gap.

He would be faithful to her always in Charlemont, and also wherever they had vacation homes, his indiscretions discreet and never spoken of between them. She would be utterly monogamous to him, recognizing that her value was in both the appearance and reality of her virtue. He would respect her, quite sincerely, as the mother of his children, but he would never seek her opinion about anything concerning their money, his business, or plans about their homes, bills, or major purchases. She would resent him over time but resign herself to her role, taking enjoyment in besting groups of women with her status, diamonds, and the performance of her children, all of that one-upmanship occurring in social settings that were photographed by Vanity Fair and Vogue.

He would die first, either of throat or tongue cancer because of his cigar habit, or at the wheel of his vintage Jag, or perhaps from a cirrhotic liver. She would be relieved and never remarry, her choice to remain a widow one made not out of loyalty to him but rather because she would lose her life estate on the farm and in the other houses as well as the enjoyment of the interest on the stocks and money he would leave in trust to his children. In her later years, she would enjoy her freedom from him and the company of her grandchildren, until she died in this very room, some fifty years from now, a private nurse by her side.