Not a bad run for either of them, considering all the other variations on the human condition one could get stuck in by virtue of the genetic lottery. And perhaps he would volunteer for precisely that blueprint, perhaps when the need to procreate finally struck him as a priority—which it absolutely had not up until now.

But until then?

“I’m so sorry”—Peyton/Preston . . . or was it Prescott?—“but I’m leaving for the day. My estate manager and the cleaning people will be here, and I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be in this sort of dishabille around them?”

She stretched again, and if her goal was enticement, he was afraid she was falling far short. Having already had all of that, there was nothing left to conquer and little to actually connect with.

And when he didn’t respond as she had no doubt hoped—i.e., by throwing himself in between her legs—she pouted. “Where are you off to in all that black? A funeral?”

“Nothing of the sort.” He approached her and leaned down, brushing her lips with his. “Come now, let’s get ourselves dressed.”

“I thought you preferred me naked?” She licked her mouth with the tip of her pink tongue. “That’s what you told me last night.”

Samuel T. glanced at his watch to avoid telling her that he didn’t remember much of the particulars past eleven p.m. Maybe ten-thirty.

“Where is your dress?” he asked.

“Downstairs. On the red sofa.”

“I’ll go get it. Along with everything else.”

“I wasn’t wearing panties.”

Now, that he did recall . . . from when they’d had sex in the Charlemont Country Club’s shoeshine room at around eight. The party they had both been at, a gathering to celebrate the impending nuptials of one of his fraternity brothers, had progressed from the grill room out to the pool. It had been himself, fifty of his brothers, and then Prescott/Peyton—or had it been Peabody?—and a number of other Tri-Delts who were sorority sisters of the bride.

Your typical May evening out, the kind of thing that was as lovely and forgettable as she was.

He’d be lucky if he remembered any feature of either as he drove away from his farm.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Get yourself up, dearest one. The day isn’t getting any younger and neither are we.”

When he returned with her Stella McCartney dress and her Louboutins, he was relieved to find her out of bed—and he had to admit, she cut quite a vision standing at the window on one side of his fireplace, her rather spectacular rear assets on display.

With her hands on her hips and her head tilted to the side, he was willing to bet she was trying to figure out exactly how much of the view he owned.

“As far as the eye can see,” he said dryly. “In all directions.”

She twisted around and smiled. “Quite a spread you have, then.”

“My father and mother own the thousand acres to the east.” As her eyes bulged, he simply shrugged. “I just have this smaller parcel.”

“I had no idea there was so much land in Kentucky.”

What did one say to that? Somehow, he didn’t think quoting the study that suggested intelligence was passed on to children through the mother’s side of things—and that perhaps she might be concerned on that point—was going to help matters much.

“Here.” He held out her things. “I really must go.”

“Will you call me?” She frowned. “I put my digits in your phone, remember?”

“Of course I do. And I will absolutely call you.” It was a lie that he had used many times, particularly in these situations that required expedited egresses. “I’ll be waiting for you downstairs. On the porch.”

Turning on his heel, he proceeded out and shut the door softly behind himself. As he bottomed out on the first floor, he went into his study and loaded up his great-uncle’s forty-year-old briefcase with files and notes. The packing was just for show, however. Where he was going next, work was going to be the last thing on his mind.

He was in the process of closing the old-fashioned leather satchel when his fingers lost their dexterity and the worn brass buckles became too much for him.

Hanging his head, he closed his eyes. In less than an hour, he was going to see her, and he was not ready. Not prepared.

Neither sober enough nor drunk enough.

Gin Baldwine was the sort of woman who, if he was going to be in her presence, he needed to be either completely aware of himself or totally obliterated. Middle of the road was not his friend.

Indeed, with him and Gin, it had always been extremes all around, great love, great hatred, great joy, great pain.

Theirs wasn’t a romance so much as a collision that kept happening over and over again.

With a familiar rush, all kinds of crystal clear memories came back to him, and as the onslaught hit, he reflected that perhaps it wasn’t the alcohol that had dimmed his mind to the events of the previous night with that P-named woman. When it came to Gin Baldwine, for example, he could relive countless bacchanals of longer duration and far surpassing intensity with the specificity of a New York Times article.

Oh, Gin.

Or, as he at times had thought of her, the Gin Reaper.

The littlest of the Bradford family’s Virginia Elizabeths was the thorn in his side, the arrow in the center of his target, the bomb planted under his car. She was the opposite of that lovely woman upstairs: She was not monogamous, she was never easy, and she didn’t care if you called her.

Gin was as predictable as an unbroken steed under saddle for the first time.

In the middle of a Civil War reenactment battle.

With a stone in one hoof and a horsefly biting its butt.

Things between the two of them had been an epic competition since they’d first gotten together when they were teenagers. No quarter asked, no quarter given, nothing but a steady stream of tit-for-tat that had left everyone else around them in ruins while they had continued to square off.

They had used so many others mercilessly in their game. Had trampled countless hearts more genuine than their own in the process.

At least until Gin had . . .

Dear Lord, he’d never thought she’d actually marry anyone—except for him, of course.

Gin had walked down the aisle with Richard Pford, however.

Well, presented herself in front of a judge with the other man, at any rate.

So now it was done.

Samuel T. thought back to her begging him to become her husband. She had come to him first—and he had blown it off as merely the newest incarnation of their legacy of chaos. But Gin had been serious—at least about the marriage issue. Who fulfilled that role was evidently unimportant—

No, that wasn’t true. The fact that she had picked Pford in the midst of her family’s bankruptcy? Talk about unassailable logic. Richard’s net worth made Samuel T.’s own fortune seem like lunch money for a kindergartner—and that was even, as they said, before people in the Pford family started to die on the guy.

Yet Gin was paying a high price for all that “security.” True, she was never going to have to worry about money again. . . .

But Samuel T. thought about her bruised neck. The hollow pits her eyes had become. The fact that she had gone from being a Roman candle to a barely lit match.

The idea that man was hurting her?

Well, that just made a fellow want to go get a gun, didn’t it.

Opening his eyes, he tried to remember what he was doing and where he was. Ah, right. In his study, packing up work he was not going to do, before he left for a funeral that wasn’t a funeral for a man that no one mourned.

Just another day in the life.

Proceeding out to the base of the stairs, he checked his watch and called up to the second floor. “Let’s go, my love!”

If he had to, he was prepared to carry the woman down on his shoulder and set her out on the curb. Which was not to suggest she was trash. More like a mis-delivered bouquet of flowers that had to move along to its rightful addressee.

“Let us go!” he called out.

As he waited for the woman to come down, he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to see Gin—or was desperate to avoid her. Either way, there was no denying that he prayed she would call him for help.