She had lied before about pregnancies.

“Let’s just get through this,” he said through gritted teeth.

“And afterward . . .” She swallowed hard. “Perhaps we can have a future together . . . a true future, without interference from third parties.”

Is that what you call fucking my father, he thought. Interference?

And as far as he was concerned, the only future they had was signing the divorce papers that were going to terminate the mistake he’d made when he’d married her.

“Lane, we don’t have to end our marriage.”

Keep your mouth shut, old boy, he told himself. Just shut the hell up.

Chantal started to say something else, but then her voice was strangled by a moan. And suddenly, she jerked one of her legs up. “Get the doctor! Get the doctor!”

As Samuel T. followed Gin into the elevator of his penthouse’s high-rise, he was consciously aware of everything about the woman: The way her hair gleamed in the illumination falling from the inset lights above them. The smell of her perfume and that hand lotion she always used whenever she washed up. The perfect fall of her peach silk dress and the glimmer of gold at her ears and across her throat.

She wasn’t wearing a scarf today and he stared at her neck.

The bruises had faded already—or at least they appeared to have faded. There were fresh ones on that wrist of hers, however.

The subtle bing! that announced they had reached the top floor brought his attention to the button panel; as the doors opened, he retracted his key out of the slot that allowed you to get all the way up.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Gin said as she walked forward onto his thick carpeting.

“Do what?”

While the elevator closed itself back up and disappeared, he watched her body move across the wide-open living space to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the Ohio River toward Indiana’s farmland. She was such a stunner, those legs so long and smooth, her ankles tiny, her high-heeled shoes dainty. Her hips were likewise an erotic swell, her waist the kind of thing he knew damn well he could span with his hands, her shoulders the perfect break for that hair of hers.

Amidst the modernist, monochromatic decor, she was everything vibrant and sensual.

She glanced back at him. “Have that thing open right up into your space.”

What the . . .? Oh, the elevator.

Samuel T. shrugged and went across to the bar. “I think of this as a hotel room that I happen to own. It’s not my space.”

“Someone could come up here.”

“Not without this, they couldn’t.” He flashed her the key and then disappeared the thing into an inner jacket pocket. “What’s your noon tipple?”

“You’ve forgotten?” She sauntered over and sat down on one of the pale gray leather sofas. “I’m hurt.”

“Wasn’t sure if you’d taken a new preference.”

“I haven’t.”

Unlike the farm, which was filled with personal effects, family antiques, and things that mattered to him, this two-thousand-square-foot anonymous enclave was nothing but a party venue, an existentially vacant place to crash after he’d been out all night downtown. What it did possess, in spades, however, was every top-shelf liquor there was on the market.

Opening up a wine cooler the size of a Sub-Zero refrigerator, he took out a bottle of Krug Private Cuvée and then he snagged the LB Crème de Cassis from the room-temperature lineup on the shelves. The cassis went into the flute first, after which he peeled off the foil from the Krug, twisted the cork until a controlled pop! was released, and filled the rest of the way to the lip with the bubbly.

He chose some Bradford Family Reserve for himself.

He and his people didn’t drink anything but Bradford.

Crossing the distance between them, he handed her glass to her and waited as she held it up to the light, inspecting the color.

“Perfect.”

“You are a spoiled brat, you know that.”

“Tell me more. I’m in the mood for revelations, and I know that you lawyers love hearing yourselves talk.”

Samuel T. sat on the other end of the sofa and crossed his legs at the knee. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her and knew . . . knew . . . that he was the addict who had once again resolved to quit—yet was weakening by the second. Her with her haute couture clothes on and her taunting airs was his crack pipe and his needle, his rolling papers and his rolled-up hundred-dollar bill.

Her naked and on top of him?

That was his undiluted narcotic.

God, when he’d found out she was marrying Richard Pford—and then when she’d actually gone and done it? He’d been so angry, he’d vowed to fuck a woman in every place he and Gin had ever been together.

It had been, and was going to continue to be, a veritable travelogue of orgasms, the kind of thing that would keep him busy for six months or a year.

And he still intended to complete that itinerary with plenty of volunteers. But somehow, seeing her in that cemetery had chipped a hole in his facade of strength and intention to remain at a distance.

Yes, because grave markers and statues of saints and crosses were just so sexy.

Then again, Gin could have been anywhere, wearing anything, and she would have rocked his world. And the trouble with his plan for revenge? For his idea of working out his aggression with other women? No female had ever come close to Gin for him.

It was like treating a filet mignon withdrawal with Burger King.

“Where’s your husband?” he heard himself demand.

“You already asked me that.” She took another sip, her lips lingering on the knife edge of the flute. “And I told you, he’s working. Are you going to offer to be my protector against him again? Volunteer to put yourself in harm’s way to keep me safe?”

Tough, taunting words. But there was pain in her eyes, even as she tried to hide it.

God, he wanted to kill that sonofabitch.

“Well?” she prompted.

As Gin cocked an eyebrow the way she used to, and spoke the kind of words in the sort of tone she always had, he knew damn well they were both reminiscing on how they had been with each other. All that was gone now, though: She lacked the energy and he no longer had the inclination to get into one of their old dogfights.

“I will always come if you call.” He threw back his bourbon and surged to his feet. Back at the bar, he poured himself a second. That was more like a second and a third together. “You know that.”

“You could just bring the bottle with you,” she drawled. “More efficient.”

“I’m still drunk from last night.”

“Who were you with.”

“Nobody.” Which was not exactly a lie. Prentiss/Peabody/Whomever hadn’t mattered to him. “And you?”

“Richard was traveling. He came back this morning.”

As Samuel T. walked back across to the sofa, he didn’t return to where he had been. Instead, he went over to stand in front of her . . . and then slowly knelt down.

Gin tilted her head and regarded him with a heavy-lidded stare. “You look good like this, Samuel T. On your knees in front of me.”

He swallowed nearly half the bourbon in his rocks glass before putting what was left aside. Then he slipped his hands around the backs of her calves and stroked his way up under the hem of her dress.

“I thought we weren’t going to do this anymore,” she said in a husky voice.

“Me, too.”

“I told my husband I was going to remain faithful.”

“Then you lied to him.”

“Yes, I believe I did.”

With a graceful arch, she loosened her body for him, her legs parting so that he could move his hips in between them. Her eyes were to die for, that blue stare so deep, he was instantly lost. And as her lips parted, he knew what was going to happen next:

He was going to kiss her, and he wasn’t going to come up for air until he finished inside of her.

“I’m giving you a chance to stop this,” he said in a guttural voice.

“When?”

“Right now. Tell me to get off you.”

“Is that what you want me to say?”