“What the hell is going on!” the guy barked.

Lane wanted to scream at them to just leave him alone with his brother-in-law a little longer—at this rate, he was only going to need about five minutes. Just three hundred seconds, max.

Jeff had other ideas. He joined the fight to pry things free—and Lane kept the choke hold going for as long as he could. His woman was just as strong as his old roommate was, though, and the pair of them succeeded in getting him off of Richard, a bulldog no longer able to keep his jaws locked on the stick he’d claimed as his own.

As Lane went flying back and slammed into the wall, Richard rolled over and coughed into the carpet. His suit jacket had split open in the back—amazing, considering how baggy the thing was on him—and one pant leg was halfway up his pasty white calf.

Jeff got between them, splaying his arms wide as if he expected Lane to charge again. “Come on, buddy. What the hell are you doing here?”

Lizzie, meanwhile, went over to Richard. “Are you okay?”

Pford was coughing and dragging in air, a man who had nearly drowned on dry land. And when he could, he lifted his head. “I’m . . . going . . . to . . . ruin this family.” His voice was harsh, his breathing ragged. “I’m going to make you all pay. Every one of you. All of you!”

Lurching to his feet, he stumbled down the corridor, bouncing off the wall, crashing into one of the decorative tables, tripping over his own wingtips again.

Lane put his head in his hands and let himself slide until his butt hit the carpeting. “You can back off of me now.”

“You sure about that?” But Jeff stepped away. “And can I just say, you people in Kentucky—never a dull moment.”

Glancing up at his old roommate, Lane noted the dark circles under the guy’s brown eyes and the smudged black hair and the—

“You’re still working?” Lane mumbled while he nodded at the button-down and business slacks Jeff was wearing. “Or did you pass out in your work clothes?”

“I think it’s important to remain professional at all times.” Jeff took a load off in the hall, too. “And also I passed out reading spreadsheets.”

“Again,” Lane tacked on.

“Again.”

After a minute, Lizzie sat down with them, her baggy T-shirt and set of boxers from his own closet—and he loved that. “So, boys, what are we waiting for?”

As if on cue, Richard stormed back out of his room and came at them like a freight train.

“Oh,” she muttered, “this.”

The man had a suitcase in one hand and that busted-up jacket in his other. “I’m leaving, but I’m coming back for my things. You can tell your sister when, and if, she gets home that I want the ring returned or I won’t annul her. Don’t worry, I won’t ask for any money—I’m going to take it out of your fucking hides at the BBC.”

Jeff spoke up. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Wait and see, CEO. Just wait and see—oh, and this is personal. It’s not business.”

Richard lanked off, his long strides taking him quickly to the grand staircase. Seconds later, the front door was slammed shut so hard, they heard it all the way up on the second floor.

“He can’t actually hurt us,” Lane asked. “Can he?”

Jeff shrugged. “If he acts within the law, not really. But if he doesn’t? The cash-flow analysis I just ran is as tight as we can get. He might be able to sink us.”

“Even with John Lenghe’s help?”

By some stroke of amazing luck, John Lenghe, who owned about half of all the corn and wheat crops in America, had offered the BBC financing while they rode out the cash crunch.

In spite of the fact that he’d lost a fifty-million-dollar-plus poker pot to Lane just last week.

Lenghe was the father Lane wished he’d had.

“Yeah, even with his help.” Jeff peeled one of his eyes wide and looked to the left like he had an eyelash problem. “I was going to tell you this before the board meeting tomorrow. It’s even worse than I thought it was. Your father’s off-balance-sheet financing is all coming due. The bank debt is piling up left and right and there’s no end in sight. Pretty soon, those creditors are going to start dialing their legal departments and when that happens? Paying for production essentials like corn and rye is going to be the least of our problems. We’re going to be dealing with summary judgments for millions of dollars and bankruptcy.”

As Lane considered the embezzlement, he had to admit his father had been crafty about transferring assets into his control. If the man had just written himself a bunch of checks from BBC accounts, it would have been clear that he was stealing from the company. Instead, he’d identified other businesses and endeavors around the world and put himself in an ownership position in those entities, using both BBC funds transferred into something call WWB Holdings as well as bank loans that had the BBC as collateral. When those other companies failed—or didn’t even exist—as John Lenghe had disclosed? The banks still wanted to get their loans paid off and had the legal right to come knocking on the BBC’s door for all that interest and principal.

Lane shook his head. “My father’s ability to pick bad investments was unparalleled.”

“He was not business savvy, for sure.” Jeff got to his feet and stretched, his back cracking. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to take a shower and go to bed so I can get up and take a shower and go back down to headquarters.”

“As chair of the board, I’ll be doing the same.”

“Listen, it could be worse. We could not have paid off all the trustees with the money I gave you so that they’d vote the way we need them to. Best two and a half million I ever spent, getting those country-club idiots off my back so I can save your company. Second move was firing all those senior vice presidents. If three times are a charm, my next decision is going to be epic.”

Lizzie glanced at the guy. “Let’s hope it’s not wasted choosing between two conditioners in your shower. You don’t want to blow that kind of firepower on Pantene versus L’Oréal.”

Jeff regarded her for a moment. “I really like you, you know that.” He looked at Lane. “You don’t deserve her, just to be clear.”

“As if I am not fully aware of this.”

As the Bradford Bourbon Company’s new CEO got up and ambled off down the hall, Lane took Lizzie’s hand and searched for the right words. “I want to say something.”

“Okay.” When he didn’t go any further, she gave him a squeeze. “And that would be?”

“I wish I knew what it was. That’s my problem. I want to reassure you everything’s going to be okay, and it’s like . . . if I could only find the precise combination of words, they will defuse the bomb, you know? Put the pin back in this grenade. But that’s just crap, isn’t it.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Thank you.” He let himself fall back so he was lying on the runner and looking up at the crown molding on the ceiling’s edges. “You know, I’ve never done this before.”

“Tried to turn around a company?”

“Laid here.” He lifted his head and smiled at her. “Also never saved a company. But at least I have Jeff’s help on that one.”

Lizzie stretched out beside him and the two of them stayed like that for the longest time, like two gingerbread men on a cookie sheet, arms and legs out straight, feet lolling to the sides, shoulders and hips flat.

“I guess we should go back to bed,” he murmured as he listened to the house creak. “I mean, it’s pretty stupid to be just lying out here in the hall on the carpet. Especially considering we have that nice, far more socially acceptable bed, oh, about twenty feet away. Although granted, we would have to open a door to get to it, and that will require a lot of energy.”

“Or we could just screw it and stay here. Who’s going to care?”

“I love you.” As she laughed a little, he sensed the tension between them because of its current absence. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”