He wanted a shower. He wanted to offer Gin a bed.

He wanted to know why she had called him to meet her out here after she’d driven for so many hours straight. Especially given that her voice hadn’t sounded right when he’d spoken to her.

Loosening his bow tie, Samuel T. slid the red and gold strip of silk from under his collar and then ditched his suit jacket. He also took off his shoes and his socks. Then he grabbed two rocks glasses, filled them with ice, and tucked a bottle of her Family Reserve under his arm.

Heading out on the porch, he sat down in the wicker chair next to her and started to pour.

As if she caught the scent of her family’s product, she opened her eyes and jerked upright. “Oh . . . you’re here.”

“And you’re back in Charlemont.” He extended a drink to her and tried to act like he wasn’t alarmed. “Where is that school, anyway? Connecticut? I didn’t think you could make it up and back in a day and a half.”

“It’s eight hundred miles and change. You can do it if you don’t sleep and don’t eat.”

“Not the safest of driving paradigms.”

“I was fine.”

“Why the rush?”

Gin stared down into her bourbon and moved the ice cubes around in their bath of liquor with her fingertip. “I wanted to come see you.”

“Your devotion is a surprise.”

“I need to talk to you, Samuel.”

Samuel T. frowned and eased back in the chair, the weave creaking as it accepted the shift in his body weight. “What about?”

As a lawyer who worked trials, he was used to reading into the vagaries of an expression and extrapolating what an eyebrow twitch meant, or how the corner of the mouth could reveal a lie . . . or a truth. When it came to Gin, however, his skills were disarmed because of his own emotions.

And he was seriously concerned. If she stayed with Pford, he had a feeling she was going to not only regret it, but be in danger. And although it was going to kill him to sit on the sidelines while she got hurt, Gin Baldwine was well known for making choices that took her into chaos, instead of away from it.

She sat up and rearranged that peach dress. The color usually looked fantastic on her—then again, what didn’t? But she was as worn out as that Mercedes parked out front looked, her skin too pale, the tight line of her lips suggesting she was upset and trying to hide it.

“This is hard for me.” She closed her eyes. “Oh, God, Samuel, please don’t hate me.”

“Well, I’ve tried that in the past and I’ve never made it stick.”

“This is different.”

“Look, if you want an annulment, I can help you and I’m not going to judge—I told you that before.” He thought of her coming forward and telling him that she loved him with a desperation he hadn’t respected because he’d assumed it was just one more game. “And I’m not volunteering to replace him, if you’re just looking for a bank account. But if you want more than that? We’ll see—”

“This is not about Richard.”

He frowned. “Okay.”

Gin went still. To the point where she barely seemed to breathe. And then he noticed the tears that were silently falling from her eyes.

Samuel T. sat forward. “Gin, what’s going on?”

As she sniffled and rubbed at her nose, he eased to the side and took out the handkerchief he always kept in his back pocket. “Here.”

“Thank you.” She put the bourbon aside and mopped up. “I don’t know how to begin.”

“A dark and stormy night always worked for Snoopy.”

“This is not funny.”

“Clearly.”

She took a shuddering breath. “Do you remember . . . way back when I was in school and I took some time off? I was pregnant then, as you know.”

“Yes.”

“And I had Amelia.”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember about nine months before I had her where I was?”

“With your professor,” he said dryly. “You were sure to tell me. With no small amount of pride, I might add.”

“Amelia was born in May. Do you remember?”

“Gin, will you just come out and tell me whatever it is—”

“She was born in May.” Her eyes lifted to his. “And nine months before, do you remember where I was? It was September.”

He threw up his free hand. “Why are you going in circles here? I don’t have any clue what you were doing way back then—”

“Fine,” she said sharply. “Do you recall where you were that September?”

“Oh, of course, ’cuz I can remember fifteen years ago—”

“Sixteen. Sixteen years ago.”

As an alarm started to go off way down at the base of his skull, the ringing sound drowned out his thoughts—but not his memories. Sixteen years ago. September. It had been right before they’d gone back to school . . .

. . . and they had met up in Bora Bora.

They had fought. And had sex. And gotten drunk. And had sex. And been sunburned. And had sex.

Samuel T. swallowed even though his mouth went dry. “What are you saying.”

Even though he knew. He suddenly knew.

“Please don’t hate me,” she said roughly. “I was young and scared. I didn’t know what to do—”

Samuel T. got to his feet so fast, bourbon spilled all over his hand. “Say it.” He raised his voice. “Say it!”

“Amelia is yours. She’s your daughter.”

He grabbed for the collar of his shirt, even though it was already open. And then the anger came, hard and fast.

“You fucking bitch.”

As soon as Lane heard back from Sutton, he returned to Easterly, leaving Lizzie with Miss Aurora and the doctors. He parked the Rolls in the rear by the garage, and then he entered the mansion through the kitchen—or tried to.

When he went to open the door behind the screen, it was locked.

So strange. For all his life, Easterly had always been accessible. Then again, there had been plenty of people inside the house, no matter the hour. Now? With Jeff at work, and his mother upstairs with a nurse in the middle of a twelve-hour shift? Doors had to be bolted.

Fortunately, there was a house key on the Phantom’s ring.

The hinges on the screen creaked as he propped the thing open with his hip, and then he was opening the solid door and taking a deep inhale of the specific scent of Miss Aurora’s kitchen: lemons and Danish and astringent.

His momma had cooked and cleaned in the space for so long, he imagined it would always smell like this. Or at least he hoped it would.

He went directly to her quarters, and had to stop as he walked in. The sight of that pair of BarcaLoungers was like a punch to the chest. It seemed like two seconds ago that he’d arrived here from Manhattan and she had cooked him his favorite soul food. And by all that was holy, he would have killed to sit just one more time side by side with her, their feet up, their plates on matching tray tables that folded away when they were through, the TV chattering off in the corner.

But that was no more, he thought sadly.

Snapping into action, it was easy enough to find the picture of him and Jeff from their U.Va. graduation, and the knife was exactly as Lizzie had described it: clean and in a plastic bag.

Dimly, he was aware of his heart starting to pound.

Miss Aurora, what did you do? he wondered.

Closing her door behind himself, he went over to the Wüsthof butcher-block holder by the stove.

Yes, it was the one that was missing.

Turning the blade in its bag over and over in his hands, he looked out the windows that faced the garage and the courtyard.

Miss Aurora’s red Mercedes was parked grille in to the business center, exactly where it had been since he had arrived home. And it was on an impulse that made him sick to his stomach that he put the knife down, went back into Miss Aurora’s suite, and got her car keys. Before he headed outside once again, he found a pair of nitrile gloves under the sink and snapped them on.

It seemed appropriate that there was a rumble of distant thunder as he walked across to Miss Aurora’s car, and he glanced up. Storm clouds were gathering over Indiana and about to follow the normal track of weather that would bring them to Charlemont.