Well, actually, those were just the texts. He hadn’t bothered listening to the voicemails.

Although he might finally learn her name if he did that.

Off in the distance, thunder rolled across the sky, and he thought absently that he was wrong. There would be no light from the setting sun on the porch tonight. Storm clouds had roiled up over in Indiana, the purple and dark-gray big boys promising a rough couple of hours.

“I want you to go,” he heard himself say.

“All right.”

“I will never forgive you for this.”

“I know. And I do not blame you.”

He thought about the last sixteen years of his life. Yes, he had gotten himself a fancy law degree and started a practice here in Charlemont that was thriving. He had also slept with how many women? Not a clue. More than a hundred? More than . . . God, he didn’t want to think about it. And how many nights out had he had, stumbling, laughing, drunk and stupid with other adult frat boys like himself ?

Where exactly would he have fit a child into all that?

Not the point, he reminded himself.

His choice had been taken away from him.

As Gin stared at him, he knew she was waiting to hear whether or not he would see Amelia—and his first instinct was to walk back into his house and slam the door without giving her an answer, just to hurt her.

“I want a paternity test,” he said as the first drops of rain began to fall.

“You can’t take my word for it? I’d rather spare her the unpleasantness. And she might feel as though you’re obligated thereafter.”

“I am obligated—or I will be if I am her father. I’m going to have to pay for things.”

“I’m not looking for money,” Gin bit out. “Do you think this is a fundraiser for her college or something?”

He shot a glare across at her. “You don’t get to pull any kind of holier-than-thou card with this. And there should be a test so that she knows she’s safe investing in any kind of relationship with me. Think about it. How would you feel if this news got dropped in your life all of a sudden. Wouldn’t you want to know for certain?”

As Gin got silent, he shook his head. “Has she never asked about me—” He caught himself. “Her father, before?”

“It hasn’t really come up, no.”

For some reason, he thought of those daddy/daughter dances they did at the club and at Charlemont Country Day. Had anyone taken Amelia? Or had she had to sit those events out while the rest of her friends went with their fathers?

Had she been sick as a child? Bullied? When she had woken up in that huge white house during thunderstorms, had she imagined her father coming for her and saving her, like some white knight—

“Who is she dating?”

“I’m sorry?” Gin said.

“Who. Is. She. Dating.” He punctuated that with a hard pull off the rim of his glass. “Does she have a boyfriend.”

“No.” Gin cleared her throat. “There was a guy she liked at the beginning of the year, but I guess it didn’t work out. She told me while we were on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.”

Okay, he was so relieved that some dumbass teenage boy with all those hormones and bright ideas wasn’t hitting on his little—

“I want the test.” He looked back over. “I want it so that I know I’m safe to feel for the kid. I don’t trust you, and after this, I never will. I’ll meet with her as soon as she gets back.”

He thought about telling Gin it had to be without her presence, but that wasn’t going to help the situation.

“Good.” Gin lowered her voice. “That’s good. Thank you—”

“I’m not doing this for you.” He turned his back on her and headed for the door into his kitchen. “I’m not doing anything for you, ever again.”

In spite of the fact that Merrimack had all but ordered Lane off the premises, he was not about to leave his family estate as the CSI vehicles showed up by the garages. Yet neither could he just hang out on the sidelines, a pedestrian bystander on his own damned property.

He ended up in the business center, in his father’s office—from which, every half hour or so, he would head down to the other end of the facility so he could look out of the shallow window in the supply room at what they were doing to Miss Aurora’s car.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t see much. The CMPD had put up a bright blue awning so that the rain that had started to fall wouldn’t disturb their investigation, and the thing had a side flap that the wind had to kick aside in order for him to get any visuals.

Merrimack was everywhere, though, going back and forth between the kitchen’s screen door and the car and the trucks. He didn’t seem to notice that there was a storm blowing things around, and in other circumstances, Lane would have respected the guy’s tenacious focus on the job at hand.

But he kind of hated the man.

With a curse, Lane turned away and walked back through the dim corridor. The business center had been ostensibly designed and decorated as a testament to the power and prestige of the Bradford Bourbon Company—but in reality, it was more like William Baldwine’s tribute to himself, the maroon and gold carpeting and the heavy velvet drapes and the company seals creating a cultivated environment of power.

Especially the reception area.

Behind the vacant desk, which had not been occupied since Lane and Jeff had thrown all of senior management out, there were flags of both the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the United States—as if you were entering the damn White House. And to that point, the space itself was even circular like the Oval Office, the carpet bearing the ornate Bradford family crest on it in the center.

The CEO’s office had an anteroom where William’s German shepherd of an executive assistant had enjoyed control over access to him. And beyond . . . was a space that Lane still had a hard time walking into.

For one, it continued to smell like his father’s cigarettes and cigars, the lingering tobacco aroma making it seem like a humidor with a throne and a desk inside. Then there were the pictures in the shelves behind the command center. Whereas Miss Aurora’s photographs were all of other people, William’s were always of himself with prominent folks like presidents, movie stars, socialites, and politicians.

Staring at the images, Lane picked out his father in each one. The expression on that distinguished face was always the same, no matter the age or context, whether it was black tie or on a golf course, at the opera or the theater, in the White House or on one of Easterly’s terraces: cold, narrowed eyes, and a smile that was, actually, not dissimilar to Merrimack’s.

A professional’s mask.

Then again, William had had to hide who he really was. He had come from a lesser Southern family and had set his sights on Lane’s mother as the first of many conquests. As for why she had married him? There was supposition that Little V.E. had taken a shine to him because he was so handsome, but clearly she had soon learned to regret her romantic notions.

Lane did look a little like the man.

Actually . . . quite a bit.

Refocusing on the desk, he went back around to the piles of folders he had taken out of the file cabinets in the business center’s back storage room. He’d reviewed most of the deals struck by the BBC under William’s reign, and found nothing out of the ordinary for a bourbon company.

Nothing owned by WWB Holdings, either.

And none of the businesses John Lenghe had detailed from memory.

Lane sat down in his father’s leather chair and swiveled things around. Underneath the shelves, which ran only halfway up the wall, there were a series of locked cabinets, and it didn’t take a genius to surmise that a man who was operating outside the scope of the law and who was not computer savvy would probably keep details of his deals right behind where he sat every day . . . in an office that, when he was away for so much as a trip to the loo, was guarded by that executive assistant of his . . . in a facility that, when he left for the night, was not just locked, but secured by an alarm system to rival the Smithsonian’s.

Lane had already tried the brass knobs before and found the handmade doors locked.

He was done with that.