“You whore! You fucked him, didn’t you! And then you ran away with him! You didn’t take your goddamn daughter to school—you went—”

Gin pivoted around, her hair long enough to let her turn. Richard’s face was twisted in rage, and she had some thought that this was it. He was going to kill her right here, her blood spilling over the black and white marble floor, her brother or maybe Lane’s fiancée the one to find her body.

Thank God she had hocked the diamond out of that engagement ring and put those gold bars in a safety-deposit box for Amelia.

And thank God she had told the jeweler and the bank manager that if she died, it was Richard’s fault.

And lastly, thank God she had come clean with Samuel T. At least Amelia would still have one parent.

Oh, and while she was making her final list? Fuck you, Richard.

Without being conscious of moving, she grabbed on to his forearms . . . and drove her knee up right between Pford’s legs, nailing him so hard, she felt the impact all the way through her own pelvis.

As he jacked in half and released her in favor of his manhood, she kicked off her heels so she could run properly and bolted for the door again. This time, as she cranked on the handle, a gust from the storm hit the front of the house and blew things wide open.

With rain and wind in her face, she raced for the Mercedes, skidding around its trunk, her bare feet getting torn up by the loose stones of the drive. And then she was in behind the wheel, slamming the driver’s door shut, locking everything. Her hands skipped and fluttered around the ignition button—

Boom, boom, boom!

Richard was pounding on the driver’s-side window, beating the glass with his fist—

“Leave me alone!” she screamed.

The Mercedes came alive with a subtle shiver and she threw it into reverse and punched the accelerator, the weight of the car lurching in Richard’s direction, knocking him down. She didn’t even look to see if she was going to hit him: As soon as the drive down the mountain was in front of her, she jerked the gearshift down and floored the gas.

In the rearview, she had a brief impression of him jumping to his feet, his arms banging on the trunk before he was again thrown off to the side.

Gin kept the car on the lane, even as gravity increased her speed and buckets of water lashed the windshield. Holding on with both hands, she didn’t dare turn on the wipers because she was afraid to loosen either grip for even a second.

At the base of the hill, she hit the brakes, the car skidding on the slick pavement as she came up to the gates. She was of half a mind just to ram them open, but she was worried the Mercedes wouldn’t drive afterward—

With a glance in the rearview, she prayed she wasn’t going to see any headlights.

Yet she feared Richard was going to—

Just as the gates were almost open enough, a twin set of beams made the turn at the top and started down for her at a dead run.

Samuel T.’s farmhouse had a kitchen that overlooked the same meadow that the back porch did, and he watched the storm come in through the picture window over the sink. Or, rather, he and his bottle of Family Reserve did. And as the ice cubes melted from his glass, he didn’t bother replacing them; he just continued on with the warm heat of the bourbon, neat.

As he stood there, his eyes tracking the rolling clouds and patterns of downfalls, his mind was a superhighway of random thoughts, fears, and regrets. He didn’t let any hope in. Too dangerous—

When his cell phone rang in the pocket of his discarded jacket, he didn’t answer it. He did not want to talk to anyone about anything.

God, the lightning was so beautiful, forking through the angry, aubergine sky, the sheets of rain falling as curtains from cloud to land, the thunder stomping through the air, an invisible giant.

Racking his brain, he tried to remember any time that he had ever seen Amelia: He had one vague memory from right after she was born. He’d come home to Charlemont and there had been an event at the Bradfords’—something that he had only attended because he’d wanted to eyeball the Scandal of Easterly.

Gin Baldwine, home from school, with her professor’s baby.

He’d had to engineer an excuse to go up to Lane’s room and then had “gotten lost.”

Gin hadn’t been home. The baby nurse had been uniformed, pleasant, and very protective.

Amelia had looked . . . like a baby. She had been swaddled in a pink blanket and there had been a mobile of plush toys over her head. Yes, he thought . . . a mobile with a white moon, three yellow stars, and a sky-blue cow with a milkmaid’s pink and lace dress on.

It seemed totally inappropriate that he remembered more about that fucking mobile than he did about his own child.

Or . . . maybe his child, was more like it.

And as he tried vainly to recall Amelia’s infant face, or whether she had hair, or what color her eyes had been, the enormity of what Gin had cheated him of became truly apparent: A father’s first moment with his child had been stolen from him. She had denied him that breathtaking, awe-inspiring, heart-wrenching meeting where he held an infant to his chest and vowed to care for her for all of his life.

Samuel felt a tickle on his face, and when he went to brush it away, he was surprised to find a tear on his fingertip.

Of course, Gin had also robbed his parents of their first bondings with their grandchild. Ever since Samuel T.’s brother had died, he had been the only son left in the family. And he knew that his mother and father were quietly waiting and hoping that he would settle down and give them another generation to carry forth the Lodge name.

There had been so much pain for the two of them, proof positive that wealth might insulate you from worrying about whether your house was paid for, but it didn’t do shit against destiny: They knew all too well that nothing was permanent, no life guaranteed. So heirs mattered, not just for the dissemination of material things, but as recipients of love and tradition.

They had never talked aloud of any of this, however.

Sometimes, though, unspoken hopes were the hardest to bear.

And so Gin had denied them of their proper first meeting with their grandchild.

Assuming Amelia really was his.

As a gust of wind shouldered against the farmhouse, the swinging bed on the porch got pushed back on its tethers, and some of the wicker furniture shifted over the floorboards as if it were considering taking refuge inside the house.

With a curse, he turned away from the view . . . only to stall out.

There wasn’t even anything to clean up in the kitchen, everything put away from breakfast, the dishwasher emptied, the counters tidied of the detritus of life.

Considering the chaos in his skull, he felt in desperate need of something that required his attention, a task that he could exert his intelligence over and improve, on his terms, in his way, at his choice and doing.

His mail and his phone seemed the two most logical avenues for this goal, and he went over to where he had dumped his navy blue suit jacket. Fishing out his cell phone, he accessed his voicemail. There were three messages, two from unknown numbers and the other from an attorney here in town who was suing one of Samuel T.’s clients.

He started with that one, which had come in just now, because why not. And as he listened to the guy make demands, he held the phone in place at his ear with his shoulder and began flipping through the household bills that had come in.

Deleting the message, he thought, Okaaaaay, maybe he’d tackle another situation first.

He triggered the next message down because he liked to do things in order, and as he put the phone back into position, he picked up the big flat envelope.

But the sound of a woman’s voice on the recording stopped him.

“Hi, Sam. It’s Prescott calling. I, ah, I’ve left you some messages. I haven’t heard back about this coming weekend? Are you going to join me or . . . or is the fact that I haven’t gotten anything from you the answer? Anyway . . . I’m just up in New York for today and tomorrow on a shoot. Then I’m back in Charlemont. It’s no biggie, either way. But, yes, I’d love to know what your plans are. Thanks, bye.”

Taking the phone from his ear, he hovered over the delete button.

He ended up skipping that and called forth the final message. It had come in about an hour before, when he’d been heading home with the top down and hadn’t heard the ringing.