He braced himself for her to get back in the car and leave him behind, and reminded himself not to take things personally. She was all but a stranger—

“Is this place haunted?”

“Um, actually, yes. I have seen two ghosts. Some people say there are more, but I’ve only seen two.”

“It’s beautiful.” Her eyes clung to the roofline. Drifted over the farmhouse’s face. Lingered on the porch. “I mean, it’s so perfect.”

Samuel T. had to blink hard. A small part of him would have died in his chest if she had found his legacy a pathetic second fiddle to the grandeur of Easterly.

Amelia cranked around to Gin. “I’m staying. I’ll call you later—unless . . . can you bring me back home when we’re done?”

Samuel T. sniffed quick and tried to make it look like his allergies were acting up. “Absolutely.”

“In your convertible? I think that is the coolest car I have ever seen. It’s totally James Bond.”

And then she was setting off for his house, her long, wavy hair bouncing in the sunshine.

Samuel T. glanced back at Gin. She looked . . . ruined, her face downcast, her eyes pits of sorrow. He didn’t know whether she was mourning her sins, or scared of losing the girl, or . . . terrified that she was going to be in last season’s fashions as her family’s fortunes declined.

But none of that was his concern.

“I’ll drive her back,” he said. “And I’ll text you if it looks like she’s staying for dinner.”

He expected Gin to try to draw him into her emotional state. That had always been her specialty before.

Instead, she nodded. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

She got back into the Rolls like an old lady.

He didn’t watch her go. Instead, he went around to the porch and smiled as he found Amelia on the bedding platform.

“This is awesome!” the girl said as she swung back and forth.

Samuel T. nodded. “You know, that’s my favorite spot, too.” He had to smile. “I used to sleep out here when I was your age. Now that I’ve taken this house over from my parents, I should do that again, huh.”

“A person can sleep out here?”

“Mosquito net keeps the bugs off. And it’s real quiet. Peaceful.”

Amelia looked over the land. After a moment, she asked, “Can I paint this view sometime?”

Samuel T. took in a deep, ragged breath. He had expected to feel curious and nervous.

But it had never dawned on him that he would want to keep her as much as he did: His daughter, his own flesh and blood, was sitting on his porch, doing what he had done when the house had been his father and mother’s.

“Anytime you like,” he said in a voice that broke. “You can come here and paint that view . . . anytime you like.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

“Okay, so here are our three piles.”

Across the CEO’s office in the business center, Lizzie started to go Vanna White at the stacks of documents on the conference table, and Lane eased back in his father’s throne and put his feet up on William’s desk.

It was the end of yet another long day. After a series of even longer ones. But one thing he had learned? With Lizzie at his side, he could get through anything.

“Hit me,” he said as he smiled.

With a swivel of the hips and a pass of an elegant arm, she motioned over the left-most collection. “These are losers that are currently causing, or will soon be causing, problems.”

It was depressing to recognize that that category had the largest number of folders, and he rubbed his tired eyes. Jeff was right now on a plane back to Charlemont, coming home from having tried to negotiate settlements with seven banks. He’d been successful with two, persuasive with four, and had failed with one. And there were another ten out there that he was going to have to go visit in the next, oh, four to five days.

No pressure.

“Our next group is the not-yet-due group.” As Lizzie made a circling motion around those documents, his eyes found his way to her body. To the indent of her waist. The curve of her breast under that—

Lizzie put her face in his line of sight. And the smile she sported was pretty much the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

“Let’s stay focused, shall we?”

“When can I have you?”

“Be a good boy, get through this, and you can have me all over this office—until dinner.”

“Can we skip dinner?”

“No.” She kicked her hip out. “But you have all night after that, too.”

Things had been amazing, a new depth and commitment sprouting, wordless and powerful, between them: They had been spending the early-morning hours wrapped in each other’s arms, talking of the future, of the past, taking everything to a new level. They’d even picked a wedding date.

June twenty-first. The longest day of the year. The one with the most sun and least darkness. A fine way, they thought, to start the future together.

It was going to be a very small, informal ceremony at Charlemont Baptist, with no one but immediate family. Her parents were coming down for a week, and Lane was really looking forward to spending time with them. And then they were taking a honeymoon to upstate New York so he could meet her high school friends and visit her old haunts at Cornell. She figured she’d tell her family about the baby then, after things were a little further along.

His people knew because of what he’d said outside of Miss Aurora’s ICU room.

They had also spoken of much harder things, like his momma’s death, and Max’s revelation about Edward, and Lane’s worry over the business. And then there were her fears about giving birth and raising a child who was never going to escape the Bradford name.

But whether the subject was light or heavy, sad or joyful, he knew that neither one of them was ever going at something alone again.

“And this is our last pile.” She motioned over the shortest stack. “These are the I-don’t-knows.”

“Greta hates those.”

Lizzie nodded. “She absolutely hates them.”

Next, one by one, she picked up stapled sheaths of paper that had been laid out in front of the stacks. “Here are Greta’s tables. Each of the sets of papers has been assigned a number and is summarized by date, name of company, equity stake, valuation—if she could find one—debt, and lender.”

“She is amazing.”

“Her husband is making her take some time off for their anniversary and he nearly had to drag her onto the airplane. I think she’s going to last forty-eight hours and then she’s going to make him fly back from Captiva. She does not want anyone else touching her piles or messing with her system here.”

Lane glanced back at the cabinets behind the desk. After he’d broken them all open, he’d found a positive sea of documents that had been randomly thrown in there, forgotten and disorganized.

Greta had more than risen to the occasion. Thank God.

Getting to his feet, Lane crossed over the thick carpeting to the I-don’t-knows. “So in the unlikely event there are any assets to re coup, they’re in here. Because all the other businesses are known losers or didn’t exist.”

“Yup, that’s where we’re at.”

He took the spreadsheet that detailed the unknowns. Glancing through the list, he shook his head. “I’ve never heard of any of these entities before.”

“I can help to try to research them further. Greta focused on the most emergent companies and banks. But I’m sure—well, I fear—that there is more bad news coming with the rest of those.”

“Yeah, I mean—Tricksey, Inc.? Out of California? What the hell is that?”

“Do we really want to know?”

“Shit.” He put the pages of columns down. “And meanwhile, Jeff’s needed down at headquarters, but he’s stuck in the air. I don’t know how we can have him run the company while he’s chasing these lawsuits.”

“At least he loves it.”

“He’s really happy, in a sick way. He’s an investment banker to his core. He loves negotiations, facing off across tables. He’d so much rather be doing that—than making bourbon.”