No reason to define the “he” in that one.

Edward stiffly moved his body around so he could see Sutton without straining. She had stopped with the hose and was staring over at him, her eyes wide as if she had heard the ask.

“I need some time. I can’t give you an answer right now,” Edward said. “I’ve got to talk it over on my home front first.”

“We need you.” Lane tossed the hay stalk. “It’s make-or-break time, and you’re the key to the strategy.”

After Lizzie and Lane left, Edward and Sutton went back to the caretaker’s cottage. While she poured them lemonade in the cramped little kitchen area, he eased down into their armchair, feeling every ache and pain more than he had since he’d gotten out of jail.

As she handed him his glass, she sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him.

“What do you think?” he said.

She didn’t hesitate, but that was her way. “Lane is right. You’ve spent your whole life getting ready for the job.”

“I don’t care about the company right now. I mean about you and me.”

Sutton stared into her lemonade and he thought of the last time they had shared a glass. It had been when he’d gotten her to leave, right before he’d put himself behind bars.

And now they were here.

“Well, we’ve always been competitors,” she said. “Back before, you know, now.”

“If it costs me you, I’m not going to do it.”

She looked up at him, stunned. “It’s your family company, Edward.”

“And you’re my life. There’s no comparison at all to me. I’m happy to live out here on the farm, being nothing but a house husband. Or staying at your house with you and your father. I’m not . . . looking to fill any holes anymore. Lane is right, I take the job and on some levels, I guess I’ve ‘won.’ But William Baldwine wasn’t even a relative of mine. He was just an evil piece of work who screwed over everyone who crossed his path. I don’t have any scores to settle with him, because I’m at peace now.”

Sutton sat up on her knees and kissed him. “I have never loved you more than I do right now.”

Slipping a hand around the back of her neck, he smiled. “And you loved me a lot last night.”

The faint blush that hit her cheeks was enchanting. But then she got serious and settled back down on the floor.

Her voice became strong and direct. “There are proprietary issues that we will never be able to discuss, and there are strategies we’ll develop in direct response to competitive market conditions that could compromise the other person’s position. We’re two generals, on different sides of the battlefield. Can we live with that?”

“I don’t know. More to the point, is it worth finding out?”

They were both silent for a time.

“You know what, Edward?”

“Tell me, my love.”

“I think you need to make bourbon.” She smiled slowly. “I think you need to go and strap on your business suit again, and come meet me in the marketplace. Let’s do this. It’s the way we started out, and if there are any two people on the planet who can make this work?”

He started to nod. “It’s you and me.”

“It’s not going to be easy.”

“No, it’s not.” He looked down at his body. “For one thing, I’m still not getting around at top speed, and those days are long.”

“You can do a lot from home.”

“Actually . . . if I’m at my father’s business center instead of down-town, I could always crash at Easterly if I have to. And I could spend the nights with you at your house—after all, the farm runs itself, with Moe and Shelby and Joey. I wouldn’t be leaving them in the lurch.”

“You come from a long line of bourbon makers,” Sutton said. “And so do I. It’s in our blood. It’s what we do and who we are. Why argue with that?”

Edward sat forward. He wasn’t going to be naive about this. Having two people in a couple be in high-powered jobs was hard enough; having two people whose businesses were head-to-head competitors was a whole different level.

It was weird, though.

He had the strangest sense that this was the right path for them. It didn’t make a lot of sense, for most people. But for a couple of bourbon makers?

“Okay, I’ll do it,” he said as he kissed her. “So get ready to bring your A game, girl.”

That fire in her eyes lit up, the one that turned him on and made him feel like he was always going to have to chase her a little.

“I never put it down.” She nipped at his lower lip. “It’s you who has got to get up to speed there, Eddie, my boy.”

Edward started to laugh, and then he was pulling her into his lap.

Whereupon lots of A game proceeded to get laid down, to the consummate enjoyment of both parties involved.

THIRTY-NINE

As dinnertime came and went at Samuel T.’s farm, he couldn’t say that he had enjoyed a meal more in recent memory.

“—and then the professor asked me what I thought,” Amelia was saying.

“Which was?” Samuel T. asked as he sat back with his glass of bourbon.

The two of them were on the porch, sitting on the same side of the table so they could watch the sun set over off to the right. They had had steaks on his grill and a fluffy salad she had made and baked potatoes. And as they had cooked together, he was so glad she wasn’t a fussy eater who wanted tofu and kale and organic whatever—but he would have given all of those to her if she had wanted them.

“Well, I just believe it’s a faulty argument, and frankly, it bores me. I mean, if Fitzgerald was merely a social commenter, a kind of Andy Cohen of his day, why are we still talking about his books? Why am I taking an entire course on him and Hemingway? If you want to dismiss him as nothing more than a Jazz Age blogger, well then you sound like Hemingway, circa nineteen forty. Talk to me about his works, not his relationship with alcohol or Zelda. I’m simply not interested in conjecture over a personality that has been dead for nearly eighty years. The work, talk to me about the work.”

“Are you thirty-five, or is it me?”

She laughed and pushed her plate away. “People say that to me all the time.”

In the last few days, Amelia had come to the house for hours at a clip, the pair of them sharing stories, trading likes and dislikes, getting to know each other. Well, actually . . . that wasn’t quite the right description. It had been more like reconnecting with an old friend, which was strange.

And affirming.

God, the pair of them were so alike. Samuel T. had heard parents refer to children as their Mini-Me’s, and he had always dismissed it as the pabulum of people who had no proper emotional boundaries with the younger generation.

But this was what they were talking about.

This identical way of approaching the world.

“I’m sorry that you have had to be so old,” he said.

It was the first time he had tiptoed into any controversial territory. He didn’t want to bash Gin. Nothing good was going to come from that, and it wasn’t necessary. Amelia had been through what she had; she was well aware of the failures of her mother.

She had had to live with them.

“It’s okay.” Amelia shrugged. “I see some of my friends, and they’re just so flighty and unfocused. It drives me nuts.”

“Sixteen-year-olds probably should be that way, though. Or at least be allowed to be. I don’t know. I don’t have any experience with them.”

“Can I ask you something about my mother?”

Samuel T. cleared his throat. “Yes, anything. And I’ll do my best to answer it truthfully.”

“Were you in love with her? Was she in love with you? You know, when . . .”

Samuel T. took a deep breath. “Yes, I was. Your mother has been the only woman I’ve ever met who I can say I was legitimately in love with. But that doesn’t mean we’re right for each other.”

“Why not?”

He took a sip of his bourbon. “Sometimes, the person you have the best chemistry with is not the one you want to try long term with.”