Are you thinking maybe someone killed him?

Hard question to answer, especially when, for him, he felt cheated because he hadn’t been the one to kill the man. And wasn’t that a tough pill to swallow, especially as he watched a fresh day dawn across the flat Indiana landscape.

In the face of so much resplendent beauty, his dark thoughts seemed like f-bombs uttered at an altar.

“Well?” Lizzie prompted. “Are you?”

“I don’t know. There are a number of people who have a motive, for sure. Most of whom I’m related to.” He frowned as he thought about something Deputy Ramsey had told him down by the river. “You know, the security cameras on the bridge haven’t been turned on yet.”

“What?”

Lane made arches in the thin air. “There are cameras mounted on the spans, and they were supposed to be recording footage that night. But when the police checked the feeds, they discovered that they hadn’t been initiated yet.”

“So no one knows what really happened, then?”

“Guess not. But Metro Police do think if he jumped it had to be from there. The other bridge is too hard for someone to get to the open drop—which is something Mitch said they were going to fix on the Big Five now.” Lane shook his head. “As for murder, though? No, I do think he jumped. I believe he killed himself. The debt, the embezzlement—it’s all coming crashing down, and my father knew this. How the hell could he have held his head up in this town now? Or anywhere else for that matter?”

“Do you know when they’ll release the body?”

“Ramsey told me as soon as the autopsy was finished. So it has to be only a matter of time.” He refocused on her. “Actually, there is something you could do to help me.”

“Name it. Anything.”

“It’s about the visiting hours for my father. As soon as the remains are released, we’re going to have to have people to Easterly, and I want it … I mean, I want everything to be as it should.”

Lizzie took his hand and gave it a squeeze. “I’ll make sure it’s done right. Of course.”

“Thank you.” He bent down and pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist. “You know, it’s funny … I don’t care about honoring his memory. It’s not for my father. It’s for the Bradford family name—and yes, that’s superficial, but I kind of feel like not on my watch, you know? Those people who come are going to be looking for signs of scandal and weakness, and I’ll be damned if they’ll get it. And I’m also concerned that Mother will want to make an appearance for something like that.”

Yes, it was true that “young” Virginia Elizabeth Bradford Baldwine, who was now over sixty, hadn’t been out of bed in the last three years for anything other than hair tending, but there were some standards even an addict like her was going to recognize, and her husband’s visitation was one of them. And people had been calling the house already, asking about what arrangements were being made. Not that that was about his father, either. Charlemont high society was as competitive as the NFL, and an event like a Bradford’s visiting hours was the Super Bowl.

Everyone wanted a good seat at the fifty-yard line.

It was all just so fake. And though he’d always known that, it hadn’t been until Lizzie had come into his life that he’d cared about the emptiness of it all.

“I’m going to promise you something,” he murmured. “After this is all done … after I’ve fixed all this? Then you and I will leave. Then we get out. But I have to stay to clean up this mess. It’s the only way I’ll ever be free of this family. Righting the wrongs of my father is the only path to earning my freedom—earning your love.”

“You already have that.”

“Come here.”

He reached for her and pulled her into his lap, finding her mouth in the morning light. Getting her naked was the work of a moment, and then she was straddling him and he was yanking his sweatpants down.

“Oh, my Lizzie,” he groaned against her mouth.

Her breasts were full in his palms, and she gasped as he cupped them. She was always a revelation, always new to him … every kiss, each touch like coming home and going to the moon at the same time.

Perfection.

As she lifted up on her knees, he shifted himself into position, and then they were together, her moving on top of him, him holding her close. She took all of him with perfect coordination, and with her eyes closed tightly, as if she didn’t want any distractions from what she was feeling.

He kept his open.

Oh, she was beautiful, the way she arched back, her head falling away, her breasts lifting, the light bathing across her magnificent nakedness and her blond hair.

This he would remember as well, he told himself. This moment on the far side of the fall, the near-drowning, the panic … this wonderful, vital moment with the one he loved, where they were both alive and together and alone, sequestered in a privacy no one else could touch and nobody could take away, he would recall this along with everything else that had happened tonight.

Yes, he thought. He needed to recharge his strength, his hope, and his heart with times and memories like this with his Lizzie.

He had battles to fight, and questions as to whether he was worthy, and worries about what was coming ahead. But she gave him the power to be the warrior he wanted and needed to be.

Forget the money, he thought.

Everything he really had to have in life was right here in his arms.

“I love you,” he gasped. “I love you …”

SEVEN

Edward was surprised when Shelby didn’t jump to her feet and strut off in a huff out the door. After all, good Christian women who were told that their employer wanted to kiss them tended to get rightfully offended. But the longer she stayed where she was, staring up at him with his boot in her hands, the more intimidated he became.

It was not supposed to go like this, he thought to himself. He’d banked on her backing away from him, leaving him alone, forgetting about the damn doctor.

“Sometimes the land must accept the storm,” Shelby whispered.

“What?”

She just shook her head as she moved up his lower body. “It’s not important.”

And she was right. Nothing much was important at all as she was the one who kissed him, her lips soft and shy, as if she knew nothing about seduction.