“Ah …”

She took her purse off her shoulder and put it under the desk. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. Did you even let them know I’ve been hired?”

“I …”

“Right, how about you send them an e-mail? And tell them I’ll be calling around various places to get everything up and rolling?”

“I want you to know, in spite of the stunning incompetence I’m currently throwing around here, I am stellar at many things. Making bourbon being chief among them.”

As she smiled at him, Mack found himself looking into her eyes for a little too long. In her red blouse and her black skirt and her flat shoes, she was everything that was competent, attractive and smart.

“Well, I’m good at my job, too,” Beth said. “This is why you hired me. So you take care of your stuff, I’ll take care of mine, and we’ll be set—”

The Old Site’s cabin door opened, and Lane Baldwine walked in looking like he’d been in a car wreck and left the injuries untreated: his face was drawn, his hair a mess, his movements as coordinated as a jar of spilled marbles.

“We’re going for a ride,” he said grimly. “Come on.”

“Beth Lewis, my new executive assistant, this is Lane Baldwine. Yes, he is who you think he is.”

As Beth lifted a hand, Mack studiously ignored how awestruck she seemed to be. Then again, Lane had been one of People magazine’s most eligible whatevers a couple of times. Also on TV and in magazines and online for dating actresses. And then there had been that Vanity Fair article on the family, where he had played the role of the sexy, commitment-phobic playboy.

Talk about method acting.

And good thing the guy was reformed and in a fully committed relationship or Mack would have wanted to throat punch him.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m sorry about your father.”

Lane nodded, but didn’t seem to really notice her. “Welcome aboard. Mack, we’re late.”

“I didn’t know we had a meeting.” But apparently, it was time to hit the road. “Oh, crap. Beth, can you send that e-mail for me?”

As Mack gave her his sign-in details, Lane was already out the door and striding over to his Porsche. “And you’ll have to excuse him. There’s a lot going on.”

Beth nodded. “I totally understand. And I’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry—oh, what’s your cell phone? In case something comes up that I can’t handle.”

Mack picked up a BBC pad and a pen, and scribbled his digits down for her. “I don’t have any meetings scheduled for today—but then, I didn’t know I had this one, so who the hell knows what’s going to happen next.”

“I’ll call if I need you.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be. And I don’t know where I’m going.”

“Be optimistic. Maybe it’s Disneyland.”

As he turned away laughing, he told himself not to look back. And he almost made it out the door without pulling a glance over the shoulder.

Almost.

Beth had gone around and sat down at the desktop computer, her fingers flying over the keys. With her hair pulled back in a low ponytail, her face was the picture of professional concentration—but also lovely.

“Any chance you’re a U of C fan?” he blurted.

Those blue eyes lifted from the screen and she smiled. “Is there another college in the state? I’m pretty sure there isn’t one.”

Mack smiled and threw her a wave.

But as he walked over to the Porsche and got in, he wasn’t laughing anymore. “What the hell, Lane. You don’t return my calls, but show up here pissed off I’m late for something I didn’t know about—”

“I’m solving your grain problem, that’s what I’m doing.” The guy put on a pair of Wayfarers. “And you’re coming with me because someone has to tell my solution how much you require. Still mad at me?”

As Lane hit the gas and skidded out of the loose-gravel parking lot, Mack clicked his seat belt into place. “You get me the corn I need, you can slap me across the face with a dead fish if you want.”

“I like a man who thinks outside the box. And in my current mood, I’m likely to pull a pescatarian assault like that just on principle.”

NINETEEN

The Charlemont International Airport was located south and a little east from the downtown area, and Lane took the Paterson Expressway around the ’burbs instead of fighting with traffic through spaghetti junction. Overhead, the sky was a gorgeous robin’s-egg blue and the sun was bright as a theater light, the day presenting itself as if nothing bad could happen to anyone under its auspices.

Of course, appearances could be deceiving.

“You know John Lenghe, right?” Lane said over the breeze as he took the first of the airport exits and entered the ring-a-round.

“Of course I know who he is,” Mack shouted back. “Never met him before, though.”

“Well, put your Pepsodent on.” As he slowed the convertible’s velocity, the engine and the wind got quieter. “And get ready to be charming. We have twenty minutes, tops, to persuade him to front us your corn.”

“Wait, what? I thought—you mean, we’re not buying from him?”

“We can’t afford to pay him. So I’m trying to engineer a carry without the cash situation.”

Lane took an exit marked Restricted Access and headed over to the airstrip where the private jets landed and took off.

“So no pressure,” Mack muttered as they slowed at the check-in kiosk.

“Nope. None at all.”

The uniformed guard waved Lane through. “’Mornin’, Mr. Baldwine.”

“’Morning, Billy. How’s Nells?”

“She’s good. Thanks.”

“Tell her I said hello.”

“Always.”

Lane proceeded over to the modernist concierge building and kept on going, passing round-topped hangars where hundreds of millions of dollars of aircraft were stabled. The chauffeur entrance to the runways was a motion-activated gate in a twelve-foot-high chain-link fence, and he sped through, the 911 hitting the tarmac like something out of a magazine ad.