After a moment, Lizzie sat forward and took his hand. “I’m sorry. I just thought—well, I saw what I did, and you haven’t been talking to me about any of this.”

“What is there to say? All I’m doing is going around in circles in my head until I want to scream.”

“But at least I’d know where you’re at. The silence is scary on my end. Your mind is spinning? Well, so is mine.”

“I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “But I am going to fight. For my family. For us. And trust me, if I were going to commit suicide, the last way I’d end my life is in the same fashion he did. I don’t want anything in common with that man. I’m stuck with the DNA, nothing I can do there. But I’m not going to encourage any further parallels.”

Lizzie took a deep breath. “Can I help in some way?”

“If there was something you could do, I’d let you know. I promise. But it’s all on me right now. I’ve got to find the missing money, pay back Prospect Trust, and pray to God I can keep the business going. Bradford Bourbon’s been around for over two hundred years—it can’t end now. It just can’t.”

As Lane turned to look out of that big window, she studied his face. He was, as her grandmother would have called it, a real looker. Classically handsome, with blue eyes the color of a clear fall sky, and dark hair that was thick between her fingers, and a body that was guaranteed to catch every eye in any room.

But it had not been love at first sight for her. Far from it. The Bradford family’s ne’er-do-well youngest son had had pole marks all over him as far as she was concerned—although the truth was that under her disdain had been a vicious attraction she’d moved heaven and earth to ignore. And then they had gotten together … and she had fallen in love with him in typical Sabrina fashion.

Well, except in her case, the “staff” was a horticulturalist with a master’s in landscape architecture from Cornell.

But then Chantal had gone to the press four weeks later and announced she was engaged to Lane, claiming the child she carried was his. That had ended things for Lizzie, and Lane had married the woman.

Only to disappear up North shortly thereafter.

Horrible. What a horrible time it had been. Following the break-up, Lizzie had done her best to keep working at Easterly and stay focused. But everyone noticed when Chantal suddenly wasn’t pregnant anymore.

Come to find out later that the woman hadn’t “lost” the baby. She had “taken care” of it at a private clinic up in Cinci.

Unbelievable. And thank God Lane was divorcing her.

Thank God also that Lizzie had seen the light when she had and allowed herself to trust the man, not the reputation. Talk about near misses.

“Sun’s coming up,” Lane murmured. “It’s a new day.”

His hand stroked its way up her bare foot and onto her ankle, lingering on her skin in a manner she wasn’t sure he was aware of. He did that a lot, touching her absently, as if when his focus shifted away from her, his body was compelled to close the mental distance with physical contact.

“God, I love it out here.” He smiled at the golden light that drew long shadows out on her lawn and across the fields that had just been seeded. “It’s so quiet.”

That was true. Her farmhouse with its tract of land and its distant neighbors was a world away from his family’s estate. Out here, the only disturbances were plows off in the distance and the occasional rogue cow.

Easterly was never quiet, even when its rooms were silent. Especially now.

The debt. The deaths. The disorder.

“I just wanted to know what he experienced when he died,” Lane said softly. “I want it to have hurt. I want him … to have hurt.”

Lizzie pointed her toes to stroke his forearm. “Don’t feel badly about that. The anger is only natural.”

“Miss Aurora would tell me I should pray for him, instead. Pray for his soul.”

“That’s because your momma is a saint.”

“Too right.”

Lizzie smiled as she pictured the African-American woman who was more Lane’s mother than the woman who had birthed him. Thank God for Miss Aurora’s presence in his life. There were so few safe places to go in that huge historic house he’d been raised in, but that kitchen, filled with food both of the soul variety and the French kind, had been a sanctuary.

“I did think you were going to jump,” she blurted.

He looked directly at her. “I have too much to live for. I have us.”

“I love you, too,” she whispered.

God, he seemed so much older than even a week before, when he had arrived on a private jet from his hideaway in Manhattan. He had come back to Easterly to make sure Miss Aurora was okay after she had collapsed. He had stayed home because of everything that had happened in such a short time, the trajectory of his family hitting an iceberg hidden in the currents of fate and destiny, the seemingly impenetrable hull of the Bradfords’ two-hundred-year history, of their extraordinary financial and social position, pierced by a reversal of fortune from which a recovery seemed … impossible.

“We can leave.” Lizzie arched her foot again. “We can sell this place and take the money and live a very nice life far away from all of this.”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it. And hey, I could support us by playing poker. It’s not classy, but I’m learning that bills don’t care where the money to cover them comes from.” He laughed in a hard burst. “Although my family has been living off of liquor revenue all these years, so how should I ever judge?”

For a moment, her heart sang as she pictured the two of them on another farm in another state, tending a small patch of good, clean earth that yielded corn and carrots and tomatoes and green beans. She would spend her days working for a small city taking care of their municipal plantings. And he would become a teacher at the local high school and maybe coach basketball or football, perhaps both. Together, they would watch each other’s faces grow lined from laughter and love, and yes, there would be children. Towheaded, straight-haired children, boys who would bring home tadpoles and girls who would climb trees. There would be driving permits and high school proms and tears when everybody went off to college and then holiday joy when the house would fill back up with chaos.

And when the sun finally set upon them, there would be a porch with a pair of rocking chairs on it, set side by side. When one passed on, the other would soon follow. Real Nicholas Sparks stuff.