In a hoarse voice, he’d asked her what time it was, and she’d told him it was after eight. When he’d looked confused, she’d had to clarify that it was at night.

She had led him down the back stairs as if he were a child, taking him by the hand, talking about nonsense. The only thing he said was that he didn’t want anyone to see him—and she had made sure that happened, directing him away from the talk in the dining room, keeping him safe from prying eyes.

As she had drawn him out into the warm night, she had heard laughter from where dinner was being eaten in that grand formal room.

How could they do that? she’d wondered. Chatter on as if there were nothing wrong … as if one of them weren’t far, far away, in danergous hands.

At the time, she had had no idea what she was doing with Lane or why she cared so much that he was suffering. She only knew that the one-dimensional playboy she’d written off as a waste of privilege had become human, and his pain mattered to her.

They hadn’t gone far. Just down the brick walkway, in between the flowering shrubs and beds and over to the gazebo in the garden’s far corner.

They had sat together and not said much. But when she had reached for his hand, he had taken what she offered and held on tight.

And when he had turned to her, she had known what he wanted—and it wasn’t talking. There had been a moment of traffic jam in her head, all kinds of whoa, wait, stop, too far …

But then she had leaned in and their lips had touched.

The thoughts had been so complicated. The connection had been so simple.

But it hadn’t stayed that way. He had grabbed her, and she had let him. He had put his hands into her clothes, and she had let him.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, she had realized that she’d hated him because she was attracted to him. Crazy attracted. And she had watched him in the pool that afternoon, although there had been so much more than that: Every time he had come to the house or left, she had tried to get a look at him—even though she would have denied it to anyone and everybody. News that he was imminently arriving at Easterly had had the ability to electrify her, and his departures had subdued her. And the pathetic reality was that she had envied those women, those dumb blondes with their perfect bodies and their Southern drawls who had put the proverbial revolving door to his bedroom to good use.

The truth that she had not wanted to admit to herself was that she would have found something to dislike in him no matter what his demographics had been.

It hadn’t been about his money, his old family, the multiple women, his too-good looks or too-slick smile.

What she had hated about him was how he made her feel. The vulnerability had been a vicious intruder into her life, an unwelcome houseguest that had moved in, and traveled with her to work, and dogged her even in her dreams.

In retrospect, she should have listened to that fear. Chosen that instinct over the incredible attraction.

Life wasn’t always that proactively wise, however.

Sometimes you didn’t heed the warning signs, and you put the pedal to the metal, and you went screaming around the blind turn.

She still had pain from the crash, that was for sure.

EIGHT

Red & Black Stables, Ogden County, KY

As the sun began to set, its golden rays penetrated Stable B’s open bay, spilling onto the broad concrete aisle and leaving a trail of pure magic through which hay and dust particles ambled. The rhythmic sound of a box broom whisking down the way brought out the mares’ heads, their intelligent eyes and graceful muzzles popping forward in inquiry.

Edward Westfork Bradford Baldwine went slow on the sweeping, his body not what it once had been. And the effort wasn’t all that bad, the constant pain he was in ceding to the gentle exercise. The chronic discomfort would return, however, as soon as he stopped or fell into a different series of movements.

He had become used to that.

The combination of muscles and bones and organs that supported his brain on its journey through this current mortal incarnation was a machine that no longer made transitions well. It much preferred entrenched activity, repeated effort in a prescribed fashion or sustained rest in any position. His physical therapists, a.k.a. the Sadists, told him to stay active with varied pursuits, rather like, as they had explained, someone who was having to rewire their brain through occupational therapy.

The more he kept changing things up, the better for his “recovery.”

He always put that word in quotation marks. True recovery to him was a return to what he had been—and that was never going to happen even if he were able to walk right, eat right, sleep through the night.

There was no going back to that other person, who had been a younger, better-natured, better-looking version of himself.

He hated the Sadists, but they were just part of a long list of things for which he held enmity. And this broken body they seemed so intent on rehabbing was simply not getting with the program. He’d been at it for how long? And still the pain, all the time the pain, to the point where it was hard to gather the energy to break through that wall of fire and get to where he was in this moment, where things were working in some semblance of order.

It was as if he were meeting the same mugger in every alley he tried to go down.

He sometimes wondered if he would feel less worn out if it were a different criminal from time to time, a different foe making off with his quality of life.

The robberies had been from a consistent thief, however.

“What are you doing, girl?” He paused to stroke a black muzzle. “You good?”