The Bourbon Kings

“Coming,” she called out. “What kind do y’all want?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Blindly heading for bottles, she picked up some gin and went back to the closed door of the bathroom. She didn’t bother to knock, just walked right in.

“Here.” She cranked the top off. “Drink from it.”

Except with the way his hands were trembling, there was no way he could handle the bottle himself without spilling it everywhere.

“Let me hold it for you,” she muttered.

There was a moment of hesitation from him, and then he lifted his mouth like a newborn foal who had been left by its mother.

He took two or three deep swallows. And another. “Now, that’s warm.”

Putting the gin by the side of the tub so he could reach it if he wanted, she took a full-sized bath towel and submerged it in the water behind him. When it was soaked and dripping, she draped it over the protruding ridge of his spine and the strips of his ribs. Then she went to work on his head with a washcloth, getting his hair wet, slicking it back.

Without him asking, she brought the gin bottle up again and he took from it, nursing from the open mouth.

Washing him with the soap and the shampoo reminded her of caring for an animal not long rescued. He was flinchy. Mistrusting.

Half dead.

“You need to eat,” she said in a voice that cracked.

I don’t have this in me, Lord. I can’t do this again.

She hadn’t managed to save that miscreant alcoholic father of hers. Losing two men in one lifetime seemed more than enough failure to go around.

“I’m going to make you breakfast after this, Edward.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Yes,” she said roughly. “I know.”

FORTY-FIVE

“So are we doing this again?”

At the sound of the male voice, Lizzie stopped in the process of transferring yet another Hedera helix spine into a fresh pot. Closing her eyes, she took a breath and ordered her hands not to shake or drop anything.

She had been waiting for Lane to come and find her. It hadn’t taken long.

“Well?” he said. “Are we back at this thing where you hear something you don’t like and shut me out? Because if that’s the script we’re running here, and it sure as hell looks like we are, I guess I should just hop back on a plane to New York and call it quits now. So much more efficient and I don’t have to run up a phone bill leaving messages on your voice mail.”

Forcing her hands to keep going, she put the root system into the hole she’d dug in the pot and began to transfer fresh soil in to fill things up.

“Something I didn’t want to hear,” she repeated. “Yes, you could say that finding out your wife is pregnant—again—is a news flash I would have preferred not to hear. Particularly because I learned about it right after I’d had sex with you myself. And then there was the happy news that you were being arrested for putting her in the hospital.”

When he didn’t say anything after that, she glanced over at him. He was standing just inside the greenhouse, by the workstation Greta would have been at had Lizzie not told the woman that she needed some time by herself.

“Do you honestly think I’m capable of something like that?” he asked in a low voice.

“It’s not up to me to decide anything of the sort.” She refocused on what she was doing and hated the words she spoke. “But the one thing I will say is that the best clue to future behavior is the way someone has conducted themselves in the past. And I can’t … I can’t do this with you anymore. Whether or not any of it is true isn’t the issue for me.”

After patting down the new soil, she reached for her watering can and tilted the thing over the ivy’s feet. In another three months, the plant would be ready to move outdoors to one of the beds, or to the base of a wall, or to a pot on the terrace. They had great luck with this variant on the estate, but it was only good planning to have backups.

Wiping her hands off on the front of her potting apron, she turned to face him. “I’m leaving. I gave my notice. So you don’t have to worry about going back to New York.”

She had no trouble meeting his eyes. Looking him in the face. Squaring off at him.

It was amazing how clear you could become with others when you knew where you stood yourself.

“You really think I could do that to a woman,” he repeated.

Of course I don’t, she thought to herself. But she stayed silent because she knew that if she really wanted him to leave her alone, the insinuation would hurt his male pride and that, sadly, would work in her favor.

“Lizzie, answer the quesiton.”

“It’s not any of my business. It just isn’t.”

After a long moment, he nodded. “Okay. Fair enough.”

As he pivoted and went for the door, she had to admit she was a little surprised. She’d expected some long, drawn-out thing from him. A torrent of persuasion she was going to have to deflect. Some kind of I love you, Lizzie. I really do love you.

“I wish you well, Lizzie,” he said. “Take care.”

And that … was that.

The door eased shut of its own volition. And for a split second, she had an absolutely absurd impulse to go after him and yell in his face that he was a colossal fucking asshole to have seduced her like he had, that he was a reprobate, that he was exactly who she feared he was, a user of women, a lying, cheating elitist sadist who wouldn’t know—