The man didn’t sense her glaring regard and was thus unaware that this bomb had been dropped—or maybe he’d planned things this way, knowing that Richard would not be able to keep quiet and she might be diverted from making a scene because there were witnesses.
And damn it, her father was right on that one. As much as she wanted to jump up and start yelling, she would not demean the Bradford name in that fashion—certainly not with Sutton Smythe and her father, Reynolds, in the room.
Over to the left, a moan was covered with a delicate cough.
Gin shifted her glare from her father to Samuel T.—whereupon the lawyer promptly cocked a brow … and sent an air kiss her way.
“Yes, you can take her plate away,” she heard Richard say to the uniformed waiter. “She’s finished—”
“Excuse me?” Gin pivoted toward Richard. “But you have no right to—”
“I approve of your lack of appetite, but let’s not chance fate, shall we?” Richard nodded to the waiter. “And she won’t have dessert, either.”
Gin leaned in to the man and smiled at him. In a whisper, she said, “Don’t get ahead of yourself. I remember the days you stuffed your jockstrap with socks. Two pairs because one didn’t go far enough.”
Richard mirrored her. In an equally quiet voice, he retorted, “Don’t pretend you have any say in this.”
“Watch me.”
“More like wait for you.” He eased back and shot her the self-satisfied expression of a man with a royal flush in his hand. “Don’t take too long, though. The carat weight of your ring goes down hourly.”
I am going to kill you, she thought to herself as she looked at her father. So help me God, I’m going to fucking kill you.
As Lizzie took a turn off a country road, the dirt lane she headed onto cut through wide-open corn fields and was barely big enough for her Yaris. Trees stood guard on either side, not in an orderly row, but with a more casual planting pattern, one driven by nature more than a landscaper’s hoe. Overhead, great limbs linked up to form a canopy that was bright green in the spring, emerald colored in the summer, yellow and orange in the fall, and skeletal in the winter.
Usually, this processional was the beginning of her relaxation, the quarter of a mile to her farmhouse a decompression chamber that she’d often thought was the only reason she was able to sleep after a day of Easterly’s issues.
Not tonight.
In fact, she wanted to look over her shoulder to make sure there was no one behind her in the rear seat of the car. Not that you could fit somebody larger than a twelve-year-old back there—but still. She felt pursued. Chased. Mugged … even though her wallet remained in her purse and she was, in fact, alone in her POS.
Her farmhouse was classic Americana, exactly what you’d see on a poster for a Lifetime movie that took place over the Fourth of July weekend: white with a wraparound porch that had on it pots of pansies, rocking chairs, and a bench swing off to one side. Both the requisite red brick chimney, and the gray slate, peaked roof were originals that dated back to its construction in 1833. And the coup de grace? A huge maple tree that provided shelter from the summer heat and a buffer to the cold wind in the winter.
She parked underneath the tree, which was the closest thing she had to a garage, and got out. Even though Charlemont was hardly Manhattan, the difference in ambient noise was stark. Out here, there were tree frogs, fireflies that had nothing to say, and a great horned owl that had started guarding the old barn out back about two years ago. No highway murmuring. No ambulance sirens. No drifting strains of Bluegrass music from the park down by the river.
Shutting her door, the sound was magnified by the darkness, and she was relieved when she walked forward and triggered motion-activated lights that were mounted on either side of the glossy red front door. Her boots scuffed the way up the five creaky steps, and the screen door welcomed her with a spring of its hinges. The dead bolt lock was brass, and relatively new—it had been installed in 1942.
Inside, everything was pitch-black, and as she confronted the emptiness, she wished she had a dog. A cat. A goldfish.