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Roberts slowly sank into his chair. He didn’t want to know what the hell Stanley had been keeping her for the last couple of days. He had frankly assumed that Stanley had finished with her and disposed of her. Good God. The puff of relief he felt as he processed the fact that she had somehow managed to escape Walter Stanley was very gratifying. And then guilt started to spill through him.

If he had known, maybe he could have– He should have helped her.

One more regret to add to the pile.

“What am I to do with it?” Roberts snapped, something he rarely dared to do with Walter Stanley.

“Find her,” Stanley said in that quiet, cold voice of his that was more terrifying than any roar. “And get her idiot brother and his idiot cousin out into the open. I don’t care what you have to do. Take them into custody. Keep their names off of the books. Once you have them, I will take them into my custody.”

Roberts swallowed hard.

“Do you understand me, Roberts?” Stanley said.

“Yes.”

“Good.” The line went dead.

Slowly, Roberts let out a breath and returned the phone to his desk.

One thing was certain, he was not going to find that girl and give her back to Walter Stanley.

But he did want to find Evelyn and he didn’t give a shit about the Lockwood brothers.

Brother.

Roberts leaned back in his chair, lacing his hands over his stomach, and began to hatch a plan.

Come to think of it, he had a favor to call in.

Chapter twenty-eight

Evie

Evie stood on the back porch, staring out at the trees of the orchard. This time of year, the air was scented with the honeyed-rosey smell of apples. At the end of the days at The Orchard, the men all came in after their long labors in the field, smelling of sweat and sunlight and apples.

It was so hot at night that most of them had taken to dragging their mattresses out into the fields and sleeping under the stars with the cicada lullaby to send them to sleep, rather than sleeping in the oppressive, sweaty confines of their small cabins on the land.

Evie had spent the last two nights sleeping alone in the carriage house. Alex stayed with Lindsay, and god only knew where Ryan disappeared to.

She hadn’t seen them so much as look at each other since their night of shared, intense passion. Alex smirked at her when she caught his eye. He touched her more often now, too, fussing with her hair. Her collar. Her fingers. Outward indications of a developing possessiveness thatfrightened her and simultaneously sent fire through her veins.

She thought about him often. The smell of him. The feel of his mouth on hers. The way he licked her blood from her with such rapture, such reverence. The way he’d said, “Hurts, doesn’t it?” after shoving his fingers into her ass.

And Ryan’s echo of that question reverberated through her too, reminding her of the ecstasy of that raw moment. Witnessing them together.

Ryan had avoided her entirely, which stung slightly, though she didn’t blame him. Things were complicated. He’d heard out her side of the story with stoic grace, but that didn’t mean that he’d forgiven her. And just because he’d allowed himself to be totally overcome with lust and give in to his desire to fuck her didn’t mean that there was anything between them.

Still, her body ached for his. The way his cock fit so perfectly against the back of her throat. The way it fit inside of her. The acute pleasure of reliving their coupling was hers to cherish and she had revisited the experience often the last couple of days, alternating it with her memory of him in the garden shed. The innocent sting of desire that had ignited between them.

How different he was then.

How very much the same.

The men were all out in the fields now, laboring to harvest the apples. At the hottest part of the day, they left their task and sat under the trees, drinking water and applejack and eating hunks of bread and Tootsie Rolls tostave off fatigue. When the heat lowered just a touch, they went back out to finish their work. The sky before her was stretching unbroken between the descending night and the unspoiled landscape, birthing a sunset the color of freshly spilled blood. It ripped across the sky and billowed outward, stretching its gory arms impossibly wide to encompass the drowsy, gradually darkening land.

The men would be back soon.

The taste of butter lingered in her mouth, along with the bitter, strong black coffee she’d had a short while ago. She lingered a while longer on the porch, hoping for the smallest hint of a breeze, but none came. Boredom was a chronic state these days. Though she tried to read, she couldn’t settle her mind enough to do it, and she alternated between napping and playing cards with Lindsay, and wandering around the outside of the house, thinking about what came next.

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