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explained), Sean, Quinn, and Wyatt (nicknamed Wy), the youngest.
    â€œCase told us he’d break bones if any of us tried anything with you,” Marshall had told me when a bunch of us were out swimming one night that summer.
    I had laughed over this ridiculousness, saying, “You tell him that he’s funny .” And then, a spurt of anger flared into my belly as I treaded water. I said heatedly to Marshall, “And if I wanted to try anything with any of you, it would be my business. No one else’s!”
    Marshall, who was very good-looking but not really my type (as in, he wasn’t bound for a high-profile corporate law career in Chicago), teased me, asking, “Is that a hint?”
    â€œYou wish,” I groused, splashing him.
    â€œI’m jealous as hell over her anyway,” Marshall had said then, indicating Ruthann, who had been riding on her boyfriend Liam’s back near the dock, both of them half in the bag and laughing hysterically about Ruthie having apparently lost her bikini top, compensating for this by keeping her bare front side pressed tightly to Liam’s back. Her wet, curly hair, long enough that it hung nearly to her slim waist, made her look more than ever like a naughty mermaid. Marshall watched them intently, shaking his head, muttering, “I hope he knows how fucking lucky he is.”
    â€œI hate to say it, but you’re asking for it,” I teased him.
    â€œI know, I know, ‘I wish,’ right?” Marshall had grumbled, and that had been the end of that.
    And so it had been nearly seven years since I’d seen Case Spicer. And I was flattering myself to think that it mattered to him one way or the other, if at all, that I would be working in his hometown for the summer.
    Probably he ’ s married.
    He must feel more than a little ridiculous for all of the things he said at Camille ’ s wedding.
    Shit, maybe he was so drunk he doesn ’ t even remember.
    I ground out the last of my smoke and sighed, shaking my fingers through my tangled hair. I was exhausted but I knew myself well enough to realize sleep would continue to remain a stranger at present; I was too used to forcing myself to stay awake for studying. I recalled a poster in my one of my old law professor’s classrooms – Sleep is Overrated.
    Right , I thought, heading back inside. In my room I clicked on the bedside lamp, caught my long hair back into a clip and snatched the Capital Overland file from one of my travel bags on the floor. I had spent my last week at the apartment in Chicago poring over all the information I could gather about this company, and its parent affiliate, Yancy Corps.
    Capital Overland had been established in 1993, and had nicely capitalized on the dotcom boom in that decade. Yancy Corps had been around much longer, established in Chicago in 1893, one hundred years earlier. These days they specialized in real estate markets around the world, dabbled in stocks, and had apparently earned fortunes for their family over the past twelve decades.
    I had collected numerous data, on my own and in contact with Al Howe in Jalesville, relating to the current managers of Capital Overland, two brothers named Franklin and Derrick Yancy; the younger, Derrick, was in Montana as of this moment. Apparently he was the company front man in Jalesville, a dark-haired, smooth-browed looker perhaps thirty years old. I would have bet money his hands were equally as smooth, just like Robbie Benson’s; men who considered manual labor what happened when they went to the gym.
    I had no trouble imagining Derrick Yancy charming his way into potential sales; that look practically oozed from him. Charming on the surface anyway, sharp as the knife he’d no doubt plunge into your back, beneath. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was about him that bothered me, but an odd coldness had settled in my gut the moment I’d seen his picture. It had yet to