“How old are those trees?” Kate asks.

“About six hundred years,” I reply, and pull around the side of the house. “They’ve been here far longer than the house.”

“They’re amazing.” She bites her lip and continues to stare at the trees, and I can’t resist reaching over and tugging the delicate skin from her teeth, then smoothing the pad of my thumb over it. “I want to see everything,” she says, as she nuzzles my palm with her cheek.

“And I’ll show you.” I kiss her lips quickly before we climb out of the car and walk around to the front of the house.

“Uncle Eli!” Sam exclaims and tosses his ball in the air, catches it, and runs over to hug me. “Are you really stayin’ here tonight?”

“We are,” I confirm. “You remember Miss Kate?”

“Hello, ma’am,” Sam says, and holds his hand out for Kate’s, making my lips twitch.

“You can call me Kate,” she offers with a smile, but Sam shakes his head no.

“I’m not supposed to call adults their real names,” he says seriously.

“Can you call me Miss Kate?” she asks, and squats down so she can look him in the eye. Sam looks up to me for confirmation.

“You may.”

“Okay, Miss Kate.” He offers her his toothless grin just as her phone rings.

“Oh, this is Rhys FaceTiming me. Sam, do you know who Rhys O’Shaughnessy is?”

“Only the best baseball player on the whole Chicago Cubs team,” he replies in awe. I step back, shove my hands in my pockets, and watch Kate with my young nephew. She grins and accepts the call.

“Hey, handsome.”

“Hey. Whatcha doin’?”

“Actually, I have a young man here who is your biggest fan. Would you mind saying hi?”

“I get to say hi?” Sam asks with a big smile.

“Sure, here.” Kate turns the phone for Sam, and instead of getting embarrassed or shy, he launches into a million questions.

“Oh, my gosh! You’re the best batter in the league! What kind of bat do you have? How do you hit the ball so hard? Do you have to practice every day?” He takes the phone and sits on the porch, chattering at Rhys, who is chuckling and trying to get a word in edgewise.

“That’ll keep them both busy for a few minutes,” Kate says, and loops her arms around my waist, her face tilted up to mine. “Rhys loves kids.”

“You might have just made my nephew’s year.”

“Well, I have ulterior motives.” She grins as her hands travel up my back and down again, over my ass.

“Do tell,” I reply and kiss her forehead.

“I was thinking about doing this.” She stands on her tip-toes, but she’s still too short to kiss me, so I happily oblige her, leaning down to take her lips with mine. It starts as a soft, simple nibble, and quickly escalates to tongues and panting and me gripping onto her lower lip with my teeth.

“There’s a child ten yards away,” she whispers against my mouth.

“I know.” I cup her face in my hands, kiss her forehead one more time, and breathe in her fresh, Kate scent, then lead her down the brick walkway between the enormous, ancient oak trees. “They were planted hundreds of years before the house,” I begin.

“It’s so cool out here,” she says.

“Yes, thanks to the river just on the other side of that levy, and with the way the trees were planted, it creates a wind tunnel effect. No one ever imagined that air conditioning would be a thing. This was the first form of AC.”

“Amazing. Look at how some of the branches rest on the ground!”

Jesus, I can’t take my eyes off of her. She’s pulled her thick, auburn hair into a knot at the back of her head. She’s wearing a strapless sundress and flip flops.

I wonder if she’s wearing panties under there.

I intend to find out very soon.

“This is seriously the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“You’ll get no argument from me,” I reply, my eyes trained on her gorgeous face, just as she turns to me and smiles shyly.

“Way to lay on the Southern charm,” she says.

“I am Southern, and it may have sounded charming, but it doesn’t make it less true.”

“Miss Kate! Miss Kate!” Sam comes running down the walk at full speed, the way only a young boy can, with Kate’s phone waving in the air. “He wants to talk to you!”

“I’m dizzy,” Rhys says dryly, as Kate takes her phone and smiles at her cousin.

“He looks happy,” she says.

“He talks more than anyone I’ve ever met in my life, and that includes you. Cute kid.”

“I have to go tell Mom!” Sam takes off back to the house, and I begin to follow him.

“I’ll be up at the house, cher. Take your time.” She shakes her head, as if to keep me here, but I simply kiss her hand and smile. “I have to say hi to Gabby.”

Her soft laugh follows me as I saunter behind the excited boy to the house. I glance around at the freshly mowed grounds of the plantation and the flowers around the house. Birds are singing in the trees, and the breeze Kate mentioned brushes through my hair.

Why haven’t I ever noticed before how lovely it is out here?

Because I haven’t noticed much for years. I haven’t given two fucks about anything for years.

Except for my family and the business, and not necessarily in that order.

I climb the steps of the porch, then turn and look out at the trees and the amazing woman chattering away at her phone, smiling and laughing.

She’s the reason I’ve come alive.

***

“Gabby makes incredible cookies,” Kate says, as she pops the last bite of an oatmeal raisin in her mouth and tilts her head back to the let the sun warm her cheeks. “I could get used to this.”

“What, cookies?”

“Cookies and sunshine and just…” she shrugs.

“Just what?”

We’re wandering through the gardens behind the house, toward the slave quarters and caretaker’s home, which is where Beau currently lives. I take her hand in mine and bring us to a stop, turn her to me, and cup her neck in my hand. “Just what?”

“Just being happy.” The last word is said in a whisper, tugging at something unfamiliar in my gut. Before I can pull her into my arms, she smiles and continues walking. “What’s over there?”

“Slave quarters,” I reply. “Gabby had them refurbished, just enough to make them safe, so guests can learn and check them out.”

“You owned slaves?” she asks with a gasp.

“Not me personally, no.” I chuckle and tuck her hair behind her ear. I can’t fucking stop touching her. “Many generations ago, slaves lived here, yes.”

She frowns and bites her lip.

“It was two hundred years ago, Kate. That wasn’t uncommon in the South.”

“I know.”

“This way.” I lead her away from the slave quarters, through a rose garden in a riot of color.

“I want to check them out,” she says, pointing to the small slave buildings.

“Later. Let’s walk through the gardens.”

“What’s over there?” She squints her eyes, looking in the nearby field. “With the fence?”

“That’s the cemetery.”

“Is it old?” she asks with glee.

“Yes.” I raise a brow. “Do you have a thing for cemeteries?”

“I know it sounds weird, but yes. Especially old ones. They’re so interesting. Can we go look?”

“Let’s go.”

She walks quickly through the gardens, barely paying attention to the flowers. The gate to the graveyard is rusty, and a bit stuck, and I make a note to have it repaired, as I wrench it open and Kate hurries inside.

“I bet this is creepy at night,” she says reverently, looking about like she doesn’t know where to start, then makes a beeline for the very back and studies each headstone as she walks by. “There are dates here that go back to the 1700’s.”

“And there are graves on the property older than that, but the Boudreaux family started this graveyard around that time.”

“Why aren’t these graves above ground like the ones in the city?”

“Because the water table is different here. We’re close to the river, but we sit higher. Even during Katrina, we didn’t flood. We simply had wind damage.”