“Right now?” He looked around. The crowd around them had thinned as most had taken cover on the back porch or beneath the auction tent. Another peal of thunder echoed around them.

“Yes.” She hurried toward the auction tent and pulled a camera bag up from under a table. She made quick work of drying the camera and then zipping it safely into the case before she gave him a look. “It’s just a rainstorm,” she said before marching away from the tent and house.

Charlie detected an edge to her words and followed her. “Is something wrong?”

Lane’s pace picked up as she got closer to the outcropping of trees lining the border of her parents’ manicured lawn. He kept up as she ducked between two large oaks and kept moving until she came upon a wooden structure on stilted legs and went inside. It looked like it might’ve been a child’s playhouse at one time. But years of weather had taken its toll on the wood, leaving it rotten and the nails rusting.

“Will you talk to me?”

Lane spun around. Water streaked down her face . . . no, they were tears. She was crying. Something was definitely wrong.

“I just . . . I have all these feelings. Inside.” She put a hand to her chest. “And it’s because of you. You’ve given me something back that I haven’t had since I was married to Mathias. And no matter how hard I try to fight it, I can’t help the way I feel.”

Charlie’s heart pumped faster. “I have feelings for you too—”

“But it’s not fair.” Lane held up her hand. Her face twisted with words she wanted to speak but was fighting back. “You deserve better.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not whole, Charlie. I’m broken. My emotions are here one second”—Lane lifted her hand in the air and then dropped it—“and here the next. Seeing you with that reporter reminded me of what I’ll never be, and I can’t ask you to wait for me to change. This . . . who I am will never change.”

What was she talking about? And then it hit him. Lane had witnessed DeMarco crawling all over him, looking for something she could headline for the ten o’clock news.

“That woman was begging for a story. There’s nothing in her that I find desirable. You’re the kind of woman I want in my life.”

“You barely know me.”

The tin roof above them dripped with the passing seconds.

“I know you cut your cinnamon roll in half and only eat the center. I know you always make double the amount of food you need for Friday Night Club so you can send extras home with families who need it.” Lane lifted her gaze to meet his. He swallowed. “I know that when you look at Noah, you twist the wedding band on your finger.”