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It was spread with enough food to feed a small army. Or a large ranch, I guessed. Scrambled eggs. Toast. Bacon. Fresh fruit. Pastries. Fucking chia seed pudding. All artfully placed like I had my chef do for me for an at-home photoshoot I’d done a few years ago.
Not that I actually ate like that. I had a celery juice, a coffee, and a cigarette right up until I quit. Then it was just the juice and coffee. Egg whites and whole wheat toast after a grueling workout. No butter. No sugar. Nothing on this bar.
“And before you politely refuse or nibble on one spoon full of chia pudding…don’t,” Harriet said. “You need to eat like a human being today. You’re gonna need your strength if you’re gonna go out on the ranch.”
My head snapped up and my gaze went between the women. “I’m going to go out on the ranch?” I couldn’t keep the child-like excitement from my voice.
Something moved in both the women’s faces. Surprise, maybe. They’d expected me to turn my nose up it, no doubt.
“We’ve got a spare horse, and we’re always looking for a spare pair of hands,” Amy said. “If you’re up to it.”
I snatched up a croissant. “Oh, I’m up to it.”
Duke had slept in.
He never slept in. Being in a family of ranchers meant you woke with the sun every morning, some mornings before it. There were no lazy teenage years for him where he woke at noon and lounged in front of the TV for hours.
He’d never done that.
And he’d never resented his family nor his life. Firstly, because he didn’t know any different. Secondly, because he loved his family, he loved the land, and he loved the horses. He loved the way the sky woke up, being able to witness that. He’d loved ranching because it was in his blood. But there was also an itch inside him, a hunger to experience different things, to live a different life to his father.
His father was happy. Even through the hard years, hard years on the land, and other harder years in his marriage. His parents loved each other fiercely, and they’d taught him that. They also taught him that love took work, hence the reason he hadn’t been all that eager to fall in love. He didn’t need the work.
Duke had plenty of work. Inside himself. Because to sate that hunger, scratch that itch, he’d left home with the idea he’d spend a few years serving his country, come back satisfied. Come back ready for the big sky, the stars, the simple life. Maybe for the complication of a woman.
But as his grandmother said: “When you make plans, God takes a look, and she laughs her fucking ass off.”
Which was what happened. It turned out, he was good at things in a warzone on the other side of the world. Things he didn’t want to be good at, but he was nonetheless. Then he was contracted to a part of the military that technically didn’t exist, doing things that never happened.
It fucked him up, you could say. Fucked him up so bad that he knew he’d never be able to live simply. Never be able to wake up and marvel at those Montana sunrises. Never be able to look his mother in the eye and pretend to be the son she used to have.
Good thing he met the right people and Keltan gave him the job, one that satisfied him. Or at least distracted him from how fucked up he really was. How much he missed home.
He went for holidays, Christmas, birthdays, but never for long. There was always a time limit on his stays, when whispers would sneak into his dreams, reminding himself of what he’d done, who he was now. Work was a good excuse. He knew it hurt his mother, worried his father, amused his grandmother, and pissed off his brother. But it was what it was.
Fuck, he’d never even told them he’d almost died in a hospital after getting shot by Lexie’s stalker. No way would he put that on their shoulders. He’d chosen this life and he wasn’t going to subject his family to it.
He hadn’t wanted to come here, to pretend once more, especially with a woman he didn’t like, but it was for the greater good. He could control shit here. Even after all these years, he knew the land like the back of his hand.
He’d been dreading bringing Anastasia to his family, only to watch them pretend to like her and silently judge him thinking this was the woman he’d picked to bring home to his family.
But then she’d surprised him.
To say the fucking least.
Upon setting her thousand-dollar shoes in the dirt of his home, she’d turned from ice-queen bitch to…a total goof.
The change jarred him, amused him, and hit him right in his fucking dick. And he continued watching her with his grandmother, get drunk off two margaritas—but two of his grandmother’s margaritas equaled about five anywhere else—and spout a story about how they met.
