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He didn’t have to elaborate for me to understand what he meant. Dark shit. Messy shit. I didn’t know how messy or dark. Remembering the team, they’d all looked clean-cut, impressively attractive, and the offices were expensively appointed. Greenstone Security was one of the most reputable firms in the country.
But did I believe each of the men and women I’d sat at that table with were capable of illegal shit?
Totally.
“You’re good at being a cowboy,” I countered.
“Yeah,” he said. “Good at it ’cause it’s what I was born for, but life turned me into something different.”
“Why did you leave?” That was the big question. Plenty of boys left farms because of poverty, because of shitty parents, but this ranch had neither of those things.
Duke shrugged. “Would like to give you a valid reason, one that makes sense. But don’t have one, other than I was a stupid kid. Angry when I had no right to be. Bored. Thought I was meant for something more than this. Then September 11 happened. I felt it my duty, thought fighting for my country would be my calling.” Another pause. “War isn’t anything like they show you in the movies. People know that, because it’s the fucking cliché. But they don’t prepare you for how fucking boring it can be. Long stretches of nothing and short bursts of horror. It put everyone on edge, that kind of atmosphere, turned everyone into something different. Turned me into something different. Something useful for Uncle Sam. Then war did look like the movies, in all the worst ways.”
Duke still held my eyes in his gaze, forcing me to see just how haunted he was. “Came back different. Like they all do. Didn’t even try to come home. Knew that shit wouldn’t work for me. Couldn’t act like I was the son or brother they’d had. I made peace with it. My family accepted it because…well, you’ve met them. Because they accept just about anything from people they love. I came home for holidays, for as long as I could handle. Then helped Keltan build Greenstone.” He took another sip of wine. “I came here because I didn’t think I had any other choice. I came here thinking it would be torture. Not because of you, but because every time I’ve set foot in my home since I got back, it’s been like that. But not this time. This time it feels…different.”
I would’ve choked on my last bite of ravioli had it not been frozen on the fork halfway to my mouth.
Duke was saying things from my fantasy. Well, he wasn’t saying it outright, but the fucking meaning was there. Things I thought I wanted to hear.
My fork hit my plate with a clatter. I stood abruptly, gathering my plate and his too.
“I’ll do the dishes,” I said quickly, averting my eyes.
I didn’t give him time to answer, since I escaped to the kitchen. It was a shitty, selfish thing to do, something befitting of Anastasia Edwards. I should’ve been kind in the face of his brutal honesty. He was sharing all those pieces that I’d been craving, and I’d eaten it all, flesh and bones. But I didn’t know how to be kind. Didn’t know how to take the responsibility for this feeling.
I expected Duke to follow me. I wanted him to be pissed off at me—for not showing the emotional intelligence that a woman who deserved him would have.
But he didn’t.
He sat at the table, drinking his wine, and looked out the window at that view he owned, despite what his past was trying to tell him.
I took my time with the dishes, made the process as slow as I possibly could. But there was only so long dishes could take. The second the sink was empty, Duke was there. He’d been sitting at the table, drinking wine, watching me silently.
He wasn’t sitting now.
“It’s time,” he said, advancing toward me. There was purpose in his step, desire in his eyes, and sex in his words.
I retreated, quickly and clumsily.
He didn’t stop, not until he made me back into a wall and he caged me in with his hands on either side of my face.
My lungs struggled to get air with his closeness, with him pressing into increasingly sensitive parts of me.
“Duke,” I warned. It was meant to come out as a warning, at least. But I was thrown, by the change in his demeanor, by the aggression in which he’d backed me into the wall.
I’d known he wanted me. Of course. I’d stopped trying to convince myself it was all part of the act for his family. I was an attractive woman. He was stuck out here for however long. I didn’t doubt he had a healthy sex life before all of this. From what I’d seen, there weren’t any badass and sexy female ranchers in the immediate vicinity. It made sense that he was looking past his dislike of me and taking what he had in front of him.
