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I punched him in the arm hard enough that he at least pretended like it hurt. “Seriously? All this time, and you show up at the exact moment it would humiliate me most? No courtesy call, no warning, and here you are, kissing my mama on the cheek and palling around with my team? I’ve already horked up half my breakfast in my mouth—you even ruined that. And then you—stop smiling, goddammit!”
I hit him again, and he held up a hand to guard or surrender, I didn’t know. Either way, it wouldn’t work.
“I’m sorry,” he said, making a sad attempt at schooling his amusement. “No, I mean it. I’m sorry, Pop, it’s just—”
“Miss Blum will do. I don’t want to hear my name in your mouth, certainly not a pet name. Where’s your girlfriend? You didn’t want to parade her around in front of me today too? Don’t act like showing up was any more of an accident than it was at city hall.”
His brow furrowed. “Girlfriend? Oh, Evangeline?”
“Don’t play dumb, you son of a bitch.”
“Poppy—”
I shot him a look.
“Miss Blum.” He straightened his face. “I swear, today was an accident, and I told you at city hall that I didn’t know you were running. And, not that it’s any of your business, but Evangeline is just a friend.”
My jaw clenched so hard, my molars ached. “What the hell do you want with the mayoral office?”
“The good of the town, what else?”
“And you think that you’re the right man for the job?”
“You think you are?”
A sound left me that was somewhere between a growl and a shout, and I raised my fist, pointing the butter knife I’d inadvertently brought with me at him. “You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up like this, competing with me of all people. You left me here, Duke, just left me here like I was worthless and now you show up and try to take over the entire town? Do us all a favor and leave. Leave it to those of us who still give a shit about Lindenbach and go back to your Washington DC bullshit.”
He sobered. “I can’t.”
“You sure as hell can. Let me point you in the right direction.”
“No, I really can’t. This was Charlie Williams’s idea. He’s backing me.”
A tingling numbness crawled down my body. “The senator?”
Duke nodded, having the good sense to look apologetic lest I test the limitations of the butterknife in my hand. “I interned for him in college. He’s been mentoring me ever since. I’m sorry, I—”
“Liar. You’re not sorry—you’ll use us just like they taught you at school and in DC. They turned you into a monster the second they got their hands on you. So don’t say you won’t abandon us as soon as we inconvenience you. That’s the Duke Daniels special.” He opened his mouth to argue, but I’d heard enough.
He didn’t stop me when I turned and stormed back to the diner, my hands trembling and the stupid butter knife clutched in my damp palm.
Duke had the backing of a congressional senator and local legend. The futility of my situation overwhelmed me, followed by a wave of panic. When it washed over me, I was left with nothing.
Except for the wholehearted determination to win.
4
THAT’S ONE WAY TO DO IT
DUKE
Evangeline and I pulled into the Blum’s farm a few days later with an ace in my pocket and the nagging sense of guilt in my craw.
We’d spent the last couple of days digging around through the old clauses and brainstorming ways to get Poppy out of the race, and Evangeline had hit the jackpot. I only wished I felt good about it. Seemed sometime in the late eighteen hundreds, a banker tried to run for mayor, and in an attempt to bar him, a calf roping clause had been added into the bylaws. No one had enforced it in a hundred years.
Until now.
I should have rejoiced, but instead I felt like the asshole Poppy accused me of being. So much had changed since I’d left despite so much being the same. I thought I’d changed, thought I’d left it all behind, but when Poppy dragged me out of Bettie’s at knife point, that boy I used to be showed up like he’d never left. I’d gone back into the diner together as ever on the outside, shaken on the inside, while I chatted with Bettie at the counter and waited for my biscuits.
The problem with that boy surfacing was that he was in love with Poppy Blum. And at the sight of her distress, he’d come unraveled.
But that didn’t change the facts. I had a job to do, however unfortunate it was that Poppy was on the other side of it. Unless I could find a way to get her out of the race, she was going to get hurt, and I hated that I’d be the man who would hurt her.
