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I looked at Cisco. “When were they hoping to start?”
“As soon as possible,jefe.”
I pressed my lips together and nodded. “We’ll figure it out. It will take some time to get another trailer set up, but if they can stay with another family in the meantime, I’ll work out the details.”
Cisco held out his hand and breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, sir.”
I shook my head as I gripped his hand. “Just Duke.”
He laughed and patted my shoulder. We both knew he wouldn’t be calling me Duke anytime soon.
Alone in my living room,I stared down into the deep amber bourbon as I swirled my glass. I pulled my black reading glasses off and pinched the bridge of my nose. Once I realized I had read, and reread, the same page of my book twice, I was giving up.
Ed lifted his head and rested his jowls on my knee, peering up at me with sad hound dog eyes. He let out a small whimper as his butt started to wiggle.
“You want to go check on him, don’t you?”
The butt wiggles got faster as Ed let out a small yip of excitement.
I sighed, gripping the sides of my armchair and pushing myself to stand. “Let’s get it over with then.”
Ed danced in happy circles as I made my way to the front door and out into the open evening air.
To the west the sun was setting over the blueberry fields, silhouetting them with a riot of oranges, hot pinks, and streaks of white. If old farmers’ superstitions were to be believed, the colors alone told me tomorrow would be another scorcher.
With Ed at my side, I walked down the steps of my porch, across the wide drive, and toward the red barn in the distance.
As I pushed through the door, two rogue barn cats scattered as I flipped on the light. Happy little quacks greeted me as I approached the makeshift pen. I peered down at the little duckling as Ed sniffed cautiously at the side of the enclosure. The duck was still scrawny, his downy feathers slowly being replaced with coarser adult ones. He looked like a gangly teen deep into the stages of puberty.
I hadn’t known what to do with the thing, and it didn’t feel right to leave it to fend for itself, so I created a makeshift pen that opened on one side to an enclosed area next to the barn. He wasn’t very brave so he rarely ventured more than a few feet past the opening. Every night as I made my final rounds around the farm, the little duck quacked happily at my feet and followed me into the barn, where I closed him in for the night.
Ed had formed some kind of maternal bond with the duck and was constantly checking up on him during the day. It was a cute kind of friendship—one you might see on the farm calendars people loved to buy in the shops downtown.
“Hey, Duck.”
He quacked back at my voice. I looked down at Ed, who continued to sniff at the enclosure and whine.
“I told you, he’s fine.”
I reached toward a shelf to grab a handful of blueberries and plunked them into Duck’s water dish. The berries floated on top of the water, and Duck greedily gobbled them up as he flapped his wings in delight.
A smirk pulled at my lips. I slipped my phone from my pocket and impulsively snapped a picture. He was kind of ugly, but pretty damn cute.
With my phone in my hand, I opened the text messages from Sylvie. It had been two weeks since I saw her at the farmers’ market. She had been so stunning it was like a punch to the gut. The way her caramel eyes played off the bright blues of the July sky was intoxicating. It had taken every ounce of willpower I had not to get lost in them in the middle of the crowded market.
It also didn’t help that she was there withhim.
Sylvie hadn’t made it seem like she was very interested in Charles, but the harsh reality of seeing her hand tucked into the nook of his elbow didn’t sit right with me. It was a harsh reality that I had watched each of my siblings find their soulmate, andI was left with nothing. Well, not nothing—an overwhelming knowing thatmy someonewas an impossibility. I could only watch from a distance as another man walked with her hand on his arm. Charles didn’t see that Sylvie was more than the woman who tried to hide in the background. She was funny and kind and incredible. He had no fucking clue—of that I was confident.
Eventually our conversations went back to the easy camaraderie they had been before, but something inside of me had shifted.
My feelings had gone from affection and secret longing to something deeper.
Hungrier.
Possessive.
I had imagined pulling her body to mine in the middle of the goddamn day at the farmers’ market and setting the record straight. Though I had no claim over Sylvie, it didn’t make seeing her with another man any easier. She was the worst person I could ever want, but I was consumed by her.
