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Duke let out a long, shaking breath. “I fucked up big time, didn’t I?”
I almost laughed. “Yeah.”
“I’m gonna make it up to you.”
“How?”
“By showing you every damn minute of every damn day that I love you…and not just by pissin’ in the wind as Nash said, but by?—”
“Just let that metaphor go,” I cut him off. “I don’t need to know what you’ll replace pissing with.”
It was like we were back in time, playing and bantering. I couldn’t have imagined that telling him my truth would lift the pain, but it did.
He pulled me into his arms. “You gonna give me a chance,Florecita?”
“I don’t know.”
“You alreadyhavegiven me a chance”—he kissed my hair—“and I promise I’m not going toshitall over it.”
“You had to go there, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want to disappoint you,” he said, his eyes dancing with amusement.
We laughed again, real and open, the kind of laughter that came from the heart—the kind that loosened something tight inside me, something I hadn’t even realized I was holding on to.
CHAPTER 35
duke
“What?” she asked me for the third time.
“I said I’d like to take you out for dinner. And please don’t saywhatagain.”
I leaned against the doorway of her office in the stables, watching her work. Two reasons for that—one, my back was killing me from more hours in the saddle than I was used to; two, I was blocking her quick escape because that’s what she’d been doing with me for the past week. Avoiding me or sayingnoto me.
Despite our breakthrough at Nash’s grave, Elena was turning me down a lot.
I’d invited her to move into Nash’s house because the bunkhouse was no place for my woman to live.
“No, thank you.”
I’d asked her to stay the night with me.
“Absolutely not.”
I suggested a picnic by the river.
“I’m busy.”
A ride together?
“I don’t have time for that.”
And now, a dinner date.
She hadn’t answered yet, but judging by the way she kept her attention locked on her laptop screen, I knew what was coming.
Fuck me!The woman was making me sweat, and the ranch hands were having the time of their lives watching me practically on my knees, begging for her attention.