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"Don’t care." He crossed his arms, all hard lines and stubbornness. "You're staying put."
I huffed, willing patience into my bones. He was being impossible.
"Let me make this real clear." I slowly peeled a blanket off my lap. "If you don’t let me move, I swear to God, I will?—"
He leaned down, hands braced on either side of me, eyes dark and dangerous. "You will what, Elena?"
I narrowed my eyes. "I’ll make your life a livinghell."
Duke smirked. "Too late. You’re already doing that."
The smug bastard.
I scowled as he pulled the blanket back up, tucking it around me like I was a fragile thing. "You need to rest. The doctor said?—"
I huffed. "The doctor also said light movement is fine."
"That doesn’t mean wandering around doing ranch work."
“I was going to the damn kitchen, Duke.”
“Nope.”
“Duke, I?—”
“Nope.”
I threw up my good hand. “You’re suffocating me.”
“You’ll live.” He was completely unfazed by my frustration.
I gritted my teeth. "You're enjoying this."
He looked at me somberly. “You think I’m enjoying this? That you got shot? That you almost died? That I had to carry you bleeding? You think this is something I get pleasure out of?”
I blinked at the hurt in his voice. “I…I’m…I’m so sorry, Duke, I?—”
“I’m kinda enjoying it,” the asshole admitted and winked at me.
I was going to kill him.
But I knew he wasn’t wrong that I needed rest because I kept falling asleep at the drop of a hat. I knew it was the painkillers, but without them, I thought I’d pass out because of the pain.
I’d been hurt plenty. I worked on a ranch, and you had to deal with the occasional bruised ribs from an ornery horse throwing a fit, cracked or broken fingers from roping cattle wrong, sprained wrists from being yanked by a lead rope, cuts and scrapes from barbed wire and fence repairs, bruised tailbone from landing wrong after a rough ride, horn bruises from working too close to cattle…I could go on and on. Aches and pains were part of the job. You didn’t complain—you just worked through it. But getting shot was the motherfucking worst.
Four days after I was shot, Duke and Itzel (because she was onhisside) allowed me to walk around the house a little, as in, I could go to the kitchen and get something to drink, and Duke didn’t carry me to the bathroom, waiting for me to do my business, ignoring my embarrassment, saying, “I have had my mouth on your pussy, stop with all this being shy nonsense.”
On the fifth day, the sheriff showed up, or rather, wasallowedto do so because Duke had made it clear to everyone that I wasn’t to be disturbed in any way.
“If I’d known that I could get a week off work by getting shot, I would’ve gotten a bullet into me a long time ago,” I muttered as I sat on a kitchen chair, shrugging Duke’s help off.
“Don’t even joke about that,” Duke admonished. He sat next to me, his arm around my chair, his stance proprietary, his whole body coiled tight like a spring.
Sheriff Hugh Dillon was a no-nonsense man, so it was creepy as hell to see him amused by us. He was in his late fifties and ran the sheriff’s office with an ironfist. He was clean-shaven and had forgone the traditional uniform for jeans, cowboy boots, a button-down shirt, and a Stetson. His sheriff’s badge gleamed on his belt.
Sheriff Dillon gave me a rundown of what had happened.
I gaped at him. "You’re saying this was a professional hit?" I looked from him to Duke. "On me?"