Page 4 of Kentucky Nights (Dead Man’s Ranch #1)

She smiles, her cheeks turning a slight pinkish color before she clears her throat. Lifting her hands again, elbows to her side, she saunters over to the aisle Daphne steered her towards.

I stand on the other side of the counter, my hat still pressed against my chest as I get lost in the lightest green eyes I’ve ever seen.

“Can I help you, Sir?”

“Please, call me Kentucky.”

A feverish grin spreads across her face. She tucks her hair behind her ear and glances down. Holding out her hand, she gets the courage to look up at me. “I’m Daphne Reynolds.”

Taking her hand gently with mine, I lock our gazes and kiss the top of her knuckles. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Reynolds.”

“Please,” she says breathlessly. “Call me Daphne.”

“Daphne,” I whisper, completely smitten with a woman I’ve never met before. “I haven’t seen you around Hank’s before. Are you new to town?”

“I am. Hank is my grandfather. He needed help around the store.”

“Grandfather?” I’ve been in this town for more years than I can count. I don’t remember Hank mentioning a granddaughter.

“Daphne.” A hunched-over man on a cane comes from the door behind her. His head is bald, casting the reflection of the sun. “You aren’t giving my best customer a hard time, are you?”

“No, Papa. I am just meeting Mr…” Her thin brows pinch together. “I didn’t get your last name, I’m sorry.”

“Jones. Kentucky Jones.” My fangs tingle to breach my gums, wanting to sink into the flawless, smooth skin of her neck.

How would she react to me being a monster? Would she embrace me like I can’t embrace myself, or would she run?

“Mr. Jones,” she finally finishes her sentence.

“Kentucky always comes in at the same time every week and pays in cash.” Hank’s glasses are perched on the tip of his nose, the dark hairs a little too long coming from his nostrils blend in with a grey mustache.

He scoots in next to Daphne. “Here is what he gets, Daphne.” Hank writes down my entire order for proof of purchase.

“Hank, you never told me you had a granddaughter. Is she taking over the store when you retire?” I don’t want to be rude, but I need to know where this woman has been hiding. “Apologies if I’m steppin’ on business that ain’t mine.”

Hank waves me away. “You have contributed plenty to my business, which makes it your business, Mr. Jones. You know my son? William?”

I nod, still never taking my interest away from Daphne.

“Well, God rest her soul, his wife died a few years back. I don’t know if you remember?—”

“—I do. I was sorry to hear about your daughter-in-law.”

“Well, he got remarried. She’s a lovely woman who also lost her husband in the war. Daphne is her daughter from her first marriage and my only grandbaby so far. I keep telling them I’m not getting any younger. I want more grandchildren.”

I chuckle to hide the sadness that stabs through my chest. His talk of children reminds me that I will never be able to have my own.

As I continue staring upon the prettiest star I have ever seen, I wonder if Daphne wants children.

If she does, if we ever get to the point where we tell our truths to one another, I couldn’t take that choice away from her.

“Do you have Romeo with you?” he asks, Hank’s eyes shining bright at the mention of my horse.

I grin, placing my hat atop my head again. “As always. I don’t go anywhere without him, Hank. I have your wagon attached to him as well.”

It’s been years since I’ve had his wagon. I offered to pay monthly for it, but at this point, I should just offer to buy it. I think the monthly expense helps Hank more when it comes to supplying the store. Until he brings it up as an issue, I’m going to keep my mouth closed.

“Excellent. Daphne. You have to see his horse. He is gorgeous and has red eyes. I have never seen one with red eyes before, and the strongest damn horse I have ever seen, excuse my language, Daphne,” Hank snickers.

“He’s out front. I can pull him around back to load the wagon. He’s tied at the trough,” I explain, fighting the urge to contain the vampire nature welling up inside me the longer I stare at Daphne.

“No, no. You’re the customer. I’ll have another employee bring Romeo around back.”

“Remember, Hank. Your employee has to introduce themselves and say they know me, or you won’t be able to move Romeo an inch from where he stands.” I give him a friendly reminder, not wanting Romeo to kill an innocent worker for doing their job.

“I know. I can’t believe that works, but you told me he’d become violent if we didn’t take your warning, and I don’t want to know what damage that horse will do.”

No, he doesn’t want to know. Romeo is an anomaly. Most likely, the only one of his kind. I’m sure I broke some type of vampire rule when I changed him, if vampire rules exist, I’m not sure, since the only one I knew, I killed.

“I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere, Mr. Jones. I would love to chat.”

“Sure, Hank.” My obsessed gaze for Daphne falls to her again. “Respectfully, I don’t see myself going anywhere.”

Hank looks from me to Daphne, then back to me, and a knowing smile rounds his plump red cheeks.

Daphne’s blood becomes sweet as her heart rate increases. She twiddles with the locket hanging around her neck, nibbling the corner of her bottom lip.

“Do you mind me asking if you have anyone special in your locket, ma’am?” I take off my hat again, not wanting to be disrespectful while talking to a lady such as Daphne.

“Please, call me Daphne.”

“As long as you call me Kentucky. Then, I’ll consider us even.” I smile, and she places the back of her hand on her cheek as if she is checking her temperature.

“Deal,” she says in a breathless way that has me leaning in, wanting to be closer. She opens her locket, and to my surprise, there is nothing in it.

My brows raise in confusion. “Did the photo up and walk away, Ms. Daphne?”

“Just Daphne,” her tone is sweet and light like the air in her reply to me.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Not ma’am either!” she giggles. “But no, I don’t think I have anything important enough to me yet. You know? Something or someone really special, hanging right here over my heart. To me, a locket isn’t just something that holds an image, but it’s meant to hold love that’s connected to the heart.”

“Is that what you want? A love so important it stays with you, like that locket?”

She pinches her lips together, tilts her mouth sideways, and pretends to think. Her finger taps her lips before she snickers in sweet, bountiful giggles. “Yeah, Kentucky. Just like that.”

We lock eyes, not saying a word, and I can’t help but wish I had met her in a different time, in a different life, where I couldn’t kill her because of my need.

I slip her locket off the corner of the picture frame, my eyes pooling with tears as I open it like I do every morning. A slight click opens the delicate silver. It burns my fingertips, but I don’t really care about the slight pain when I know I can heal.

Pushing the oval face to the left, the first tear falls when I open it to reveal a photo of me on the left and a picture of us on the right.

She got what she wanted, and I wish it were enough to soothe the ache of missing her.

I’m only content because I know she was happy in the end.

I remember her wrinkled, spotted hand taking mine.

She was always so cold at that age. Her long, strawberry blonde hair had turned white.

Those light green eyes I fell in love with were cloudy.

Daphne couldn’t see in the end, but she knew I looked the same as the day I met her.

“Always so handsome,” her voice shook with age.

I leaned into her touch, bringing her hand to my cheek so she could feel me. I didn’t care that she was old or that she didn’t look as young as when we met. I wanted to die with her, but she didn’t let me. She wouldn’t allow me to die.

“Promise me, Kentucky. You’ll live another full life and love another. Your heart is too good and too full of love to give. You might meet your fated mate.”

“I don’t want her. I want you, ma’am. Just you.”

“What did I tell you about calling me ma’am?”

I couldn’t laugh at her joke when I could hear her heart slowing. It was subtle. She couldn’t feel it yet, but I could.

“—Kentucky. Promise me.”

“I can’t do that, Daphne. I won’t break a promise.”

“You gave me what I wanted. It’s time for you to have what I’ve had all these years.”

“I did. I got you, didn’t I?”

“You know what I mean, Kentucky.”

“What did I give you? I could have turned you ? —”

“—It’s not what I wanted, and it isn’t what you wanted. You gave me love important enough to stick with me. It’s your turn.”

“Daphne, your love will stick with me for all eternity, fated mate or not.”

She died a moment later with a smile on her last breath.

I didn’t bury her right away. I couldn’t. Fifty-ish years of us being together, and all I had left was her shell. She was mine in that lifetime. I just wish the world weren’t so cruel and could have given her to me for all my lifetimes.

The locket is fisted in my hand when the scent of blood infiltrates the air, ruining my morning routine. With tears still wetting my cheeks, my vision turns a predatory shade of red, and my fangs breach my gums.

I reach for my 1847 Colt Walker Revolver hanging on my hip. Blurring out the front door to see who my intruder is.

That blood doesn’t belong here, and no one is allowed on my property but me.

Even if the scent of this blood is the best I have ever smelled in all my years of living.