Page 20 of Killer on the Homestead (Bent County Protectors #2)

Duncan had forgotten how much he loved baseball. As a spectator. It wasn’t just that he’d been good as a kid—he’d loved the game. The intricacies of it. The teamwork required. That feeling of being in a crowd holding their breath while everyone waited for the next pitch.

It’s a good place to be. His mother’s words kept echoing in his head. Because it was . Bent County wasn’t perfect. Hell, even the Kirk Ranch wasn’t perfect. But there was a community, a teamwork to it. Just like baseball.

Maybe Owen Green had come from a not-so-nice place. Maybe that explained why his demeanor had changed slowly, as had Hunter’s, over their first months of being here.

He hated that even in the middle of the fun, and a date with Rosalie, his mind kept trailing back to Owen and Hunter. A dead body. A distraught young man.

Two outsiders.

When the game was over, a close and tense win for Bent County High, what Duncan really wanted to do was disappear, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.

Maybe he didn’t really know Sarabeth from any other kid around here. They weren’t kin, and as far as he knew his parents weren’t acquainted with the Thompsons. But he couldn’t forget who he’d been out there on the field, and if a major league player had come to one of his games?

Hell.

“Go on, Ace. Give ’em a thrill,” Rosalie said, giving him a nudge toward the dugout, where the coaches were talking to the kids, but all eyes were on him.

The excitement was palpable as he approached—from both kids and coaches alike. It was a different staff than when he’d played here, so he didn’t recognize any of the coaches. He introduced himself to the head coach, and then he was essentially engulfed.

He gave compliments. Signed balls, gloves, and bats. Answered a zillion questions. Politely declined a job assistant-coaching…three times. Then, in an attempt to escape, had to shake what felt like a million parent hands until his arm was throbbing.

Eventually the crowds began to dissipate a little , but Duncan had officially had enough. He searched the area for Rosalie, found her underneath a tree, watching him with amusement.

Save me , he mouthed at her.

She grinned at him but pushed off the tree and sauntered over. Smooth as could be, she extracted him from a small group of overzealous adults without making either of them look like jerks.

“You’re a real pro,” he said. “I’d have hired you back in LA.”

She shook her head at that. “You’re too nice to those people.”

“Can’t really have it getting around town that LA changed me and I’m some snooty SOB now. My mother would have my neck.”

It got a good laugh out of her, and since they were back at his truck, in the shadow of it and a tree, and most of the parking lot had cleared out, he went ahead and followed the path of that laugh.

Because his life had been ruled by discipline for so long, there was something freeing and irresistible about following an impulse, a temptation.

So he pressed his mouth to hers, caging her subtly against his truck, the size of his frame no doubt obscuring her from any straggling crowd members.

He half expected her to push him away, but she didn’t. She melted into him like wax. When he wrapped his good arm around her back and pulled her tight against him, she raised her hands to clasp around the back of his neck.

Maybe it was the location, maybe it was Rosalie, but there was a kind of sweet nostalgia to it all. But underneath that sweetness, and the smell of baseball, and a crisp Wyoming night, was the sharpening edge of need.

The throb in his shoulder twinged with the drugging pulse of pleasure. A strange, potent mix of feelings wrapped up in the faint strawberry scent of her.

She didn’t push him away, but she did ease back. He could only barely make out her face in the dark. “We’re in a parking lot, Ace.”

But her breath came out on a little sigh, and her hand was still curled around his neck.

“Yeah, we are. Did you ever make out in this parking lot after hours back in your day?”

She looked around—the baseball diamond was dark now. The school behind them was dark. “A lady never tells.” Then her eyes narrowed. “What about you?”

He put a hand to his chest in mock outrage. “A gentleman never tells either.”

She snorted.

And because she did, and because she hadn’t taken her arms down from around him, he lowered his mouth again. This time with a little more of that urgency he was starting to feel, and a nip against her bottom lip.

“Come home with me,” he murmured against her mouth. Not charming, he knew, but she pulled something out of him. A directness. A straightforward need. Like a bright new light, after quite a few months of existing and maybe even wallowing in the dark.

He could feel the inner battle going on inside of her. But he was getting the picture that her internal battles weren’t about him specifically. They were about stuff going on in her life.

Still, when the battle ended, and she said, “Maybe for a minute or two,” he considered it a win.

It didn’t mean she was going to sleep with him.

Rosalie told herself this, over and over again, as his truck drove down the highway and a mournful country song twanged around them in the dark of the truck’s interior.

But if she did sleep with him, then it might eradicate this… this .

Like something had wrapped around her lungs, tight and with thorns. A bramble bush inside of her chest.

It went away when he kissed her. Everything did, except the delicious lick of heat. Her lungs could expand when he kissed her. She didn’t worry when his arm banded around her. All those doubts and concerns just evaporated.

So it could just be sex. She could handle just sex. A little fling with the hot neighbor guy. She was good at flings and handling men. She was a pro .

Even as he pulled onto the service-road entrance to his family ranch, rather than the main entrance that would lead to his parents’ house. Even as he pulled up to his cabin at the back of the property. Even as he turned off the car and hopped out, she told herself it was just a bit of fun.

And once they got a little bit of fun out of their systems, they could just…move on. No harm, no foul.

She slid out of the truck as he did, still not saying anything. She met him at the front of the truck in the little porchlight that barely illuminated the little patch of yard they were in. He was so tall, so handsome, there in the moonlight.

So much potential harm, she knew, as her heart lurched, and beat unsteadily in her chest as they stood there just staring at each other. She managed to swallow, to look away, up at the stars to steady herself.

It was a riot of stars, universes up there, bright and vast. She had only ever lived here, looking up at this sky, without light pollution, without an entire world out there that Duncan had gone out and experienced.

“Miss this out in LA?” she asked, and maybe she meant it as a little dig aimed at his time away, but really, she was curious. What had he missed about home while out in California living his dream?

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. I used to lay out under the stars after every game here—win or lose—and picture myself under the lights of a professional ballpark. People chanting my name.”

“And you got it.”

“I got it, and then there was nowhere to lay outside and watch the stars. I mean there was, but it wasn’t home. I never regretted it. I don’t, even now, even when it didn’t end in a nice little bow like I wanted it to. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t miss this as much as I enjoyed that.”

It was somehow the perfect answer. A blend of understanding how lucky he was, without losing sight of where he’d come from. Why did that lodge in her chest like physical pain?

At least until he moved closer, drew her into his arms, and kissed her. Soft and sweet at first. A kiss meant for starlight and the chill of a Wyoming night she didn’t feel because his body gave out warmth and stirred up some inside her as well.

But the angle changed, the grip. Everything got a little deeper, hotter, needier, and that was exactly what she needed. Ride the wave, forget about all the messy emotions cluttering up inside of her. She’d deal with those later, alone. Pick them apart, set them away.

They moved toward the cabin, arms wrapped around each other, mouths on each other. A laugh when they tripped, a shuddery exhale when his hand slid under her shirt, spread out on her back. Hot, big, rough.

They somehow managed to stumble up the stairs to his door, and he opened it without even taking his mouth from hers. She would have told him it was impressive, but he nibbled at her bottom lip, taking away all rational thought. He pulled her in, backing them into his living room.

She heard something crunch under her shoe. Confused, she blinked her eyes open even as Duncan’s mouth took a very interesting tour of her neck.

But the sensual haze faded into cold fear as she saw the room around them. “Oh my God.”

“If you think that’s impressive…”

She choked on a half laugh, even in the midst of the mess. “No, Duncan.” She pushed at his chest. “God. Your place is trashed.”

He turned then and saw what she saw. His face went utterly blank.

All his boxes had been upended. Trophies—some broken, some shattered. Clothes strewn about, drawers opened and emptied.

“What the hell?”

“We need to call the police, Duncan,” she said sharply. She felt a bubble of panic try to burst free, but she pushed it back down. Because this wasn’t murder. They didn’t know what it was, but things could be replaced, so it wasn’t murder .

But because there had been a murder, it was more terrifying than just a break-in.

When Duncan didn’t move, Rosalie pulled out her own phone, irritated that her hand shook. She hesitated for a moment, not sure what decision to make, then went ahead and dialed Copeland’s cell.

Maybe this didn’t relate to the murder, but how could it not?

“Do I even want to know why you’re calling my personal number and not Bent County?” he answered, as she tried to push away from Duncan.

Who held on to her. Tightly.

“There was a break-in at Duncan’s cabin,” Rosalie said without sounding panicked. She hoped. “Someone broke in and trashed his place.”

He grunted. “Call the emergency line then.”

“Copeland.”

The long, world-weary sigh on the other end was dramatic. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming. I’ll handle it.”

The line went dead, and Rosalie put the phone back in her pocket.

She surveyed the room again. “Duncan…” She felt helpless and strange, and that wasn’t her , so she dug deep for some kind of control.

“We should wait outside,” she decided. No contaminating a crime scene.

“We should… Duncan, you’re going to have to tell your parents.

When the police come up the drive, they’ll see. ”

“Call the detective back. Have him cut through. I’ll…” Then he cursed and took off, back out the door and into the dark night. She realized, only a second or two after he did, what he might be worried about. So she took off after him.

She ran after him—he was a quick shadow in the dark—across fields.

She even had to hop a fence and wondered how he’d done it with his bad arm.

The main house was fully dark in the distance.

His long legs, and maybe the whole being-a-professional-athlete thing, meant he made it to the front of the house before her.

He was peering into the window on the front door when she caught up, lungs burning and eyes watering.

“Everything looks fine from here. The security system is set.” He was breathing heavily. She could tell he was in pain, but he didn’t reach up and grip his shoulder.

She hated to say it, but she knew she had to. “You’re still going to have to wake them up,” she said around panting breaths. “You don’t want them to wake up to cops coming up the drive. They’ll think something worse happened.”

He inhaled deeply, let it out slowly, evening his breathing quicker than she was able to. “Yeah. Why don’t you call Audra. Have her pick you up?”

She was surprised that the words landed like little stabs of pain. That damn bramble being yanked out of her heart. But she managed to keep her tone even, light. “Is that what you want?”

He stared at her there in the dim glow of the ranch’s security light. “No,” he said, and with enough heft and weight that those little brambles dug right back into her heart.

She swallowed it all down. “Then I’ll stay.”