Page 10 of The Wrong Ride Home (Wildflower Canyon #1)

duke

T he steak was perfect. The wine was over-fucking-priced.

The company was powerful. And Fiona was charming the pants off everyone, even the women.

There was something about my girlfriend.

Men wanted her, and women wanted to be her.

She didn’t threaten. She cajoled, especially when she was dealing with people who she perceived as being above her from a social and wealth perspective.

Equals were treated with some condescension while people she believed were beneath her were… well beneath her.

I hired her as Vice President of Development at Ironwood Development Group because she had a reputation for closing deals and getting people to sign contracts.

She had a law degree from Harvard and an MBA from Stanford.

She was smart, good-looking, and dynamite in bed.

The fact that she even managed to get along with my mother was a big fat bonus .

But now that I was back in Colorado, within breathing distance of Elena, what I felt for Fiona paled in comparison. How could what I felt a decade ago, when I was basically a kid, still be the most powerful emotion I’d ever had for another person?

I’d fallen in love with Elena that summer and never fell out. Even now, even though I hated her guts, hated her mother, hated my father—hated the fucking ranch, I still wanted Elena.

If she walked up to me right now and held her hand out and said, “ Mi cielo , be mine,” I’d follow her out like a lost puppy. Good thing she didn’t know the power she had over me because I didn’t trust her not to abuse it. Hell, I trusted her to abuse it.

“Senator Jessup, you’re lyin’,” Fiona flirted as the senator told a story about some backroom deal in Austin while he looked at my girlfriend’s tits. I didn’t mind. She flaunted them to distract men. And then I thought, if this were Elena, I would have loosened some of the senator’s teeth.

She now wore chambray shirts and jeans with cowboy boots. Her hair was in a braid. The Stetson was not from some fancy store. It was part of her work uniform. She wouldn’t unbutton her shirt so Jessup could look at her tits.

And, yet, you called her a whore and are dating Fiona.

The senator’s wife, Celeste, wasn’t paying attention to her husband. She was drowning in diamonds, which I thought was her first priority. Fiona had oohed and aahed about her bracelet, and Celeste had looked at me and said, “I think your girlfriend is telling you what she wants as a present, Duke.”

Fiona flushed, and I kissed her temple. “My girl gets whatever she wants.” I knew how to play the game as well. People expected to see a happy couple, someone they could gossip about and be jealous of.

Celeste laughed at something Kazimir Chase said. Kaz was a wealthy investor and dealmaker who always seemed to be involved in the country's most significant land development deals.

Celeste, I noticed, was the senator’s Fiona, and I felt disillusioned at what my life had become. How come all of this seemed normal in Dallas, and now, with one whiff of the Colorado air, I was thinking of these social settings as Nash would?

Fucked up shit with fucked up people to make an extra dime that I don’t need.

We were seated in the private dining room at Blackwood Prime, a place well accustomed to gatherings like ours—where men carved up profits over expensive steaks, and women played their part, offering a break from business with the promise of a good fuck.

“Oh, Senator, I love how you told the Governor of Wyoming off.” This was from Sylvia, Congressman Bryce Thornton’s wife, who was all poise and calculation. Thornton’s family had invested in ski lodges across Colorado—and he was known to sway votes for campaign financing and expanding his wealth.

The only person in our group who was probably as disgusted with these people as I was—and who did not buy any of this horse manure—was Nokoni Red Clay.

Nokoni was Comanche, born and raised on the Cedar River Reservation just east of Wildflower Canyon.

He was chairman of the tribal council, a land steward, and the kind of man who never wasted words.

He’d spent most of his life fighting men like the senator, the congressman, and Chase—men who saw land as something to be bought, sold, and paved over in the name of progress to make bucket loads of money.

To Nokoni, the land wasn’t a commodity. It was history, blood, and belonging. And just like Nash, he sure as hell wasn’t interested in watching Wildflower Canyon turn into another Jackson Hole, crawling with ski resorts and wealthy transplants who thought cowboy boots were a fashion statement.

But he wasn’t stupid, either.

Unlike my father, he knew how these men operated. He knew they saw him as an obstacle, a problem to negotiate around. That’s why he was here—to keep them from carving up the valley like a damn steak.

He was the only one at our table who wasn’t grinning about the millions to be made when we sold Wilder Ranch’s hundred thousand-odd acres to whoever would pay the most for the privilege.

He was going to do what he could to buy as much as he could to protect it. But he didn’t have the kind of money that these men could round up with investors. He knew that, too. He hated them and believed they were a blight on humanity, and he wasn’t wrong.

But when his sharp, dark eyes flicked to me over the rim of his whiskey glass, I got the distinct feeling I offended him as much as they did.

When I invited him for dinner, telling him my plan, he’d been livid.

"This place isn’t meant to be another Jackson Hole," Nokoni raged. "You start carving up Wilder Ranch, selling pieces to out-of-state developers, and Wildflower Canyon won’t survive it."

"It’ll survive just fine," I countered smoothly. "It’ll just be worth a hell of a lot more."

"To people who don’t belong here," Nokoni shot back.

"That’s not how money works," I told him. "You can’t pick and choose who buys in, Nokoni. You know that."

"I know that once you sell, you can’t buy it back,” he warned me.

"Nokoni, I get it. But the ranch is mine now. And it’s not a legacy I give a damn about."

“So, have you heard of Piper Novak?” Senator Jessup casually threw the question out there.

Fiona grinned. "We certainly have, Senator.” Everyone who was in the land development business knew Novak Enterprises and the head of the company, the indomitable Piper Novak.

He nodded gravely and then added, “They’re very interested in building an airport on the south side of your ranch, Duke. "

Of course, they were.

The south side was the flattest stretch of land on Wilder Ranch, wide open and already close to Highway 82, making access easy.

There are no steep inclines, no rocky terrain—just rolling pastureland that could be paved over without much effort.

It was also the part of the ranch I cared the least about—not prime grazing land, not near the river or the old homestead.

“From a development standpoint, it makes perfect sense,” the congressman agreed.

“From a moral standpoint, it’s a damn travesty,” Nokoni stated. He picked up his scotch and downed it.

“Nokoni, it’s called progress,” I quipped.

Nokoni’s dark eyes pinned me. Measured. Unimpressed. “What is progress? Paving over thousands of acres of ranchland so rich men can fly in on private jets, skiing gear in tow? Turning cattle country into a Goddamn runway?”

Fiona reached for my hand beneath the table, giving it a gentle squeeze, reminding me to keep my temper in check. It worked. Barely.

"Look, if you’re worried about losing the soul of this land, don’t be. I’m sure your tribe can open a few new gift shops with all the tourism money that’ll come in,” the senator mocked.

“Tourism is going to destroy Wildflower Canyon. We’re ranch country, not a place to have Spring Break on a ski slope,” Nokoni scoffed.

“You sound like Nash,” I mocked.

“Nash Wilder protected the land,” Nokoni stated. “And made money doing it.”

"He could’ve made more if he hadn’t been so fucking stubborn about selling," Kaz remarked, raising his glass. "I thought he’d sell when that oil pipeline deal collapsed."

Senator Jessup chuckled, swirling his whiskey. "Would’ve, if it weren’t for that—what’s her name? That Rivera girl?"

That hit me like a slap.

Elena .

Congressman Thornton smirked. "Oh yeah. The little accountant with the juicy ass.” His wife rolled her eyes, but he continued. “Turns out she had a brain along with those big tits. I heard Nash would’ve drowned in debt if she hadn’t pulled him out of that Harden deal."

I gritted my teeth.

"She saved his ass," Jessup continued as if this was the most irritating thing in the world. "And then she started running things. Pretty soon, we had to go through her to get to Nash…and since he didn’t want to be gotten to, we got no fucking where."

Kaz snorted. "Made negotiations harder. Woman didn’t budge an inch. Thought she had a pair, the way she acted."

Laughter rippled around the table.

“Good thing your daddy died, or he’d lose the land come tax day,” the senator chirped. “That Rivera bitch wouldn’t be able to save the day then. It’s smart of you to sell, Duke. Very smart.”

I felt it before I saw it—the disgust in Nokoni’s glare .

"It’s not smart, and it lacks integrity," Nokoni said, his voice steady. "And if you call Elena a bitch in front of me again, I don’t care that you’re a senator; I will lay you down."

That shut them up for a second. It shut me up as well.

Nokoni was defending the girl I loved while I was playing Land Developer.

I’d not had a call of conscience in the years I was building my company, and now I seemed to be plagued with it, and I had been in Wildflower Canyon less than twenty-four hours.

Thornton settled back, smug. "Aw, come on, Nokoni." He smirked. "She was Nash’s whore’s daughter."

Something inside me snapped.