Page 30 of The Wrong Ride Home (Wildflower Canyon #1)

duke

I asked Kaz if we could meet at The Rusty Spur because I knew Hunt was taking Elena there, “ ‘Cause she needs cheering ,” according to him.

He and I didn’t explicitly talk about the letter, but we’d both been thinking about it. What had Nash said to her? Why had he insisted this letter be read in private while mine was read aloud?

Fiona had asked if she should join my meeting with Kaz, and I prevaricated, saying that he and I were just meeting for a drink.

She knew we were ending, and she was making a last-ditch effort to hold us together. She’d tried to have sex the previous night, and I’d told her I was tired.

“ I feel like I’m losing you, Duke,” she whined. “Since we came here, you’re…different.”

How was I supposed to tell her that the man she knew hadn’t been real, that the man in Wildflower Canyon on the ranch was the real Duke ?

“It’s just a stressful time, doll.”

More lies.

“I feel like you’re not mine anymore,” she pleaded, wanting to connect, wanting us to become the people we used to be—the couple we had been.

Yours? I wanted to laugh at that thought. Honey, I’m not even mine. Can’t you see I belong to her ? I have since I first laid eyes on her.

Maybe she could see that truth, and that was why she was insecure as hell. I couldn’t blame her. The man I used to be was more like her, but that man was a facade, and he was peeling off layer by layer in Wildflower Canyon.

“Here is where your roots lie, son. Here is where your thirst is quenched by tapping into the reservoirs deep below the land,” Nash told me once.

That was his way of explaining why he could never leave, why he couldn’t be transplanted.

Dallas, or any concrete jungle for that matter, would starve him of what kept him alive.

He wouldn’t survive anywhere else—his roots ran too deep in this land.

Mama and I had lived in a world of glass towers and manicured lawns, but Nash?

His world was wide-open skies and earth that held history in its bones.

“You look like shit,” Kaz told me as he handed me a beer after I settled in next to him, leaning against the bar, my back to the bartender, my gaze firmly locked on her .

She’d seen me. I’d felt her gaze on me. I always knew when she was there, like an electric current running through me .

“I feel worse,” I remarked.

The bar was packed, loud, and full of cowboys—dust on their boots, sweat on their collars, beer in their hands. I’d been in enough places like this to know how the night would end—with a few black eyes and someone getting tossed onto the sidewalk.

And if that motherfucker talking to Elena would not stop touching her arm, he’d be the one getting tossed.

“You wanna tell me what your play is here, Duke?” Kaz was relaxed and dressed like everyone else, though his jeans cost more than most people’s rent.

But then, so did mine. Two rich blokes pretending to fit in—though my roots were here, and as soon as I stepped on the land, it was like they’d connected to my insides, which had begun to throb with need.

I blew out a measured breath. “It’s not complicated. Sell the ranch. Take the money.”

“You sure?” He studied me.

I looked away from a smiling, slightly tipsy Elena. “Yeah, Kaz, I’m sure. The question is, what do you want?”

He grinned. “Same thing you want, bud. Sell your ranch. Make some money.”

“Then we’re on the same page.” I took a sip of the beer, my eyes drifting back to the woman who had a leading role in my dreams and nightmares.

“I don’t think you’re as sold on this as you pretend to be,” Kaz stated.

Now, he had my attention. “Why would you say that? ”

His eyes drifted to where mine had been. “So that’s the problem.”

“Huh?”

Kaz smirked, clearly entertained. “She important to you?”

I wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t know who she was. Kaz and I didn’t know each other well, but we’d both clocked one another as being similar . We liked money, and we were ruthless in its pursuit.

“She’s the past.”

“If Fiona is the present, you’re better off living in the past.”

She began to dance with the motherfucker. My jaw clenched. Kaz followed my line of sight, watching as the cowboy who was about to lose his head dipped forward, whispering something, his lips close to her skin, making Elena smile.

“The past is complicated,” I murmured.

No shit, Sherlock!

Kaz’s smirk deepened. “Only if you’ve got lingering issues about the fact that she’s the daughter of your father’s mistress.”

I straightened and moved threateningly toward Kaz. No one talked about Maria like he just had, not to my face.

Kaz lifted his beer in surrender. “Easy. Just an observation.”

I breathed through my nose, forcing myself to calm down.

He took a sip of his drink, watching me now as if I were a puzzle he was relishing putting together. “You ever heard of Silas and Tansy Hawthorne?”

I frowned. “Yes. They sold their farm to Kincaid.”

“You know them?”

“Know of them.”

He smiled like that answer amused him. “You should meet them. Silas was a good friend of your mother’s.”

Something about the way he said it made my skin itch. “What the hell does that mean?”

Kaz shrugged. “It means you should start asking the right questions before you kill your legacy.”

Before I could push him on that, a fight broke out near the bar. Two cowboys swinging fists, knocking over chairs, sending beer sloshing onto the floor. I barely registered it because my eyes had found Elena again. She was now dancing with another sumbitch, their bodies moving slowly to the music.

“Still no problem, huh?” Kaz mused.

I didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.

“I’ll be seeing you, Kaz,” I said and then walked up to Elena and went ahead and fucked everyone’s night up.

Well, almost . The only saving grace was that I kissed her.

For the first time in a decade, I tasted her—whiskey and want, fire and familiarity. And just like that, my world tilted. It was the tipping point—the moment the lie I’d been telling myself crumbled to dust.

I’d spent years trying to protect myself from her, pretending I’d moved on, that what Elena and I had was buried under too much time, too much hurt. But all my efforts had failed for one simple reason—I still loved her.

God help me, I always had, and I knew as sure as the sun rose over Wilder Ranch and set behind those Colorado peaks, I always would.