Page 7 of The Wrong Ride Home (Wildflower Canyon #1)

I was too angry to let him stay. He had done this to her, hadn’t he?

We made amends later. Not right away. But slowly. I came to the ranch the summer I turned nineteen. That’s when I met Elena. She was so fucking sweet.

That summer had been a revelation. I had fallen in love with the ranch, with the land, with the quiet, with the way Hunt and my father taught me to be a cowboy. And with her .

When I returned the following summer, when I was twenty, Elena and I happened. It was a wildfire we couldn’t stop.

I went home at the end of that summer, still tangled up in her, still wanting. I told Mama about the ranch, about how things were, about the people. I’d been so excited. That’s when she dropped the bomb about Maria. Elena’s mother had stolen my mother’s husband and driven her to end her life.

I reacted rashly; I could see that now, but then I went back to Colorado, angrier than a bull fresh off the prod, looking for something to wreck.

I called Elena names I still couldn’t stomach remembering. When my father told me I didn’t understand, I walked out on him.

I’d been so damned angry—at my mother for being fragile, at my father for not loving her enough, at Elena for making me fall in love with her.

I blamed her for everything. Blamed her for me falling in love with her.

Blamed her for not telling me about Maria.

Blamed her for things that were not her fault—just like Nash had done.

Like father like son? I’d shifted the blame onto everyone except myself.

I had been with Elena. No one put a gun to my head.

And, yet, walking away all but crippled me, and the only way I could do it was by hating her.

I wasn’t sure if it made me young and foolish or a coward, maybe both.

I swallowed hard, clearing my throat. “Are you coming for the funeral?”

“Yeah,” Amos replied.

“We can go through the ledgers then,” I told him. “I’m going to sell the ranch. Looking at buyers already.”

"Do whatever you want." Amos sounded irritated. "The ranch is yours."

Yeah, it was.

I hadn’t doubted my decision to offload the whole damn thing—until I got here.

Until I breathed in the dust, the horses, the hay.

Until I felt the land under my boots, the pull of something old and profound in my bones, I hadn’t expected that and had definitely not expected the hesitation, the way the thought of selling suddenly felt like a mistake.

I was still at my desk, sleeves rolled up, reviewing the files on the computer, when Fiona appeared in the doorway, dressed to the nines in a tight black dress.

She’d only brought black with her, she told me, because we were technically mourning.

Her heels were high, and she wore the diamonds I’d given her for Christmas.

It struck me then that I never bought Elena anything. Nothing .

I picked wildflowers for her that she kept even after they dried up, treating them like diamonds.

"Duke.” Fiona’s red lips curved in expectation.

"You need to get ready."

We were having dinner with Senator Otis Jessup and his wife.

And a few others. I knew they wanted to get their hands on Wilder Ranch and use the property to develop ski resorts, airports…

whatever. Nash would have nothing to do with it, and since Elena was more or less running his business, I could see he hadn’t had to sell a damn sliver of land he didn’t want to.

Now, I knew why I was being chased down—they knew I’d sell, unlike Nash.

I groaned out a breath. "Right."

Fiona crossed the room heels clicking against the hardwood. She set my iPhone on the desk beside me. "You left this in the bedroom. Your mother wants to talk to you. ”

I suppressed a sigh. “Now?”

“Now,” Fiona agreed.

I hesitated but ultimately called my mother. "Mama," I greeted.

"Duke," she breathed, and just like that, I was ten years old again, desperate to keep her from breaking.

Gloria Wilder was delicate. Too delicate for this world, for my father, for this damn ranch. Even now, her voice was soft, wispy, like a feather floating just before it fell.

“I’m very anxious, baby.”

I had to smother the desire to say take a Xanax because she’d once taken too many. I sometimes felt like I was her hostage, always worried that she’d keel over and it would somehow be my fault. Especially now, with Nash gone, I’d have no one else to blame.

I loved my mother. I did. But I didn’t always like her.

Now, when I needed to focus on other things, and she knew I did, she demanded my attention because when I gave it to her, she felt loved.

After all, I chose her above everything else.

And, thanks to my father, she needed to be chosen all the fucking time.

I was grateful that my mother liked Fiona because there had been other girlfriends, who my mother had not been able to stand and had begged and pleaded with me to let them go because she was scared they’d take me away from her.

“What’s wrong, Mama?” I urged politely.

I knew exactly what the fuck was wrong. She was going to have to come here for Nash’s funeral.

I’d told her she didn’t have to, but she worried about what people would think.

That was the other thing with Mama—she constantly worried about what everyone thought of her, the family, Nash…

the world. It was exhausting for her and drove me up the fucking wall, because I didn’t give a flying fuck about people’s perceptions.

“I…I don’t know what to wear, son.” She sniffled, and I knew she was crying.

For fuck’s sake! “Mama, just anything black will be fine. I chartered a plane for you and?—”

“Can you come and get me? I don’t want to travel by myself.” She sounded like a little girl.

“Mama, I have a lot of?—”

“Please, Duke,” she sobbed. “I can’t do this alone.”

A sigh slipped out of me. “Sure, Mama, I’ll come down and get you.” And waste my fucking time being on a fucking plane when I had a shit ton of work to do not just with Wilder Ranch but my company as well.

“Thanks so much, Duke. You’re the best son a mother could have.”

But are you the best mother a son can have ? That thought always popped up when she praised me for being a good son.

“Okay, Mama, I have to?—"

"Are you all right?" She cut me off again , and I could hear the unsteady inhale on the other end.

"I’m fine."

"I don’t know why I even asked," she murmured. "You never let me worry about you, do you?"

Because you have enough to worry about .

“Look, Mama, you don’t have to come to the funeral. I’m telling you no one?—”

“I have to, Duke. He was my husband.”

I hated that she never let me talk. Mama was many things, a good listener, she wasn’t.

I closed my eyes briefly. "It’s going to be a spectacle. You don’t like spectacles."

She let out a soft laugh, brittle at the edges. "I’ll be ready…as long as you’re with me, holding my hand."

“Okay, Mama.”

“Son?”

I ground my teeth. Why couldn’t she just say what she had to say instead of me having to pull the words out of her?

“Yes, Mama.”

“Can you…can you make sure she isn’t there? I spoke to Mindy, and she said she’s still at the ranch.”

Mindy Rostock was the wife of Bubba Rostock, who owned a construction company in Denver and had built a freaking mansion in Wildflower Canyon. He’d bought a ranch and had converted it into a private golf course. Nash hated his guts. Mama and Mindy were besties.

“Mama—”

“Is she still there?”

She was talking about Elena. When Maria died, Mama had been thrilled. I, not so much. I’d spoken to Hunt, and he told me she passed away after battling pancreatic cancer. There had been six months between diagnosis and death .

“Nash is drinking all the fuckin’ time instead of being with her,” he told me.

“I don’t want to know about my father’s mistress, Hunt.”

But I had wanted to know about Elena. How was she handling it? Was she okay? But I didn’t ask him. I made it a point to not ask about her. I checked up on my father through Hunt, and we shot the shit but never discussed personal stuff.

“Yes, Mama.”

“You have to get rid of her,” she whined.

I wanted to tell her I had tried, but Hunt hadn’t let me, but I would sound like a whiney bitch.

But the truth was I had let Hunt twist my arm, and even if he hadn’t, there was no fucking way I’d have let her go with Maverick Fucking Kincaid.

Over my dead body. The fact that I was still so possessive about her was all kinds of fucked up.

“Mama, she’s the horse trainer, and I need her to sell the horses for a good price.”

“Can you not find someone else?” she asked petulantly.

Fiona narrowed her eyes and jerked her chin up. I shook my head and mouthed, “ It’s fine .”

“I can’t. How about I make sure she won’t be at the funeral?

” I offered. It was unfair since Elena had taken care of my father while he’d been sick.

Been with him. Been his nurse. But, hell, I couldn’t have my father’s mistress’s daughter at my father’s funeral that my mother was attending, now could I ?

Fuck my life!

She sniffled. “I don’t want to see her.”

“I’ll make sure you won’t.”

“Thanks, baby. I just…I just worry that things will be a mess if she’s around. That I will be a mess.”

She wasn’t wrong ‘cause I could already see disaster coming.

My fragile, grieving mother on one side of me, my perfect, society-groomed girlfriend Fiona on the other, and then added to the mix was Elena—the daughter of my father’s mistress, the woman I couldn’t stop wanting, even when I hated her. All of us standing over my father’s grave.

Hell of a homecoming.