2. Duke
CHAPTER 2
Duke
W hy the fuck would she be in the bunkhouse? That was no place for a woman like Elena. “What do you mean? She’s always had her room in the house.”
“Not always. Not for…a decade now. She works here, Duke, and lives like the ranch hands.” Hunt has his hands tucked in his pockets, I suspected, to prevent him from hitting me. “And just to tell you, you fire her, you’re up shit creek without a paddle with the horses.”
“We’ll find another horse trainer.”
“Sure, you will. ‘Cause they grow on fuckin’ trees,” Hunt quipped. He shook his head. “And don’t you ever insinuate that she and I fuckin’, ‘cause we’re not. She’s my sister, and I hear this crap from the asshole cowboys, and I won’t hear it from you. Understood?”
Why did I feel relieved that she wasn’t sleeping with Hunt? I’d seen them stand close, so close when I got out of the car that the pain jabbing through me surprised me. So, I grabbed Fiona and kissed her. I needed my defenses in place.
I had known that I’d react to seeing Elena again. I knew it. What I hadn’t expected was to feel a sense of possession when I saw her.
Mine ! The thought roared from within me. My Florecita. Mine.
Ten years had changed my little flower. Her body didn’t have the softness of youth, and neither did her face. She worked outdoors; there was a roughness to her, and yet she screamed of femininity in the way she stood, spoke, and carried herself. Her hair was tied into a braid away from her face. She wore a blue button-down, jeans, cowboy boots, and a Stetson. She looked fucking gorgeous, and I had trouble breathing when my eyes landed on her. I wanted her, desperately, like I used to. The first time we were intimate had been a revelation. I’d had sex before, plenty of it, but with Elena, I made love for the first time. After that, I wanted to be inside her all the fucking time because she felt like home to me. Safe, secure, warm, loving.
I didn’t respond to Hunt’s threat of not accusing him of sleeping with Elena. He didn’t understand that I had to do something, anything, to keep the hate within me for her alive because that sucker vanished the moment my eyes landed on her beautiful face. I’d always known it would be like this. She’d cast a spell on me, and I was bewitched for life.
I looked around the office. It was neat as a pin. My father was not. This was Elena’s doing. I had felt her for the past decade, and now, with her so close in the flesh, I’d lose my fucking mind.
“I don’t want her here, Hunt,” I admitted.
“I get that, but you want to sell the place, and you can’t sell the horses without her. She leaves, and everyone is gonna think something’s wrong with the horses. It’ll be a shitshow,” he warned me.
Hunt knew I was going to sell the ranch. He agreed to stay as foreman until the sale. I’d asked him if I could maybe negotiate a role for him when we sold, but he told me not to worry, that he was ready to move on.
“She’s that good?” I asked mockingly. “Or are you sure you’re not fucking her and thinking with your dick?”
I hated that he was defending her. That was my job, not his. Christ! I’d been here a half hour, and already Elena was a fire in my blood. How would I manage the next six months or so it would take to sell this place if she was here? I’d lose my fucking mind.
Hunt shook his head. “You’re an asshole, Duke, you know that, don’t you?”
“You’re not the first one to accuse me of being one.”
“Since you’re clearly not listening to me about her , let me make something clear to you. I’ll be packin’ my bags along with Elena and getting the hell out of here.”
“Damn it, Hunt, I?—”
“Nope.” Hunt raised a hand to silence me. “You need to get your head out of your ass. She’s not the problem. Get it?”
Didn’t I just? Son of a motherfucking bitch! I’: d barely been here, and she was already twisting me up.
“With her, it’s reflex,” I confessed wearily and then added, “I’ll work on it.”
Hunt cocked an eyebrow.
I shrugged. “Since you’re both so close, she must’ve told you what went down ten years ago.”
I rose and went around the desk to the cabinet built into the far wall, where I remembered my father kept his liquor. Not out in the open—Nash Wilder had never been careless—but behind a heavy paneled door, tucked between stacks of old ranch ledgers and a rusted tin where he kept spare bullets.
I pulled the cabinet door open, the hinges creaking, and found the familiar row of bottles inside. Bourbon, mostly. A half-drunk bottle of Nash’s favorite, the label worn from years of handling. It was early, not even noon, but I needed a drink.
I poured a glass, and when Hunt nodded, I poured him one, too.
“To Nash,” he toasted, and I joined him.
Regardless of how much the old man pissed me off, he was my father, and I regretted not coming to see him before he died. I regretted protecting my mother, who was fragile as hell when it came to the ranch and my father. She’d begged and pleaded with me not to see my father—and she’d insinuated in more ways than one that if I did, she couldn’t be blamed for breaking down, which was code for her hurting herself.
But you know what they said about regret? It’s like a stray bullet—don’t matter if you saw it coming, it’ll gut you just the same.
We sat back, me on one side of my father’s desk and he on the other.
He cradled his glass in his hands and finally looked up at me. “Elena never told me…anything. I got some of it from Maria, but she….”
“She what?” I queried.
He shrugged. “Maria toed the line for Nash. And your Daddy had a problem with Elena a mile long. No matter what she did, and she fuckin’ did everythin’ for him, especially after Maria passed, he blamed her for you not being at the ranch.”
Something inside me twisted at that. “I wasn’t here ‘cause of him.”
“You know your Daddy, Duke, and he’d never take the blame for anythin’ if he could shift it onto someone else.”
“Maria died three years ago. Why is Elena still here?” I knew she wouldn’t have left her mother, especially not after she’d been diagnosed with cancer.
“Why do you think?”
“I have no goddamn clue.” I downed the rest of the bourbon and felt the heat scorch through me, making me feel a little numb. A few more, and I’d be blissfully so!
“Elena promised her mother she’d take care of Nash. So, she stayed.” Hunt then looked at his watch and sighed. “I better go up to the bunkhouse and see how far Elena has gotten packin’ up. Hopefully, not too far. I told Ben to stall her if she came rushing back, ready to get the fuck outta here.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You sayin’ you expected me to kick her out.”
“Yeah, Duke, I did.”
I scoffed. “How do you know me so well?”
“’Cause I knew your Daddy,” he explained, and that didn’t make me feel good at all, not one fucking single bit. I hated that I was behaving like Nash.
“Elena, if fucking your mother is as good as fuckin’ you, I can understand why my father couldn’t let Maria go. Tightest pussy I’ve ever had.”
I hurt her because I’d been hurting. She’d been a virgin when she came to me untouched, but then I decided she was maybe not innocent. She knew who her mother was to my father, what her mother had done to my family, and she’d still laid down with me. If Mama had found out, she’d have lost it, and I would’ve lost my mother.
“So, what you’re sayin’ is that she’s stayin’?” I knew the answer to that. Hunt was the foreman of the Wilder Ranch, and he knew that I’d be outta bullets in the middle of a shootout if he walked out on me.
“Oh, yeah, she’s stayin’, you jackass, and you make sure not to?—”
I raised a hand to stop him from losing his temper, which I knew he was close to doing since I’d been riling him up by going after Elena.
“It was a knee-jerk reaction,” I repeated.
“Yeah, it was you being’ a jerk, alright.” With that, he got up and left the ranch house.
I sat for a while, looking around the office where my father had spent much of his time, either here or riding around the one hundred-odd thousand acres that stretched across two counties.
The large pastures were divided for different purposes: cattle grazing, horse training, and hay production. Wilder Ranch was an impressive operation, and I knew selling it would take the time it would take. Not everyone could go ahead and buy this much land, twenty-thousand head of cattle, thirty stalls for working horses, including breeding stock, valuable bloodlines, and a remuda of working horses.
I worked in land development, and I knew the best option was to divide the land and sell it according to its zoning—maybe even push for rezoning. Some parcels could be flipped from agricultural use to high-end residential, others for commercial developments like resorts, retail centers, or even industrial projects if the logistics made sense. Hell, with the right permits, some of it could even go toward infrastructure expansion—roads, airports, whatever the highest bidder wanted.
Back in Texas, it had seemed simple. Split up the land, sell it off piece-by-piece, and turn the mountain acreage into something profitable. Maybe resorts, maybe high-end developments. It made sense on paper. But standing here now, with the dust in my throat and the ranch stretching wide around me, it didn’t sit right. I’d told myself I didn’t care and didn’t owe this place a thing, that I owed Nash nothing.
But the truth I’d been running away for ten years was smacking me in the face—ranching was in my blood, whether I wanted it there or not, and desecrating the land wasn’t coming as easy as I thought it would.
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