Chapter 8
“You could start by making coffee. See if you can get that machine in my kitchen working. It’s a lot smaller than the one in the cafe.”
“Okay.” Her eyes didn’t meet his when she rose.
The announcer said, “And now a word from one of our sponsors,” and if he hadn’t been watching her, Ryder would not have seen her flinch. Her eyes were now locked on the screen.
“I’ll make coffee,” she said abruptly and then disappeared into the kitchen.
Ryder looked at the screen. It was an ad for candy.
“How do you take it, Ryder?” Libby said, coming back into the room. Unlike his family, she didn’t just yell from the kitchen.
“Cream and two sugars,” he said as the next ad came on the screen.
When she’d left again, he ran through what he already knew about Libby Gulliver, which, if he was honest, wasn’t much. First off, there was a wedding dress in her trunk, which suggested she was running from her own wedding. Second, she didn’t like asking for help, which told him she was stubborn to the point of stupidity or not used to having people in her corner to ask. Third, she was an accountant—that had been a surprise.
“Cookies in the barrel to the left of the coffee maker!” Ryder called.
She reappeared with a tray he hadn’t known was in his kitchen and likely had been put in there by one of the women in his life. On it were two mugs of coffee and a small plate with four biscuits on it.
“I only get four?”
“You just ate all that food,” Libby said.
“And?” Ryder took his coffee and a biscuit. “I’m still growing.”
“I have a brother….” Her words fell away.
“Nice. Older or younger?”
“Older,” she said before taking a mouthful of coffee.
“Any other siblings?”
“Two sisters.”
“Where are you from?” Ryder said, looking at the screen as the game came back on.
“You wouldn’t know it,” she said, attempting to stop the questions.
“Try me.” With the family he had, persistence was often the only way you found out things. “After all, you’re living in my house, and I’ve been really nice to you today. The least you could do is tell me where you live.”
“All right. I’m from Oklahoma. Happy?”
“You’re right, I’ve never heard of Oklahoma,” he drawled. Ryder stored away in his head that if he wanted information from Libby, he had to annoy it out of her. “Where in Oklahoma?”
“Piedmont.” The name sounded like she was choking.
“I’ve heard it’s nice.”
She didn’t add anything to that, and they watched the game in silence. Libby took a cookie and nibbled. This Ryder knew, as he could see her out the corner of his eye.
“Yes.”
“Pardon?” he looked at her as the game finished.
“I’m happy the Warriors won,” she said, getting to her feet. “I will wash these dishes and then go to bed now, Ryder. Thank you again for your generosity today, especially as I’m a stranger.” She walked away from him to the kitchen.
He stayed where he was and watched the postmatch interviews.
“Good night, Ryder.”
“Libby,” he called as she reached the hall leading to the bedrooms.
“Yes?” She was pale, scared, and trying to be brave.
“I promise you are safe here.”
She gave a jerky nod and left. He gave it twenty minutes and then did the same. Stopping outside her door, he heard her crying. Aw, hell. He tapped on the wood softly, but there was no answer.
Ryder liked to fix things if they were broken, and if one of his people were hurt, he was there for them. Libby wasn’t his person, but she was in his home.
“I’m coming in, so if you’re naked, get under the covers.”
Pushing open the door, he saw she’d put the side lamp on, and the soft glow showed him Libby curled in a ball on the bed with the throw blanket his sister had insisted he needed over her entire body, even her head.
“Hey.”
“Pl-please leave.”
“You look like a mole,” he said, moving closer. Lifting the end where her head was, he saw her face was pressed into the bed. “Rough day?” And if that wasn’t about the stupidest thing he’d ever said? Of course, it was a rough, shitty day. Her car broke down, and she was forced to sleep in it and ask him for a job. Then there was the wedding dress, and who knew what else she was dealing with.
“I-I’m okay,” she got out.
“Sure looks like it. You want to talk?” He’d spent his life around women and knew from experience they liked to talk stuff out. Personally, that was his worst nightmare, but it took all sorts.
Libby shook her head, then moved like a caterpillar up the bed to press her face into the pillows.
Ryder bit back a sigh. His eyelids felt heavy, the burn on his hand he’d given himself today stung, and he was bone-tired. Bending, he pushed her into the middle of the bed and took the space he’d moved her out of. Resting against the pillows and headboard, he crossed his legs.
“Wh-what are you doing?” She lifted her head, and Ryder got a look at her puffy face, eyes red, nose running.
“Don’t take offense, but that’s not a hot look on anyone,” he said, reaching for the tissues his mother said guests needed on their bedside table. Who knew she’d be right? “Plus you lost one of your lashes, and it looks like a spider leg stuck to you cheek.”
Libby kneeled and took the tissues. She wiped the lash away, then blew her nose.
“You don’t expect me to take that back, do you?”
She managed a watery sigh.
“So, Libby Gulliver, who or what are you running away from?”
If Ryder needed proof, that look gave it. She was shocked.
“Your fiancé? Family? Life? Job? All the above?”
“I decided I didn’t want to get married,” she whispered.
“Never easy if you’d done the planning. Those things are expensive,” Ryder said.
She made a snuffling sound he had no idea how to interpret. “They are.”
“I’m guessing you had good reason?” Her hair was loose and hung to her shoulders in caramel curls. She wore pajamas that were dark blue and silky. Ryder lifted his eyes back to her face and off her body, which he already knew was pretty special.
“I shouldn’t be in this room with you,” Libby whispered.
“You planning on jumping me? Because let me tell you, I’m exhausted, and you’d have to do most of the work.” He pulled out his phone and found his photos. Scrolling through, he held up the last family shot they’d taken all together.
“This is my family. I have four siblings—three brothers and a sister. Three of them are in relationships. The kid is Ally, my brother Brody’s girl. My uncle is the one in uniform. He arrived late for the cookout that day. Uncle Asher is the chief of police in Lyntacky, and my brother Dan”—he pointed at his brother—“is a deputy. My mom is a librarian, and Zoe runs Petticoat Homeware. Don’t ask me about that name because I’m still clueless.”
“I met Dan in the waffle place,” she said in a voice raspy from crying.
“Most days the chances are you’ll run into a Duke at some place in town,” he said.
She sat on her knees, now studying the picture.
“I have lived in this town my entire life, and usually people call me the easygoing, good Duke brother. I would never hurt you, Libby.”
“I know,” she whispered. “Linda and June told me that.”
“Look at you being on first-name terms.”
Her smile was small, but he saw it. “The people in this town are forceful.”
“And then some.”
He watched as she continued to look at the picture.
“It looks like you have a nice family, Ryder. Why are you called the easygoing good guy?”
“Ah, well.” He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had asked him that. “I’m the Duke who usually toes the line and doesn’t cause trouble. The ‘go with the flow’ Duke, you could say. I never left like the rest of them and have never been driven.” That came out bitter, and he wished he’d kept the words inside.
“The man I saw fighting those bikers didn’t look like a ‘go with the flow’ Duke to me, and the one who runs that cafe has to be driven for it to be the success it is. Plus you own this lovely home.”
“Thanks, but you haven’t been in town long enough to know how things lie.”
He studied her face. Pale, drawn, and sad. She tugged at something inside him.
Ryder, like his brothers, was a protector. He fixed things when they needed fixing, but he knew Libby Gulliver would not be an easy fix.
“We all have many sides to us, Libby. What you see is not always the full picture.”
Her eyes lifted to his briefly and then away again.
“My family has had our share of hell,” he continued. “But we always find our way back to each other.” He took the phone and placed it on the nightstand.
“I thought my life was planned out,” she said softly. “I’ve always lived in the same place and known… m-mostly what I was meant to do and be. My dad, he’s a good man, but he likes to be in control?—”
“I bet you tested that a time or two?”
“Not really, and actually this is probably the first real time,” she said to the pillow she was now staring at. “But I just couldn’t go through with the marriage.”
“Why?” Ryder didn’t think she’d tell him because she probably already thought she’d said too much. But he’d asked anyway.
He watched as she touched the scar on her jaw, running her fingers back and forth along it.
“This is the reason I left.”
He knew there was more to that statement, so he didn’t speak, just watched her.
“I’m not sure why it’s easy to talk to you when I never talk…. I mean, about what’s in here.” She tapped her head.
“Sometimes it’s just the right time,” he said. “I was once struggling with something and sitting in the Do-Si-Do Diner. Mr. Tricker, who runs a supply store for grain and other things like saddles and clothing, wandered in. He slid right into my booth across the table and looked at me. Now, the thing you need to know about Mr. Tricker is, unlike some others in this town, he doesn’t like to talk unless he has something to say.”
“Not really a trait for a man who makes a living selling stuff,” Libby said.
“His wife likes to talk, so they even each other out.”
“Makes sense,” she said.
“Anyway, he looked at me and said, ‘I can see you’ve got something on your mind, Ryder. Want me to help you work through it?’”
“He just came out with that?” Libby asked.
“You know this town by now, Libby. No one holds anything back.”
“Of course.”
“So I found myself talking to him about some stuff, and he gave me good advice, and I felt better. Then he left, and we never spoke about it again.”
“What, never?” She looked a bit shocked about that.
“No. And Mr. Tricker is probably one of the few people in town who can also hold a secret, so remember that.”
“Nice that it was him you spoke to, then.”
“It was. So how about you talk to me, Libby Gulliver, and I’ll be your Mr. Tricker and keep your secrets.”
She stared at him hard, as if searching for something.
“What did you talk to him about?”
“Being brave enough to do what I’ve always wanted to and step out from behind the protective wall of my family.” Ryder remembered that day like it was yesterday. He’d made lists of pros and cons, but he just wasn’t sure, and then after that talk with Mr. Tricker, he’d approached Larry Limpet with his oldest brother, Sawyer, who knew how to speak grumpy asshole fluently. The rest was history.
“My fiancé said that we should put off the wedding because the photos would have this in them,” she said, touching the scar again. “He knew the professional ones could be worked on to remove it, but not the private ones. The ones that would end up on social media. I knew it was his mother behind what he was saying, as she’s a dominant woman, but it still hurt.”
“Sounds like a real winner,” Ryder said, thinking he’d like to meet the man and give him a few lessons on how to treat people—namely, the woman who was meant to be his wife.
“He’s actually not a bad guy, just….” Her words fell away. “It’s complicated. My life is very different, and I come from another world than yours.”
“A rich world?”
She didn’t answer that.
“My sister Katie said that Andrew wanted to speak with me at the church. I thought it odd because he wasn’t meant to see me beforehand, or so the tradition goes.”
She was back there now, her eyes focused on Ryder but not really seeing.
“I went into the room next door and found him. Andrew took my hands in his and said that if I loved him, I’d do this small thing he was about to ask of me.” She sniffed loudly as more tears threatened to fall. “He told me his mother was worried pictures would be taken even though people had been banned from doing so, and they’d end up on the internet, and they’d show my scar.”
Ryder swore under his breath.
“I needed to promise him I would turn to my good side all day, and?—”
“Are you kidding me?” The words exploded out of Ryder. “Tell me he wasn’t serious?”
“Ryder—”
“No, Libby. You’re his princess! The one person he would live and die for, and he was worried about that.” He leaned forward and touched her scar gently. “It was wrong on so many levels,” he added when she didn’t speak. “You know that, and that’s why you ran, right?”
The tears started to fall then. “I-I don’t know why I knew then that I couldn’t go through with it. Andrew and I, we understood each other. He was the husband I’d always wanted, but right then I couldn’t do it. I tried to talk to him, but he said he had to go before someone saw us together.”
“What did you do?”
“I-I sat in that room, numb and unsure of my next move. His mother came next and told me that if I loved her son, I’d do this for him.”
Ryder blew out an angry breath.
“I mean, I knew they w-were worried about the ph-photos, as Andrew and his mother had tried to p-postpone the wedding. But to t-talk to me then, before I was to walk down the a-aisle….”
“It’s all right, Libby,” he said as her words turned to sobs. Heartbreaking sobs that made his chest burn.
Ryder reached for her then, lifting her onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her. She stiffened and tried to pull away, but he held her tighter, placing his chin on top of her head.
“You know what you did was the right thing, Libby. Even though your life isn’t going to plan now, it will again I promise. You’re strong and brave. No one could do what you did and not be.”
She cried into his shirt. Her hands curled into fists against his chest as he held her like he would Ally if she were upset.
“I know you’re going to doubt what you did, Libby, but trust me on this, there would have been other things that he would have asked of you. Things that would have broken another piece inside you.”
She looked up at him then, her eyes red rimmed and still brimming with tears, and he felt something move in his chest. He’d closed the distance between them before he thought better of it and kissed her softly. It was just for comfort and over in seconds. “Everything is going to be okay, Libby. I promise.”
She laid her cheek back on his chest and gave a deep sigh as all fight left her.
He wasn’t sure how long he lay there with her in his arms weeping, but in that moment, he knew this woman needed his strength, and he wanted to give it to her.
Ryder closed his eyes when her tears eventually eased, and then he felt her body soften against his, and seconds later, he knew only darkness.