Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Duke
“So, if the eggs are anything like last night’s laundry, we might have a full-on chemical incident before ten.” I toss a grin at the room, fully aware that no one’s paying attention. “Someone grab a fire extinguisher, or I’ll be forced to eat them all and rate them for structural integrity.”
Sherry snorts, which I consider a victory.
Everyone else? Blank stares.
Cody’s glasses catch the light at a precise angle, as if the reflection alone might erase my words from existence. Annie lifts an eyebrow, weighing the joke on some internal scale that I’m not allowed to see.
What the hell is going on?
Annie usually loves my jokes. Especially when they’re dumb.
Sometimes it’s just that little twitch at the corner of her mouth, trying not to encourage me and failing on principle.
Sometimes it’s a dry comment under her breath that lets me know she was listening even if she’d rather die than admit I’m funny before coffee.
But she reacts. That’s the thing. Annie reacts.
This morning, she’s giving me careful.
Careful is bad.
Careful means she’s either upset, suspicious, hiding something, or trying very hard not to feel whatever she’s feeling.
Since the woman runs on stubbornness and iced coffee, that still leaves too many options for my liking.
She’s at the island in black jeans and a loose charcoal sweater, one hand wrapped around her mug, the other around a piece of toast she doesn’t seem all that interested in.
Her blue hair is twisted up in a knot that’s trying to escape, a few bright strands loose around her face, and there’s a crease between her brows as if she woke up halfway through an argument and hasn’t stopped having it yet.
Normally, she clocks me the second I walk in.
Today, I get a nod and a “morning.” I might as well be some guy who repairs gutters, not one of her bosses and definitely not the man who had her in my bed a few weeks ago.
That stings more than I want it to.
Across the room, Cody is pretending to read a ledger at breakfast because he’s a complete lunatic. Glasses on, shoulders set, attention pinned to the page in that too-controlled way that says he isn’t taking in a damn thing.
He’s adjusted his watch three times in under a minute, which means whatever little system he uses to keep himself from unraveling is currently doing a poor job of it.
Interesting.
Also annoying.
Silas is at the counter with black coffee and the day’s schedule, looking at both as if they’ve failed him personally. That’s just a Tuesday in his body, even though it’s not Tuesday.
I slide eggs onto plates and point the spatula at Cody. “You know, it’s brave of you to bring accounting to breakfast. Real commitment to the bit.”
He doesn’t look up. “I’m working.”
“You’re glaring at paper in a room with food. That’s not the same thing.”
“It is when the paper matters.”
“See, that’s where we differ. Because from where I’m standing, bacon matters.”
Sherry laughs again while setting down a basket of toast. “I’m with Duke.”
“Of course you are,” Cody mutters.
Annie snorts softly into her coffee before she can stop herself.
There.
The sound hits me right in the ribs, ridiculous and immediate, and I turn a little too fast, catching the faint flush that rises in her cheeks.
Okay.
That would’ve been enough to make breakfast survivable.
Then Cody looks up.
Not at me. At her.
And whatever passes between them is gone before I can name it, but it’s there. Some little spark of awareness. Some shared thing neither of them wants on the table with the eggs.
Well.
Hell.
My hand tightens around the spatula.
Silas, because the man has timing when he’s not actively trying to terrify people, glances over and says, “If you burn those while psychoanalyzing the room, I’m making you eat all of them.”
“I would gladly eat all of them,” I say.
“That wasn’t the threat you think it was,” Annie murmurs.
There she is again. Dry, biting, almost herself.
Almost.
I plate breakfast, pass things around, keep the mood moving because that’s what I do around here.
Silas keeps the ranch standing. Cody keeps the books breathing. I keep the place from feeling mausoleumesque.
I make food, crack jokes, smooth over the rougher edges, make sure no one says the thing they can’t take back before they’ve had enough coffee to regret it properly.
Usually, I’m good at it. This morning, less so.
Annie eats fast. Cody barely tastes anything. Silas is distracted by the schedule and whatever new irritation Jake left in his path.
Sherry, poor woman, keeps trying to inject normal into the room and getting about as much traction as a deer on ice.
And underneath all of it, there’s this strange little current between Annie and Cody that would probably be invisible to anyone who doesn’t know exactly how both of them move.
I know.
That’s the problem.
Annie, who usually looks right at Cody when she’s needling him, barely meets his eyes.
Cody, who handles discomfort by turning into an expensive filing cabinet, keeps going too still every time she says anything at all.
I don’t like it.
Which is inconvenient, because I don’t exactly have a right to not like it.
I’m the one who got warned off.
Silas made that crystal clear after Annie spent the night in my room. Employees are off limits. Reputation matters. Complications spread.
The whole Harlan family cautionary sermon, just with more jaw tension and fewer direct mentions of our aunt.
And I listened.
Mostly.
I backed off. I gave Annie space. I stopped brushing too close in the kitchen and let breakfast become breakfast again instead of a game we were both trying too hard not to play.
Okay, so we went to the potluck, but we were clearly there as friends.
I did the smart thing, which is rare enough around here that I expected at least one medal and maybe pie.
What I didn’t expect was to sit at my own kitchen table and watch my brother go strange around the woman I still very much like.
That’s not a fun feeling.
It’s low and hot and stupid under the ribs.
Jealousy.
I hate it immediately.
By the time breakfast breaks, Annie’s up first, mug in hand. “I’ve got some things to go over.”
Annie slips out.
Cody stands at the same time in one smooth motion, collecting his mug and ledger, starring in a public service announcement about men who absolutely aren’t following women into hallways.
He stops. Just for a breath.
Long enough that I know he had to.
Then he turns the other way and heads for his office.
Silas either notices nothing or everything and says, “Feed delivery’s at ten. Jake has the revised list.”
“I heard him the first three times he said it yesterday,” I reply.
“Then maybe it’ll stick this time.”
I smile sweetly. “You know, I’d call you unpleasant this early in the morning, but that would imply you improve.”
He gives me the closest thing he has to an amused grin and heads out.
And suddenly I’m alone in the kitchen with dirty plates, cooling eggs, and the very inconvenient certainty that something happened last night and I don’t like not knowing what it was.
That should probably bother me for better reasons than it does.
Instead, I stand at the sink with my hands braced on the edge and stare at an abandoned butter knife waiting for a confession.
“Excellent,” I tell it. “Love this for me.”
The butter knife, same as most people in this house, offers nothing useful.
By midmorning, I’ve got enough irritation under my skin to become productive.
That’s one of my better traits, I think. Some people get frustrated and turn into assholes. Some people get frustrated and go looking for a fight.
I get frustrated and start doing things, which is not only more socially acceptable but occasionally hot if you frame it right.
So I throw myself into work.
The kitchen inventory needs updating anyway. The freezer in the back pantry has been making a noise I don’t trust.
There’s a roast marinating for dinner, three loaves proofing by the window, and a grocery list going because Jesse mentioned he and the twins might be here Friday and if that man brings those children into my kitchen without enough cereal and emergency dessert on hand, I’ll never recover.
I knead dough. I reorganize dry goods. I make a mental note to tell Sherry we’re low on cinnamon because I know if I tell Cody he’ll ask for quantities and I don’t currently need that kind of oppression in my life.
By 11:30, I’ve punched bread hard enough to qualify as therapy and still haven’t stopped thinking about Annie and Cody.
That’s irritating.
At noon, I give in and go looking for information because I can’t stand the not knowing anymore.
Cody’s office door is half open. He’s inside at his desk, sleeves rolled up, glasses on, staring at two screens full of numbers as if they’ve insulted our mother.
The room is exactly what anyone with eyes would expect from Cody. Ledgers stacked with mathematically satisfying precision, color-coded tabs, no unnecessary objects, and not one damn thing out of place unless it belongs to a system only he understands.
He doesn’t look up when I knock on the frame. “What?”
“Hello to you too.”
“I’m busy.”
“Clearly.”
I step in anyway and drop into the chair across from his desk.
That gets his attention.
He lifts his gaze over the rim of his glasses, expression already flat with warning. “What do you want?”
I lean back as if this is a casual social call and not me poking at a hornet’s nest in prescription lenses. “You tell me.”
His jaw tightens. “I’m not doing this.”
“That’s funny, because from where I’m sitting, you’ve been doing this all morning.”
He closes one spreadsheet, opens another. He seems to think the performance of productivity alone might send me back to the kitchen.
“I have work.”
“Mm. And yet you still found time at breakfast to stare at Annie every time she picked up a fork.”
He goes still. “I wasn’t staring at her.”
“Sure.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were,” I say. “And before you start pretending I imagined it, she was doing the same weird little avoidance dance right back, which means either you two had the world’s least successful conversation sometime after I went to bed or I’m suddenly psychic.”
He takes off his glasses, which is never a good sign. “Duke.”
“Did something happen?”
“No.”
“That was fast.”
“Because it’s true.”
“You’re lying.”
He gives me a look that on most people would qualify as murderous and on Cody qualifies as mildly inconvenienced. “I’m not discussing Annie with you.”
Interesting wording.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m busy.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s enough of one.”
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “Cody.”
He doesn’t respond.
Just stares back at me with that locked-down expression that means he’s put six extra doors between himself and whatever’s actually going on.
I know that face. I’ve known it since we were kids.
It’s the one he gets when something’s gotten under his skin far enough to matter, and he’d rather bite through his own tongue than admit it aloud.
Which means I’m not getting anything useful out of him unless I want to start a real fight.
Part of me does.
Not because I’m mad at him exactly. Because I’m mad at the feeling in my chest that keeps insisting I missed something important.
I’m mad at Annie for being careful with me this morning. I’m mad at myself for noticing the difference. Because none of this is clean anymore, and clean is a luxury we haven’t had in this house for years.
Instead, I say, “You know Silas warned me off.”
His expression doesn’t change, but one muscle in his jaw jumps.
“Then maybe you should stay off,” he says.
I smile, but there’s no warmth in it. “That sounded personal.”
“That sounded practical.”
“Since when are you practical about women?”
“Since this one lives in our house and works in our office while someone’s actively interfering with the accounts.”
Huh?
I sit back slowly. “Okay. That’s the first useful thing you’ve said.”
Cody exhales through his nose and puts his glasses back on, which means he regrets having said even that much. “If you’re done, leave.”
“Not yet.”
His stare narrows.
I hold up a hand. “I’m serious, Cody. Are you actually looking at the books, or are you hiding behind them because you don’t want to answer me?”
He doesn’t answer immediately, which is answer enough.
Then he turns one of the monitors toward me.
At first, all I see is rows of timestamps and file paths, the kind of backend system nonsense that makes my eyes glaze over after about twenty seconds because, unlike my brother, I wasn’t born wanting to romance a spreadsheet.
But even I can tell what I’m looking at is wrong.
“Whose access is that?” I ask.
“Annie’s.”
I look at him.
“Except it isn’t,” he says. “Her login shows activity she shouldn’t be able to perform without secondary approval, and there’s no record of that approval happening.”
That gets all of my attention at once. “Someone used her login?”
“Or made it look like someone did.”
“And you didn’t tell her.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know what I’m looking at yet.”
I stare at the screen again.
The dates mean nothing to me. But the implications do.
Someone’s in the system. Someone wants Annie visible. Or compromised. Or both.
And suddenly my jealousy feels very small and very stupid sitting beside that.
We have way more going on here that I need to be focused on.