Duke stared at me a good long while. Maybe he was trying to see through the act, maybe trying to figure out whether the floor was a more sensible option.
I wasn’t sure what I hoped for more. I’d never slept with a man. I’d fucked plenty. But sleep was something personal. Intimate. Vulnerable. Something I never shared with anyone.
Not even the man I’d been engaged to. He said he couldn’t sleep with another person beside him, as it interrupted his dreams.
The floorboards creaked ever so slightly as Duke crossed the room. The bed depressed with his weight. It was a big bed, so there was a considerable space between us, but the Grand fucking Canyon wouldn’t be wide enough.
I held my breath and waited.
For what, I didn’t know.
For something.
But nothing came.
Only silence that only a place with a big sky could offer.
5
“Good morning, sunshine.”
I squinted at Harriet, and she had a grin on her face to match the one in her voice. She was wearing a different outfit today, no less fabulous. A long-sleeved leopard print shirt, complemented by the multiple gold necklaces slung around her neck. Both arms were adorned with thick bracelets. She was wearing high-waisted black jeans and heeled boots, for goodness sake. At six in the morning. Not to mention full makeup.
“Hey, sweetie,” Anna said, moving from what I guessed was a butler’s pantry, warm smile on her face. She also looked arguably as good as Harriet, though a little less glam. She was wearing a denim chambray shirt, big wide belt buckle, and faded jeans. No makeup. Where Harriet looked like a beautiful rock-chick badass, Anna was the beautiful cowgirl badass. Their clothes helped, but more than anything that beauty was inside them.
I envied it.
“Morning,” I said, feeling more out of place than ever. I was an early riser. Something in me was always wide awake before dawn. Maybe it was because sleep didn’t give me rest nor respite like it did with other people.
It was obvious why, because throughout my childhood I always went to sleep hungry, scared, and powerless.
Sure, I still went to bed hungry these days, but I’d been so sure that when I had all the control I thought money and fame would give me it would fill me up. It would give me what I needed to sleep through the night.
Turns out, it didn’t work that way.
Especially when you slept next to a man like Duke.
“How’d you sleep?” Anna asked, handing me a cup of coffee.
I took the cup happily, inhaling long and deep. I could tell this was good coffee—I was somewhat of a coffee snob—plus, I recognized the fancy machine on the counter.
“Great,” I said after my first sip.
It wasn’t a lie either. I might’ve awoken at my regular time, but it was the first time since I’d closed my eyes the night before, which was not the norm for me. I was up multiple times in the night, mostly because I was convinced I heard a noise, that there was someone watching me sleep. The little poor, hungry girl in me had been in charge when buying my six-bedroom mansion. Bigger meant better. Bigger meant I’d made it and it could swallow up my entire past.
In reality, to a woman with an active imagination who was waiting for everything to be taken away from her, it was another beast. A huge tomb where my murderer could hide in the shadows.
It didn’t matter that I paid for the best security system money could buy, and lived in a gated compound with a twenty-four-hour security attendant. Fear didn’t respond to logic like that. So I’d get at best, a full three hours, the rest of the night was spent wandering around the house, looking for my demise. Then, I’d turn all the lights on, read, or write, or do anything to distract myself from how alone and afraid I was.
I’d never felt safer with Duke beside me. It turned out my sleeping self didn’t have the reservations I had about the distance we needed behind closed doors. I’d woken up sprawled on his expansive chest, one leg cocked and thrown over the two of his, my forehead on his large pec, using it like it was a down fucking pillow.
And I was not a fucking cuddler, which obviously wasn’t a surprise. No way did I want to find comfort in other people, when they were the ones to give me all my scars in the first place. You never got close enough to let someone cut you—physically or emotionally. I’d done both with Duke. I’d just been glad I’d been able to extricate myself from the situation without Duke waking up.
“The boy still asleep?” Harriet asked.
I nodded, thinking of the way he’d looked sleeping.
She eyed me, much too sharp a gaze for this time in the morning, for this time in my life. “Needs it,” she said finally. “I don’t imagine that boy’s had a good night’s sleep in years, not with all that running around war zones and cities filled with miscreants and misogynists.”
I almost choked on my coffee with her words. Both because they were funny, right on the point, and filled with love and sadness.
“Yeah,” I said, swallowing the coffee. “He needs it.”
“Help yourself to some breakfast,” Amy offered, gesturing to the breakfast bar.
It was spread with enough food to feed a small army. Or a large ranch, I guessed. Scrambled eggs. Toast. Bacon. Fresh fruit. Pastries. Fucking chia seed pudding. All artfully placed like I had my chef do for me for an at-home photoshoot I’d done a few years ago.
Not that I actually ate like that. I had a celery juice, a coffee, and a cigarette right up until I quit. Then it was just the juice and coffee. Egg whites and whole wheat toast after a grueling workout. No butter. No sugar. Nothing on this bar.
“And before you politely refuse or nibble on one spoon full of chia pudding...don’t,” Harriet said. “You need to eat like a human being today. You’re gonna need your strength if you’re gonna go out on the ranch.”
My head snapped up and my gaze went between the women. “I’m going to go out on the ranch?” I couldn’t keep the child-like excitement from my voice.
Something moved in both the women’s faces. Surprise, maybe. They’d expected me to turn my nose up it, no doubt.
“We’ve got a spare horse, and we’re always looking for a spare pair of hands,” Amy said. “If you’re up to it.”
I snatched up a croissant. “Oh, I’m up to it.”
Duke had slept in.
He never slept in. Being in a family of ranchers meant you woke with the sun every morning, some mornings before it. There were no lazy teenage years for him where he woke at noon and lounged in front of the TV for hours.
He’d never done that.
And he’d never resented his family nor his life. Firstly, because he didn’t know any different. Secondly, because he loved his family, he loved the land, and he loved the horses. He loved the way the sky woke up, being able to witness that. He’d loved ranching because it was in his blood. But there was also an itch inside him, a hunger to experience different things, to live a different life to his father.
His father was happy. Even through the hard years, hard years on the land, and other harder years in his marriage. His parents loved each other fiercely, and they’d taught him that. They also taught him that love took work, hence the reason he hadn’t been all that eager to fall in love. He didn’t need the work.