Cue melty moment and then hot sex.
So, yeah, I had indulged this past month, filled myself up, despite the empty place Andre’s death left inside me.
It hit me sometimes, at odd moments, when I was playing poker with the ranch hands—which had made Duke furious until he realized that I’d cleaned them all out. Then he’d joined the game and I’d cleaned him out too.
He’d asked me who taught me and the hitch to my voice and the glassiness to my eyes told him everything he needed to know.
Other times I didn’t even need a reminder. I could be feeding the horses and the pain would bring me to my knees. I’d sob quietly and heavily with no one but the horses to watch. Crying without an audience was not something I was used to, but it was cleansing, like I wasn’t crying for anyone, wasn’t structuring my feelings to appear a certain way. I was just feeling.
It hurt.
It killed.
But it felt right, just like everything had this past month: Duke teaching me how to make raviolis, getting covered in flour and having sex on the kitchen counter; Anna teaching me how to make Chicken-Fried steak, Harriet teaching me how to hot wire Duke’s truck; Tanner taking me fishing in his favorite spot, sharing beers and conversation and company. Duke hadn’t completely forgiven his brother, but things seemed to have improved between them. I liked that. I liked watching Duke find his family again, find himself again.
I wasn’t just finding myself here. I was creating a version of myself that was completely and utterly mine, not designed by my agent, by directors, my trainers, the trolls on the Internet. Not even by Duke. Just me.
The trial hung over my head like a noose, waiting to strangle this life out of me. But I only thought of that in the hours after midnight, when I’d sneak out of bed and sit outside, staring at the stars.
Sometimes Duke would wake and find me. Other times I’d sit there alone.
“Need I remind you of the snake bite?” Duke asked, jerking me back to the present with his lips against mine.
I returned the kiss, of course. It was as natural as breathing these days. When we’d first got here, I’d thought the way he’d touched me was perfect for the act of us being together. But now we were really together, it was different. It was torture. Beautiful torture.
“Need I remind you that I didn’t die from that?” I replied, pulling back ever so slightly. It shouldn’t have been as hard as it was. It shouldn’t have been like removing my oxygen mask underwater, but it was.
His lips touched mine. Maybe he was intending it to start out as a simple kiss, but nothing was ever simple with us.
“Hey! You can suck each other’s faces later. We’ve got cattle to move.”
Both of us detached to find a grinning Tanner staring at us.
I grinned back.
Duke did not. “Fuck off.”
Tanner winked at me before sauntering out the door. His smile seemed almost genuine these days, but the ghost of what he’d let go would always haunt him. It shook me, since I’d be a version of that in the not-so-distant future.
Duke’s jaw got hard and his eyes got tight whenever I tried to ask him for updates. He’d give me as little information as possible. It should’ve offended me. I should’ve been given all the information about when I could expect to get my life back—after I testified against a killer of course. But I was relieved. It wouldn’t be my life I was getting back. My life was here. I’d be slipping into a stranger’s skin, back into the spotlight as a stranger to myself. But completely on my own. No Andre. No one to provide the compass for the full and insincere life of Anastasia Edwards.
Duke grasped my chin so I was looking at him again. “I’m serious, Anastasia. I’ve got plans for you later.”
My stomach dipped in the exact way it had since the first time. My hunger for him was never sated. He matched me with his needs. I moved my hand down his abs and toyed with the buckle of his belt. “I’ve got plans for you too. So how about you make sure you don’t fall off that horse.”
He kissed me again, hard and quick. “Honey, I fall off that horse, it’s ’cause I’m dead. Nothing else.”
I frowned with the thought of it. A sharp stab in my chest reminded me of Andre, of how easy it was to lose people when you cared about them.
“Hey,” Duke said, voice soft. “I’m comin’ back to you.”
The words shook me to my core. They were simple but the meaning behind them wasn’t. The way Duke looked at me wasn’t.
It was the look in his eyes that had stilled my heart in rare moments this past month. It was fleeting. At first, it was quick enough for me to dismiss as something constructed from hope. But it was becoming more frequent lately, this look. One that said three words, the ones I hadn’t repeated since that night, the ones he still hadn’t said.
But he stepped back giving my hips one last squeeze. “You call on the landline if anything happens.”
I rolled my eyes, not just because they still had a landline. “Yes, but as I said, I doubt anything will happen in the two hours I’m alone.”
I was totally freaking wrong about that.
The knock at the door surprised me, scared me a little too, if I was honest. But I guessed if anyone was coming here to murder me, they wouldn’t knock.
Harriet was due back from her hair appointment soon, the only reason I was alone in the house in the first place. I wanted to go on the herding trip with them, but there were others from a neighboring ranch involved and Duke didn’t want to risk one of them recognizing me.
Duke would be pissed at me for opening the door, but I didn’t realize what a bad idea it was until I opened it and a very pregnant woman gaped at me in surprise and then recognition.
“You’re Anastasia Edwards,” she said.
Shit.
I was Anastasia Edwards. Despite what I’d said to Duke on that night a thousand years ago, I had forgotten. I’d forgotten I was the movie star. People had treated me differently for years. They’d treated me with respect—whether it was fake or not. They never let me forget that I was someone famous, that I was a celebrity.
And at some point, that turned me into something less than human. I’d let it convince me that I was nothing more than that.
But this ranch. Duke. His family.
They’d turned me into something more than the celebrity. They’d turned me into something human.
So yeah, I forgot who I was right up until I saw the recognition on this beautiful woman’s face.
I was a movie star and a murder witness.
So I really hoped this woman wasn’t a gossip.
“Um, yeah, I am,” I said with the least amount of confidence I’d had admitting that.
“Are you with Duke?” she asked, cradling her stomach and frowning slightly.
Oh shit.
Was this woman, the soft woman I’d been so sure he had? She certainly looked like someone deserving of Duke—long dark hair, caramel eyes, skin that was the same. Native American, if I had to guess. And beautiful with very little makeup. She was small—apart from the belly, of course—wearing a tight black dress and cowboy boots, and perfectly kind eyes.
She belonged here, in this place, with this family. Something told me that.
“Am I with Duke?” I repeated.