She turned to me as I was regarding the small log cabin. It was only about a ten-minute drive from the homestead, and I figured that walking across the field would make it around the same length of time by foot, but it seemed completely and totally isolated. It was on a slight incline, which meant that the wraparound porch had a breathtaking view of the entire valley, and the mountains beyond. It wasn’t big. Maybe two bedrooms, from what I could see. Well maintained. Flowers surrounding it. Wicker furniture on the porch. Someone had tended to this place, the same person that had tended to the homestead—likely Anna or Harriet.
In short, it was the dream house I didn’t know I wanted.
Not some huge mansion full of empty spaces and expensive furniture. Not the desirable zip code. The palm trees. The sprawling pool I never swam in but paid thousands to have maintained.
No. More than anything, I wanted this enchanting log cabin in Montana.
And despite that I had the money to buy any kind of house I wanted, I’d never get this. I didn’t have the currency to buy this.
“What, you didn’t think we’d make the two of you sleep in the main house with all of us, did you?” Harriet asked, jerking me out of my trance. “Then you can’t walk around naked cooking bacon at three in the morning.” She paused. “But I wouldn’t recommend cooking bacon nude. Oil splatters and all that.” She waved her hand. “Anyway. You two need your own space. We’ve had this sitting here, for family, guests. Well, that’s what we’ve said throughout the years. It was always for our Duke, for his family, if he ever decided to come home to us.”
The bravado in her voice trailed off at the end so I could hear the naked emotion, her love for Duke.
I looked over to see the woman staring at the cabin, at the alternate futures it might’ve had. But with something else. Hope.
Hope that I might be the person to bring all those things into that cabin.
It choked me, sickened me. The desperate need I had to be that. To fill up that fucking cabin, when the truth was I didn’t have enough inside me to fill up a fucking bathtub, let alone the cabin, the life that someone like Duke deserved.
“It’s taken a couple of days to get it ready,” she continued. “That’s why you’ve been stuck in the main house. That, and we wanted to spend some time with the both of you. I needed some time to decide if I liked you or not.”
I couldn’t help myself. “Does this mean you’ve decided you like me?”
She turned to me, grinning. “Honey, I decided to like you the second you said yes to margaritas, and decided to love you once you told that story about meeting my grandson.”
I opened my mouth then, ready to let the ugly truth come tumbling out. It was selfish. Duke had been keeping his family out of this for a reason. A good one, most likely, one that might keep me alive. But I couldn’t stand to continue to watch them welcome me. Couldn’t stand that I was starting to fall a little bit in love with all of them. Fall in love with this lie.
But of course, the man on the white horse came to save the day. Save me from the truth.
“Ah, there’s the man of the hour,” Harriet declared, smiling at where the horse was trotting toward us. “Just in time too, he can take the bags in while we drink wine.”
My entire body was tense as Duke rode up. I should’ve been holding on to the act from this morning. That nasty confidence. But I didn’t have the energy, not with this fucking cabin staring at me.
So I looked at anything but Duke, right up until he got off his horse, and his boots crunched across the dirt and settled right in front of me. A hand went to my chin and tilted my head toward him.
He was wearing his cowboy hat. It did things to me—along with the faded plaid shirt, large shiny belt buckle that drew my eyes too close to his crotch, and the distressed Levis. It did everything to me. When had I been so certain that I needed a man in a ten-thousand-dollar suit? That was bullshit. All I needed was Duke in cowboy boots.
His eyes were full of things. Worry. Intensity. Warmth. None of that fury and hatred that I expected.
“How you feeling, baby?”
Baby.
There it was again.
It hit me in the stomach.
I couldn’t keep up with this. He couldn’t keep doing this to me, shifting all my foundations, calling me by this endearment like it belonged on me. I had to stop this, had to put on my bitch face and get him to hate me again. As horrible as that was, it was safer.