His jaw hardened. “Coupla things. I’m fuckin’ good at my job. To be fair, every single one at Greenstone is fuckin’ good at their jobs. Which means, you’ll stay alive if you stay smart.” He paused, to be sure it was made known he didn’t think I was smart. “I’m also a professional. I don’t have to like you to keep you alive.”
I bit my lip and his gaze flickered down. He noted that, like it was something more than the nervous gesture it was, his brows furrowing for a beat before he kept speaking.
“Second thing, most of my brothers have wives. Kids. Goes without saying this job comes with more risks than most. Also goes without saying each of those men are pretty fuckin’ capable of mitigating risks and danger. But Kitsch is serious. We’ve gone up against serious. We got our scars from that. We got through. But this fuckin’ guy will use anything and anyone to get to you. I don’t have a wife or kids to be endangered. So, princess, I don’t give a shit if you’d rather someone more agreeable to you, you’ve got me.”
That shut me up. Not because he called me princess in a way that was meant to be insulting and patronizing.
No, because just by doing this job, I was putting him in serious danger. Putting the kids of those macho men in danger.
I swallowed lead. “Is there a way that Kitsch could connect their families to me?” I asked, voice small. “Will Greenstone protecting me put them in danger?”
If the answer to that was yes, I’d make my escape in the middle of the night. I’d climb out the fucking window and find my way to a pay phone, call Andre, and figure out another way. I might not like Duke, but I hated myself a lot more. And that self-hatred would become suffocating if a child came to harm, or if the man who murmured soft things to Rosie and looked like she invented oxygen was in danger of losing her.
I was a bitch. Sure. A narcissist. Definitely. But this? No fucking way.
I was so deep in my panic, I didn’t realize that Duke hadn’t answered and was staring at me again, brows furrowed like last time.
“Answer me,” I clipped in my best bitch-tone, uncomfortable with this probing gaze. “Am I putting them in danger or not?”
He jerked, ever so slightly, his face turned cold once more. “No,” he said.
I made sure to measure that single word, weigh it to find if I could see a lie. I couldn’t. Although, I thought Duke would be someone who could get away with a lie. So I measured who I considered him to be. A good man. One who helped people for a living, but wasn’t afraid to do some dark things. He loved his family, was good to his mother, respected his father, and adored his grandmother.
He wouldn’t bring me here if there was even a sliver of risk to those in this house.
“Okay,” I said.
Then I snatched up my bags and stomped into the bathroom, making sure to close and lock the door behind me.
It was nice, like the rest of the house. Expensive, but it didn’t scream at you like my bathroom did. The tile was gleaming. Two sinks, complete with little glass jars of guest soaps and cotton pads. Huge, claw-footed tub situated in front of a window that looked out onto the whole freaking ranch.
Walking over to it, it seemed like it looked over the whole freaking world. They said Montana was Big Sky Country, and for once, they weren’t full of cliché and bullshit.
I didn’t stare at the sky for too long. At its beauty. I couldn’t handle looking at that, at something so beautiful when I had ugliness simmering inside of me. So I took a shower in the large shower, used hundreds of dollars’ worth of products, donned silk, and commenced my lengthy skincare routine.
It was rude with Duke out there waiting. He likely wanted the shower just as much as I did. He had more rights to it.
But I was done being polite and considerate. I’d done that for a whole night. I was out of practice—meaning I’d never done that in recorded memory. It was exhausting.
Yet it felt…right. Everything felt right amongst Duke’s family. The easy conversation, the laughter, the smiles, Duke’s fucking hand on my thigh. Hence me having to wash that feeling off, and replace it with multifarious synthetic versions of me.
Once I felt enough like myself, I opened the door.
I didn’t know what I was expecting, an empty room, maybe? Duke sneaking off to his old room—lying to his parents about some fight—or maybe I’d find him sleeping soundly in the bed, owning all the pillows, leaving me to sleep on the large armchair in the corner of the room.