Page 21 of The Wrong Ride Home

“Nash Wilder protected the land,” Nokoni stated. “And made money doing it.”

"He could’ve made more if he hadn’t been so fucking stubborn about selling," Kaz remarked, raising his glass. "I thought he’d sell when that oil pipeline deal collapsed."

Senator Jessup chuckled, swirling his whiskey. "Would’ve, if it weren’t for that—what’s her name? That Rivera girl?"

That hit me like a slap.

Elena.

Congressman Thornton smirked. "Oh yeah. The little accountant with the juicy ass.” His wife rolled her eyes, but he continued. “Turns out she had a brain along with those big tits. I heard Nash would’ve drowned in debt if she hadn’t pulled him out of that Harden deal."

I gritted my teeth.

"She saved his ass," Jessup continued as if this was the most irritating thing in the world. "And then she started running things. Pretty soon, we had to go through her to get to Nash…and since he didn’t want to be gotten to, we got no fucking where."

Kaz snorted. "Made negotiations harder. Woman didn’t budge an inch. Thought she had a pair, the way she acted."

Laughter rippled around the table.

“Good thing your daddy died, or he’d lose the land come tax day,” the senator chirped. “That Rivera bitch wouldn’t be able to save the day then. It’s smart of you to sell, Duke. Very smart.”

I felt it before I saw it—the disgust in Nokoni’s glare.

"It’s not smart, and it lacks integrity," Nokoni said, his voice steady. "And if you call Elena a bitch in front of me again, I don’t care that you’re a senator; Iwilllay you down."

That shut them up for a second. It shut me up as well. Nokoni was defending the girl I loved while I wasplayingLand Developer. I’d not had a call of conscience in the years I was building my company, and now I seemed to be plagued with it, and I had been in Wildflower Canyon less than twenty-four hours.

Thornton settled back, smug. "Aw, come on, Nokoni." He smirked. "She was Nash’s whore’s daughter."

Something inside me snapped.

My chair scraped back hard against the floor, but before I could speak, Fiona chirped, "Oh, Senator, I meant to ask you about the land-use bill coming up for a vote next session." She smiled, effortless and poised. "The one about re-zoning protections for private ranches?"

Jessup’s interest shifted instantly, his smug grin returning. "Ah, yes. Big implications for developments like yours, Duke."

Nokoni shoved his chair back and rose. He turned to me—not them, me.

“Nash would be disappointed how much you’ve become like Gloria,” he remarked, his eyes blazing. Then he grabbed his hat off the table and walked out without another word.

Silence settled for half a second before Kaz huffed a laugh. "He always gets so damn emotional. His kind—always taking things so personally."

A few of them chuckled.

I didn’t.

Because not for the first time this night, I was feeling a little sick.

It only got worse after that. But I knew I couldn’t lose my temper, no matter how much money I poured into Jessup and Thornton’s reelection campaigns—these were the people, along with Kaz Chase, who were vital for my business. They helped sway the votes in Congress and the Senate, so I could keep doing what I was doing, what Nokoni calledraping the land. Well, fuck him. This was progress. This was how the world came to be.

But I knew I was rationalizing.

It was easy to make deals when you weren’t standing on the land that was going to be razed. Easy to see numbers on a contract instead of grass flattened under bulldozers, fences torn down to make room for resort entrances, and pastures paved over in the name of progress.

It was harder to accept that your father, his father, and two generations before him had fought to save this land, to keep it wild.

Harder when you realized that you were the one about to sell it out.

When the senator cracked another joke about how Native Americans had lost their land because of their emotions, I left the table and went to the restroom.

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