Betting the Bad Boy (13 page)

“Where did you learn how to cook like this?”

“In pri—” He caught himself. “Meals are important to me. I’m going to cook dinner from now on.”

“What about breakfast?” Ryder asked Duke with his mouth full.

“You’re going to learn how to cook your own. I’m teaching you how to make eggs this week.” He looked at Grace. “Is that okay with you?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Are you also going to take over rebuilding the porch? I saw all the materials out there.”

“It’s rotting. I would have gotten more done, but I had a meeting with Ryder’s teacher and guidance counselor.”

“You did what?” She dropped her fork. Ryder looked down into his plate.

“The boy has been playing you. The reason he’s been skipping out on math class is because he’s bored. He ain’t stupid and it sure as hell isn’t too hard for him.” Duke slipped a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Grace. It was a worksheet with complex equations on it that she couldn’t begin to understand.

“What is this?”

“Calculus. Ryder was getting his work done really early in class and it was all correct. So the teacher started to give him harder and harder assignments and the boy just keeps blowing through them. The counselor said he’s gifted. Hasn’t seen a kid like him in Destiny in a long time, maybe never. I had him taken out of the class. He’s going to be working with a professor at the local college from now on. I had it arranged so he’ll meet Ryder at the school every day.”

“And you did this all without asking me?”

“Yup.” He nodded.

Her stomach began to burn, anger causing it to roll. “You couldn’t have called me to let me know what’s going on?”

“I’m telling you now. And even if I had told you, would it have made a difference? Our kid is a goddamn genius, I thought you would be a little more interested in that.”

He was right, but she still didn’t like him making decisions without her. He had only been a father for a few days. She had been Ryder’s mother his entire life. “You did this?” she asked Ryder, looking at the paper.

He nodded.

“I’m impressed. I’m proud of you, but I’m upset with you, too. I got you a tutor who you terrorized. I fought with the school to get you more help and you’re a math whiz?” She sat back in her chair, frustration overwhelming her. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

“You kept a secret from me, too,” he said, surprising her. “Now we’re even.”

“Don’t be disrespectful,” Duke barked.

Ryder’s words were like a slap in the face, but it was one she deserved. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I haven’t always done what was best for you.” She rubbed her temples, the throbbing she had felt all day increasing. “My head hurts.” She got up from the table. “I’m going to go rest for a while. You and your father can enjoy the rest of your dinner in peace.”

*   *   *

Duke watched Grace go. She was hurt. It was clear on her face, but there was nothing he could do about it. Ryder was angry at her and he had a right to be.

“You probably are going to have to apologize.”

“For what?” he asked with more emotion than Duke had heard from him all day. “I’m not sorry about what I said. She should have told me about you. I asked about you. About who you were. She just kept telling me that you were gone and that I was all she had left of you.”

Duke looked down at his bowl of rapidly cooling food. At least she hadn’t told the boy that Duke didn’t want him. He couldn’t imagine what she thought about him when she didn’t get any responses to her letters. “She had her reasons.”

“It’s because you were in prison, wasn’t it?”

The question made Duke’s head snap up. “How do you know that?”

“One of the kids in my class asked me about it today and I looked it up on the Internet. It’s not a secret. People write about you because you’re rich now.”

“What exactly did you find out?”

“That you spent six years in jail out of your ten-year sentence. What did you do?”

Duke debated whether to tell him or not, but there was no reason to hide it from him. In a town as small as Destiny, where gossiping was the national pastime, he was bound to find out. “A man hit your mother and we got into a fight. I would have killed him if there weren’t people there to stop me.”

“Somebody hit Mom?” Ryder’s nostril’s flared. “You should have killed him.”

Duke couldn’t deny the small bit of pride that flared in his chest at Ryder’s response even though he knew it was wrong. “I can’t sit here and tell you that what I did was right.”

“I would have killed him.”

Ryder had been the man of the house all this time. His mother’s protector. He was giving her trouble now, but he could tell they were close. “I needed to control my temper. You’re like me, boy. I can see myself in you. You’re going to have to keep your cool in life. You’ll end up regretting it if you don’t.”

“I hit you that first day,” he said softly.

“You tried to take my damn head off.”

“I’m sorry.” He genuinely seemed to feel bad and Duke wanted to reach out and touch him to reassure him, but he kept his hands in his lap.

“Don’t be. You had your reasons. But you shouldn’t try that again because you know I’ll stomp you, right?”

Ryder nodded and there was just a little hint of a smile from him. That made Duke feel surprisingly good. It was the first time his kid smiled at him.

*   *   *

Duke rested the book he was reading on his chest. He was tired, but he couldn’t fall asleep. There was too much going on in his mind to relax. Too many thoughts about Ryder and Grace and where his life was going. He still had his shop in Vegas to think about. He had hired men he trusted who were talented and hardworking, but the first shop was his baby. It was what he’d worked the hardest for and he didn’t know how long he could be away from it. He’d committed to being here for the month, but what about after that?

What about Ryder? He didn’t want to be one of those fathers that just saw their kid sometimes on holidays and weekends. He wanted to be there all the time. But he didn’t want to be here. When he walked into that school today it all came back to him. How much he hated sitting at a desk and having a teacher drone on and on about shit he didn’t care about, about shit he was never going to use.

He’d dropped out just before graduation senior year. Lolly raked him over the coals for it, but it didn’t matter to him. School was getting in the way of him working. Those seven hours spent there were hours he could have been making cash as a mechanic and learning more about customization. He didn’t know if he regretted his decision to drop out of school, because it enabled him to save up thousands of dollars and he had gotten his GED eventually, but now he had Ryder. Who probably wasn’t going to use a third of the shit he learned in school, but still Duke wanted that for his son. He wanted him to go to college and get a degree and be more like Colt than him.

That was why he’d decided to have that professor come down and work with Ryder. He had more money than he could spend in ten lifetimes. He was going to make sure his kid had better than he had. That he had the best. He was going to win that bet no matter what the cost or how much he pissed Grace off in the process.

He heard the door open and then Grace’s footsteps on the stairs. He didn’t think he would see her tonight. She had gone to lie down during dinner and hadn’t come out for the rest of the evening.

“You cleaned the kitchen,” she said when she reached the last step.

“Of course I did. I don’t do anything half-assed.”

“No.” She stood there looking at him. “I guess you don’t.”

He took her in for a long moment. Her hair was loose and hanging around her shoulders. She wore a cheap pink cotton nightgown that was meant more for comfort than titillation, but he still found her sexy in it. It was the way it lightly skimmed her body. He could just see her curves through it and he knew what was hidden underneath. She looked exhausted but beautiful and he found himself wanting to be near her. “I made Ryder help.”

“You think I baby him.”

He nodded once. “I do.”

“You think I don’t give him enough responsibility.”

“That’s right.”

She came over to the bed, pushed the book off his chest, and placed her head there. “I think you should shut up.”

Her comment was unexpected and it made him laugh.

“I’m so mad at you, Duke, I could punch you.”

He ran his fingers through her hair. “Why is that, Grace?”

“You’re a better cook than me.”

“Prison didn’t have many perks, but that was one of them.”

She looked up at him with those big wide eyes, and it made his heart beat just a little faster. Those eyes were what made him fall in love with her in the first place. She looked at him in a way that only she was capable of. She looked at him like she cared about him. “You learned how to cook in there?”

“Yeah. We had a bona fide four-star French chef in with us.”

“What did he do?”

“Tried to kill his sous-chef for sleeping with his daughter. He was a nice guy, though.”

“Really?” She didn’t believe him.

“You can’t define people by one day in their life, or one action. Chef’s daughter was sixteen at the time. The guy who was sleeping with her was thirty-five.”

“Oh. I guess you’re right then.” She stoked her hand over his stomach. “I don’t like it when you’re right. It makes me feel horrible.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought prison would change you. Make you harder. Make you institutionalized. I read about maximum-security prisons. I was afraid of what you might be like. But you’re still you and I kept him away for nothing.”

Her fears were right. He had seen people get beaten and stabbed. He had seen guards do terrible, illegal things. He had seen scared kids turn into hardened criminals. He didn’t blame her. He could have been an animal.

“Ryder knows.”

She looked up at him. “Did you tell him?”

“No. He knew. One of his friends saw me bring him to school and asked him about me. I guess I should have known it wasn’t a secret around here. Ryder looked me up on the Internet. He asked me about it. Wanted to know what I did.”

“You told him?”

“I didn’t want to lie.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You shouldn’t have. How did he react?”

“He said I should have killed him.”

There was an odd mixture of pride and chagrin on her face. “He’s so much like you, Duke.”

“And yet you love him more than anything else.”

Grace climbed on top of him and kissed his lips. “Of course I do.”

“Why are you here?” he asked her as he felt his arousal being to stir.

“Because”—she kissed his mouth again, a little longer, a little deeper this time—“I want to feel good in the way only you make me feel good.”

He sighed and relaxed into the bed as she took her lips from his mouth and set them on his chest. Grace was still the best sex he had ever had. There had been women before and after her but she was the only one who could make him hard just by saying his name. She was the only one who could kiss him and make him want to be inside of her all night.

She licked his nipple and then scraped her teeth across it. He hissed. It was taking everything in him not to flip her over and rip off her underwear. Instead he sat up and pulled her close, causing her to straddle his lap. “I want you naked,” he told her.

“Then I guess you are going to have to strip me.”

He took her lower lip between his teeth and bit down slightly. She moaned a little and rubbed herself against the erection in his boxers. He kissed her then, soothing her where he had bitten, and studied her for a moment. Her lips were pink and kiss-swollen, and there was a little red mark where his teeth had sunk in. Her hair was a mess from his fingers running through it, and it made him harder. He loved it when she looked like this. Raw and aroused and messy, because nobody got to see this side of her. She looked sweet to the rest of the world, homey, almost prim, but he knew there was more to her than that. She didn’t hold back and it made him want to get on his knees and thank God for it. For her.

He pulled her nightgown off her, revealing her totally nude body. “No underwear?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t see the point. They were coming off anyway.” She looped her arms around his neck, her fingers playing in his hair.

“You planned to seduce me tonight?”

“I thought about you all last night and this morning and when I was at work today. I wanted your skin on mine. I wanted to smell your scent. I wanted to feel your arms around me. I’ve never seduced man before. Is wanting someone seduction?”

She had always been so open about wanting to be with him. And he never understood why. Never could figure out what it was about him that she liked. And now she was sitting completely naked in his lap, arms wrapped around him, eyes locked with his.

He had he to admit that it felt damn good.

“You’re so beautiful, Grace.” He kissed down the side of her neck as he cupped her breast in his hand. He was thirty-five years old and he still couldn’t believe that somebody like him got to be with somebody like her. Rationally, he knew he was a millionaire, that he had brains, that he could have anyone he wanted, but part of him still felt like he was a boy and she was the forbidden piece of fruit he wanted to pick so bad.

“I’m ready for you, Duke.” She moved his hand between her legs where he found her slick, and that made him even harder. He pushed two fingers inside of her, feeling her tightness clench around him. “I want you inside of me,” she whispered. “But I don’t want to move from this spot.”

“We don’t have to move. We can do this right here.”

“Can we?” She was surprised.

“There are so many ways we can do this.”

She took him from his boxers and started to stroke him. “Oh, really? Start with the way that makes me forgot my name.”

He rolled her onto her back, pushed her legs apart and her knees up to her breasts, and thrust inside her.

She cried out and he spent the next hour making sure he did everything in his power to make sure she forgot everything she ever knew.

*   *   *

Grace felt almost liquid two hours later. Duke had made love to her twice that night and she knew she should get up and go back upstairs to her bedroom, but she couldn’t force herself to move. She had never slept in bed with a man. Never had a warm, heavy body enveloping her. Never felt this safe. She knew that once she got up the night would be over and she would have to go to bed alone. Then this closeness she felt with him would evaporate and they would go back to the strained tension that plagued them when the sun came up.