Resonance of Stars (Greenstone Security #5) - Anne Malcom Page 0,28

were soft from all the times they’d been washed.

They were, quite simply, the finest sheets I’d ever felt.

I made a point not to look at Duke, hating that I didn’t have my phone. It hadn’t been so clear how much I’d used it as a shield, until I didn’t have it. Nor did I have the foresight to snatch up a book from the shelves on the other side of the room.

It would ruin the moment I’d created if I got up to grab one now. So instead, I acted like I was totally okay with lying in a bed that smelled of lavender, on a ranch in Montana, with a man who didn’t like me, pretending to his family I was his girlfriend, and not the witness to a high-profile murder he was trying to keep alive.

Duke stared at me a good long while. Maybe he was trying to see through the act, maybe trying to figure out whether the floor was a more sensible option.

I wasn’t sure what I hoped for more. I’d never slept with a man. I’d fucked plenty. But sleep was something personal. Intimate. Vulnerable. Something I never shared with anyone.

Not even the man I’d been engaged to. He said he couldn’t sleep with another person beside him, as it interrupted his dreams.

The floorboards creaked ever so slightly as Duke crossed the room. The bed depressed with his weight. It was a big bed, so there was a considerable space between us, but the Grand fucking Canyon wouldn’t be wide enough.

I held my breath and waited.

For what, I didn’t know.

For something.

But nothing came.

Only silence that only a place with a big sky could offer.

5

“Good morning, sunshine.”

I squinted at Harriet, and she had a grin on her face to match the one in her voice. She was wearing a different outfit today, no less fabulous. A long-sleeved leopard print shirt, complemented by the multiple gold necklaces slung around her neck. Both arms were adorned with thick bracelets. She was wearing high-waisted black jeans and heeled boots, for goodness sake. At six in the morning. Not to mention full makeup.

“Hey, sweetie,” Anna said, moving from what I guessed was a butler’s pantry, warm smile on her face. She also looked arguably as good as Harriet, though a little less glam. She was wearing a denim chambray shirt, big wide belt buckle, and faded jeans. No makeup. Where Harriet looked like a beautiful rock-chick badass, Anna was the beautiful cowgirl badass. Their clothes helped, but more than anything that beauty was inside them.

I envied it.

“Morning,” I said, feeling more out of place than ever. I was an early riser. Something in me was always wide awake before dawn. Maybe it was because sleep didn’t give me rest nor respite like it did with other people.

It was obvious why, because throughout my childhood I always went to sleep hungry, scared, and powerless.

Sure, I still went to bed hungry these days, but I’d been so sure that when I had all the control I thought money and fame would give me it would fill me up. It would give me what I needed to sleep through the night.

Turns out, it didn’t work that way.

Especially when you slept next to a man like Duke.

“How’d you sleep?” Anna asked, handing me a cup of coffee.

I took the cup happily, inhaling long and deep. I could tell this was good coffee—I was somewhat of a coffee snob—plus, I recognized the fancy machine on the counter.

“Great,” I said after my first sip.

It wasn’t a lie either. I might’ve awoken at my regular time, but it was the first time since I’d closed my eyes the night before, which was not the norm for me. I was up multiple times in the night, mostly because I was convinced I heard a noise, that there was someone watching me sleep. The little poor, hungry girl in me had been in charge when buying my six-bedroom mansion. Bigger meant better. Bigger meant I’d made it and it could swallow up my entire past.

In reality, to a woman with an active imagination who was waiting for everything to be taken away from her, it was another beast. A huge tomb where my murderer could hide in the shadows.

It didn’t matter that I paid for the best security system money could buy, and lived in a gated compound with a twenty-four-hour security attendant. Fear didn’t respond to logic like that. So I’d get at best, a full three hours,