Smoked

I followed him over to where Decker and his team were exiting the truck.
“Smoke,” he said, stepping forward to shake my hand. “It’s good to see you.”
“Likewise, Deck. Thanks for accelerating the schedule for me. I don’t know how much longer the guys and I could’ve kept up the round-the-clock surveillance.”
“Copy that,” he said. “Okay to set up in there?” he asked Zeke, pointing to the barn.
“All ready for ya,” he answered.
My head shot up when I heard another vehicle pulling in.
“That’s the rest of my guys,” said Decker, maybe catching the look of disappointment on my face.
“He’s waiting on Siren,” said Zeke once he was far enough away from me that I couldn’t throttle him.
“Go do your job, asshole,” I growled in his direction.
I walked over to the corral, and Deck followed. “How’s she doin’?”
“She’s got almost full mobility on the left side of her body, but her memory isn’t improving as quickly as her doctors expected it to.”
“What’s it been, a month?”
“About that.”
“Before I put my foot in it, what’s the situation between the two of you?”
“We’re together.” My head snapped up again when I heard another SUV pull in. This time, I saw Maureen behind the wheel. “Excuse me.” I raced toward the vehicle, shouting behind me, “Zeke can get you set up.”
“Hi,” Siren said when I opened the door to help her out.
“How’d it go?”
“Not well,” she answered. “I have a terrible headache, and I’m not sitting through another one of those feckin’ scans.”
“They did more?”
“Yes,” she murmured, walking around me toward the house.
“Siren,” I called after her but felt Maureen’s hand on my arm.
“She had a rough go of it today.”
“In what way?”
“She remembered some things that are troubling her.”
“About her and me?”
The nurse nodded. “You might want to let her be for a bit.”
That was the last thing I intended to do. I stalked toward the house, down the hallway, past the open door of my bedroom. I opened the door to the other room without knocking. Siren was lying on the bed with her arm covering her eyes.
“Go away, Smoke.”
“Maureen said you had a rough day.”
“That, I did, and I’m not up for talking about it.”
I walked to the window, closed the blinds, and sat on the side of the bed. I moved Siren’s arm from her face. “Look at me,” I said when she turned her head away. “What did you remember?”
“More of the same.”
I hated the anguish I could hear in her voice.
“Why is it in every memory I have, you and I are at odds?” she cried, rolling her body farther from mine and then looking over her shoulder. “I don’t want you to answer unless you’re going to say something different than what you’ve said before.”
Even if I believed now was the right time to tell her how we’d felt about each other before a bullet almost took her life, with Decker’s arrival, I couldn’t get into it.
“Get some rest, and we’ll talk later.”
“Was that Decker I saw you talking to?”
“It was. Why?”
“I remember him.”
I left the room and the house with a terrible feeling plaguing me. Could I afford to let this go any longer? If I did, was I risking losing her forever?
Over the next several hours, there was a whirlwind of activity at every part of the ranch as Deck’s team and mine began installing the security system that would stop the rustlers from stealing—and killing—any more of our cattle.
When I finally called it a night, one crew was still out riding the ranch, making sure the areas left unmonitored were secure.
Ms. Wynona made sure Decker’s crew was comfortably ensconced in the guest houses that usually sat empty save during branding and calving seasons.
All I wanted was to take a hot shower, crawl in bed, and curl my body around Siren’s. Heaviness weighed my heart down in the same way fatigue did my body.
When I walked down the hallway, I was surprised to see the door to the master bedroom was closed. I eased it open and breathed a sigh of relief at seeing Siren sound asleep in my bed.
My exhaustion faded away as I went into the bathroom, stripped off my clothes, and let the hot water of the shower melt away the tension I’d carried with me throughout the day. I was rinsing soap from my hair when I felt cold air come from the open shower door.
“May I join you?”
“Am I dreaming?” I asked, running my hands over Siren’s naked body. I pulled her against me. “God, you feel good.”
“I’m sorry about earlier.”
“Don’t be.” I cupped her cheek with my hand and kissed her.
“I couldn’t stand the idea of sleeping alone,” she murmured.
“Me either.”
I washed her body, and she washed mine. I wrapped her in a towel heated on my warmer, dried myself off, and led her over to my bed. Once under the covers, I pulled her up against me, her back to my front. “I want you more than I want to breathe, Siren, but the old man in me needs to catch a couple of hours of sleep.”
I peered over her shoulder and saw she was already out.
At one point during the night, we woke and I took her from behind. At another, I woke and she was straddling me, stroking my erection before sheathing me first in a condom and then in her pussy.
We were four days into the security system installation. Another four, and Decker said everything would be in place—something that would’ve taken a normal security company a month or more to do. However, there was nothing regular about the system that was now partially functional at the Blazing T.
Zeke and I had spent the morning with Decker while he reviewed what was currently operational and what they still needed to complete.
“Any changes to the original quote?” I asked when he finished the review of the first phase.
“You got an answer for Rile?”
I shook my head.
“Then, it’s double.” We both laughed.
Zeke stood. “If you fellas