Page 4 of Rough Ride

She slanted him a look, then turned her attention back to stove. She’d kill to have a professional grade stovetop at home. “I taught. I resigned last spring.”

There was a beat of silence. “Joe didn’t tell me that.”

She laughed. “I doubt all my happenings were so interesting that Joe would report them to you.”

When he said nothing, she turned to face him. Nothing. No expression. Joe had said Eli had been Special Forces and apparently, they were all the same. Her father, Joe and Eli were good at hiding their feelings.

She wanted to ask him how he was doing, but she knew it would not be welcomed. He’d built a wall and she wasn’t in the mood to scale it. “So, when is everything going on today?”

“The memorial service is in a couple of hours. We thought to do it up on the hill.”

She smiled. “Oh, Joe would have liked that.”

His lips curved slightly. “Yeah, he would.”

“More than likely, he would have wanted to sit in the audience and hear all the gossip people were saying about him.”

Eli nodded. “Then, we will be in the library here for the reading of the will.”

Damn, she hated that idea. Hated the word will. She had had enough of those issues after her father got sick. Before she could remark on that, her stomach rumbled. It was rather loud for the mostly silent kitchen. Her face heated as she cleared her throat.

“Do you think I could rummage in your refrigerator? They fed us on the plane, but my metabolism is kind of…well, my father said he could feed an entire battle group on what I eat in a week.”

“Sure.”

“There’s no cook that’ll come in here and yell at me?”

He chuckled. “No. We have a cook for the men, out in their quarters. Joe and I did for ourselves.”

She nodded and opened the fridge. It was stocked full of fruits and vegetables. She decided the best thing to have would be a salad.

“You do know there will be a meal served at the memorial, right?” Eli asked as he filled his coffee cup.

Crysta laughed. “I told you I have a high metabolism. It’s probably the reason I learned to cook at an early age.”

“Along with not having a mother.”

She looked up at him surprised. “I guess Joe told you?”

He nodded. “Most everyone in the community knows his sister is dead.”

She didn’t know what community Eli was talking about, but she figured it really wasn’t any of her business and let it go.

“Dad’s a good cook, but as he moved up through the ranks in the Navy, he had less and less time at home. Being an only child, I learned to fend for myself.”

She thought Eli would leave, but instead, he slipped into one of the chairs at the breakfast bar across the counter from her. Part of her wished he would leave her alone. She was tired and her nerves were frayed. She’d had too much coffee on the plane. Never before had she been this super sensitive to a man’s movements-unless it was her Dom. And she hadn’t had one since she’d broken off her engagement.

Still, she was sick enough that a part of her wanted him to stay. He was mysterious, which she liked. Men with deep dark secrets always intrigued her. It had been her downfall with Ted. He’d had secrets, one of which turned out to be that he was fucking his administrative assistant.

She brushed that thought away. She glanced at Eli and found him watching her. It was so…dominating the way he watched her. If he was into play, he was definitely a Dom.

Do not go there, Crysta. No playing for you.

Another reason she was interested in him was his relationship with Joe. Her uncle had admired Eli and that went a long way with her.

“Must have been a lonely upbringing.”

It took her a second to remember what they had been talking about. She shrugged. “My Grandma Bessie was with us. She’s the one who taught me to cook. Dad was deployed a lot, of course. After Mom died, there was talk of him leaving the Navy, but my grandmother wouldn’t hear of it. She decided to stay on with us.”

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