Chapter 16
sixteen
GIDEON
I’d known she was out there for over an hour before the sky decided to intrude on her alone time.
We’d been giving her space all afternoon, first when she’d been gardening and then when she’d headed to the grove after her planting was finished.
I’d finished my work first and made it back to the house just as she’d left the yard and traipsed past where the fence ended and the land took over, and I’d made the deliberate decision to give her time.
If there was one thing I’d learned about Julia this past week, it was that she needed room to process.
She wasn’t the kind of woman who sorted through her feelings in a room full of people.
My girl went quiet, went somewhere private, and came back with her spine straighter and her eyes clearer.
The best thing I could do for her was stay out of her way and make sure nobody else got in it either.
But the storm front currently barreling over the peaks hadn’t gotten that memo.
I leaned against the porch railing, arms crossed, watching the clouds stack and darken with the kind of speed that meant a hell of a storm.
The temperature had dropped six degrees in the last ten minutes.
The wind had shifted hard from the west, flattening the tall grass in the pastures and sending one of the barn cats streaking for cover under the porch.
And she was still out there…
I pulled my phone from my back pocket, checked the radar, and grimaced. The green blob on the screen wasn’t a passing shower. It was a solid wall of moisture pushing our way at a fast clip. We only had twenty minutes, maybe less, before the worst of it hit.
I pocketed the phone and grabbed the umbrella from the hook by the front door.
It was the only one that still functioned, a large, dark green umbrella that had survived all our manhandling and was still somehow still hanging in there.
The other three were broken, missing, or being used as a prop sword by Wyatt in places unknown.
The first fat drops hit the porch railing as I stepped off the stairs and onto the path.
I walked fast but didn’t run, not wanting to startle her, but my stride ate up the ground in a way that made it clear I wasn’t out for a casual stroll, either.
The thing about Julia Cristenello was that she had absolutely no idea what she’d done to this pack.
I’d watched my pack fracture for three years.
Watched Stetson bury himself in the ranch until he forgot he was more than a foreman.
Watched the twins pour every ounce of love they had into a little girl because there was no one else to give it to her.
Watched Boone set a table, his hand unconsciously hovering over grabbing an extra plate at every damn meal like a prayer no one was answering.
Watched Colt—Jesus, Colt—disappear into the forge and the woodpile and the hard work this life required like he could outrun his demons if he exhausted himself to the bone every damn day.
They needed an anchor. Someone fierce enough to hold her ground when Stetson pushed, patient enough to sit with Colt’s silence, sharp enough to keep up with the twins, and soft enough to appreciate the quiet way Boone loved.
Someone who wouldn’t just tolerate the chaos of this pack but meet it head-on.
In just two weeks, she’d already started shifting things I’d been watching calcify for years.
Small things. Stetson hadn’t fought me on a single pack decision since the courtship dinner, which might not sound like much, but for a man who white-knuckled every thread of control, it was seismic.
The twins had stopped circling each other like restless dogs and started circling her, their energy finally pointed somewhere that mattered.
Boone had made three new recipes this week.
Three. The man had been rotating the same dozen meals for a year.
And Colt had come back from the school run yesterday looking like someone had picked a lock he’d swallowed the key to. He hadn’t said a word about it, but he didn’t have to. I’d spent three years reading that man’s silence, and yesterday’s was different.
She was barely getting started, and the foundation was already shifting under our feet.
I’d gambled everything when I brought her here. Watching it start to pay off should’ve felt like vindication.
It felt like falling.
Just like the rain that was coming down steadily now, soaking through my jacket and plastering my hair flat against my forehead.
The path to the grove had turned slick, mud grabbing at my boots with every step.
I shifted the umbrella to my other hand and ducked under the first low-hanging cottonwood branch.
And there she was.
On her pretty ass in the mud, face tipped toward the sky, laughing.
Her shirt was plastered to her body, the thin fabric clinging to every curve and line of her in a way that made my mouth go dry.
Her hair hung in dark, soaked ropes down her back.
Mud streaked her forearms and her jeans.
She even had a streak on her cheekbone. Beside her, a pile of uprooted vines and debris sat in a heap beside the old bench.
For a city girl, she wasn’t panicking or running for cover the way I thought she might. She was sitting in a downpour with her eyes closed and her chin lifted, letting the rain hammer down on her like she’d been waiting for it.
Something behind my ribs shifted hard enough that I had to plant my boots to keep steady.
Real smooth, Rhodes. Taken out by a woman sitting in a puddle.
This woman.
I’d read her file a hundred times before she ever stepped off that plane.
I knew her stats, her history, her designation markers, her compatibility scores.
I knew what the OMA thought she was worth on paper.
None of it, not a single damn detail, had prepared me for the reality of Julia Cristenello in the flesh.
She was so fucking beautiful, it physically ached.
Her dark hair was practically onyx when it was wet.
Drops coated her long lashes and dripped off her chin and ran in rivulets down her slender neck.
I wanted to trace their trail with my tongue, taste her olive skin, let my hands explore the curves so blatantly on display thanks to the wet fabric that molded to her body.
Christ. She was a complete disaster and somehow the most stunning thing I’d ever laid eyes on. If this was what losing my mind looked like, I wasn’t interested in finding it again.
I couldn’t stop myself from just standing there and drinking her in for another moment. She looked so goddamn… free.
“Julia.” I called over the hammering rain as I crossed the last stretch of the grove.
Her eyes opened, and she turned her head with rain streaming down her jaw. When she spotted me walking toward her with the umbrella angled against the wind, her grin was immediate and devastating.
“Gideon.” She wiped the rain from her eyes with the back of her wrist, which only smeared more dirt across her face. “My hero.”
I stopped beside her and tilted the umbrella to cover us both, though it was doing her about as much good as a screen door on a submarine.
She was already soaked to the bone, her clothes heavy with water, her hair plastered dark against her neck.
Rain pooled in the creases of her rolled-up sleeves and dripped steadily off her chin.
“I brought this for you.” I nodded at the umbrella. “Though I’m starting to think I should’ve brought a kayak.”
She laughed, tipping her head back to look up at me from where she sat. “I lost track of time.”
“I noticed.” I extended my free hand to help her up. “You planning on growing roots out here, or can I convince you to come inside before you start shivering?”
Her muddy fingers wrapped around mine, and I pulled her to her feet. She came up unsteady, boots slipping in the wet earth, and I tugged her close to keep her upright. Rain drummed on the umbrella over our heads as she stood under it with me while everything beneath it went suddenly quiet.
“Thank you,” she said, breathless from laughing or the cold or both. Her cheeks were flushed pink beneath the streaks of dirt. “For the umbrella. Even though I’m a lost cause at this point.”
“You’re a lot of things, Julia. A lost cause isn’t one of them.”
She held my gaze for a beat longer than was casual, and something flickered behind her eyes. Then she glanced down at herself and let out a groan. “I look like I crawled out of a swamp.”
“You look real,” I told her, letting my eyes trace the mess she’d made of herself.
“That’s just code for ‘you look like hell,’“ she retorted, but her mouth lifted crooked at the edge. “You can say it.”
“I think you look beautiful, even covered in mud.” I said it without thinking, which meant it was about as honest as I got. “I don’t think anyone’s ever looked better, to be honest.”
Cocking one hip, she struck a pose. “I guess we can call this look ‘rural chic.’”
A drop of water traced the tip of her nose, paused, then rolled to her upper lip.
I couldn’t help myself—I reached out and swept it away with the pad of my thumb.
She stilled, caught between laughing and something softer.
I flexed my hand, meaning to let it fall, but her chin tipped up, following it, like she wanted me to keep going.
That was new. Julia wasn’t touch-averse, but she was particular. She inhabited her own space with the awareness of a woman who’d gone too long without it being respected. But right now she was close, inside my radius, looking at me with wide brown-eyes framed by rain-dark lashes, wanting more.
“Doesn’t matter that it’s rainin’. You always bring the sun with you.” It was fucking corny, but her mouth dimpling sweet at the corners made it worth the risk.
“Was that a line, Rhodes?” Fuck, I love that she used my last name like that. Challenging me. Daring me.
“A scientific observation, actually.” I grinned, brushing off a stripe of mud on her jaw with my thumb.