9. Juliette
JULIETTE
The heavy paper of my father’s hand-delivered message feels like a dead leaf in my hand. Conrad doesn’t call when he’s truly furious. He sends orders designed to look official. He treats family like a hostile takeover, and right now, I’m the asset that’s currently tanking his portfolio.
"Return by Sunday. All is forgiven. The merger remains on the table. Do not make me come for you."
I scoff, the sound sharp and ugly in the quiet of the kitchen.
Forgiven. Like I’m a runaway puppy that chewed up a designer loafer instead of a grown woman who left a twelve-thousand-dollar wedding gown in a heap of shredded silk and lace.
He doesn't want me back because he loves me. He wants me back because the banking heir he’d sold me to is probably demanding a refund on the deposit.
Conrad Marchand has the emotional range of a refrigerated shark, and about the same amount of mercy.
I crumple the paper into a tight ball until the edges bite into my palm. The sting is small, clean, and mine—a reminder of the escape, the adrenaline, and the moment I realized my life was worth more than a line item on a balance sheet.
I look around the Kramer kitchen. It smells like sourdough and the faint, lingering trace of woodsmoke.
Nothing like the lemon-scented floor wax and expensive silence of my father’s house.
This place feels lived in. Things are built here, broken here, and mended with calloused hands instead of being replaced with a swipe of a titanium credit card.
Linda steps out of the pantry with a graphite smudge beneath her thumbnail. She sees the crumpled message in my hand but doesn’t ask what it says.
‘Cag’s in the back pasture,’ she tells me. ‘He’s been out there since dawn.’
‘What is he doing?’
“Working on the cabin.”
My throat tightens. The cabin he abandoned after another woman decided he wasn’t worth staying for.
“He shouldn’t be alone.”
Linda’s expression softens. “Then don’t leave him there.”
I don’t need to be told twice. I need to get to him. Not because I’m scared of the letter, though a small, cold part of me knows my father’s threats aren't empty—but because I need to tell Cag that I’m not a guest anymore. I’m not a runaway. I’m staying.
I head toward the back door, but then I stop. I look down at the heavy boots Linda lent me. They’re sturdy and practical, but they feel like another layer of armor. Another thing I’m hiding behind.
I sit on the mudroom bench and tug them off. Then the socks.
My feet hit the cool linoleum, then the porch wood, and finally, the dirt.
The grit of the Pine Ridge soil is warm, sun-baked and unapologetic. I’ve spent my life in custom leather soles and satin slippers, my feet never touching anything that wasn't polished or vacuumed. Walking barefoot feels like a rebellion. It feels like a prayer.
The grass in the back pasture is tall, the golden stalks brushing against my calves. The scent of wild clover and drying earth rises up to meet me. My father would call this primitive. He’d call it dirty. I call it the first time I’ve actually felt the ground beneath me.
I see him in the distance. Cag.
He’s standing by the skeleton of the cabin, the one he started three years ago.
The sun is starting its slow, honeyed descent toward the mountains, casting long, jagged shadows across the grass.
He’s stripped to his waist, his skin bronzed and glistening with sweat.
The scar on his jaw, the one from the calf-roping accident, stands out white against his tan.
He’s splitting a fallen length of cottonwood, each strike rhythmic and powerful.
He isn't just cutting wood. He’s purging.
I can see it in the tension of his shoulders, the way his muscles cord and shift under the surface of his skin.
Every swing carries three years of anger he never found a place to put.
I keep walking. The dry stalks of grass prickle my soles, but I don't slow down. I like the sting. It reminds me that I’m awake. That I’m here.
He stops mid-swing. He doesn't turn around, but I know he knows I’m there.
He can probably smell the magnolia on me, or maybe he just feels the shift in the air that happens whenever we’re within ten feet of each other.
The distance between us catches at something inside me until I’m close enough to touch him.
"You're barefoot," he grunts. He still hasn't looked at me. His voice is deep, vibrating through the space between us like a low-frequency hum.
"The boots were heavy," I say, my voice steady. "I wanted to feel where I was going."
He turns then. His eyes are dark, hooded, and currently roaming over me with a possessiveness that should probably scare me. Instead, it makes my blood sing. He looks at my messy hair, my dirt-smudged dress, and finally, my bare feet.
His jaw tightens. He drops the axe and starts toward me, his stride long and purposeful. He looks like a predator who just found something he didn't know he was looking for.
"The ground’s full of rocks and burrs, Juliette," he says, stopping just inches from me. He smells like sweat, cut wood, and the saddle oil that seems to live in his skin. "You shouldn't be out here without protection."
"I have you for protection, don't I?" I challenge, tilting my head back.
The sassy remark is a reflex, a way to keep from drowning in the sheer intensity of his gaze. But as soon as the words leave my mouth, I see something flicker in his eyes. It’s not just desire. It’s a raw, terrifying vulnerability.
"You do." He forces the words out slowly. "But you don’t know what that means yet. You don’t know what it costs to belong to a man like me."
"I know what it costs to belong to a man like my father," I counter, my humor fading into something sharper. "It costs everything. My voice, my choices, my soul. He sent a letter, Cag. Hand-delivered, like a summons. He wants me back. He thinks he can forgive me into submission."
Cag’s entire body goes rigid. His hands, large and scarred, clench into fists at his sides. The dangerous energy I’ve sensed in him since the moment I climbed into his truck surges to the surface.
"He isn't taking you," Cag growls. It’s not a statement. It’s a vow. "I don't care who he is or how much money he has. He doesn't get to touch you. He doesn't even get to think your name."
"I know," I say softly. I reach out, my fingers trembling just a little, and lay my hand against his bare chest. His skin is hot, his heart thudding a frantic, heavy rhythm against my palm. "That's why I’m here. Barefoot. In your pasture. I’m choosing this, Cag. I’m choosing the dirt and the hard work and the man who whittles birds because he’s afraid to finish a house. "
He flinches at that, a small, subtle movement that tells me I hit the mark. His trauma is a physical thing, a weight he carries in the curve of his spine. Being left at the altar didn't just break his heart; it broke his belief in completion.
"I finished the workshop," he says, his voice thick.
"You did. For me. Now finish the rest. Finish us."
He lets out a breath that sounds like a groan. He reaches up, his hand tangling in my hair, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw with a reverence that makes my knees weak. He’s looking at me like I’m a miracle he doesn't deserve, a piece of high-fashion silk that somehow survived a windstorm.
"I’m not a good man, Juliette," he murmurs, his forehead dropping to rest against mine. "I’m possessive and I’m stubborn and I’m probably going to ruin your life with this war your father is starting."
"My old life was built around choices other people made. You gave me room to start making my own."
I lean into him, the heat of his body soaking into mine.
Out here, in the middle of the back pasture, with the water rights being stolen and the corporate sharks circling, everything feels incredibly simple.
There’s the land, there’s the family, and there’s the man holding me like I’m the only thing keeping him grounded.
The trauma of my past—the years spent as a "transaction"—feels like a distant, fading bruise. With Cag, I’m not an asset. I’m a person. A woman who gets to walk barefoot through the grass if she wants to. A woman who gets to fight for the home she’s finally found.
"Don’t leave," he says, the words slow, carved out one at a time. It’s not a request. It’s a command, wrapped in a plea.
"I’m not going anywhere, cowboy."
I look past him at the unfinished cabin. The beams are silvered by the sun, the structure open to the sky. It looks lonely. It looks like a promise that was broken before it could be kept.
"We should finish it," I say, my voice gaining strength. "The cabin. Not for the wedding you didn't have. For the life we’re having now."
Cag pulls back just enough to look me in the eye. The darkness is still there, the obsession and the territorial fire, but there’s something else now. A glimmer of hope. He looks at the cabin, then back at me.
"I’ve spent three years avoiding this spot," he admits, his voice raw. "Every time I looked at those beams, I saw a failure. I saw a man who wasn't worth staying for."
"Look again," I say, taking his hand and pulling him toward the structure. "I see a foundation. I see a place where I can design dresses that actually mean something. I see a home where no one ever has to open a letter like that again."
He follows me, his hand gripping mine so tight it almost hurts. We walk to the center of the unfinished floorboards, the wood creaking under our weight. The air smells like pine and the coming evening chill.
He pulls me into his arms then, a sudden, desperate movement that knocks the breath out of me.
He buries his face in the crook of my neck, his breath hot against my skin.
He’s shaking. Just a little. The big, tough cowboy who stares down Black Aspen surveyors is trembling because I’m standing in his house.
"Here," he says into my skin, the word carved out of him slow. "God help me, stay here."