19. Gideon
GIDEON
Thoughts of Bianca Donovan consume me.
I stand at the end of the counter with my hands in the pockets of my coat. There are three people in line ahead of me.
Three people between her and me. And the line is slow. Very slow.
I have closed acquisitions in less time than it takes the elderly man at the front to choose between a cupcake and a cinnamon roll.
Bianca is smiling at him, answering all his questions.
The morning light through the front window catches her hazel eyes. I have to look at the floor for a second. This is, presumably, what people call nervous.
I don’t remember the last time I was this nervous.
The line moves. The old man gets his cupcake. A woman buys two coffees and a box of cookies.
A teenager orders a cupcake with rainbow sprinkles and pays in coins. Bianca counts the coins.
Bianca thanks her. She tells her the rainbow sprinkles were a great choice.
Then it’s my turn.
Her eyes lift and fix on my face.
It takes her a moment to register her surprise. “Gideon.”
“I need to talk to you.”
Her hands rest on the top of the case. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes.”
She waits. I don’t respond.
Eliza comes out of the back with a tray of brown butter cookies balanced on one hand, with a knowing look. I called Eliza yesterday to work this out. My brothers helped.
She takes one look at me, one look at Bianca, and slides the tray onto the back counter.
Eliza ties her apron a fraction tighter. “Go on, Bianca. I’ve got the register.”
Bianca’s mouth opens. “I was going to?—”
“Go.”
Bianca looks at me. She looks at Eliza. She wipes her hands on the cloth at her hip, unties the apron, and steps out from behind the case.
She walks to the small two-top by the window. I follow. We sit. The chairs are wood and a little too small for me, and I don’t adjust.
She rests her forearms on the table. “Okay. Talk.”
“I’m taking you away. For a few days.”
Her mouth opens. “What?”
“I’m taking you away.”
“I can’t leave, Gideon.” Her hand lifts toward the bakery. The case. The line, which has regenerated behind me without my noticing. “I have to work.”
“You don’t.”
She stops. “I don’t what?”
“Have to work. I arranged it with Eliza.”
She blinks. “How?”
“I’m a planner.” I point toward the register. “Eliza will cover for you.”
Her head turns toward the back of the bakery. Eliza is at the register, ringing up a man with a toddler on his hip. She raises her head, looks at Bianca, and she nods.
Bianca’s breath leaves her in a quiet exhale.
She turns back to me, and her hands fold in front of her on the table.
“What’s this all about?”
I have been answering that question in my own head for three nights. “Because I am not my father.”
She stops moving. Her eyes don’t leave my face.
“I thought about what you said three nights ago. When I asked you to stay away from my brothers.” It’s all I’ve thought about, actually. “I am done living my life for my father. I’m choosing the life I want.”
She doesn’t answer right away.
“Gideon.” She picks her words carefully. “I’m with both of your brothers.”
“I know.”
“Like. Actually with them. Theo and Ander. The three of us decided. It’s a thing.”
“Bianca. I know.”
She gives me an incredulous look. “They’re okay with this? With you. With us going away together?”
I reach across the table and take her hand. She doesn’t pull away. “They encouraged it.”
Her brows lift. “Excuse me?”
“I invited both of them to join us. But they both said no.”
“Why?”
“Theo said I need this time alone with you.” I pause. “Ander said I need to fuck you until you forget your own name.”
She laughs, and her hands cover her mouth. Then, she looks around, making sure nobody heard. “Okay. Wait. Hold on. Where are you taking me?”
“Maine. The cabin you were looking at,” I say.
She looks down and straightens the succulent vase on the table that was already straight. “The cabin you bid on at the charity auction?”
“Yes, but I did more than bid on a weekend retreat. I bought the cabin.”
Her eyes shoot up. “You bought the cabin?”
“I couldn’t admit my feelings for you that night. You were looking at that cabin for a while. I bought it hoping that one day I could take you there.”
Her hands lower. “Gideon, that’s… That’s a lot.”
“So you’ll join me?”
She stands. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. I have to pack. I don’t know what to pack. What does one pack for a kidnapping by a billionaire to a place in Maine that he now owns?”
“Hardly a kidnapping. I’m not forcing you.”
She stops. “Gideon, I want to go.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” I stand, too.
I don’t tell her that for the past forty-eight hours, I paid a lot of people a lot of money to have the cabin cleaned and prepared for us to arrive. New furniture and all.
“Pack warm.”
She nods once, fast, and she’s gone.
When she comes back downstairs ten minutes later, my driver is waiting for us at the curb. She slides into the back, and I follow.
When we arrive at the airport, the jet is waiting on the tarmac.
She sits in one of the cream leather seats and runs her hand along the armrest. A flight attendant takes her drink order. Water.
I sit across from her and order a water, too.
She doesn’t speak for most of the flight. She looks out the window. I don’t try to fill the silence.
The car from the airstrip takes us through fifteen miles of pine before the road narrows to a single lane. She sits forward when the trees break.
We pull up to the cabin, and she is out of the car as soon as the driver has it in park.
She stops at the edge of the front porch and looks back at me while the driver carries our bags inside.
The cabin is dark cedar and two stories tall, with a porch that wraps three sides. It’s set against a backdrop of pine trees so thick that the snow on the ground between them is still untouched.
There is a frozen lake, and the dock is dusted in white.
The chimney is smoking. I had the caretaker light a fire two hours ago.
“Gideon, this is unreal,” she says.
“You like it?”
Her hand lifts and falls. “It’s every cabin from every cozy romance novel I’ve ever read.”
I laugh. “My brothers mentioned you have a thing for romance novels.”
She walks the length of the porch and back, talking with her hands now, the laugh still in her chest. “Okay. Okay. I have to ask. You didn’t bring me here to kill me, right?
Because the cabin is in the woods, and I don’t see any neighbors,” she jokes.
“I have read enough books to know what this could be. If you’re in witness protection, this is a great time to tell me.
If there’s a body in the lake, I would like a heads-up.
I’ve never been into romantic suspense.”
“I’m not in witness protection. And there’s no dead body in the lake.”
She nods. “Okay. Good to know.”
I pause. “To be fair. I haven’t completely scoped out the lake. If something is amiss, that’s not on me.”
She smirks. “So we’re starting with plausible deniability. Love that for us.”
Fuck. This woman is too much. I love it.
Months ago, I was supposed to hate her. Standing here, I cannot imagine ever feeling that way.
She walks inside, and I follow.
The main room is open, with exposed beams, a brown leather couch, a kitchen with a butcher-block island, and a fire already burning.
A staircase climbs to the second story, where the bedrooms are located. A wall of windows looks at the lake.
She walks the room. Touches the back of the couch. The fireplace mantel. The frame of the window. She stops there and looks out at the lake. I stand behind her, and I don’t approach her.
“Gideon, what are you expecting from me?”
This is the question I have prepared for.
“I want to be with you,” I say. “I want what you have with my brothers. I want to be the fourth.”
She turns to face me, the lake at her back.
“I know that I already apologized. I’ll apologize again for all of it,” I say. “And I heard about Theo’s groveling. I am fully prepared to grovel.”
She tucks her chin into the collar of her coat. The pink of her cheeks deepens, and it’s not from the cold. “He’s very good at groveling.”
“Trust me, I’m happy to grovel that way.” I’m smiling.
She’s smiling.
Then my face turns serious. “But that’s not why I brought you here. I brought you here because I want to build something real with you. A future.”
I take a step toward her. The space between us is three feet now. Another step. Two feet.
“You asked me what I’m expecting from you.
” I keep the two feet between us. “I only want you. You make me laugh. You don’t back down.
You’re brave. You gave me the courage to follow what I want, not what’s expected.
And when you were in my kitchen, you hugged me.
Not because you wanted something from me. You wanted something for me.”
She takes the last step, closing the distance. Her chin tips up. My hands lift to her face, and I let them stop just shy of her skin, my thumbs almost at her cheekbones.
She is close enough that her breath is on my mouth.
Her hand slides up the front of my coat and rests over my heart. “Kiss me.”