Page 60 of Marrying the Accidental Groom
He swallowed, choosing his words carefully. “I told him you wouldn’t need it.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You did what?”
“Juliana, just?—”
“It took me two hours to get that ride arranged!” she snapped, her voice sharp enough to cut through the hum of the lobby’s Christmas music. “Do you have any idea how hard it isto get from here to the airport in Grand Junction? You already wrecked all my plans once. Can’t you just stay out of it for once?”
The hit landed, even if she hadn’t meant it to be fatal. He stared at her, feeling the fight drain into something heavier. “If I thought staying out of it meant you’d be happy, maybe I could. But I don’t think running is gonna fix whatever’s making you bolt. You were just gonna slip out of here? No note. No call. Not even a goodbye?”
Her chin lifted. “What would you have wanted me to say? That I’m leaving because I don’t know what’s real anymore? That maybe I was wrong to think—” She stopped herself, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” he shot back. “You think you can just run off and that’s it? After everything—after the last few weeks—you’re just walking away without giving me a chance to make it right?”
Her arms folded tight across her chest. “You don’t even know whatrightwould be for me.”
“Then tell me,” he pressed, stepping closer. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks a lot like you’re giving up. On this. On us. And I thought we were at least worth a conversation before you threw in the towel.”
“You’re the one who asked a lawyer to draw up annulment papers!”
He shook his head and scoffed. “Yeah, I did. A month ago, Jules! When I thought that was what you wanted.”
She didn’t answer, just brushed past him and tried to head back inside. But he wasn’t letting her go without a fight. In the end, if she chose that fancy hotel job over him and the ranch, so be it. Gideon wasn’t going to let her go thinking that he didn’t want her. Because he’d never wanted anything as badly as he wanted to call Julliana his. To unravel her careful composure at every opportunity and go on trips around the world with ameticulous itinerary he could convince her to ignore—at least partially.
He wanted her to alphabetize his spice rack and rearrange his bookshelves by genre. He wanted her to tease him about his broken truck and teach him how to make a bed with hospital corners.
He just wantedher.
He reached out before he could think better of it, his fingers closing gently around her wrist.
“Come with me,” he said, giving a light tug to draw her back toward him.
Her eyes flashed, defiant and guarded all at once, but under it, he caught a flicker of curiosity.
“Where?”
“You’ll find out when we get there.”
She glanced toward her bags, still sitting on the porch as if they were just waiting to be loaded up and carried out of his life.
“Leave them,” he said. “They’ll be fine.”
She sighed, the kind of sound that told him she already knew he wasn’t going to let her walk away this easily.
“You’re not going to let me out of this, are you?”
“Nope.” He managed a shadow of his usual grin, though it felt heavier than it looked. “We’re going for a ride, and we’re going to talk about all the things we’ve been sidestepping since the barn dance.”
While she’d been trying to figure out a way out of this marriage, he’d been slowly falling in love with her. He’d discovered in Tealua that there was more underneath her poised exterior, and in Redemption Ridge, he’d slowly uncovered it little by little. And the more he exposed the multi-faceted woman—with a surprisingly sarcastic sense of humor and a vulnerable spirit? The more he wanted to see.
She wasn’t the one he would have guessed, but if anything had been clear the last six weeks, it was that God’s plans were far better than his own, when he had any at all.
Had Juliana finally come around to the idea that God’s plans might be better than the ones she drafted in her color-coded calendar?
If she hadn’t...well, he wanted to be the man who helped her see it.
She dipped her chin, a hint of challenge in her eyes. “Okay.”
Gideon didn’t release her right away. Maybe because a part of him was still reeling at how close he’d come to walking out here and finding nothing but tire tracks in the snow where she’d been. Or maybe because some stubborn part of him still thought—no, he knew—there was more here worth fighting for.
