Bounty (Colorado Mountain 7)

So I wasn’t real hip on him being gone all day in a way I couldn’t get to him and ask what he thought about the towels I was buying for the guest bathroom (or whatever).

But this was life. This was its rhythm and would be the months we stayed put.

I needed to get used to it.

I didn’t have to like it, but I needed to get used to it.

Thinking of Deke, it came to mind that he’d disappeared. There was a lot of house, all of it easily accessible now with the stairs and all.

But I had dinner in the Crock-Pot, a pulled-pork recipe that had filled the house with delicious smells all day. Smells Deke had told me he was looking forward to experiencing.

And it was time to experience.

So where was he?

“Deke?” I called, moving farther into the space.

“Yo,” he called back, sounding like he was in the bedroom.

I headed that way but stopped when he emerged through the doorway to the hall.

He did this with snowflakes quickly melting in his hair and on his shoulders. And with the chill setting in, even if he worked inside still only wearing a tee, now he had a padded flannel shirt on over that.

He also emerged with a bottle of champagne in his hand and a Deluxe Home Store bag dangling from the other.

He moved right to the black, toffee and cream-veined marble-countertopped island that easily could seat six, even eight.

Though there were only six stools wrapped and waiting to be brought in from the garage.

We’d see how they fit. I might be doing more ordering.

He shrugged off his flannel shirt and tossed it on the island. He put the bottle and bag on the island and dug into the bag.

“Not sure in all the shit you bought that you got champagne glasses, or if you can even find them in that mess in your garage, so Lexie handed these off to Bubba and he stashed them outside.”

After unearthing them from white tissue, he set the fluted glasses on the marble, tossed the bag aside and commenced unwrapping the foil on what I could see was a very good bottle of champagne.

I stood immobile, watching him.

The cork popped.

I didn’t so much as twitch.

Deke turned to me.

I stared at his face.

“Jussy?” My name was a question.

“It’s snowing,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” he replied quietly, being Deke, reading my mood and falling right into it so he could be there with me.

Right there with me.

“I need to get the pumpkins inside,” I shared.

“Do that for you, babe, after we toast your place.”

Yes, he would. He’d do that for me. He’d buy me champagne. He’d go on the road with me like Mace did with Stella and the Blue Moon Gypsies. Mace and Stella taking their kids along like Dad used to do with me.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Gypsy,” Deke said, calling my attention back to him.

“I needed you…on the road,” I blurted.

“Say again?” he asked.

“I could have done it,” I shared, knowing this to be true straight to the pit of my heart.

That place where my dad lived, Granddad, Joss, Lacey, Bianca, Mr. T, even Mav.

Where Deke lived.

“I could have made it,” I told him. “I could have handled it, all of it, if I’d had you.”

His face changed, and immediately I memorized that change, the magnificence of it.

A magnificence of feeling.

“Get over here, Justice,” he ordered roughly.

I didn’t get over there.

I turned my gaze out the windows and saw through the dark that the flurries were falling thicker.

I saw it but I thought about Chace having Faye. Deacon having whoever he had at home.

And me.

I’d drifted here, anchorless without my father.

And I’d found Deke.

Hell, I’d nearly been strangled to death on my own bed.

But somehow, that dramatic, life-altering event barely touched me.

Because I’d found Deke.

And now I was standing in my newly-finished house with a man who lived in a trailer. But he was a man who knew what this house meant to me and thought enough about me to plan ahead, have a friend bring glasses, buy a bottle of champagne and toast the beginning of a new chapter of my life, our lives, doing that for me.

I had not found my oasis. I had not found a home.

I’d stumbled into Heaven on earth where miracles could happen.

I knew this because I’d sensed this in Chace. In Deacon.

But I felt it in me.

“Justice,” Deke rumbled.

I started, shifting my eyes to him.

Then, slowly, I walked to him.

When I got close, Deke, so damned Deke, curved an arm around my waist and pulled me tight, my front to his side, his bearded chin buried in his neck to hold my eyes.

His held concern.

“You okay, baby?” he whispered gently.

“I bought champagne glasses,” I whispered back.

Deke said nothing.

“And red wineglasses,” I carried on. “White wineglasses. Martini glasses. Bourbon glasses—”

Deke cut me off. “I’m catching your drift.”

I nodded.

“Talk to me,” he ordered.

I did not talk to him.

Oh no.

A moment like that was not for words.

It was for song.

So I didn’t talk to him.

I sang to him.

“Wither to dust, crumble like rust, only by your side.”

His arm got tighter and I felt it before I heard the noise that reverberated from his gut, through his chest and out between his lips.

But I kept singing.

“Fresh air, cold beer. Root myself in you.”

“Stop it, gypsy,” he growled.