Page 32 of Stealing the Runaway Bride

Black Aspen wants Pine Ridge to surrender. Tomorrow, they learn we’ve started searching for the document that proves the water was never theirs to take.

9

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.