I look back at Lila. The moment between us has sealed over, solid on the surface. But I can still feel the warmth of her jaw in my palm. I can still see the way her eyes dropped to my mouth.
I hold the door for her and follow her back into the noise and the light and the pink champagne, and I watch her get swallowed up by people who love her and appreciate her. I watch her enjoy the kind of birthday she deserves and feel warmth swell up inside me.
Happy wife, happy life,Walker said.
The guy’s onto something.
Chapter 30
Howling Wind
LILA
The howling wind keeps waking me up.
Slade’s house was built by a firm out of Bozeman that I’ve admired for years, architects who design with the landscape instead of against it, who understand that a structure in this terrain needs to breathe with the land, not fight it.
But Montana weather is a beast, and there’s no engineering against the katabatic winds that barrel down through the mountains.
Through the bedroom windows I can see the meadow grass flattening in great rushing waves. The cottonwoods at the tree line are whipping sideways. The gusts find every edge of the house, whistling through the seals, rattling the glass in its frames, making the steel beams groan.
Through the haze of half-sleep, I hear a door opening and closing down the hallway. The clock on my nightstand says it’s 2:30 am.
I get out of bed and pad down the hallway, shivering, to find Slade pulling on his boots by the front door.
My heart rate picks up at the sight. I haven’t lived on a ranch long, but I know it means some serious shit went down when your man is pulling on his boots in the middle of the night.
“Slade, honey? Where are you going?” I ask.
“Wind knocked a tree down onto the south barn. Horses spooked and scattered.” He glances up from lacing his work boots and his serious gaze softens when it lands on me. “We need everybody out there.”
My stomach drops. “Are the horses hurt?”
“Don’t know yet.” He stands and rubs his bad shoulder while looking out the window. “Tree took out the storage end, not the stalls, so probably not. But a spooked horse in a windstorm…” He pauses. “We gotta find them and get them settled before they hurt themselves.”
I look out the window at the darkness and the bending grass. Anxiety surges through me.
“It’s gusting ninety miles an hour out there,” I say.
“Hundred, last I checked.”
I go over to him. I want to reach for him so badly. Touch him, hug him, do something to reassure myself that he’s solid and strong and he’ll come back to me. Logically, I know he’ll come back to me. Of course he will, he knows this land, he’s done this before, no doubt. But the wind is a hundred miles an hour and the darkness outside is total and I want to hold onto him anyway.
But he’s shrugging his jacket on, checking the pockets like he’s running through a mental checklist, and I don’t want to interrupt his concentration.
“Can I help?” I ask.
“Stay inside,” he says, stuffing a pair of work gloves into his back pocket.
“I want to be helpful. The horses?—”
“Lila.” He takes my hands, his rough, warm palms wrapping all the way around mine. “Handling spooked horses in a windstorm takes years of experience. You’d be putting yourself in danger and it’d be one more thing for me to worry about.”
I bite my lip. “I feel useless,” I say. “You’re going out there in the middle of the night to deal with this and I’m just sitting here doing nothing.”
“Staying safe is the most useful thing you can do for me right now.” He squeezes my hands. “I need to know you’re inside and warm and okay. That’s what I need from you tonight.”
I nod.
