Her usual response to a difficult problem was to brainstorm solutions. Only this wasn’t that kind of problem. This was about people and tradition and an intangible she couldn’t identify. She was both excited by the opportunity and frightened. She had never shied away from responsibility before, but this was different, and she didn’t know what to do.
The result of which was her drive up the mountain.
She turned down a small, paved road that was marked as private. A quarter mile later, she saw the house set back in the trees. Gideon’s house.
She hadn’t known who else to talk to. She had started to make friends in town, women who tried to understand her and appreciate the effort she made to bond. Funny, charming women who all had a connection with the town. And that was the problem. The town. She needed an outside opinion.
Normally she would have gone to Justice, but he had recently gotten engaged to Patience. Felicia wasn’t clear on all the dynamics that went into falling in love, but she was pretty sure keeping secrets broke a major rule. Which meant Justice would tell Patience what Felicia said, bringing her back to needing an outside opinion.
She parked in the wide, circular driveway and got out of her car. There was a long front porch and big windows that would allow in plenty of light. She would guess that light and sky would be important to a man like Gideon.
She walked to the porch and sat on the steps to wait. His shift ended at two, so she would expect him to arrive shortly. He didn’t strike her as the type to stop in a bar on the way home. Not that she could say how she knew that about him.
The little information she had on Gideon was sketchy at best. Their time together four years ago had been more physical than conversational. She knew that he was former military, that he’d been assigned to covert ops and that his work had taken him places no man should have to go. She knew that he and his team had been taken prisoner for nearly two years. That had happened before they’d met.
She’d never discovered any details on his captivity, mostly because the information had been classified beyond her pay grade. Technically she could have gotten into the file, but Felicia was less concerned about if she could do something than if she should. What she did know was that Gideon had been involved in the kind of missions that were so exciting in movies but deadly in real life. The kind that if the operative got caught—no one was coming after him. Because of that, Gideon had spent twenty-two months in the hands of the Taliban. She assumed he’d been tortured and abused until death had seemed like the best possible outcome. Then he’d been rescued. The other men with him hadn’t made it out.
Headlights appeared through the bushes. She watched Gideon’s truck pull up behind her car. He turned off the engine, then got out and walked toward her.
He was tall, with broad shoulders. In the starlight there were no details—just the silhouette of the man. A shiver raced through her. Not apprehension, she thought. Anticipation. Her body remembered what Gideon had done, how he’d touched her with a combination of tenderness and desperation. His hunger had chased away any nerves.
While she’d studied the subject of sexual intimacy, knowing in her head and experiencing in person were two different things. Reading about the states of arousal had been nothing like experiencing them. Intellectual knowledge of why a tongue stroke on a nipple might feel good hadn’t prepared her for the wet heat of his mouth on her breast. And knowing the progression of an orgasm hadn’t come close to actually feeling the shuddering release that had claimed her.
“You’re unexpected,” he said, pausing at the foot of the stairs.
In the starlight, she couldn’t read his expression. She couldn’t see if he was remembering, too. “I need to talk to someone,” she admitted. “You came to mind.”
His eyebrows rose. “Okay. That’s a new one. I haven’t seen you in four years and you thought of me?”
“Technically you saw me in the warehouse.”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “Yes, and it was meaningful for me, too.” The almost-smile faded. “What do you want to talk about?”
“It’s work related, but if you don’t want to have a conversation, I can leave.”
He studied her for a few seconds. “Come on in. I’m too wired to sleep after I work. I usually do Tai Chi to relax, but having a conversation works, too.”
He walked past her. She rose and followed him inside.
The house was big and open, with plenty of wood and high ceilings. Gideon flipped on lights as he moved through a great room with a fireplace at one end. There were floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the darkness. While she couldn’t make out details of the view, she had a sense of vastness beyond.
“Is the house on the edge of a canyon?” she asked.
“Side of a mountain.”
He went into the kitchen. There were plenty of cabinets, lots of granite countertops and stainless appliances. He pulled two beers out of the refrigerator and handed her one.
“I thought you were avoiding me,” he said.
“I was, but now that we’ve spoken there didn’t seem to be any need to continue.”
“Huh.”
His dark gaze was steady but unreadable. She had no idea what he was thinking. His voice was appealing, but that was more about physiology than any interest in her. Gideon had one of those low, rumbly voices that sounded so good on the radio. He could make a detergent sound sexy if he put any effort into it.
He flipped off the kitchen lights. She blinked in the sudden darkness, then heard more than saw him walk across the room and open a sliding glass door. Moonlight illuminated the shadow of him disappearing onto what would be the back deck of the house. She followed.
There were a few lounge chairs and a couple of small tables. Forest stretched out beyond the railing. The trees angled down—Gideon hadn’t been kidding about the house being on the side of a mountain.
She settled in a chair close to his, with one of the tables between them. She rested her head against the cushions and stared up at the star-filled sky. The half-moon had nearly cleared the mountain, illuminating the quiet forest and still mountain.
The air was cool, but not cold. In the distance she heard the faint hoot of an owl. An occasional leaf rustled.
“I can see why you like it here,” she said, reaching for her beer. “It’s restful. You’re close enough to town to get to the station but far enough away to not have to deal with too many unexpected visitors.” She smiled. “Excluding me, of course.”
“I like it.”
“Do you get snowed in during the winter?”
“I didn’t last year. We hardly had any snow. But it’s going to happen.” He shrugged. “I’m prepared.”
He would be, she thought, because of his military training. She’d noticed that she and Justice often came at a problem from different angles but with the same objective. And speaking of her friend...
“I couldn’t talk to Justice about this,” she said.
Gideon raised his eyebrows. “All right.”
“I thought you’d want to know why. Because he and I are like family.” She turned on the lounge chair, angling herself toward him.
He was in silhouette again. A powerful man momentarily tamed. Her gaze drifted to his hands. She was tall, but with Gideon she’d felt delicate. For a few hours in his bed, she hadn’t been frighteningly brilliant or freakishly organized. She’d been a woman—just like everyone else.
“So what’s the problem?”
For a second she thought