Page 16 of DFF: Delicate Freakin’ Flower (Family Ties #5)

Chapter Fourteen

Webb

I ’d slept maybe three hours total. And even that felt generous. Between the subtle creaks of the cabin settling, the faintest rustle of leaves that could’ve been raccoons or men with silencers, and the ever-present pressure of not letting anything happen to Gabby, my brain hadn’t shut off.

And if that wasn’t enough, there was also Gabby herself.

Beautiful, chaotic, unpredictable Gabby, with her wild hair, her weird animal facts, and her tendency to make me laugh when I least expected it—like in the middle of setting a trap that could legitimately injure someone.

I’d kissed her. That kiss had been something that was enough to stick in my head like an echo. Enough to make the silence after it feel deafening.

She'd intrigued me before, in fact, she always had in the periphery. The way she watched people without needing to be seen. The way she slipped in and out of family events, as if she didn’t belong, but always remembered your dog’s name and brought the pie.

But now that I knew her? I’d spent days with her in the middle of nowhere, watching her go from terrified to tactical, from overwhelmed to steel spined. She was brave, brilliant, surprisingly sharp with a rifle, and still soft in the moments when no one else would’ve blamed her for breaking.

And yeah, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice her in other ways. The curve of her hip when she bent over to adjust a trip wire. The way her eyes lit up when she had a new deranged idea, like raccoon army recruitment. The cute little snort she tried to hide when she laughed too hard.

I liked her. Really liked her.

And I wasn’t blind, I’d seen the way she looked at me when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. Like she was debating whether it was a terrible idea to climb into my lap and find out if I kissed like that all the time. I didn’t not like that, either.

But now I was sleep-deprived, half delirious, and stumbling toward the outhouse with a bladder that had very specific demands and no patience.

I shoved the door open and nearly walked straight into the back wall, trying to blink the world into focus.

That’s when I heard it. Grunting, then a low, rhythmic moaning. I froze, and my brain, already on edge, whirred into DEFCON 1.

Was someone hurt? Was someone here?

Was someone— Wait, that sounded like—Jesus Christ.

No.

I had no business being turned on right now, but the noises were not helping my current precarious hormonal balance.

I grabbed my gun from the shelf, ignoring the screaming protest of my bladder, and slowly crept toward the trees, following the sound like some wild-eyed idiot in a horror movie. If Maddox’s guys were here, we were screwed.

If something was happening to Gabby?—

A twig snapped under my foot, making me wince.

The moaning stopped, and I rounded the tree line, gun up, ready for the worst, and stopped dead.

Gabby was on a yoga mat in the clearing, bent in half, face serene, doing downward dog like it was a holy mission. A family of raccoons sat a few feet away, watching her like they were at a Broadway show.

She moved fluidly into cobra pose, stretched her arms, breathed in deep, and let out a soft hum sound that might’ve sent a weaker man to his knees.

I stood there, half-aroused, half-panicked, blinking into the sunrise like I’d walked into some kind of fever dream. My gun was still in my hand, and my bladder was still demanding action.

Gabby looked up mid-pose, spotted me, and smiled.

“Morning,” she called, cheerful as hell. “You okay?”

I finally regained some of my cognitive functions. “I thought someone was being murdered.”

She tilted her head. “What? Why?”

“The noises.” I gestured helplessly. “The grunting and moaning. I?—”

“Oh, that’s just intensive yoga breathing.” She sat back into a seated pose, casually wiping sweat from her neck with a towel. “It helps with stress, flexibility, and digestion, apparently.”

I rubbed the back of my neck and then cracked it to relieve some tension. “Right.”

The raccoons chittered, one of them casually licking its paw like it, too, had been confused and slightly aroused.

I put the gun into the back of my shorts, turned slowly back toward the outhouse, and muttered, “I’m gonna go... not shoot anyone and reevaluate my life.”

Behind me, I heard her laugh, and God help me, it made me want to kiss her all over again.

Gabby

Webb came back from the outhouse looking like a man deeply and existentially rattled.

He still had his gun in one hand, his expression unreadable, and he walked like someone who’d just stared into the abyss and hadn’t liked what stared back.

I was mid-stretch, sinking into a sun-drenched warrior pose, when he stopped at the edge of my yoga mat.

He stared at me as if I were doing something profoundly inappropriate.

Though, to be fair, yoga poses in the right humidity and the wrong clothes could probably land someone in trouble.

Especially when that someone was sweaty, breathing deeply, and wearing a sports bra that was currently fighting for its life.

“Are you okay?” I asked, shifting smoothly into a child’s pose, watching him through the corner of my eye. “You look like you just saw a ghost or a frog doing taxes.”

He didn’t answer right away, he just kept staring, but not at my face. His eyes weren't even close to that part of my body.

“You’re acting weird,” I informed him as I pushed myself up to sit on my knees.

“I’m not,” he replied, far too quickly to be convincing.

“You one hundred percent are.”

“I thought you were being attacked.”

“By what? Enlightenment?” I lifted my arms over my head in a slow stretch, letting the heat and the tension in my shoulders melt away. “You said my stress levels are high, and this helps.”

He nodded absently but still didn’t seem present. His gaze flicked away from mine and landed somewhere around the tree line like he was trying not to make eye contact with the sun.

I narrowed my eyes. “Okay, now I’m sure you’re acting weird.”

His eyes met mine again, and this time, they didn’t dart away. They dropped, trailing slowly from my mouth to my collarbone to my stomach and then lower before he caught himself and looked sharply to the side.

Ohhh !

I stood and took a slow, deliberate step closer. “You sure everything’s fine?”

He swallowed like his throat had suddenly dried out. “No.”

I smiled, a little too pleased with myself. “Wanna try some yoga?”

“Not really.”

“Scared?” I teased.

His gaze snapped back to mine, intense in a way that immediately turned my stomach inside out. “Not of yoga.”

Everything shifted at that moment. One second, we were exchanging sarcasm, the usual sharp-edged back and forth.

The next, we were standing toe to toe, the tension between us thick and buzzing with electricity.

Webb tilted his face down toward mine, and I could feel the heat radiating off him.

My breath caught as the tip of his fingers brushed against my hip, featherlight but deliberate.

I tilted my face up toward his, and he leaned in until our noses brushed. The air between us shifted—charged and expectant. I knew he was going to kiss me. I could feel it in every nerve, every cell, every heartbeat.

And then it happened—a loud snap cracked through the air, followed by the rattling clatter of tin and the unmistakable screech of a flare igniting.

The sound echoed through the trees like thunder. We both froze for a heartbeat, then jerked apart as instinct took over. Webb was already moving, his gun in hand, his stance sharp and alert.

“Shit,” he muttered, his eyes scanning the tree line beyond the clearing.

I looked where he was looking and felt the blood drain from my face. A thin streak of orange smoke rose between the trees, curling skyward from the direction of the eastern trail.

“Is that—” I started.

“One of the traps,” Webb said grimly. He was already stepping off the mat, his entire body coiled with purpose. “Something tripped it.”

My heart was suddenly pounding in a very different rhythm now. The kiss, the yoga, the teasing—all of it evaporated in a second. The warmth of the morning sun felt distant, washed out by the chill of what that flare meant.

Someone—or something—had just crossed the line.

The flare was still burning out in the trees, leaving an orange streak in the sky like a firework sent up by fate to ruin my morning.

I turned to Webb, who was frozen beside me, eyes wide, lips parted like he hadn’t decided whether to panic or punch something.

I didn’t budge.

“Inside,” Webb hissed. “Now! Go to the pantry and lock the door. You know the drill.”

I folded my arms. “Webb?—”

“Gabby, go.”

He looked like he was ready to throw me over his shoulder and haul me off like a sack of flour, but I planted my feet and stood tall. “No, I’m not hiding like a hostage in a cereal box. I’m staying.”

“We talked about this?—”

“I’ve got your back,” I told him as steadily as I could.

“With what?” he whisper-shouted, gesturing wildly like I was the crazy one here.

I pointed toward the crate by the firepit. “The sardines and those out-of-date wieners from the pantry.”

He just stared at me, his mouth opening and closing like he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You’re going to fight off armed men with expired meat?”

“I have range,” I whispered, feeling weirdly proud of it. “I can throw them.”

“And kill someone with botulism?” he asked, incredulous.

I lifted my chin. “And don’t forget the raccoons. I’ve got backup.”

That shut him up for a second. “Have you lost your damn mind?” he finally asked.

“No,” I shot back. “I think I've finally found it.”

But before he could either argue or drag me bodily inside, movement flickered through the trees. Webb's reaction was instant—gun up, aimed, and deadly. My heart jerked into my throat as a figure stepped into the clearing, hands raised in peace, and I exhaled in relief.