His Montana Bride Page 16

  “That’s a pretty valid point,” he conceded.

  “I know.” She smiled as they walked out of the barn into the bright autumn sunshine.

  He looked down at her, at a beautiful woman with hair the color of autumn and eyes the color of spring. The breeze lifted her hair, blowing it across her cheek. She pushed it back and looked up at him, her lips strawberry and tempting. But he wouldn’t be tempted. Not today. Today she needed someone to just be there for her, be her friend.

  In a matter of days he would marry her. They would walk down the aisle, he in a suit and she in a white dress and they would stand with forty-nine other couples. But she wasn’t really his bride. She wasn’t going to leave with him at the end of that ceremony. They wouldn’t fly off to Hawaii or Jamaica. He would come back to this ranch with Marci. They would go back to their routine of visiting Lulu, planning for the future, finalizing the adoption.

  Katie would walk away from him at the end of the ceremony and go back to whatever life she planned for herself. He wondered if she ever thought of him in that plan. Did she ever consider that they were good together? They were good at being friends, good at supporting one another, and she felt good in his arms.

  Did it ever cross her mind, the way it had crossed his, that this didn’t have to end? That maybe all her intentions led here, to him?

  But how did a guy say that to a woman he’d known less than a month?

  Weeks before he was supposed to marry Susan, he had worried that she might not be the right one. He had been attracted to a woman he met at a rodeo in Ennis. He’d been drawn to her beauty, to her love of horses and ranching. He’d hoped she would change and be the person he needed her to be.

  What a wrong way to approach a marriage, hoping the person would change to fit what he needed or wanted.

  He and Katie stood at the fence. The grass was no longer green and no longer sprinkled with wildflowers. In the distance, the mountain rose up to the blue sky. Katie leaned against the fence watching his horses, smiling a little. And she looked like the perfect fit, someone he could see in his life forever. But he was asking her to marry him in a ceremony that would mean nothing.

  The thing about Katie was that he wouldn’t change a thing about her.

  She rested her arms on the top rail of the fence and then rested her chin on her arms. Cord slipped an arm around her, pulling her close. He leaned to kiss her cheek.

  “Kate, I’ll find someone else. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. So don’t feel guilty or worry about what you’re doing to me or Jasper Gulch.”

  She closed her eyes and nodded.

  He heard the rumble of a vehicle. He watched as the school bus came in to view and then stopped at the gate at the end of his driveway. He could hear children laughing, shouting. He watched as Marci got off the bus, waved and then ran up the driveway.

  Before she got to them, she was yelling, “Katie, Katie. You’re here.”

  Katie pushed away from the fence, swiped a finger under her eyes and smiled. Marci rushed toward them, her smile huge. Cord had been relieved that in the past week Marci had adjusted as well as she had. They’d had some tears. There were times at the nursing facility that she saw Lulu as she had been and wanted to bring her grandmother home.

  But all in all she was adjusting to this new life. He was adjusting to his home not being empty. There was a housekeeper who, though not a noisy woman, was a presence, a continuous presence. Marci had added laughter and chaos to his home. The kitten was ripping apart plants and furniture.

  It was good, though.

  He had to catch up. Marci had hold of Katie and was dragging her toward the house, asking if she wanted to go with them to see her grammy. And did Katie want to see her room? Katie was allowing herself to be pulled along by the girl, her smile showing that she had managed to brush off whatever hurt she felt.

  Or maybe that’s how she dealt with life. She brushed off her hurt and moved on.

  He would have followed, but it seemed his place was Grand Central today. A truck pulled up to the barn. His dad.

  “Marci, you and Kate go on in. I need to talk to my dad.”

  Katie nodded and Marci kept talking, this time about the pizza the housekeeper made. It was the best ever. Cord shook his head and with a smile that took him by surprise he headed to the barn.

  “Dad?”

  Jackson Shaw walked around the front of his truck, looking a little the worse for wear. It had been a long few months, longer if they went back to the planning stages of the centennial celebration.

  “Son. I thought I’d see if there is anything left to do on this wedding. You’ve got your fifty couples and everything else is wrapped up. Right?”

  Cord shook his head. “No, not really.” He leaned against the fence and his dad joined him.

  “I thought you and Katie Archer were going to be the last couple.”

  “It isn’t going to work out.”

  Jackson grunted. “Well, stranger things have worked out. You never know.”

  “I know that I can’t pretend to marry this woman, Dad. It isn’t fair to her.”

  “Maybe you ought to take a good look at what’s right under your nose, son.”

  “What does that mean?” He guessed he knew, but he really didn’t want to jump right into this conversation.

  “You’ve had a rough time. Not just the past few years but with Angie’s death and taking on Marci. But you’re not getting any younger.”

  “Thanks, Dad, good advice.”

  “It isn’t just advice, it’s the truth. Cord, you’ve struggled, but you’re a man of faith. That’s how we raised you. I don’t think you’ve walked so far away you can’t see that sometimes God has a very different plan from the one we have. If we get caught up in our plan and whether it goes right or wrong, we might miss out on the real plan.”

  Cord took a good look at his dad, surprised by the talk, one of the most honest they’d had in a while. “Dad, are you and Mom okay?”

  His dad looked straight ahead, but he nodded. “We will be. I might have made a rash decision or two that she doesn’t agree with. But we’ll work through it. We always do. That’s how we’ve stayed together near on forty years.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. We’ve all been a little worried.”

  “No need to be, not about your mother and me. But you might want to be thinking about that fiftieth couple.”

  “You could agree to renew your vows.”

  “I said them once and meant every bit of them. I don’t need to say them again.”

  “Did you ever think about being a little romantic, Dad? Might go a long way in patching up some of the differences between you and Mom.”

  “I guess I could send her some flowers.”

  “That would be a start.” Cord hid his smile.

  His dad hit him with a look that effectively put the smile to rest. “Looks to me like you’ve been courting that little gal from Missoula. If you aren’t, then you should be honest about that. If you are, then maybe you should do something about it.”

  “Agreed. But I’m not going to ask her to do something that might hurt her.”

  “That’s a start.” His dad inclined his head, waved goodbye and headed for his truck.

  Cord glanced toward his house where he knew Marci and Katie were waiting. Kate. He smiled at the name. He smiled a lot more these days, in this past month, than he had in a long time. He wasn’t foolish enough to think that he’d done all this changing on his own.

  A lot of people had been praying for him. He got that.

  He also knew that Katie had changed everything for him. Whatever decisions were made in the next week would change everything all over again. For better or worse.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Katie set up the ladder at the f
ront of the tent where she and Faith Shaw were preparing to drape tulle as a backdrop. Pastor Ethan would stand in front. The brides and grooms would be lined up with the tulle to their backs facing him. Two diagonal lines of brides and grooms. The attendants would line up behind them, making a half circle. Katie knew from one walk-through that they would all fit. Barely, and only because not all the couples had attendants.

  “Do you really think we can pull this off?” Faith asked as she handed tulle up the ladder to Katie.

  “I think so.” She clipped the tulle. Behind it they had made what looked like stained-glass-window shapes out of Christmas lights. Placed behind the tulle, the lights would give everything a golden sheen.

  “It’s beautiful,” Faith offered. “You have a gift. I couldn’t have envisioned this.”

  “You train horses and work on a ranch.” Katie smiled down at her friend. “I couldn’t do that.”

  “So we’re each a part of the body, making up the whole.” Ethan Johnson walked down the center to join them. “You ladies were listening to my sermon.”

  They shook their heads at him and he chuckled. “Need any help?”

  Faith looked up at Katie, who looked around the huge tent. “We’re going to wrap tulle around the support posts of the tent and then attach pretty jars of lights on some and jars of wildflowers on the others.”

  “Sounds perfect. If I can help.”

  Katie climbed down from placing the last bit of tulle. “Do you want to go plug in the lights?”

  He did. She and Faith stood back to watch as the lights went on and the tulle became gauzy curtains and the lights framed everything perfectly.

  “Amazing.” Faith spoke breathlessly.

  Ethan cleared his throat. “I think I know the ceremony by heart. Are there any adjustments?”

  “None that I can think of,” Katie offered. She glanced around the tent. Chairs were set up in diagonal rows facing the front center of the tent. The chandeliers had been hung. The afternoon of the wedding the candles would be lit.

  “What about the fiftieth couple?” Ethan asked as they walked toward the back of the tent.

  “We haven’t quite settled that situation,” Katie answered without explaining. Faith shot her a look asking for more. Katie ignored the look.

  “It’ll all work out.” Ethan pushed the door of the tent open. “Let me know if you need anything from me.”

  “I will.” Katie remained inside the tent with Faith. It was warm inside. There were heaters placed around the edges and several at the front. “I need to turn off lights and heaters.”

  “Let me start on one side,” Faith offered. “You know, Katie, Cord couldn’t have done this without you.”

  “Yes, he could have. There would have been plenty of people chipping in to help.”

  “I don’t think it would have worked out so beautifully.”

  “Need help in here?”

  Faith and Katie both turned at the question. Cord stood at the entrance of the tent. Katie had to take a deep breath to push past her reaction to this man, to his presence. He stood there in jeans, a canvas jacket and his hat pulled low.

  “I think we have it wrapped up,” Faith offered. “We’re turning off heaters and lights.”

  “You head on home, Faith. I’ll help Kate wrap things up here.”

  “Kate?” Faith mumbled, but she turned to smile at Katie. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Katie nodded and watched as her friend left, shooting daggers at her brother on her way out.

  “That went well.” Cord approached, pulling off his gloves and shoving them in his pockets as he walked. “It looks great. You should think about this as a career.”

  “I have been thinking about it.”

  “I see.”

  She waited, wanting him to say more than that. He didn’t, so she moved away. It was late and she didn’t want him to say more, or to ask about the wedding.

  They turned off all the heaters and then she pulled the plug on the lights that were wrapped around the support posts, leaving only the lights framed like stained-glass windows.

  “Kate, I need you to believe me when I say that this wedding will work. I’ll figure something out.”

  “You’ve worked hard on this. You should have fifty couples.”

  “It isn’t really about what I want. Or what the town wants. I know that every woman wants her wedding to be special. It’s all about the dress, isn’t that what you told me? And your dress, the dress you always wanted to wear...”

  She put a hand on his chest, “Let’s not talk about that. It’ll make me cry.”

  “When you get married, there shouldn’t be another wedding, another dress or another groom in your past. Julie and Faith have both told me, and they didn’t hold back, that I was wrong to ask you to do this.”

  “You weren’t wrong. You asked a friend to help you out.” A friend could do that. Couldn’t she? It didn’t have to hurt, not if she kept it all in perspective. She was going to put on a dress and help out a friend. It wasn’t so different from her junior prom when she’d accepted the invitation from a friend because he didn’t want to go alone and his girlfriend had just broken up with him. By the end of the night, he and the other girl had gotten back together and Katie had sat at the table for girls without dates. It hadn’t been so bad.

  Really.

  “Yes, I asked a friend to help me out.” He smiled as he said it. “But this is different than asking you to do some dishes or give me a ride to town. I asked you to marry me.”

  “I guess that does make it a little more serious. But I can do this, Cord. I have a dress already ordered. It isn’t as if it will keep me from ever having a real wedding.”

  “No, it won’t. But—”

  She put a finger on his lips to stop him. “Just get a ring before I change my mind. It obviously doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be out of a gumball machine if you want.”

  “Okay. A ring it is. And, Kate,” he added, flicking a finger across her cheek where a tear had slid free, “if you change your mind, we’ll still be friends.”

  “Of course.” She smiled, but it quickly evaporated as a chill swept over her, making her shiver in the changing temperature of the tent. Obviously the heaters worked.

  “Are you cold?”

  “No, I’m fine.” She buttoned her jacket and smiled. “There, all better. Now, time to get this place closed up and go home.”

  Home, funny that she considered Shaw Ranch, a place she had no connection to, her home. And the man watching her, she felt connected to him, too. But he was a friend. Just a friend.

  * * *

  Cord didn’t know what else to say. She was willing to walk down the aisle with him. He should talk her out of it. Crazy as it seemed, he wanted to see her walk down the aisle in a white dress. He wanted to buy her a ring and slip it on her finger. He wanted to kiss her.

  He didn’t want this month to be over, because when the month ended, he was afraid her time here would come to an end. She hadn’t committed to the store. In the end, it couldn’t matter for him. His life would settle into his new reality, raising Marci on his own. He had to keep his mind on what had been his priority for almost a dozen years.

  He knew he would miss Kate. All the lectures to himself about how he shouldn’t have gotten involved, shouldn’t have let her in, were pretty useless now.

  He cleared his throat and stepped away from temptation. “Let me pull the plug on the last strand of lights and we’ll go. I know I’m beat and I’m sure you are, too.”

  “Yes.” Her voice shook a little as she answered. “How is Lulu?”

  “Good days and bad. Marci is the same. Good days and bad. She’s excited, she’s sad, quiet, talks my leg off. I know we’ll get through it. But today when we visited, Lulu didn�
�t remember Marci’s name. I know it hurt her. But they sang their song.”

  “I’m so sorry, Cord,” she said, and then her hand reached for his, drawing him to her side.

  “Kate, I’m not sure why you’re here, but when I think about this past month without you—” he held her a little closer to him “—I’m glad you were here.”

  “Shh,” she whispered.

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t say anything we have to think about tomorrow.”

  He agreed, kissing the top of her head before he moved a step back. By next week they’d be going back to their real lives and he didn’t know who she was in that real world or what she really wanted.

  “We should go,” he said, starting them toward their cars.

  “Yes, we should. Good night, Cord.”

  “Kate?”

  She shook her head as she backed away from him. “Not tonight.”

  He watched her leave, knowing he should go after her but knowing she really needed time away from him. He probably needed time, too.

  In two days he would walk her down the aisle, although it wouldn’t be legal since they wouldn’t have a marriage license. And she was more the person he wanted to marry than either of the women he had nearly married for real.

  He watched as the Jeep roared to life and took off. A truck was parked behind his, running, exhaust pouring from the back. He watched as Julie got out of the truck and walked toward him. Mad. Yes, he’d seen that look on her face before.

  “For an older brother, you sure know how to make a mess of things.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, I was driving through town after a meeting for the committee planning the Thanksgiving Parade and Homecoming Feast, a meeting you were supposed to attend. I thought I’d stop by and fill you in on what we discussed.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh. And what do I see but you and Katie. And I think you shouldn’t use your very obvious charms to convince her to do this wedding. She’s more fragile than she looks.”