The Bride Wore Denim

To the brides from my family who came before me:

Two great-grandmothers who left their homes and crossed an ocean on their own

to find their happily-ever-afters;

two grandmothers who married the men of their dreams and then pulled with them

through hardships I can’t imagine to live their happily-ever-afters;

and finally to my mother who is the most incredibly faithful bride still after sixty-plus years

of happily-ever-after marriage.

Thank you all for giving me my belief in romance.

This book begins a new series of stories, and I would not be writing them without the push and inspiration from Jennifer Bernard, who reminded me that no little helpful fairies were going to come and give me the concept for a new set of books; I had to use my own brain!

A hundred hugs and thank-yous go big time to my fantastic, beautiful agent Elizabeth Winick Rubinstein, who brainstormed during long conversations and caught all the perfect idea nuggets I let fall, then helped me weave them into the Seven Brides for Seven Cowboys concept.

My critique partners, Ellen Lindseth (who talks me expertly off of ledges quite regularly), Nancy Holland (who is willing to argue with me until I relent—although she doesn’t know I do), and Naomi Stone (who almost always sees the meaning in what I write and doesn’t let me leave a crit session depressed). They all refuse to let me coast, despite my whining.

Thanks to Avon Books editorial assistant Gabrielle Keck, who got me through the beginnings of starting the book, and who found lots of great things to fix.

Most of all I thank my brilliant, kind, encouraging editor Tessa Woodward, who knew exactly how to fix all the broken pieces of the original draft and made me feel like it was never my fault they needed fixing! This story rocks because of her!

Thank you, too, to Adam Muhlig and his wife, Ellie, who went to their ranching family and asked research questions on my behalf. Ellie’s uncle Steve Gruy and cousin Alberto Muzquiz of Rancho Solo in Hebbronville, Texas, offered me wonderful details about the business of running a large cattle ranch—and promised more when I need it. I am very grateful!

T
HANK
G
OD FOR
the chickens.
They
knew how to liven up a funeral.

Harper Crockett crouched against the rain-soaked wall of her father’s extravagant chicken coop and laughed until she cried. This time, however, the tears weren’t for the man who’d built the Henhouse Hilton—as she and her sisters had christened the porch-fronted coop that rivaled most human homes—they were for the eight multicolored, escaped fowl that careened around the yard like over-caffeinated bees.

The very idea of a chicken stampede on one of Wyoming’s largest cattle ranches was enough to ease her sorrow, even today.

She glanced toward the back porch of her parents’ huge log home several hundred yards away to make sure she was still alone, and she wiped the tears and the rain from her eyes. “I know you probably aren’t liking this, Dad,” she said, aiming her words at the sopping chickens. “Chaos instead of order.”

Chaos had never been acceptable to Samuel Crockett.

A
bock-bocking
Welsummer rooster, gorgeous with its burnt-orange-and-blue body and iridescent green tail, powered past, close enough for an ambush. Harper sprang and nabbed the affronted bird around its thick, shiny body. “Gotcha,” she said as its feathers soaked her sweater. “Back to the pen for you.”

The rest of the chickens squawked in alarm at the apprehension and arrest of one of their own. They scattered again, scolding and flapping.

Yeah, she thought as she deposited the rooster back in the chicken yard, her father had no choice but to glower at the bedlam from heaven. He was the one who’d left the dang birds behind.

As the hens fussed, Harper assessed the little flock made up of her father’s favorite breeds—all chosen for their easygoing temperaments: friendly, buff-colored Cochins; smart, docile, black-and-white Plymouth Rocks; and sweet, shy, black Australorps. What a little freedom and gang mentality could do, she mused, plotting her next capture. They’d turned into a band of egg-laying gangsters, helping each other escape the law.

Despite there being seven chickens still left to corral, Harper reveled in sharing their attempted run for freedom with nobody. She brushed ineffectually at the mud on her soggy blue-and-brown broom skirt—hippie clothing in the words of her sisters—and the stains on her favorite, crocheted summer sweater. It would have been much smarter to recruit help. Any number of kids bored with funereal reminiscing would have gladly volunteered. Her sisters—Joely and the triplets, if not Amelia—might have as well. The wrangling would have been done in minutes.

Something about handling this alone, however, fed her need to dredge whatever good memories she could from the day. She’d chased an awful lot of chickens throughout her youth. The memories served her sadness, and she didn’t want to share them.

Another lucky grab garnered a little Australorp who was returned, protesting, to the yard. Glancing around once more to check the rainy yard, Harper squatted back under the eaves of the ostentatious yellow chicken mansion and let the half dozen birds settle. These were not her mother’s pets. These were her father’s “girls”—creatures who’d sometimes received more warmth than the human females he’d raised.

Good memories tried to flee in the wake of her petty thoughts, and she grabbed them back. Of course her father had loved his daughters. He’d just never been good at showing it. There’d been plenty of good times.

Rain pittered in a slow, steady rhythm over the lawn and against the coop’s gingerbread scrollwork. It pattered into the genuine, petunia-filled, window boxes on their actual multipaned windows. Inside, the chickens enjoyed oak-trimmed nesting boxes, two flights of ladders, and chicken-themed artwork. Behind their over-the-top manse stretched half an acre of safely fenced running yard, which was trimmed with white picket fencing. Why the idiot birds were shunning such luxury to go AWOL out here in the rain was beyond Harper—even if they had found the gate improperly latched.

Wiping rain from her face again, she concentrated like a cat stalking canaries. Chicken wrangling was rarely about mad chasing and much more about patience. She made three more successful captures and then smiled evilly at the remaining three criminals who eyed her with concern. “Give yourselves up, you dirty birds. Your time on the lam is finished.”

She swooped toward a fluffy Cochin, a chicken breed normally known for its lazy friendliness, and the fat creature shocked her by feinting and then dodging. For the first time in the hunt, Harper missed her chicken. A resulting belly flop onto the grass forced a startled grunt from her throat, and she slid four inches through a puddle. Before she could let loose the mild curse that bubbled up to her tongue, the mortifying sound of clapping echoed through the rain.

“I definitely give that a nine-point-five.”

A hot flash of awareness blazed through her stomach, leaving behind unwanted flutters, and she closed her eyes, fighting back embarrassment. Her voice was still missing when a large, sinewy male hand appeared in front of her, accompanied by rich, baritone laugher. She groaned and reached for his fingers.

“Hello, Cole,” she said, resignation forcing her vocal chords to work as she let him help her gently but unceremoniously to her feet.

Cole Wainwright stood before her, the knot of his tie pulled three inches down his white shirt front, the two buttons above it spread open. That left the tanned, corded skin of his neck at Harper’s eye level. She swallowed hard. His brown-black hair was spiked and mussed, as if he’d awoken, and his eyes sparkled in the rain like blue diamonds. She took a step back.

“Hullo, you,” he replied.

His pirate’s grin, wide and warm and charming, hadn’t changed since they’d been kids. It had been dorky when he’d been ten and she eight and they, together with Harper’s five sisters, had played at being the only pirates who’d sought treasure on horseback rather than from a ship’s deck. Then she’d turned twelve and one day found she would have rather been a captured princess than one of the crew. Because that smile had no longer been dorky. It had been a nice fantasy—but Amelia had always made herself the pirate’s princess. The highest Harper could rise was to being the round butterball of a maid servant.

Cole’s family had owned Paradise’s neighboring ranch the Double Diamond. The Crockett daughters and the Wainwright son had all stayed friends through high school, even though Cole had chosen Amelia for, first, the homecoming dance, then Snow Ball, and finally prom. Once the years of exploring their adjoining land on horseback and hanging out being ranch kids had ended, Cole and Amelia had quickly become The Super Couple—gorgeous on gorgeous. Harper had let her secret Cole fantasies fade away, finished high school, gone off to her wild and failed college years, and kept track of Cole and Amelia only the rare holidays they all visited Paradise Ranch at the same time—like last Christmas when she’d spoken to Cole one-on-one for the first time in years.

His relationship with Amelia had been complicated. Dating for two years after graduation, staying apart for another three years, getting back together so that the family had, for a long time, considered Cole and Amelia all but married. Then, unexpectedly three years ago, the Super Couple had broken up—amicably but permanently, they’d insisted, even though some people still believed, even hoped, they’d reunite.

They hadn’t. It didn’t look as if they would. But everyone was still friends.

Except for the eighteen months after Harper’s father had purchased the Double Diamond. Cole and Mia had broken up, and Cole had disappeared without a trace.

Eventually he’d come back, and the past two winters he’d worked for Sam Crockett on Paradise. Everyone said he was fine.

“Earth to Harpo.”

His hand waved in front of her face. She shook her head, and suddenly she was staring at him, having missed every word he’d said. And there were flutters, deep and unmistakably caused by his proximity.

She blinked. “Oh! I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

He laughed again. “Are you all right?”

No. No, no, no.
This was unacceptable. As happy as she was to see him, these were not the memories she’d been after. This was not a reaction she wanted—this electric anticipation that had been thrumming through her body ever since he’d walked into the church that morning almost late for the service.

“I’m fine.”

“You still do it.” He peered at her, grinning again.

“Do what?”

“Go off into that little artist’s daze. I always wondered what you were seeing while you were in those trances. Usually you’d disappear after one of them, and we’d find you in some corner painting or drawing. But you weren’t big on showing me your work. I was left thinking you’d gotten some great vision or prophecy. Like now.”

She nearly choked on her laughter. “I do not do that! And believe me, I was having no visions of any kind. I was seeing three chickens laughing at me, so I was plotting revenge.”

That was a lie, but he didn’t need to know it.

“Well, you
did
go into trances, but who am I to argue? If this was only revenge plotting, I think you’re justified. You are kind of a mud ball, aren’t you?”

His familiar, mischievous voice finally calmed her, sent her gaze downward to survey the damage to her only dressy clothes, and, most importantly, made her think the whole episode including the wet clothing, was funny. She lifted her eyes.

“I dunno. I think mud is the new chic.”

“Aw, Harpo, if mud is in, then you look fantastic.” He hesitated and studied her, his bright blue eyes as warm as his smile. “You look pretty fantastic even if mud isn’t a fashion statement.”

She lifted her face to the sky, letting the rain that was starting to slow into huge drops burst like little water balloons on her cheeks, keeping the heat in them from showing.

“Yeah? Well, thank you, my old silver-tongued friend. But you know you’re going to look equally fantastic if you stay out here much longer.”

Without thinking, she brushed raindrops off the shoulders of his shirt, skimming their broad expanse twice with cupped fingers. Then she flicked drops from his hair. The tousled, just-out-of-bed look was beginning to flatten like the chickens’ wet feathers.

He stared at her, and she jerked her hand away, dismayed by her bold touches.

“You should get back inside,” she said. “I was on my way to the barn to find Joely, but the chickens’ gate got unlatched. I had to side track. I’ll get these last three chickens and join you.”

“I’ll help. It’ll go faster.”

“That’s silly. You’ll only get muddy, too.”

“No, just wet. Because unlike you, I’m good at this.”

“Oh, wow. There was a gauntlet hitting the lawn with a giant, rippling splash.”

He grinned. She returned it.

“He who returns the most remaining chickens to the yard, gets to . . . ” Cole made a show of thinking up the prize. “Put anything he wants on a piece of Melanie’s lefse and make the loser eat it.”

“Oh my gosh, what are you? Ten?” She sputtered with more laughter.

Melanie Thorson, the Southern belle wife of Paradise Ranch’s foreman who was, in contrast, a first-generation Norwegian-American through and through, had learned to make the best lefse this side of Oslo. The trouble was, a mean person could stuff it with anything from cinnamon sugar to pickled herring.

“Deal or no deal?” Cole asked, his handsome nose now dripping water.

“Oh, it’s a deal. But I warn you, the winner?
She
is going to come up with something really disgusting.”

“Dream on. One, two, three, go. Catch one if you can, Harpo.”

The three chickens had huddled for safety and shelter beneath a huge linden tree, but the instant Harper and Cole took off, the birds clucked into panic mode and went three different directions like possessed bobblehead dolls. Harper went after the Cochin that had left her in the grass and caught her in seconds.

“Hah!” She held up the chicken in triumph, only to see Cole with a flapping Plymouth Rock hen.

“Lucky,” he called.

“You keep thinking that,” she replied.

They reincarcerated the two chickens and turned to the last escapee. This hen, Harper knew, was the oldest chicken in the flock, the only Rhode Island Red, a hen that had been around at least five or six years. She was wily and stubborn and laid a lot of eggs.

“Roxie Red,” Harper said, in the same tone she might have said “Lizzie Borden.”

“They all have names, don’t they?” Cole asked.

“He always named them, but I don’t know what they are. Who can tell them apart? She stands out, the old, cranky biddy.”

“Don’t you worry your head,” he teased. “Let me take care of her.”

“Not on your life.”

The ridiculousness of their impromptu game felt a little disrespectful given the reason she and Cole were really here, but Harper couldn’t rein in the streak of temporary insanity she’d obviously caught from the chickens. At last she’d found the release—the relief—she’d wanted.

They chased the crafty old hen for five full minutes, cutting each other off, herding her into corners, cooing softly but then charging when she dodged and bobbed like a running back. Harper swore the old girl was having as much fun as they were. At last she managed to streak ahead of Cole and reach Roxie as the hen made it to the rabbit fencing around her mother and grandmother’s huge vegetable garden behind the coop.

“Gotcha!” She sprang forward, but she tripped and landed on Cole’s arm. His hand covered hers as both of them grasped simultaneously for the scolding Roxie.

“Get away from my bird!” Harper shot Cole a withering look.

“Hands off
my
chicken.” His voice was high-pitched with mirth.

Roxie flapped easily away, and Harper dissolved into laughter, splayed once again face down on the ground. She lifted her head to find Cole flat on his back gasping for air. He reached across her back, grabbed her arm, and rolled her over, until she, too, lay on her back, her head cradled on his shoulder.

Her first shivering instinct was to leap away, but his laughter held her in place—rumbly and comforting beneath her.