The Bride Wore Denim (3 page)

“No longer anything except a friend.” He turned her face gently with one finger, so she had to meet his smiling eyes. “But still, I know that was too quick. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Especially if there’s anyone else—I didn’t even ask. I honestly just got excited for you.”

Mia was more than his friend. She was and always would be his ex-girlfriend, lover, almost fiancée. No matter how strained her relationship with her sister might be, Harper would never do the stealing thing. The comparison thing.

“There’s no one else.”

She stared, dumbstruck at herself. That wasn’t what she’d intended to say.

“Well, then. That’s good.” He let her go. “And for the record? It was a good kiss.”

It definitely had been that.

“And congratulations on the art showing. I know this is your dream.”

“Uh . . . ” She scrambled to regain her composure. “It is. But don’t tell anyone.”

“Why would you keep it a secret?”

“I didn’t feel right celebrating it before Dad’s funeral. Tomorrow is soon enough.”

“Okay. But then you’re shouting it from the rooftop.”

Her composure wouldn’t quite cooperate by fully returning, but Cole looked down at their clothing and made a face that at least dispelled her awkwardness.

“We’d better go in. I’ve pushed the limits of your grandmother’s timeline. I was supposed to have you back ten minutes ago. She didn’t seem much inclined to be patient.”

“Grandma gets what she wants, that’s for sure. But I’m sure it’s something simple like what to do with all the flowers. It has to be.”

She looked to him for confirmation, but a surprising shadow of concern crossed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said. “In all honesty I got out of the house to procrastinate, too. I had the weird feeling this meeting might be something we all wish it weren’t.”

T
HEY HADN’T BEEN
in the house ten seconds before they were accosted by Amelia, a wineglass and a dishtowel clutched in her hands, her long brown hair spilling from a bun-like thing on the top of her head. Cole knew the harried look—the one she wore whenever she took on too many tasks at once.

“Where in the world were you two?” Mia scolded like the chickens he and Harper had just corralled.

“Relax, it’s okay,” he said. “Got into some chicken wrangling. Harpo saved the day and rescued a bunch of escapees.”

“Oh, for the love . . . ” Mia shook her head. “Mother let some of the little kids go see the chickens. They probably left the gate unlatched. I told her—”

“Mia, don’t worry,” Harper said softly. “They’re all back where they belong. No need to say anything about it. I’ll go change as quickly as I can.”

“Fine. Yes, go, go, hurry.” Mia swapped her annoyance for bustling marching orders. “Grandma and Mother are already waiting in the study.”

“Do you have anything to change into?” Harper looked at him. “I can probably find you something of . . . Dad’s.” Her voice caught.

Warmth at her emotional offer spread through his chest. “It’s okay. I’m staying in the guest room for now. My things are there. Thanks, Harpo.”

She nodded; gave a quick, sad smile to her sister; and headed out of the kitchen. Mia sighed and shook her head.

“You picked a brilliant time to jump into champion mode, Cole. Honestly, she was really chasing chickens?” She turned with a scowl, set the wineglass on the counter, and hung the towel neatly on a holder. “You didn’t have to fall into her crazy, you know.”

“In fact she told me to go in and not get wet, but I ignored her. Look, Harper isn’t crazy, she’s fine. She used this as a little bit of therapy, I think. Be nice now.”

“Sure, she’s fine.
Harper
is always fine.” For the first time, bitterness crept into Mia’s voice—an echo of what he’d heard earlier in Harper’s. “It doesn’t surprise me a bit that she disappeared to drench herself in the rain with chickens. It’s typical, actually. She’ll say it inspired her. She’ll probably wander off now and paint them, complete with her wackadoodle colors to ‘express the emotion.’ ” The prickles in her voice made him turn to her with gentle chastisement.

“Let me say it again. Be charitable, Mia. Nobody is doing well today. Pretty much anything goes for crazy emotions, don’t you think?”

She immediately bowed her head and covered her eyes with one hand. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’re allowed the emotions, too.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it.

She allowed the tiniest uptick of a smile. “Kind as always. It’s good to see you again, Cole. I’m sorry we haven’t had much time to catch up.”

“We will,” he replied. “Everything’s good in New York?”

“It is. I applied for a new job in the hospital—chief resident in pediatrics. I’ve been working on pediatric surgery rotations, and the last step in certification is to hold a position of leadership. If I’m lucky I’ll have my certification this time next year.”

“Pediatric as well as general surgery. Impressive goals, as usual. Will we have to call you Dr. Dr. Crockett?”

“Sure. I’m that arrogant.” She actually smiled. “Don’t be ridiculous. Now go. Get cleaned up. You look like you’ve been mud wrestling.”

He looked to where Harper’s swinging black braid was disappearing through the dining room attached to the kitchen. He didn’t know what had happened to him outside, but whatever it was, he wished he could re-create that chicken dive and have Harper’s head wind up cushioned against his arm for a little while longer. It wasn’t mud
wrestling
—but getting down and dirty with her again . . . He turned back to Mia.

“I’m happy for you,” he said. “Good luck with the job. When do you find out?”

“A couple of months yet. The beginning of November. It sounds a little puffed up, I know, but I’m fairly confident.”

“I’m sure you have every reason—as usual. See you in a few minutes.”

He was lucky. Rarely could a person spend six years dating someone, mutually and completely agree to separate, and remain genuine friends. He loved Mia, but they’d accepted long ago they’d never really been
in
love. It would take the family even longer than the two years that had already passed to believe they’d never get back together.

A
S HE WENT
through the huge dining room and the smaller sunken living room—smaller but still spacious enough to host a presidential reception—Cole smiled at Bjorn and Melanie Thorson and two of their kids, and a remaining handful of Bella’s relatives who were staying in the tiny nearby town of Wolf Paw Pass. Rosecroft could have been an ostentatious monstrosity, with its nine bedrooms and five bathrooms and all this space on the main floor, but despite the size it embraced its people like a much smaller cottage. Bella had always seen to the friendliness of her home. The furniture was upholstered in reds, maroons, and subtle oranges—and their conversational groupings on thick, pale blue area rugs made the space warm as a sunset.

He climbed the wide wooden stairway to the second floor and followed the airy hallway to his temporary room at the end of the house. Each of the girls still had her own bedroom, despite the fact that the triplets had moved out five years ago and none of the sisters had lived here since each had left for college.

The guest room was simply decorated in blue and white, with a view toward the mountains, an attached bathroom, and shelves filled with books of every genre. The walls were decorated with photographs of Paradise Ranch—amazing images he knew had come from Harper’s camera. The girl was artistic in more ways than painting.

Harper.

He stood by the bed and shucked off his soaking shirt, glad to have the cold, mucky fabric off his body. His mind moved from his moment in the mud with his old best friend, to that unplanned kiss they’d shared.

Absolutely unplanned.

In all truth, he couldn’t say he’d never imagined kissing her. Seeds of feelings for Harper that were more than friendship had been germinating longer than he’d ever admit out loud, but she’d never seemed interested—and Mia had. He couldn’t explain what had made those feelings sprout today after so many dormant years. Sure, he’d spent a lot of time talking to Harper the past Christmas, for the first time in years. And, yes, after that, he’d found himself unable to stop wondering about her: how her painting was progressing or how the community education classes she taught were going. But those thoughts weren’t attraction—he’d simply rekindled the friendship they’d always had.

Seeing her today, however, all the latent thoughts he’d once had about her had risen out of hiding and boiled over: how unique among the six sisters she was; how soft-spoken she could be until her adamant, highly opinionated side would burst through; how sweetly curvy and feminine, like her Grandma Sadie, she’d always been, compared to the other five who’d gotten their mother’s taller, slighter build. Twenty minutes ago, wet and bedraggled and stubbornly determined to catch the damn chickens, she’d suddenly struck him as fifties-movie-starlet sexy. And stoic. And vulnerable. It had always been rare to glimpse Harper Crockett being vulnerable. She knew how to bury that weakness. In a way, Sam Crockett had taught that to all his girls. But Cole had fallen into, what had Mia called it? Champion mode.

Ridiculous. Harper might need, even appreciate, a shoulder to lean on, but she was no damsel in distress. She didn’t need a champion. God knew he didn’t need the complication of an attraction to her.

His dress pants came off, and he dragged on dry jeans.

Starting anything with Harper would be a fool’s pursuit. He had a plan, and it would not work with a long-distance relationship or a woman, however much he admired her and found her sexier than hell, who’d made it clear years ago that she wanted no part of ranch life. He’d told her already—he was going to get the Double Diamond back. It wasn’t an idle wish.

He was it. The last of his line. Poor health had robbed his mother of having more children. His father had been robbed of passing the Double Di down to his only son by timing and economy. Now all Cole had was his own brand of stubborn determination. He’d worked his ass off the past three summers, making great money in North Dakota, riding the oil-rich economy as a mechanic. He’d learned to repair everything from transport vehicles to parts of oil wells. He’d come back to Paradise in the winter, when the demand for manpower in North Dakota waned, and it was hard for Sam and Leif to keep help on the ranch for the harsh winters. He didn’t know how much longer the work in North Dakota would last, since oil prices were falling. But it didn’t matter. He was close—within a year or two of having enough money to buy his property back from Paradise.

And once he did, he wanted to make sure it wouldn’t leave his family again. He wanted a wife someday, one who’d love the land as much as he did. And he wanted kids. A passel of them, like Sam had raised.

Girls. Boys. He didn’t care. The difference would be, they wouldn’t want to leave.

So maybe the last parts of his dream were still in the wishing phase. It didn’t make them any less real.

He still had no right to push anything with Harper—it wasn’t fair to either of them. No matter that the kiss had been more than fun. It had scared him with its honest intensity. And Harper had shied from it like a day-old foal. He didn’t blame her. At the very least, he could admit that a day like today was not the best time to mess with the shaky status quo. Everyone’s heart was broken—his included. He hadn’t lied. He’d believed Sam Crockett would live forever. He’d liked the man despite his iron will and unbending vision.

And his death was going to throw a wrench into Cole’s goals. Sam alone had known the details of a potential sale.

He pulled on his favorite old V-neck sweater, ignoring the fraying cuffs and the slightly stretched-out hem. He didn’t need to be formal anymore. He pulled on clean socks and his worn boots, then longingly eyed his everyday Stetson sitting on the small desk by the window. He wished he could wear it—it always made him feel complete. On the job in the Midwest, they’d called him Cowboy, and it had made him unique. Here, it was who he was.

He didn’t want to go to the meeting Sadie had called. But she’d specifically asked for him and for Leif to attend. He couldn’t imagine what it was about, but he closed the bedroom door behind him and made his way down the stairs.

H
ARPER HESITATED AT
the door to her father’s office, trying for the hundredth time to imagine what this meeting was about. She’d changed into jeans, a comfortable tank top, and a thigh-length, loose-knit cardigan that was her favorite “curl-up and get warm” sweater. Her well-loved Uggs would assure that Mia continued picking on her clothing, but she was beyond caring. Too many emotions took precedence over whether her sister thought she dressed like a crazy artist. Like what would Mia think if she knew Harper had just kissed her ex-lover? Did
that
matter?

With a deep breath, she entered the room and was swept away from every emotion but the conflicting ones over her father. She might have had her issues with him, but this room embodied everything Samuel Crockett had been—good and bad.

The office walls were navy blue, the masculine darkness offset by a lighter patterned area rug on the pine floor in blues and creams. The chairs and sofa were burgundy leather, the desk a massive cherry piece handed down from Sam’s father, Sebastian. Her father’s signature pipe tobacco, dark and spicy, had permeated the furniture and fabrics and hung in the air—as if his spirt stood watching in the background. An oil painting of him with his favorite horse, Smokey Jasper, hung in a row with portraits of Harper’s other Crockett relatives: Benjamin, her uncle, who’d died in Vietnam; her grandfather Sebastian, who’d been Sadie’s husband; and her great-grandfather Eli, who’d homesteaded the ranch in 1916. All the men looked alike—tall, broad-shouldered, sandy-haired, intense-eyed.

Harper turned from the memories and faced the living people in the room. Cole wasn’t there yet, but her mother, tall and regally beautiful in a soft gray dress, smiled with stoic, buried grief. Beside her, leaning heavily on the black-and-red flowered cane, stood stooped-but-indomitable Grandma Sadie.

Brilliant, organized, no-nonsense Amelia held a deep discussion with Bjorn. The triplets, Raquel, Kelly, and Grace, her adorable, accomplished baby sisters named for their father’s favorite two movie stars, sat in front of their grandmother. And then there was Joely, standing like a sunbeam in the middle of the room—the only sister with their father’s light, honey-colored hair, and the one who could have worn puce- and mustard-colored pajamas to a state dinner and pulled them off. If Mia was brilliant and no-nonsense, Joely was her opposite—social and popular. The homecoming queen, the rodeo queen, and, six years ago, Miss Wyoming, she’d been the first and only sister to marry. That had been four years ago, and Joely was still, and probably always would be, beauty queen stunning.

The sisters represented the entire breadth of the country now. Harper liked her crazy life in Chicago with her painting and teaching. Mia had her surgical practice in New York and seemed to love it there. Joely lived in California with her husband, Tim, and the triplets were in Denver with their very successful organic coffee shop and restaurant called Triple Bean.

Each of them had found success in her own right. Just not at ranching—to their father’s now-permanent sorrow.

“You okay, little Harpo?”

She looked into Leif’s familiar old face and tears finally threatened. By “little” he meant, of course, to invoke the spirit of the Harper he’d watched grow up. With all the surreal emotions sitting on her heart, today she felt just shy of ancient.

She accepted his hug, feeling a touch of desperation in the old cowboy’s embrace. He’d been hired for this job by Sebastian practically upon getting of the boat from Norway almost fifty years earlier. Now he was a true American cowboy—right down to his handlebar mustache and bowlegs.