The Bride Wore Denim (7 page)

“Well, Sam, you know now.” Cole lifted the Scotch bottle and saluted the sky with it.

To connoisseurs, the odd-shaped bottle was apparently recognizable—a Glenrothes John Ramsay, one of only two hundred sent to the United States. Won in a poker game six years before, it went, Sam bragged, for a thousand dollars a bottle. Since nothing that rich had ever passed Cole’s lips, he’d looked it up. Sure enough, Sam hadn’t been ripped off—if a thousand-buck bottle of Scotch could be considered equal to money in a poker pot.

And since Sam wasn’t here to protect his winnings, this seemed a perfect time to crack open the bottle. It certainly hadn’t done him any good to keep it for posterity.

Cole found an etched-glass tray and pulled five lowball tumblers from the shelves above the bar. Setting them artlessly on the tray, he hefted it and carried it along with the Scotch into the dining room.

“What’s this?” Bella asked.

Harper sat beside Joely, holding one hand while Bella held the other. They were smiling now—anemically but genuinely.

“Your husband’s secret stash.” Cole smiled, too, fully prepared for Bella to protest. He assumed she knew about the Glenrothes. “I do remember one thing he taught every one of his daughters.”

To his pleasant surprise, Bella nodded. “The John Ramsay. I’d forgotten all about that. Well done, Cole, sweetheart.”

He nodded his acceptance of the compliment and distributed the glasses.

“Your father taught each one of you how to drink fine whisky,” he said. “He definitely knew his Scotch. He had a warped sense of pride in the fact that every one of you learned to like it, too.”

“His twenty-first birthday gift for each of us,” Amelia said, “was a private tasting party. Our father was definitely one of a kind.”

“Amen to that.” Cole unwrapped the label from the bottle neck and pulled the stopper out with no more ceremony than he’d have used to unscrew the cap off of a bottle of Wild Turkey. “Like hiding this thousand-dollar bottle of Scotch in a corner.”

“Oh my gosh! Are you serious?” Harper asked. “This is thousand-dollar Scotch? And you opened it?”

“Can’t drink it without opening it.”

Slowly he started around the table, pouring two fingers into each glass, finishing with his own. He set the bottle in the center of the table. Harper picked it up and peered at the label and at the white etched signature of John Ramsay across the swell of the barrel shape.

“Number two hundred fifty-seven of fourteen hundred bottles,” she read. “Seriously?”

Cole shrugged. “That’s what they say. Your dad told me there were only two hundred shipped to the United States.”

“Heck,” she replied. “We might be drinking our inheritance. I say bottoms up.”

Cole lifted his glass and the others followed. “We haven’t fixed anything,” he said. “In fact, it feels like a lot is more broken than ever. But we’re not going to discuss any more tonight. Agreed?”

A chorus of “hear-hears” made it so.

“And even though we each have our own memory of him and had a unique relationship with him while he was here, we can drink together to Samuel Crockett. We’ll miss him. May he rest in peace.”

“Rest in peace, Daddy,” Amelia said quietly.

“Amen,” Harper agreed.

Cole tipped his glass against his lips and let the cool, dark gold richness slide across his tongue and down his throat.

“Oh my,” Harper said, her voice like a breathy prayer. “I haven’t had anything that smooth and dry in a very, very long time.”

“A little orangey,” Joely said. “Maybe some vanilla.”

“Oh, yes, your father would be very proud,” said Bella, the sheen of unshed tears in her eyes. “Cole—I don’t think there’s any point in hoarding that Scotch. Pour again.”

He almost laughed. He truly didn’t believe in medicating problems—he’d had enough of that after high school—but the mood in the room was changing to one more appropriate for the night, and Bella needed that more than any of them. He poured again. Bella lifted her glass first.

“To my three oldest beautiful daughters. God grant you wisdom to go along with the brilliance you already possess.”

More agreement and more glasses drained. Cole poured a third time.

“To Kelly, Grace, and Raquel,” Joely said. “I wish they were here.”

The Scotch disappeared a third time. Harper set her glass heavily on the table. “I think we need to drink to all the douche bags in our family.” Everyone stared. She grinned slyly. “May one of them forever regret what he’s done to my sister.”

This time full-fledged cheering broke out, and when the whisky had been downed, actual laughter followed. There wasn’t a lot of the John Ramsay left, enough for another couple of fingers each with a swallow remaining.

“To Mother.” Harper lifted her hand for the final toast. “I hope you soar now on your own wings. Daddy can be your angel, and you will miss him, but you don’t
need
him. You are the best part of each one of us.”

For a group of people slowly getting drunk on very good Scotch, the response to that was subdued and heartfelt. Nobody chugged her last drink, and Cole swirled the amber liquid around the base of his glass. He knew another truth about the girls of Paradise Ranch—they all believed their mother had been downtrodden her whole life. After all, if Sam had pressed them to be what he wanted them to be, how much more opinionated would he have been with his wife?

Cole didn’t know if their perception was right. Bella had never struck him as a weak woman. But he did know his father had said that nobody in Wolf Paw Pass knew why Isabella Holcomb had fallen and stayed fallen for Sam Crockett. They couldn’t have been more opposite in temperament or interests. But stay with him she had, for thirty-five years. The girls’ mother, at fifty-nine, only now showed the first fan of crows’ feet at her eyes and the first miniscule droop beside her mouth to mark the approach of her next decade. Tonight the puffiness beneath Bella’s lovely brown eyes were not the mark of a woman relieved to out from a man’s thumb.

“This is very, very excellent Scotch.” Harper stared into her glass, which still held half an inch of the Glenrothes. Her words weren’t slurring, but they surfaced slowly, deliberately. Her thick, dark hair now fell unbraided in a beautiful, satiny drape along her cheek.

“It is.” He drained his glass, pushed it away, and forced himself to stand so he wouldn’t kiss her right in front of everyone. “I think it’s almost time for everybody to go to bed.”

Amelia smiled tipsily and winked at him. “Good idea. Bed.”

He laughed at her loss of self-censorship. “Come on. Time for all good girls to go there. And nobody gets up early tomorrow, got it?”

Harper stood and braced both hands on the table. “Whoa. Did you see this stuff is, like, forty-six point seven percent alcohol by volume? It’s the real deal, girls. Cole, if you get lost on your way to your room, you can come and get me.” She grinned. “Or come and tuck me in to start with. I’ll give you directions.”

She was no more sober than Mia, and yet her words struck his blood like little hand grenades.

“You always were a fun drinker, Harpo. Go on and dream about me, but don’t stay awake waiting.”

She saluted him, hugged her mother and Joely, and stopped in front of Amelia. For a moment she hesitated, then Harper took her in a huge embrace. Cole sagged with relief. The Scotch had worked.

“You guys never let me finish,” Joely said, still smiling over her glass of whisky. “I was serious. I’m flying back to LA day after tomorrow; I’m packing up my house, putting it on the market, and I’m driving back here in my truck and trailer. I still have my horse, and she and I are coming home. You all watch—I’ll save the family ranch.”

Cole didn’t argue with her. Tomorrow, with a little hangover and the crashing weight of reality, Joely would probably fall out of love with this starry-eyed savior-of-the-ranch idea. Then again, he wasn’t 100 percent sober either. He could be dead wrong.

S
HE DIDN’T EXACTLY
have a hangover, just a thumping headache, but she sure had regrets. Harper remembered clearly every word that had been uttered the night before, including her ridiculous babblings to Cole.

Tuck me in? I’ll give you directions?

Now there was a perfect example of why one drink should always be her limit. She was garrulous under the influence—and she’d never known how to run at the mouth with elegance.

Tuck me in
. She groaned and concentrated on her feet. One step at a time. Don’t think about her share of the thousand-dollar bottle of Scotch that, up until she’d gotten careless, had actually been a brilliant solution to the end of a truly awful day. The course of this day, even though it was already ten thirty in the morning, was still up in the air.

She trudged toward the barn, her old boots the most comfortable thing on her body. She’d kept them, along with a handful of sweaters and the ancient Carhartt jacket she used for ranch work, in a corner of her old closet where they awaited her infrequent visits. She suspected each of her sisters had a similar stash and wondered if they were always as surprised as she was to find their mother hadn’t tossed the whole lot.

She crested the rise in the driveway that allowed her to overlook the impressive heart of the ranch. Her ancestors had known what they were doing when they’d laid out the basic work areas. Despite recent decisions, what her father had done to upgrade and make things run more efficiently only enhanced the beauty of the whole operation.

To the left stood the horse barn, the ranch’s newest structure built ten years earlier. A horse owner’s dream, it had solid oak stall doors, full plumbing, a huge tack room filling one end of the barn, and an extra room off the main rectangle, housing a repair shop for everything cowboy related, from tack to ropes to branding equipment to chaps. To the right was a cluster of buildings, a couple dating from the forties and fifties, and one, a small, meticulously maintained house that had been the main office from 1916 when Eli Crockett had founded Paradise Ranch.

Two cattle sheds and another huge, older barn, a machine shed, a blacksmith’s cabin, and a modern log office not dissimilar to the main house completed the set of buildings. Beyond the ranch’s micro city, however, the Paradise’s majestic landscape spread out—the start of nearly ninety square miles of rolling hills and mountains, all smaller preludes to the Rockies. Two huge corrals that could be used for branding or sorting flanked the view, and beyond them, a glint from the small, tributary Kwinaa River flashed silver, and the mighty Rocky Mountains defined the horizon with jagged silhouettes.

Harper drew the sweet Western air into her lungs. It honestly smelled and even tasted different from the bustling, frantically moving, greasy air of Chicago. Slowly her headache faded and strength filled her limbs. She’d originally regretted her impulsive agreement to talk to Bjorn about using a couple of his private pleasure horses. But as her mind cleared, and the indignation from her meeting with Mountain Pacific caught fresh sparks, her mission suddenly seemed righteous. Not that she really wanted to run into Skylar Thorson again—she hadn’t been particularly kind during their first meeting—but she wanted to get her family out to imagine the potential damage allowing the oil company onto their property could cause.

She was headed half a mile southwest of the ranch center. When he’d taken over Paradise, her father had set aside four ten-acre plots of land for his long-term employees. At the time nobody had known Leif would remain such a part of the family or that his son would bring back a Southern belle who’d stay as well. Sam had simply wanted his employees to have some ownership in their jobs. He rented the homes built on the acreages to full-time hands. After they worked for him two years, he offered the homes for sale to them. When they wanted to leave, the ranch bought the homes back, guaranteed. It had turned out to be a brilliant plan. Over the years, only Leif and Bjorn and their families had moved in permanently. The other two houses switched hands regularly, and most of the time served as rental properties.

Harper had chosen to walk rather than drive or ride to Bjorn’s home. By the time she’d reached the front door of his stone-fronted ranch-style house, she didn’t care who answered the door. She was ready with a smile on her face.

“Hi!”

She looked down through a screen door into the eager, round face of a boy child approximately five or six years old.

“Hi,” she replied.

“You’re Miss Harper. I saw you yesterday.” He had a precocious tone of voice and precise enunciation. Impressive for such a short person.

“I am. I’m a friend of your grandpa’s and your dad’s.”

“Howdy, Miss Harper.”

Oh, they were going to have trouble with this one. That cowboy-slash-Southern charm combo was going to be lethal when he got to school.

“Howdy, sir. Will you forgive me if I tell you I don’t remember your name?”

“Aiden Per Thorson.”

“That is one of the most distinguished names I’ve ever heard. Is your dad or your mom home?”

“My mom’s here. We’re supposed to be in school, but she let us have the day off because of Mr. Crockett’s funeral yesterday. She said we all need a day to play because life’s too short.”

Harper hadn’t known Melanie Thorson possessed such practical wisdom. She’d always seemed overly structured and even a little unyielding.

“That sounds like a very nice thing to do.”

“Did you know Mr. Crockett?”

For some reason his words didn’t hurt or even sting. Harper found his serious question endearing and slightly comforting.

“I sure did. He was my dad.”

Aiden took that in with a little bit of surprise. He studied her for a minute, as if he knew there was something special he should say but he wasn’t quite sure what.

“Are you really sad today?”

Just like that he’d found precisely the right words. “I am. It’s very nice of you to ask me.”

“I would be awful sad if my daddy died.”

“I know. I’m glad your daddy is fine. Is he working today?”

“He said he had to help Grandpa, because even though Mr. Crockett isn’t here there’s still work to do. The work didn’t die.”

Harper found herself wishing that adults—that everyone—could be this open and honest about death. No pussyfooting. No political correctness. Just pure emotion. Aiden Per Thorson was making her smile inside.

“That’s something we all end up learning, Aiden. The work never dies. Your daddy and grandpa work really hard. I bet you work hard at school, too.”

He shrugged.

“Aiden?” His mother appeared at the door and peered through the screen. “Harper?”

“Hi, Melanie. Sorry to bother you.”

“Nonsense. I’m thrilled to see you, although I’m surprised it’s so soon after the funeral. Are y’all doing okay up there?”

Every time she heard it, Melanie’s lilting Carolina accent tickled Harper. It was so incongruous amid all the macho bombast of western Wyoming.

“We’re fine, really. In a little bit of shock still, but we’re muddling.”

“I’m sure it’s a comfort for your mama to have you girls all home.”

“The triplets are gone already, but the rest of us have a few more days. And Joely will be staying on to start taking over some of Dad’s work.”

“Oh my, what a task that is,” Melanie said. “Bless her heart; I’ll be prayin’ for her, you can believe that. Can you come in? I’ve got some fresh peanut butter cookies. Slipping in a little home-ec lesson even though I promised no school today.”

“You must be the most organized person on the face of the earth. Mom, teacher, baker, friend. How do you do it?”

She stepped into the house. It did smell delicious.

“I don’t always manage well. The older two are starting to fuss a bit about school and discipline. This time of year, when Leif and Bjorn are busy I sometimes do a lot of fudging with field trips. And now, since your father . . . Harper, I’m really sorry about your dad.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ll let me know if there’s anything at all I can do.”

“I will. In fact, I’m kind of here to ask a huge favor right now.”

“Name it.”

“We need to go as a family to Wolf Paw Pass. Don’t mention it yet, but yesterday I ran into a group from Mountain Pacific gas that claimed they were here on my dad’s request. I’m not sure about that, but it’s divided the family a little. I want everyone to see the area these people were talking about testing. I’m not a big fan of them coming onto the ranch.”

“I don’t blame you,” Melanie said.

Melanie’s agreement soothed Harper’s inner turmoil a little. She didn’t know what Leif or Bjorn’s feelings about the situation would be, but if she had Melanie’s support, it couldn’t hurt.

“Not everyone will be adverse to the idea. It’s a good way to supplement income if there is a reserve of oil or gas on ranch property. Still, there has to be a better way to make money than spoiling good land.”

“So what can I help you with?”

“We only have three horses these days, but Mama said you and Bjorn have five. I’m wondering if we could borrow two mounts for a couple of hours this afternoon.”

“Of course. I’m wondering, though, if there might be only two available today.”

“Oh?”

“One is a pony—too small for any of you. Marcus took his horse, Scout, out this morning and isn’t back. Bjorn’s King threw a shoe yesterday and is a little sore until he gets it back on. That leaves Leif’s Nellie and Skylar’s Bungu. I shouldn’t give permission to take him without asking Skylar first.”

“Of course. The black-and-white Appy?”

“Her pride and joy. She bought half of him herself. The girl is horse crazy, but then, this
is
a ranch.”

“We had six horse-crazy girls. I totally understand.” Harper sat at the crisp, white lacquered kitchen table and took in Melanie’s cheerful blue-and-red Norwegian color scheme. On one wall was a framed Norwegian blessing Harper had heard Leif recite a hundred times over the years. “
I Jesu navn gar vi til bords . . .
In Jesus’s name we come to the table . . . ” She smiled, hearing her father’s voice mercilessly butchering the pronunciation whenever he teased Leif by trying it himself.

“Sure ain’t a drop of Viking blood in your veins,” Leif would say.

“Unless there were Vikings in Davy Crockett’s genes,” her father would reply haughtily.

“Probably were,” Leif would say with a sniff.

Faintly Harper heard a question and pulled her eyes from the prayer, surprised that it of all things had dredged up the sorrow. She shook her head and turned to the plate of cookies Melanie set on the table.

“Sorry, what?” Harper asked.

“I asked when you have to go back to Chicago.”

“Another four days. I have some preexisting commitments. Amelia has to get back to work in New York. I think, as of this morning, Joely’s talking about taking Mom on a road trip to get her things from California.”

“Your daddy raised some pretty smart girls.” Melanie smiled. “You’re all doing very well. He was proud of you.”

So everyone kept saying. Harper smiled back—her rote acknowledgment of how great Sam Crockett had been. People said a lot of things after someone died. She bit into a cookie, and groaned.

“This is amazing. It’s been ages since I’ve had a homemade peanut butter cookie. I forget that nothing compares—except maybe something with six pounds of chocolate.”

“Well, that goes without saying.”

“So, is Skylar here?” Harper changed the subject over a mouthful of thick, warm, chewy cookie. “I could ask her myself about her horse.”

“I think she is.” Melanie stood and walked to the kitchen door. She leaned through it and called her daughter’s name. Instead, Aiden came running. “Have you seen Skylar?” Melanie asked.

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head. “May I have a cookie?”

“After lunch. You’ve already had two.”

“But pleeeeeeze?”

“Go. Find Skylar for me. Pleeeeeeze.”

“She’s not here.”

“Oh?”

“She left.”

“When did she leave?” Melanie’s brow furrowed. “She should be telling me when she goes out.”

“Like one second ago, about.” He eyed the plate of cookies pitifully.

“Thank you for the information. Now you go and play.”

“Howdy, Miss Harper.” He grinned as if they shared a secret joke.

“Howdy, Mr. Aiden.”

He beamed at her, his dimples deepening adorably, and turned to go—obedient yet impish. No doubt about it, the kid was already a lady killer.

“Six going on twice that.” Melanie sighed.

Harper laughed and took another cookie. Aiden Thorson was the kind of kid who could make a person think about having her own. The idea had never seriously crossed her mind. Children didn’t fit well into an artist’s bizarre schedule, and with her history of drugs and dropping out of things, she didn’t have anywhere near the credentials one needed for raising human beings.

“He’s darling,” she said, deciding she was just as glad Aiden was staying with a mom like Melanie.

A
N HOUR LATER
, Harper led Joely, Mia, and their mother over the trail Harper had followed the day before. Cole brought up the rear. She rode Skylar Thorson’s black-and-white Appaloosa without the girl’s approval, since nobody had seen her from the time Harper had appeared to ask for permission to use the horses. She’d only been on the horse twenty minutes, but Harper had decided she wouldn’t give him back. He was a beauty, but he also had brains to spare. Bungu. All Melanie could tell her about his name was that it was an Indian word for horse, and that Skylar loved him more than life itself.

Joely rode the inexperienced Chevy, who belonged to Rico, the ranch hand. Cole had their other hand Neil’s gelding, Paco. Bella rode Sam’s gelding, Wheeler, and Mia rode Leif’s mare, Nellie. As the sun filtered through the trees, highlighting the route toward the mountains and the open land beyond Wolf Paw Peak, Harper relaxed. Nobody seemed mired in anger or even dark grief any more. Maybe this whole idea would work. Or they were all nursing hangover headaches.