“Jenny!” Danny laughed as Krista’s twin, who was identical except for having short, dyed-dark hair and a sharper edge to her jeans-and-boots outfit, bulleted toward her. They met in a quick, excited hug.
“And here’s Shelby!” Krista said as a sleek black sedan pulled in. Moments later, a woman emerged and headed their way.
With scarlet lipstick and painted nails, the newcomer might’ve been intimidating if it weren’t for her wide, friendly smile and the way she reached out as she approached. “Danny! I can’t believe we haven’t met yet. Foster says the guests adored you. You’re so wonderful to help out!”
Not sure which of those statements to focus on first, Danny returned the other woman’s hand-clasp-cheek-kiss. “It’s lovely to meet you!” She had been looking forward to this, too, after hearing Krista’s stories about Shelby giving up a lucrative advertising career in Boston to marry Mustang Ridge’s head wrangler and stay in Wyoming with her young daughter.
Shelby spun away to do quick hugs-and-kisses with Krista and Jenny, then announced dramatically, “You wouldn’t believe the week I’ve had!”
“Let’s hit the road,” Jenny urged. “You can tell us on the way into town.”
They piled into her Jeep, with Danny riding shotgun. She didn’t know if Krista had done that on purpose—she’d had to ’fess up about the claustrophobia when it came to getting the canoe paddles out from their small, dark storage space beneath the boathouse—or if it had just worked out that way, but she was grateful to be able to crack the window and stretch out her legs.
“Let me guess, Shelby,” Krista said. “Your week from hell involved the Burpee Baby account.”
The other woman gave a dramatic shudder. “I knew I was in trouble the minute the client, Amanda, said she had lined up a dozen of her best customers and their little ones for the shoot, and that her husband would be taking the photos. That should’ve been my cue to exit stage left, let them flail, and then, after the fact, hire professionals to do it right. But—silly me—I sympathize that she’s on a budget, and the setup sounded like it had the potential to be cute. So I caved when she asked me to direct the shoot.”
“And wound up covered in drool while juggling screaming human larvae?” suggested Jenny, earning a whack from her sister, who had texted Wyatt twice in the past half hour to check on Abby.
“The babies weren’t the problem,” Shelby said. “It was the mothers. Every one of them wanted her special darling front and center of the shot, and a few of them didn’t care what it took.” She rolled her eyes. “I even caught one of them making scary faces at the baby sitting next to hers, trying to make it cry. And Amanda’s husband was no help. He just sat in a corner, surfing the Web on his phone and waiting for us to get the shot set up the way we wanted.”
“Sounds to me like the photog was the sanest one in the group,” Jenny put in. “As usual.”
“Anyway,” Shelby said, “some of the moms got pretty annoyed when I started saying stuff like, ‘What in God’s name did you feed that kid this morning?’ and ‘No, we’re not changing little Suzie’s outfit six more times and doing some solo shots for her portfolio, but I’m happy to give you Jenny Skye’s contact info if you want to do a studio session.’”
“Gee, thanks,” Jenny drawled.
“What are friends for? In the end, though, we got the shots we needed for the print ads and online push we’re planning for good old Burpee’s Babies. Best of all, nobody looking at those angelic little faces will ever know that the photo was snapped in the single split second between little Billy picking his nose and baby Aimee projectile-vomiting on that cute little stuffed dog she’s holding.”
Krista nodded. “Kind of like how, when you look at a horse-for-sale ad, you have to assume that the picture shows the horse on his best day ever, and might or might not be from this decade.”
“Or online dating,” Jenny put in, “where it’s fifty-fifty whether a guy’s profile picture bears any resemblance to the person who knocks on your door. Or so Ruth tells me.”
Remembering what Jenny had told her about her veterinarian husband’s admin assistant—purple-haired, sixtysomething, and in love with life—Danny said, “I thought she was dating Nick’s father.”
Jenny nodded. “True, but she’s taken up mate-shopping for her friends.”
“The Bingo ladies?” Krista asked, amused.
“You betcha. A few of the guys, too. She loves browsing, and they’re grateful that they don’t have to wade through all the ads and figure out the hidden red flags. She’ll even help with the first couple of e-mails, though they’re on their own for the actual dating stuff.”
Shelby leaned back in her seat. “I am profoundly grateful that I don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“Hear, hear,” Krista seconded, and Jenny gave a fervent nod.
Then they all looked at Danny. Even Jenny, who was driving.
She put up both hands. “Don’t look at me. Online dating is the last thing on my wish list.”
“So what is on your wish list?” Shelby asked with a wicked glitter.
“A perfect dress for me to wear to Krista’s wedding. So give me some hints here. Are we talking eveningwear, ruffled calico, or what?”
“Ha!” Jenny hooted. “Subject change on Aisle Five!”
“And quite neatly done, too,” Shelby said. “Especially when it brings up something we really do need to discuss.” Fixing Krista with a look, she lowered her voice to intone, “Because someone doesn’t have her wedding dress yet, which makes it awfully difficult to nail down the theme.”
“She . . . Really?” Danny gawked at Krista.
“Yes, really,” Shelby confirmed.
“It’ll be fine,” Krista said firmly. “I’ll find something, but I’m going to do it on my terms. I’ve let Mom have her way with the decorations, but there’s no way I’m letting her pick out my dress. You should see some of the things she’s bookmarked on my computer.” She shuddered. “They’re like bad cake toppers come to life.” But there was a lick of panic in her eyes.
“I hate to be the one to point it out,” Jenny said, “since I’m usually the one who gets Mom going, but you may be cutting off your nose to spite your face on this one. It’s one thing to prove that you can have an awesome wedding without custom making everything and spending a gazillion dollars—especially, hello, when you own the perfect venue. But if you don’t find a dress soon, you’re going to be getting married in jeans and a Mustang Ridge polo shirt.”
“This is Krista and Wyatt we’re talking about,” Shelby pointed out. “I could totally see them getting married in their riding clothes. Though I reserve the right to bling the heck out of mine.”
“No bling on the pockets or inseam,” Jenny cautioned. “It scratches the hell out of the saddle.”
Shelby nodded solemnly. “So noted.”
“What I don’t get,” Jenny said, “is why you didn’t drag us all into Laramie for the full-on Say Yes to the Dress experience five seconds after Wyatt proposed. I mean, you always wanted to play wedding when we were kids, right down to sneaking Great-Gramma Abby’s lace tablecloth out of the sideboard to use as a veil. I would’ve thought you’d be rabid for a full-on princess dress.”
“I was four months pregnant when Wyatt proposed,” Krista said drily. “That’s not exactly the right time to be trying on form-fitting dresses if you don’t enjoy looking like a satin-covered sausage link.”
“You weren’t that huge, and corset backs are pretty forgiving.”
“It’s not that I’m not going to get a dress.” Krista scowled at the road ahead. “I just haven’t found one yet. I’m looking, though, and I’ll know it when I see it.”
“Have you asked Bootsy?” Shelby asked. “I know she runs the tack store, but she sells plenty of clothes, too, and she’s got some serious style. She might have catalogs yo
u could look through.”
“Been there, done that, too many doilies and ruffles. It’s like the Western wear designers hear ‘bridal’ and head straight for the 1800s, and not in a good way.” Krista shook her head. “Nope. I want something casual and comfortable, but that still says I’m the bride. Bonus points for pockets.”
Jenny snorted. “For what, your keys? Maybe a couple of sugar cubes?”
“Oh, shut up. It’s the principle.” To Danny, she said, “As far as what you should wear, that’s up to you. You’re feeling floor-length sequins? Go for it. You’d rather rock a sundress? That works, too. Heck, jeans and hiking boots are fine by me. I just want you to be there and enjoy yourself.”
“Which is why we’re here,” Jenny said cheerfully to Danny. “Along with wanting to hang out with you, that is. Because the way we see it, a wedding is a wedding, and that involves getting dolled up. So you’re getting a dress whether you like it or not.”
“But that doesn’t have to mean lace. For a little Western town, Three Ridges has some decent shopping options.” Shelby pointed to a storefront as Jenny pulled into a parking spot right by the front door. “Welcome to Another Fyne Thing!”
The wide main street had lines of cars parked on both sides and some bustling sidewalk foot traffic. Most of the storefronts were squat and square, with facades that seemed to be channeling an old gold-rush town, or maybe the set of a spaghetti Western. There was a saloon called Spurr’s Bar and Grill, a bookstore-slash-teashop called Read Me/Eat Me, and a whole lot of tourists in brand-new boots and Stetsons, mixed in with locals in their battered counterparts. The scene reminded Danny of Mustang Ridge, really, with tourist amenities layered on top of sturdy old structures that had seen the heyday of the cattle boom. Like the Disney version of the Wild West.
Seeing the magic words painted on the wide glass windows of Another Fyne Thing—UNIQUE VINTAGE AND REPURPOSED ITEMS—Danny grinned, relieved that they weren’t headed for froufrou bridal land. “Rock on with the recycling!”
“I told you Danny is our kind of girl.” Jenny hooked an arm through hers. “Come on! Let’s see what Della’s got on the racks today.” She shot a glittering look back at Krista. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll find a nice shiny polyester wedding dress with poufy shoulders, lots of sequins, and hoops you could fit a pony under. Mom would have a cow.”
“I’m not doing this to torture her,” Krista practically wailed. “I swear!”
A small brass bell gave a cheerful ding-a-ling when they opened the door and piled through, with Shelby calling, “Yoo-hoo, Della. Trouble’s here!”
The store was bigger than it looked from the outside, with high, airy ceilings and thick beams that made Danny think it might have been a warehouse or factory at some point in the past. Now, though, the beams were wrapped with shirts and capris tacked up in disembodied hugs and high kicks, and mismatched sneakers hung from cables high above, dangling from their tied-together laces. One wall held a rack of hats and boots, another a long line of full-length dresses topped with signs like CATTLEMAN’S BALL, FLOWING AND FLIRTY, and DATE NIGHT. The center of the space overflowed with circular racks of hanging clothes, bookcases filled with folded jeans and paired-up shoes, and a glass-topped counter that held jewelry and a register.
The bell was still doing its ding-a-ling thing when a perky brunette in her late teens bounced through a doorway on the hat wall, wearing a screaming purple tank top, a ruffled skirt, and a pair of old-school leather hiking boots. “Mom’s on the phone,” she announced at top volume, like she was shouting over music that the others couldn’t hear. “She said she’ll be out in a minute, and you guys should make yourselves at home.”
Shelby inflated her lungs as if to holler back, then grinned and exhaled before saying in a normal voice, “Thanks, Tiffany. We’re looking for stuff to wear to a wedding. Any suggestions?”
“A dress, maybe? They’re over here.” She led them to the wall, stopping between SASSY SUNDRESSES and DATE NIGHT. “Would you like to try some on?”
“I think we’ll look through them first,” Jenny said solemnly. “But then, yeah. Try-ons would be good.”
The teen waved vaguely to a curtained-off area in the corner, near where long mirrors were hung intentionally crooked and a row of secondhand boots sat beneath a long wooden bench. “Yell if I can help you with anything else.”
“Will do,” Krista said, giving a good-humored eye roll as the girl drifted off to the front of the store, where she stood staring out at the foot traffic like a kid who’d been grounded and couldn’t go out and play.
Shelby dove into the racks, going straight for RED CARPET and hooting when she pulled out a sequined gold dress that was backless and most of the way frontless, with little more than two narrow strips covering the non-PG territory. “Take a look at this one! It looks like all its fabric slid south.”
“Don’t even think about wearing it to the wedding,” Jenny advised. “Mom would make you put an apron on over it.”
Shelby pretended to consider it. “The cute one Gran’s got with the dancing peppers on it would make a statement, don’t you think?”
“If the statement you’re going for is ‘I cook naked,’ maybe.”
“Hm.”
Deciding she wasn’t getting into that debate, Danny went for the sundresses, but found them more tie-dyed than sassy, at least for her taste. “Okay, Date Night it is,” she announced, and moved down a rack.
“What about Fun and Flirty?” Krista asked from a little farther down, where she was holding up a suede-fringed denim jacket in a full-length mirror.
“We’ll see. I’m not sure I’m that kind of girl.”
“Hey, you’re on vacation. You can be whatever kind of girl you want to be.”
“You should use that in your advertising.”
“We do, sort of,” Shelby said. Holding up a ball gown that had peacock feathers sewn onto it, fanning from a narrow point at her crotch to a full spray across the bodice and shoulders, she added, “What do you think?”
“That you look like the NBC logo,” Jenny said with a mock scowl. “And that you’re not taking this seriously. What gives? When Nick and I got married, you took one look at my dress, gave me three options for your and Krista’s maid-of-honor dresses, and told me to pick one.”
“Yeah, but you had a dress I could use as a starting point.” Shelby made an evil face. “I’ll buckle down when Krista does.”
“Hey! No fair.” Krista hung the fringed jacket on a nearby coat hook that bore a sign reading COOL THINGS I’M GOING TO TRY ON. “I’ve got everything under control. The menu is set, the cake is ordered, and the gazebo is finished. I’ve even got my vows written!”
“But no dress.”
“Oh, shut up.” Looking a little frantic, she turned to Danny as if to enlist support. But then she did a double take at the dress she was holding up. “Ooh, pretty!”
“You think?” Danny stroked the vivid blue-green fabric, enjoying the subtle diamond pattern and the way the Grecian-style top had a strap over one shoulder, but left the other bare.
“Absolutely.” Jenny held up her hands and formed a square shape with her thumbs and index fingers, as if framing her for a photo shoot. “Look how it picks up the lights of your skin and the darks of your hair and eyes.”
“Thus speaks the photog,” Shelby intoned. Then she grinned. “But she’s totally right. Here.” She nudged Danny toward the mirror Krista had been using. “Check it out.”
Danny obligingly put herself in front of the mirror. And stared.
The rehab hospital had been plastered with shiny, reflective surfaces, like it would’ve been counterproductive for the patients to forget that they were pale, pasty versions of themselves. Even back home, she had felt wan and drained. But now . . . “Wow.” It was a whisper, little more than a breath.
Krista came up beside her in the m
irror, her eyes kind, as if she got that this wasn’t just about the dress. “You’ll look amazing in it.”
Danny didn’t know about that, but all of a sudden she was herself again. She recognized the gypsy-dark ringlets that had driven her crazy until they went flat and lifeless, the familiar lines of muscle in shoulders that had been thin and wasted. And, most of all, she saw the spark that had been missing, the healthy tan and the restrained energy that said she was poised to move at a moment’s notice, ready to try anything.
Maybe it was a different “anything” now. But at least it was something.
“You have got to try that on.” Shelby propelled her toward the curtained-off corner. “And it’s a Girl Zone rule that you have to come out and show us, even if it looks completely whack.”
“Especially if it looks whack,” Jenny clarified, pretending to get her phone ready to take a picture. Or, quite possibly, not pretending at all.
“Okay, okay.” Danny threw up her hands. “But the first person to shove a pair of nosebleed heels under the door is going to be eating them.”
Krista made a cross-my-heart gesture. Jenny, on the other hand, perked up and said, “So the second person is safe?”
“Oh, go shop. Unless you’re thinking it would be good to take the Naked Chef idea to the next level and declare it a Naked Wedding?”
Shelby whooped as Danny swept through into the changing room. Through the curtains, she heard the others move off with comments like “Mom would have a cow if she thought we were serious about having a naked wedding” from Krista and “What if we just pretended for a couple of days to freak her out?” from Jenny.
Meanwhile, Danny stood for a second with the pretty dress clutched in her arms, and counted to ten while the dressing room tried to close in around her and the air went thin. Which was just stupid. The walls were curtains, not solid rock, and the cubicle was open above her head, all the way up to the ceiling. This wasn’t a chimney, and the ceiling wasn’t a slice of sky sandwiched between two cliff walls, getting darker and darker as the cold seeped in. Breathe, darn it! She was stronger than this.
Firelight at Mustang Ridge Page 9
