“Bo…?” she said, not knowing what she was going to ask.
Before he answered, a flash went off, startling her, blinding her vision, even as Bo took his hand away and got up from the bench. She was still recovering as Bo asked whoever had taken the picture to leave them some privacy.
Even when Holly’s vision finally colored up again, she found that it hadn’t cleared much at all.
Not when it came to Bo.
Chapter Five
The clouds were still around to cover the sun the next morning as Bo went to the ROOTS storefront building to meet Holly for another interview he’d arranged, this time with the new online department of The Thunder Canyon Nugget.
The newspaper had sent a fresh-from-college blogger who was building up the Internet aspect of the business, and when they arrived at ROOTS, Bo paused before the door. The spiky-haired kid, Jerry Farina, photographed him, just as he’d done last evening in the square, while he’d been doing some preliminary research and come upon Bo and Holly there.
But when his camera flashed this time, Bo only remembered how Holly had flinched at that photo last night, when they’d been having a private moment in the park, his hand cradling her belly.
He shook it off and said, “You know much about ROOTS, Jerry?”
“Sure.” The blogger adjusted his digital camera. “Haley Anderson started it, wanting to ‘pay it forward’ in her community, especially with a younger crowd who needs a little more TLC than your average bears. It’s the most popular with high school students—they like to come here to socialize—and the mentors are around to help with homework or even just to talk.”
Jerry took another picture. “How many hours will Holly be putting in here, with her condition and all?”
Bo had been trying to take the temperature of the town ever since the news had hit about Holly’s pre-wedding pregnancy this morning in the newspaper. He was pretty sure the younger citizens, like Jerry, were taking it well, but he was just waiting for Swinton’s response, plus that of the more conservative citizens of Thunder Canyon.
“Holly’s going to need some rest, so she’ll be letting up on the volunteering soon,” Bo said. “But if she had her way, she’d be bustling around Thunder Canyon minutes before and after the birth.”
Then Bo quietly opened the door, revealing a mellow, Saturday-morning scene inside the storefront. About seven teens were here already, lounging on the sparse selection of thrift-store furniture. Most were watching cartoons on the TV. One redheaded girl in hipster braids was playing a game on her cell phone while leaning against the wall that’d been painted with Haley Anderson’s mural, which featured images like iPods, purses, footballs and other assorted teen paraphernalia.
Across the room, Carleigh Benedict, who’d been running ROOTS since Haley had gotten engaged to Marlon Cates and celebrated by taking a long trip with him, glanced up from the computer table. She was sitting with a boy wearing braces, and she smiled at Bo and Jerry. Bo waved back, keeping silent so as not to disturb the peace.
He continued searching the room, although he didn’t admit to himself who he was looking for until he actually found her.
Holly.
She stole a breath out of him without even trying. All she was doing was sitting in a corner with a ponytailed brunette girl, obviously coaching the teen on writing an essay or letter. Holly was murmuring, maybe in encouragement, as she pointed something out in the teen’s notebook.
When the girl’s face lit up, as if a light bulb had gone on in her brain thanks to Holly’s guidance, his fiancée smiled.
How was it that a woman who’d found herself in such a fix still had time to help others…and to take such joy in it?
Bo glanced at the other kids—every one of whom would rather be here on a Saturday morning than at home with their families. They all seemed alone in some way, just as he’d felt after the murder of his uncle. Bo had been older than these guys when it’d happened—fresh out of college, just like Holly—but the event had changed Bo’s perception of everything.
His family hadn’t been able to comfort him since they were grieving, too, and Bo wished there’d been a place like ROOTS back then, for him and his cousins and Stephanie Julen, whose father had been killed with Uncle John. He wished there’d been people like Holly…
Jerry the blogger took a picture of the mural, and the redheaded girl moved away from it, shooting Jerry one of those teenaged annoyed faces that could make even an adult cringe. Bo smiled at her in apology for ruining her game on the cell phone, and she glanced at him with interest, as if recognizing him, before returning to her pursuits.
The flashbulb had caught Holly’s attention, and when she saw Bo, there was…something about her.
A spark?
A smile that had grown even bigger?
Whatever it was, she tamed it into what Bo recognized to be that “fiancée smile” as he went over to offer a hand as she stood from the floor.
Jerry didn’t waste a second—he captured a photo of the “happy couple.” Holly withstood it like a trouper.
“Ms. Pritchett,” the blogger said, “is now a good time to ask you a few questions?”
“About ROOTS? Certainly.”
Bo almost chuckled. She’d made it clear that personal questions about the pregnancy and their engagement—topics that had already been covered in this morning’s edition of the newspaper—were off-limits.
The perfect mayor’s wife—gracious yet strong.
Holly linked her arm through Bo’s. “If you’ll just give me a minute?”
“No problem.” Jerry wandered away, stopping at the mural to get a better view of the details.
Holly glanced at the girl she’d been mentoring, but the teen was writing like a dervish, the tip of her tongue sticking out as her pen flew across the page.
They moved away from her and into a private corner near the front window.
“You must’ve gotten here early,” he said.
“I did some of my data entry work at the crack of dawn so I could be here for Tatiana.” Holly indicated the writing teen. “She’s working on her college application and says she wants to be a lawyer, just like I…”
Holly stopped, but Bo could guess what she’d been about to say.
Just like I’d wanted to be.
Bo didn’t even check himself as he used a finger to tip up her chin. “You can still do anything you want.”
“I’m going to be pretty busy with a baby for the next few years.”
She hadn’t included him in that statement. But why should she?
Bo shifted while surprising guilt gnawed at him. “Speaking of the data entry, are you going to give notice? You don’t need to work anymore.”
She opened her mouth, as if to protest, but closed it, merely nodding. He could tell Miss Independent here was just getting used to the notion of taking money from him, that it ripped her up to have to take anything from anybody.
Maybe she needed to know that he didn’t think of her as some charity case—she was worth a lot, and not just to him…
Or more to the point, to his campaign.
“Being at ROOTS,” he said, “and seeing you in action just reminds me of why I want to be mayor. There are people behind every policy, and the kids here are just a peek into that.”
“Community,” she said. “That’s what ROOTS is about. That’s what can solve so many things. If people just stopped talking about what’s wrong and got something started like Haley did…”
There was real conviction in her tone, and Bo fed off of it.
As the flashbulb went off from Jerry’s camera again, Holly gave Bo a jaded look, and if he said so himself, jaded didn’t belong on Holly, even if she was thinking about how Bo was treating this as a photo op.
He was talking before he could stop himself. “Publicity’s not why I’m here.”
It was really about the people of Thunder Canyon, not his ego or because he liked being in the newspaper. But it sure seemed li
ke that was the case right now.
Bo girded himself against that. To win, he needed publicity. So why deny it?
Jerry started to meander back over to them. Bo tucked a curl behind Holly’s ear, not for show, but because she’d seen Jerry coming and she hadn’t exactly seemed delighted about it.
Buck up, he thought to her.
As if hearing that, she put on her game face.
“Grant and Steph are coming to my place for dinner tonight,” he said. “You up to it?”
“I’d love to be there. I’ve just got a gown fitting this afternoon, then, I suspect, a nap.”
“If dinner’s going to tire you out…”
“I’ve been having an easy pregnancy, and that shouldn’t change in the space of an afternoon. I’ll be there.”
The way she said it made things clear: dinners and appearances were a part of their deal.
But that wasn’t why Bo wanted her to be with him tonight.
Was it?
An hour later, as Bo sat at his desk in his campaign office, Rose Friedel closed the door behind her while holding up this morning’s edition of The Thunder Canyon Nugget.
“Perfect,” she said, tossing the copy at him.
He caught it, seeing the front-page picture of him and Holly at the rally, along with the headline Bo’s Already Struck Gold!
He set down the paper. “I read it. It’s a fair enough piece.”
“Mark asked you some very direct questions about the pregnancy, and you rose to the occasion, Bo. Good job.”
He’d told the journalist that he and Holly had always been as good as married. And, late last night, when Mark had called Bo for a few follow-up questions before the paper went to press, he’d asked him to comment about Swinton’s reaction to Bo’s announcement.
“This is what your opponent told me,” Mark had said over the phone. “’No surprise. We just have new proof that Bo Clifton’s wild days really aren’t behind him. He couldn’t even contain himself with a good girl like Holly Pritchett. To me, that doesn’t show a lot of self-control, and we need that in a mayor.’”
The older man even had the conjones to hint about the age difference between bride and groom, just as Holly had anticipated.
But Bo’s responses to the newsman had subtly painted Swinton as a judgmental man who was frighteningly behind modern times.
Now, as he kept his hand on the paper, he said, “We’ll see what Swinton comes up with next, Rose. Based on what he said to Mark, it almost seems as if the guy’s just daring me to go through with this marriage, and I’m not even going to flinch.”
“Daring you to go through with it? That part might be all in your mind.” Rose sat on the cusp of his desk, the purple jacket of one of her many pantsuits brushing the surface.
Bo glanced at that picture of him and Holly. If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve sworn that he was the happiest man on earth. “Ironic, huh? Every promise I’ve made about helping Thunder Canyon is no lie, but when it comes to my private life, everything’s falser than a wooden nickel.”
Rose grabbed the paper, turning it to the gossip section. There, the picture that’d been taken last night by Jerry the blogger—the photo of Holly and Bo in the park—stood out like a ringing shout.
Bo could hardly believe it was him, touching Holly’s stomach so tenderly, an expression of wonderment on his features. The caption read A Private Moment for the Candidate.
Then there was Holly’s face.
As her hand covered his, it seemed like she’d been just as moved as Bo had been.
“If you ask me,” Rose said, “that’s no wooden nickel.”
Bo calmly folded up the paper, tucking it to the side of his desk. “Stop romanticizing this.”
“Oh, no romance from me, my friend. You just might need to be reminded that there’s a line here, and you don’t want to cross it.”
“I won’t.”
“You’re getting awfully close, judging by that photo.”
Rose got up from his desk and opened his door, letting in the sounds of cell phones ringing, volunteers chatting to the community and dashing around the room with newly printed fliers.
“I know what my priorities are,” he told his manager. “And I’ll damned well maintain them.”
Rose paused. “Priorities do change. Just keep that firmly in mind, for everyone’s sake.”
She closed the door, as if putting a period at the end of her proclamation.
As if drawing a more pronounced line so he would be fully aware of it the next time he saw Holly.
“So what exactly are you looking for?” the kind, soft-voiced matron from the bridal store near town square asked Holly.
At the question, Holly held back a sad smile, knowing that Grace, the clerk, was asking about a dress, nothing more. But if Holly were to answer, she might’ve said something about her baby and a house with a nice little lawn for her child to play on in a quiet neighborhood where ice cream trucks still drove slowly by.
That’s all Holly was looking for.
But, instead of voicing that, she pulled out a file of magazine clippings from her big suede purse. The pictures she’d collected back when she and Alan had dated.
So much for wishful thinking.
“Here are some ideas,” she said as Grace perused the images.
“We can certainly work with this.”
Grace laid the file on the glass table, between the flower-patterned sofas where she and Holly were chatting. She’d offered Holly champagne but had apologized after remembering the pregnancy announcement. So it was club soda all the way.
The shopkeeper stood. “We’ve got all kinds of choices for Bo Clifton’s bride.”
Initially, Holly had taken Grace Farthingworth as a conservative who might pass judgment on her and Bo because of the pregnancy—a Swinton supporter. But the older woman hadn’t shown even a speck of high-minded derision.
She supposed the woman was more enthusiastic about having Thunder Canyon’s potential new first lady as a customer.
“We’ll be going with a Wild West theme, if that helps,” Holly said.
“So…Annie Oakley? That sort of feel?”
Holly laughed. “No. I’m actually thinking of something in an empire style, if you have that on hand.” She touched her tummy.
“Of course.” Grace skittered off to the back of the shop, moving fast for a woman with a slight blue tint to her hair and limbs like those of a frail cricket’s.
She was back in five minutes to escort Holly to a dressing room with three gowns hanging beside it.
Revealing her first choice, Grace presented a high-waisted taffeta sheath that would’ve done nicely, but there was another dress that caught Holly’s eye.
“This,” she said, touching the plastic wrapping.
“The Elizabeth Bennet special?” Grace plucked it out from the other dresses and parted the plastic, showing off the white velvet, the long sleeves, the blue sash. “That’s what I like to call it. Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorites. With your hair up and curls framing your face under the veil, you’d pull this off wonderfully.”
It wasn’t the Wild West, but the gown had already captured Holly’s heart.
But would Bo like it?
Grace led Holly into the dressing room and pulled the curtain to assure privacy. “I’ll be right back with a veil as well as the wrap that goes with the gown.”
By the time she returned, Holly was in her dress, flushed as she stared at the vision in the mirror.
A bride looked back out at her—a glowing woman in white velvet, which whispered in a graceful line to the ground. A woman who could’ve been an angel if she hadn’t fallen from her former heights.
When she exited the room, Grace’s eyes got misty.
“This is why I love my job,” she said, clasping the veil in her hands as if it were a bouquet. She came over and worked the pearled headpiece—all pearls and soft gleam—into Holly’s hair.
Then the shop
keeper darted out of the room again and returned with an actual bouquet—white silk flowers—for Holly to hold.
Grace brought her over to a connected set of three long, antique mirrors, and Holly bit her bottom lip as she glanced at every angle. It was as if she was peeking into a fortune-teller’s vision. Or, at least, an alternate version of what she could have been.
Because this didn’t seem as if it was really happening.
The chimes sounded from the front door of the shop, but before Grace could get there, Holly saw someone else in the mirror behind her.
Bo.
He was taking off his hat, holding it over his heart, as if in awe. In her wildest dreams, she’d only imagined seeing a man react this way to her—like a groom who couldn’t take his eyes off of his intended as she walked down the aisle toward him, the rest of their lives before them.
Holly went fluid under his appreciative gaze, even as she told herself that this was all just part of the act, that he had to be this way in front of the shopkeeper.
But Grace wasn’t so much paying attention to that as to tradition.
“Bo Clifton? Git. Shoo!”
He came out of whatever acting moment he was experiencing, tossing his hat to the nearest chair. Holly almost wondered if she’d conjured up the entire few seconds.
“Morning, Grace,” he said. “I see my bride’s in fine hands.”
“You’re causing bad luck!” Grace was pulling at his coat now.
“It’s okay,” Holly said. Their marriage would be over before they needed much luck, anyway. “As you might’ve heard, Bo’s a progressive, so he believes in building on tradition rather than rigidly subscribing to it.”
The old woman had given up on trying to drag him out. “There’re just some things you don’t mess with, and seeing your future wife like this is one of them.”
“No problem,” he said. “We’ll make sure to counter the bad luck by getting Holly something old, something new, something…” He frowned. “What’s the rest of it?”
Holly helped him out. “Something borrowed, something blue.”
Bo had sauntered closer to her, and she shivered, anticipating the scent and proximity of him.
When the Cowboy said “I Do” Page 7
