The Bride Wore Starlight

by Lizbeth Selvig

  Dedication

  For my mother, Grace Feuk,

  who taught me all about the stars when I was young,

  and for my husband, Jan, the love of my life,

  who has been watching those stars with me for forty years.

  Acknowledgments

  FIRST AND FOREMOST, a huge thank you goes to my dear friend and writing partner Ellen Lindseth for coming up with the inspirational and perfect title “The Bride Wore Starlight.” I loved it the moment she said it.

  Thank you to my family, who all had to work as hard on this book as I did since it got written in the midst of two weddings, a long vacation, and many travels. I know if they’d had to hear “I’m so stressed, I’ll never get this book done,” one more time, they were planning to lock me away and take away my chocolate. I really can’t thank them enough or come close to telling them how much I love them all. Special thanks to my amazing sister-in-law Robin who follows me everywhere and supports me with her whole heart.

  My critique partners get the biggest thank-you in all my books and deservedly so. Naomi Stone, Nancy Holland, and Ellen Lindseth are full partners in my writing journey—I wouldn’t have any books published without them (at least not good ones!).

  To my beta reader extraordinaire, Jennifer Bernard: You are honest, inspiring, and amazing. Thank you for taking time out of your precious writing time to read my drafts.

  Tessa Woodward, my phenomenal editor, gets the Most Epic “Talking Selvig off the Ledge” award for not firing (or even laughing at) me when she got an e-mail on the day this book was due, saying, “I am in a panic. This book isn’t done and it doesn’t work. Help.” To which she replied, “We’ve got this,” followed with an edit letter that began, “Wow. I know you were worried, but I beg to differ.” Thank you, Tessa, from the bottom of my heart.

  Elle Keck, my “second” Avon editor, is always taking care of the details and making sure I know I can do this crazy job. She kind of rocks.

  Hugs to my agent, Elizabeth Winick Rubinstein, who cares for my career as if it’s her own. I know we have great things coming together in the future. XO!

  Thank you to the men and women who serve in our military, and who have inspired several of my characters, especially Alec in this story. I hope I paid respectful tribute to those who come back from service with wounds and sorrows that they must struggle with daily because they chose to protect what we love and cherish. For more information on helping our wounded vets, please visit The Wounded Warrior Project: www.woundedwarriorproject.org

  And, really, most importantly of all, thank you to my readers. Every time I hear from you telling me how one of my books made you happy, or helped you, or touched a special nerve, it makes those nights of pushing deadlines way worth it!

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  An Excerpt from The Bride Wore Red Boots

  About the Author

  Also by Lizbeth Selvig

  An Excerpt from Everything She Wanted by Jennifer Ryan

  An Excerpt from When We Kiss by Darcy Burke

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  THE MIRROR WAS her enemy. Once upon a time that hadn’t been the case, but now Joely Crockett Foster turned away from her reflection wishing memories were as easy to ignore.

  They weren’t. After two months in the hospital and six in the assisted care apartment that was both home and rehab facility, living in the past was now her stock in trade.

  “You look gorgeous!” Her favorite nurse, Mary, a pretty, rosy-skinned woman of Mexican heritage, voiced the compliment warily in her perpetually beautiful and happy accent. “I tol’ you we would make your hair and makeup turn out beautiful.”

  “Thanks.” Joely sighed, accepting the praise with effort. This special day deserved her best behavior.

  “Harper and Mia will be so excited,” Mary added. “They have been trying to get you fancied up for weeks.”

  Her two older sisters.

  Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest Crockett of all? It’s you, Joely!

  She could hear Mia’s and Harper’s voices from across the years, from back when they would brush her thick hair, put it in ringlets and bows, and dress her like a honey-haired Snow White. She could remember smiling at her five-year-old image.

  Now, unless forced—like today in order to prepare for her sisters’ double wedding—she no longer looked in mirrors.

  A double wedding.

  She was thrilled for her sisters, of course, but still, if she’d been in the mood, she would have laughed. All through their teenage years and even into adulthood, Mia and Harper had rarely gotten along. That the two of them were sharing a wedding day constituted nearly miraculous cosmic humor. To Joely, however, the humor and the miracle were overshadowed by apprehension.

  Mirror, Mirror . . . Her sisters had honored her by begging her to be matron of honor for both of them, but the facts that she was no longer the fairest Crockett, that she hated photos more than she hated mirrors, and that she was about to be a sitting duck for every camera-wielding guest at this wedding, left her dreading the celebration.

  The only consolation was that she would get two bridesmaid ordeals over with in one excruciating wheelchair roll down the aisle. She’d survive.

  Just as she had survived after the accident.

  The drifting back started, and she fought against all-too-familiar memories. This day was not supposed to be about her.

  “Hey, you.” Harper’s soft, cheerful voice, brightening the small room as she entered, finished the job of shutting down Joely’s dark thoughts. “Ready for my wedding day?”

  “No, but she’s ready for mine!”

  Mia followed, the eldest Crockett sister commanding the room as she always did. But today, a warm smile and an aura of happiness that hadn’t come through her cool physician’s demeanor before she’d met Gabe Harrison softened the effect.

  Harper all but skipped across the floor and threw her arms around Joely. Unlike Mia, Harper hadn’t always exuded confidence, much less the ability to command, but nowadays she did. After running the Crockett family’s huge Paradise Ranch with her fiancé, Cole Wainwright, for the past seven months, she’d gotten a fast dose of reality and life lessons that had turned her into the de facto head of one of Wyoming’s most prestigious ranching families. It seemed so weird to think of her sisters as moguls.

  And they were both radiant moguls, even in jeans, T-shirts, and cowboy boots—blue for Harper and bright red for Mia. A rush of gratitude and love mitigated Joely’s deep sadness and unwarranted twinges of jealousy. She might have been the first to marry, but Harper and Mia would be the first to marry for rainbows, white doves, happily-ever-afters, and all the rest of true love’s platitudes.

  The only cliché left to Joely was the one about a husband leaving his wife for another woman. Tim Foster, by far her worse half, was still legally married to her, yet she hadn’t seen h
is handsome, cheating face since last August—nine months ago when she’d come back to Wyoming for her father’s funeral. In September, when she and her mother had nearly died in a car accident, Tim hadn’t bothered to send more than an e-mail telling her he was so sorry and to let him know when she was on her feet again.

  Joely had three more sisters in addition to Harper and Mia—sweet, beautiful triplets. The kind of young women who wouldn’t call cow dung shit if they were paid to do it. Their collective name for Tim Foster was DoucheWipe of the Year. Joely supposed that was accurate enough in the triplets’ cute way. But her husband didn’t deserve anything cute, even an epithet.

  “Hey, Joellen Brigitta, come back here this instant.”

  She focused on Harper, whose cocoa-brown eyes searched for her attention from mere inches away. Even though she wasn’t the sister with the medical degree, Harper had less tolerance for hiding away in depression than Mia the doctor did. With her artist’s intuition and understanding of people, Harper had an uncanny way of knowing exactly when Joely was falling into pits of memory or troughs of despair.

  “Sorry, Harpo.” Joely forced lightness into a quick, covering lie. “I was imagining the whole wedding. You both look so beautiful, and I didn’t expect to see either of you before I got to the house. I thought you’d send Mom or the triplets.”

  “No,” said Mia. “They’re herding the men, since we aren’t allowed to see them.”

  “Besides,” added Harper. “We wanted to spend time with you. It’ll be crazy later, and we wanted time to thank you for doing this. We both know it’s hard for you.”

  “This isn’t hard.” She lied again as a lump formed in her throat behind the words. “I’d do anything for you.”

  “We know.” Mia took her turn giving a hug. “But you can’t fool us about it not being tough.”

  Being in the public eye had once been Joely’s forte. Junior and senior rodeo princesses, high school rodeo queen, homecoming queen, Miss Wyoming . . . she’d had a lifetime of practice. But comfort in the spotlight had gone the way of mirrors and cameras. Now the thought of being in a crowd of people tied her stomach in knots strong enough to hold a bucking bronc.

  “Okay, I’m out of practice,” she agreed. “I’m not ready to face all the pity and sympathy.”

  Harper knelt in front of her wheelchair. With her forefinger, she gently touched the start of a long, crooked scar that ran from Joely’s right ear to her throat, traversing her cheek and angling across her jawbone. Joely flinched, caught Harper’s hand, and shook her head.

  “It doesn’t show the way you think it does,” Harper insisted. “You’re beautiful, and I don’t care how much you chew me out for saying so.”

  “Don’t lecture me on your wedding day.” Joely grumbled, but her melancholy lifted slightly.

  Having her big sisters to herself, feeling them rally around her even though they were now in their early thirties and she only three years from joining them, made the world seem as it once had . . . safe and rife with possibilities. Life seemed less discouraging. In just minutes, however, life outside the confines of her contained world would pour in, threaten to drown her, and safety would flee.

  “Time to go,” Harper said. “We’ve got your dress at the house, and by the time we get there, the men will have been relegated to the Double Diamond.”

  The Double Diamond had once been a neighboring ranch belonging to Harper’s fiancé Cole and his family. It was now part of Paradise, and Harper, because she was a successful artist in addition to a ranch owner, had turned the former homestead into a community arts center and retreat. Today it was bachelor central. For the first time, Joely’s spirits lifted toward the joy of the day.

  “So I won’t get to sneak a peek at your two gorgeous grooms before you do, huh?”

  “Not if Mom has her way.” Mia laughed. “As much tradition as she can shoehorn in—that’s the theme of this wedding.”

  “You two are far kinder than I’d be.”

  “Nah,” Harper said. “You’d be fine with it, too. She’s finally absorbed in something fun and all-encompassing for the first time since Dad’s death. We stand up to her when it’s really important. Otherwise, we’re just glad to see her happy.”

  Another small pang of jealousy, wrapped in a solid dose of homesickness, lanced through Joely’s heart. Since Harper had come back to Wyoming from Chicago and Mia had returned from New York, everyone but the triplets, who worked in Denver, had a place in the huge log ranch home their mother had named Rosecroft. The heart of Paradise Ranch. Because she’d been so long in the hospital and rehab, Joely missed the day-to-day interactions the others shared there.

  Not that she could blame anyone but herself. Harper had been trying to get her to move home for months, but even once she’d grown more mobile many long weeks after the accident, Joely had opted for this assisted living apartment in the VA’s long-term care facility. Because of Tim’s VA benefits, she got a hefty chunk of the cost covered. The bills that weren’t covered still came out of his pocket, and she didn’t have a single qualm about continuing to take advantage of her absentee husband. In this place she could at least pretend she was independent, and she didn’t have to face the constant barrage of sympathy she’d get at home. To keep the status quo, she could most of the time ignore her jealousy.

  Mary returned with a walker. “Take this with you,” she said. “You might need to go somewhere the chair won’t.”

  Joely set her lips in aversion. She was permanently injured but not ninety.

  “I’m going to Rosecroft, the church, and back. No walker.”

  “C’mon, this is no time for vanity,” Mia chided. “Bring it. Bring your crutches, too. We want you prepared for anything.”

  For a moment Joely had to fight back a surge of irritation. All along she’d done everything for this double party exactly the way she’d been asked. Couldn’t they let her make one decision? She let the testiness dissipate without a fight. Once again she reminded herself that the day wasn’t about her wishes.

  “Fine. Put the walker in the trunk, but I’m not using it,” she said.

  “Fair enough.” Harper kissed the top of her head and pointed to the overnight bag on the bed. “Is this your stuff?”

  Joely nodded. Mia pushed her chair out into the hallway. Mary locked the door behind them.

  “See you in two days. Make sure you have fun.” Mary kissed Joely on the cheek—more like a mother or a loving aunt than a nurse.

  “I’m sure I will.”

  She wished she believed it. She wished even more she was coming back to her safe cocoon tonight.

  Her sisters chattered with each other all the way down the hall, and their voices blurred into white noise. Joely looked at her good right leg and foot that rested easily on the chair’s footrest. If only people could stand for hours on one leg like a flamingo. She rubbed the thigh of her shattered left leg, crushed when the payload chains on a flatbed had snapped and sent half a dozen eight-foot diameter logs plunging onto the highway in front of her truck and horse trailer.

  After four surgeries and eight months of healing and therapy, she had mobility in her hips, could flex the left knee, careen around with crutches, and limp along slightly faster with a walker. Her left leg was an inch shorter than the right, however, and that foot turned outward about ten or fifteen degrees. Some of the nerves that controlled minor movements were crushed beyond repair. Even though there was no need to amputate the leg, she sometimes wondered if losing it wouldn’t have been less traumatic.

  Give it time, they all told her—the doctors, nurses, and physical therapists. In time she could retrain the muscles to work differently. And there were braces. There were sleek new wheelchairs. There was always hope.

  Hope for everything but the life she’d once known or the life she’d wanted to build.

  “All right, Queen Joellen, your coach awaits.” Mia set a hand on her shoulder.

  Joely blinked and saw the open car door. Leav
ing the building hadn’t even registered with her.

  Easily she moved her good leg from its rest and flipped up the footrest. With two hands, she helped her left leg onto the ground where Mia took over, flipping the leg rest out of the way, setting the chair’s brake, and reaching for her hands.

  “Up you come,” she said and pulled Joely to a stand.

  In a move perfected over the months of occupational therapy, Joely braced a hand on Mia’s shoulder and hopped in a circle until she could back into the seat of Harper’s new hybrid Highlander. Moments later she was fully in and ready to go.

  She had to smile at Harper’s choice of vehicle. Her second sister was determined to turn Paradise Ranch as green as she could, and she was perfectly happy to take all the jeers and teasing that came with implementing her convictions in a fairly conservative state like Wyoming.

  Joely agreed whole-heartedly, and before her accident she had been primed to take over running the ranch herself. She would have run Paradise exactly the way Harper and Cole were doing. Now, however, she no longer had the fortitude to stand up to taunting from ranchers who thought windmills in Wyoming were ridiculous and ugly, or to oil company executives who badgered her to let them drill on the ranch. Then there were lesser fights, like ranch hands who thought a once-a-year, uneconomical, old-fashioned round-up using horses and cowboys instead of gas-slurping four-wheelers and helicopters was an inefficient and unnecessary way to show appreciation of their heritage.

  As the third child behind two such strong and successful sisters—the artist and the surgeon—Joely had learned to use her assets to create success by following and people pleasing. She didn’t make waves.

  The scenery on the way to her childhood home never failed to stun with its stark beauty. Paradise Ranch’s fifty-thousand acres lay forty miles south of Jackson and stretched west below the Teton mountain range. Even in her darkest moments, the land brought Joely tranquility—however fleeting. During the half-hour ride from the VA complex, neither Harper, who drove, nor Mia, who sat in the back leaning forward between the seats, seemed to notice that Joely’s minimal comments were only aimed at keeping them talking so she didn’t need to.