Last Year's Bride (Montana Born Brides)

by Anne McAllister

  He didn’t know. He supposed it didn’t matter. She’d cracked his heart open and got in.

  And she didn’t show any signs of leaving.

  He’d gone through the entire ride to the summer range in almost complete silence. He’d hoped it would be a good time spent with Mac and Chandler. It was good of them to volunteer and he was grateful they’d been willing to do it. But he’d hardly been able to say so. He couldn’t seem to dislodge the lump in his throat to say more than a word or two.

  “Man, you really are the strong silent type, aren’t you?” Mac had teased after most of a day had gone by without him saying fifty words.

  “He’s just mad ‘cause he has to spend his honeymoon with us instead of Nell.” Chandler grinned.

  Cole had tried to smile. But the way they had looked at him, wary and a little worried, told him he wasn’t doing too good a job of it.

  “He’ll be okay. Your old man, I mean.” Mac had said, apparently deciding that Sam’s heart attack was the reason for his moodiness.

  Probably he would. Nell had the right of it. Sam seemed to have more lives than a cat. Cole’s knife flicked off the wood shavings at a furious rate. He’d got out of the hospital in three days and was now, to Cole’s amazement, living at Jane’s.

  “What do you mean, he’s gone to Jane’s?” Cole had demanded when Em told him. She had been making coffee and set a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the table, nodding to them as an invitation for him to take one. But everything tasted like sawdust these days, so Cole had shaken his head. “What’s he doin’ at Jane’s?” he had persisted.

  “He said it would be easier on me,” Em replied with a little huff of annoyance. “As if I can’t take care of my own son.”

  “Well, he probably figured you’d hover,” Cole said, “which you would.”

  “I would not!” Em protested. Then she’d added, “As if Jane isn’t.”

  “She can’t seriously still be contemplating marrying him?”

  But Em had nodded. “She is. He tried to talk her out of it. Told her he wasn’t good for anything with his heart the way it is.”

  “Which is true,” Cole said baldly.

  “And Jane said, ‘Well, then get it fixed.’ And he is.”

  Cole had almost reeled in shock. “What?”

  “He told the doctor he’d have the surgery.”

  Cole hadn’t believed it. How the hell many times had Sam been offered that option before? And how many times had he said no? He asked Em that and she just shrugged.

  “He didn’t see the point before. Now he does. Now he has someone to live for,” she said simply.

  “He had us,” Cole reminded her flatly.

  Em smiled one of her wise grandmother smiles. “Oh, get over yourself, Cole. You know it’s not the same. You matter, but Jane makes his life worth living. You know how you feel about Nell.”

  Yeah, he did, Cole thought now as he stared into the flames of the cabin’s fireplace. He knew he loved her. He knew he’d lost her. Which was probably why the knife slipped and he gouged the palm of his hand.

  It was all well and good to believe what she wanted him to believe, Cole told himself. But could she really find something for herself here on the ranch? She had a gift. Everyone said so. Even Mac and Chandler had said how good she was at getting their reactions to what was happening, challenging them to dig deeper, find themselves.

  “She’s amazing,” Chandler had said. “I figured she came by all the stuff she’s good at naturally, but she told me that wasn’t true. She said she’s a good swimmer now, but she was deathly afraid of water as a kid, had to really work at getting past it.”

  Cole hadn’t known that about her. There was so much about Nell he didn’t know. Would never have the chance to find out. He scowled and shoved his hands into the back pockets of his Wranglers, a car coming up the road to the cabin catching his eye. For a moment he felt a welling of hope, the fleeting notion that it might be Nell coming back to him.

  But Nell wasn’t coming. She’d made that clear. “You know where to find me,” she’d said.

  When the car got close enough to make out clearly, he saw that it was Sadie.

  “Hi!” She bounced out of the car with a big smile on her face. “What’re you doing home? It’s the middle of the day.”

  He hadn’t moved back to the ranch house since Maggie and Beth had left. He didn’t want to face the constant scrutiny he would get from Em and his sister. He didn’t want to answer questions about Nell—how she was, what she was doing, when she was coming back. He didn’t want to tell them she wasn’t coming back.

  Besides, he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave the cabin. It was like closing a door he didn’t want to close just yet—just like the divorce papers still in the desk drawer where he had shoved them after she left because he wasn’t ready to file them yet.

  Now he shrugged off Sadie’s question. “Want some coffee?”

  “No, thanks. Don’t have time. I have to get to work. I just came by to pick up whatever sculptures you’ve got for me. Sabrina says she’s really got a market for them. There was some guy from Venice—Venice, Italy,” Sadie clarified “—in there the other day who wanted to talk to you about them.”

  Cole grunted. He had no interest in talking to any guy from any Venice in the world about his sculpture. They were whittlings. They didn’t matter.

  “Fine, be that way.” Sadie didn’t care. “And I brought you this.” She thrust a newspaper in his hand. “Thought you’d like to read all about Gran. It’s great stuff.” She was scooping Cole’s Noah’s Ark worth of animals and cowboy boots and hats and saddles into the tote bag she’d brought in. “Thanks,” she said when she’d cleared the counter and started for the door. “How’s Nell?”

  “What? Oh, fine. She’s fine.” He was sure she was, now that she was shed of him.

  When Sadie left, he dropped the Copper Mountain Courier on the counter top and started to turn away. But the above-the-headline shout-out caught his eye: Rockette made Marietta Home: Emily McCullough Tells All.

  What?

  Cole stared, then shook his head in disbelief. Rockette? Em? As in Radio City Music Hall? As in kicks above his head?

  He flipped open the paper to the center section and sat down in the big old leather chair by the window to see two photos, side by side. One was undeniably his grandmother in her blue jeans, one of Sam’s shirts knotted at her waist, her short grey hair sleek and her lips smiling that bemused grandmother smile as she leaned against one of the log porch pillars and looked at the photographer. The other was—Cole stared—the same woman with the same bemused smile. But she was much younger and wearing far, far fewer clothes. On top she wore something that looked like a sailor’s middy jacket fitted and reaching the tops of her thighs. On the bottom there were—Cole swallowed. Hard—some very long, very shapely legs.

  “Em?” he said, strangled. Disbelief changed to rampant curiosity. He started to read. It was a long article, accompanied by another half dozen pictures. It was his grandmother—and a woman he’d never met before.

  Born in Chicago—well, Cole knew that, but he thought she’d come to Montana as a child—she hadn’t set foot out of a city until she married Clarence ‘Mac’ McCullough when she met him after he’d been at the Chicago stockyards. She’d left Chicago at the age of eighteen to try to sing and dance her way to fame on Broadway. She’d got a job as a Rockette, had done high kicks at Radio City Music Hall for three years. Then, her widowed father had become ill so she’d gone back to Chicago to help out. She’d taken care of him during his final illness, then had got a part in a musical in the city. She’d been acting, singing and dancing in Chicago when her husband had swept her off her feet.

  “He said, ‘Marry me,’ and I said, ‘Yes,’” Em was reported as saying. “And I did. We came straight to Marietta and I’ve never been back.”

  Cole stared at the words, tried to make sense of them. He’d always thought his grandmother had been
born to feed hungry cowboys, help her husband mend fences, drive to town in blizzards to fetch a part for the tractor, wring the heads of chickens and make apple pie for thirty at the drop of a hat.

  She hadn’t been?

  She’d been a singer? A dancer? She’d acted?

  “I love theater. I’ve directed the Marietta Christmas pageant for fifty years,” she was quoted as saying in the article. “That’s been fun.”

  Fun? Had it fulfilled her? Been enough for her?

  Cole tried to think, to imagine his grandmother as unhappy, dissatisfied, wanting to leave. He couldn’t. He’d never tried before because he’d never imagined she’d been anywhere else—always here.

  Because what kid ever really thought a lot about his grandparents as having lives beyond those in which they’d been exactly that—grandparents? Obviously, not him.

  Get over yourself, Cole, he remembered her saying the last time he’d talked to her.

  He stared at the pictures of her as a girl, as a Rockette, as a young woman on the ranch holding a baby Sam in her arms. He thought about the way she’d been over the years—loving and giving and never leaving.

  He thought about Jane sticking by Sam even though it seemed a crazy thing to do—unless she loved him. He thought about Sam finally taking the risk of surgery for her.

  Because she makes his life worth living, Em had said.

  Cole let the newspaper fall to his lap and stared out the window. He didn’t see the trees, the meadow, the blue sky or the snow-capped peaks. He saw Nell looking at him, her heart in her eyes.

  Did he make Nell’s life worth living?

  Was Cole McCullough enough for her?

  The late night fog had met the early morning fog sometime around two this afternoon, Nell figured. They called it the ‘marine layer’ these days, but Judy who was sixtyish and had grown up here still called it fog, and it looked like fog to Nell.

  It wasn’t low, but overcast, hazy. Bleak and depressing, she would have said. But that wasn’t the weather, that was her. And she had to snap out of it, she thought as she walked back along the beach then turned toward The Strand, the broad pavement which ran along the beach in front of homes only people like Grant could ever hope to afford.

  She had been back two weeks now. She had finished the editing. The show had been put to bed. Once it was done, she had been champing at the bit to keep busy, to start something else. Not in Europe. She had turned Grant’s plum job down. She would stay here in L.A. and continue working—for all the good it would do her to be where she’d told Cole she would be. But she’d had to take three days off at Grant’s insistence first.

  “Why? I’m fine,” she’d protested. “I don’t need a break.”

  “We do,” Grant said darkly. “Besides we want you to miss us,” he’d added, practically shoving her out the door.

  So she hadn’t worked for five whole days now, counting the weekend. But tomorrow she could go back to work, drink gallons of coffee, get annoyed, and put together stories.

  “I want a happy ending this time,” she’d told Grant on Friday.

  “You had a happy ending last time,” he reminded her. “Mac and Maggie?” He tossed their names at her as if she’d forgotten.

  She hadn’t. They just weren’t her personal happy ending. But she wasn’t getting one of those, apparently, she thought as she sat down on a bench on The Strand to brush the sand off her feet before padding up the hill to her apartment. So she would just have to live vicariously.

  “Nell?”

  The sound was so quiet and so familiar she didn’t even hear it at first. Or if she did, she thought she was imagining things.

  But then the sound of her name came again, a little louder, stronger. “Nell.” It wasn’t a question this time. And she knew the voice. It sent a shiver right up her spine. She held perfectly still, afraid to turn around. Afraid it was a mirage. A dream.

  She’d dreamed every night and in the morning, she’d faced nothing but pain. She didn’t need more dreams.

  But then he came around to stand between her and the sand. A faint shadow fell across her, so there must be at least a hint of sun. Nell looked up slowly, let her gaze travel past the worn knees and faded denim of his Wranglers, past the much-washed formerly red t-shirt she knew so well to the stubbled jaw and the sharp, slightly crooked nose, and those mesmerizing dark blue eyes that bored into hers.

  He wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat. His dark hair might once have been combed. Now it was ruffled by the faint ocean breeze.

  “Cole,” she said, trying not to hope, trying not to throw herself into his arms, trying to save herself when she knew it was far, far too late for that. He might not have come for her. He might have come to tell her that something awful had happened to Sam. Or to Em. Or—

  He crouched down so they were on eye level. He reached out a hand and touched her cheek. She could feel the tremor in it. Her own fingers tightened into fists to keep from reaching up to grasp his and press them against her lips.

  “I love you,” he said. His voice was firm and clear. “I trust you. I hope to God I’m enough for you. I’ll try to be.” His voice broke. Were those unshed tears in his eyes? Or was she seeing them through her own unshed tears?

  She blinked rapidly. “Does this mean—?” But she couldn’t even say the words.

  It didn’t matter. He knew the question. He reached in his back pocket and pulled out an envelope and held it out to her. With shaking fingers she opened it. Inside were hundreds and hundreds of little bits of shredded paper.

  “The divorce papers,” Cole said, his voice ragged. “I don’t want one. I never want one. I hope to God you don’t either.”

  And then the tears weren’t unshed anymore. They streamed down her cheeks as she reached for him, and he stood, pulling her up into his arms, kissing her for all he was worth.

  Nell kissed him back—kissed his lips, his cheeks, his jaw, his nose. She burrowed against his hard chest and drew in the still-present scent of leather, pine and mountain air.

  Then, knowing they’d better get back to her apartment before they scandalized the neighborhood, she led him up the hill, keeping his fingers firmly knotted with hers.

  “A Rockette?” Nell couldn’t quite believe her ears when Cole told her.

  But he had brought the newspaper to show her. She read the article, laughing and crying all over again.

  “And that’s what brought you? You think if your grandmother the Rockette can make a go of it in Marietta, I might be able to, too?”

  Cole looked faintly abashed, but then grinned. “Why not? If you want to,” he added after a second.

  “I thought we’d settled that.” Nell snuggled closer to him on the sofa, resting her head against his chest. She could feel his lips teasing her hair.

  “I think we have,” Cole said gravely. “I think I’ve finally got it through my head.”

  “I suppose I can remind you now and then,” Nell offered. “There are perks in Marietta.”

  “You could take over the Christmas pageant.”

  “I could,” she agreed. “But not until Em is ready. I was thinking about other perks.” With a finger she traced the seam up the inside thigh of his jeans.

  Cole sucked in a breath. “You want me for sex.”

  “Of course.” Her fingers were doing lascivious things and she smiled as he squirmed and grabbed her hand. She tipped her head to look up into his eyes. “But I want you for more than that. I want you because you make my life worth living. You make me happy. In fact, Cole McCullough,” she said, raising up to touch her lips to his, “you make me the happiest woman in the world.”

  The End

  Montana Born Brides

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  The Substitute Bride by Kathleen O’Brien

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  Last Year’s Bride by Anne McAllister

  About the Author

  Best-selling author Anne McAllister has written nearly 70 romance novels -- long and short, contemporary, time travel, and single title. She has won two RITA awards from the Romance Writers of America — for Cowboy Pride and The Stardust Cowboy — and has had nine other books which were RITA finalists.

  Anne grew up on the beaches of southern California, and spent summers in Montana and on her grandparents' small ranch in Colorado. They were formative experiences — not only in providing her settings, but in giving her heroes. She finds herself attracted to lean, dark, honorable men – often lone wolf types – who always get the job done, whatever it might be.

  Anne and her husband, The Prof, spend the school year in the Midwest now, but are looking forward to more time in Montana when he retires. But wherever they are, Anne will always be writing. There are too many ideas not to!

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