The Cowboy's Bride

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  Callie couldn’t believe he was resorting to that again. She’d thought his loner days were over. “Cody. For heaven’s sake. The wedding is supposed to start in less than an hour! Can’t we talk this out?”

  He snorted in derision. “You don’t really think I’d marry you now?” he queried in raging disbelief.

  Callie struggled to keep a handle on her own skyrocketing emotions. “I had hoped,” she said with as much tranquility as she could manage.

  “So had I,” Cody retorted bitterly. He grabbed her arms and brought her up short against him. “I had hoped things were different. I had hoped by now that you loved me enough to bare your soul to me, the way I bared mine to you.”

  “I did!” Callie shouted back. She had told him practically everything.

  “No, Callie, you didn’t,” Cody disagreed with a deliberate iciness that cut straight to her soul. Releasing his grip on her abruptly, he towered over her. “Because if you had, you would have told me everything. If not before we made love last night, then certainly after. Or even this morning.”

  Callie gulped, aware he had a point there. “I wanted to,” she said tearfully after a moment.

  “But—” Cody prodded mercilessly.

  What could she say to that? Callie wondered miserably. That she hadn’t expected him to believe her when she told him she was not part of Pa and Buck’s heinous scheme? That she hadn’t wanted to risk losing him all over again? Callie swallowed. “I wanted to wait until the time was right.”

  Cody’s jaw tightened. His eyes never left her face. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” he said in a low, deadly voice. “Face it, Callie. As painful as it is, I have. The time never would have been right for you to confide in me about this or anything else. And if we had been fool enough to marry, as Uncle Max wanted us to, I would have been signing on for a lifetime of half-truths and hurt. And that I just can’t do. Not for you,” he told her grimly. “Not for anyone.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  00:45

  Shorty hopped down from his truck and ambled over to Cody. Pushing his hat back on his head, he shook his head at the mess and lamented, “If today isn’t a day for disaster, I don’t know what is. One crisis after another. Trouble everywhere you look.”

  Cody paused in the act of shoveling the mud from beneath the rear wheels of his pickup. He was not enjoying digging his truck out of the muck Callie had left it in, and he didn’t like the ominous way Shorty had spoken.

  Swearing silently at the prospect of more trouble, he stuck his shovel in the mud and pushed himself upright. “Is everyone all right?” Cody asked gruffly. He’d been so caught up in his own problems he hadn’t thought to ask, and they had suffered one hell of a storm the night before.

  Shorty rested his gloved hands on his waist. “I expect they will be by the time we get everything straightened out,” he said sagely. “But don’t you worry none about Patience or Trace or their loved ones, Cody. You worry about you and that young beauty you’re letting slip away.”

  Cody felt a lecture coming on that he did not want to receive. “Better be careful, Shorty,” he warned grimly as he went back to digging out his truck. “When your hand is in a bobcat’s mouth, you don’t go pulling on his tail.”

  “Nor do you keep silent when it’s obvious things are going to hell in a handbasket for someone you damn near raised,” Shorty shot right back as he grabbed another shovel out of his own truck and lent a hand. “And Max and I both put in a lot of time on you, Cody. What the beck are you doing out here anyway?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” Cody dug into the mud more viciously. “I’m trying to get my pickup truck out of the mud Callie stuck it in last night.”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, buckaroo, this is your wedding day. The blasted ceremony’s in less than half an hour,” Shorty stressed, pointing to his watch.

  Cody scowled at the clear blue sky overhead. It looked like he was never going to have the kind of marriage his parents had after all. “Well, the hoopla’s happening without me.”

  “You get struck by lightning last night? ‘Cause somethin’ sure happened to set you off. You look mad as a hungry bear.”

  Cody could see he was never going to get any peace unless he came out with it. Even though it went against his grain to reveal anything of what he was thinking or feeling when he didn’t have a mind to do so, he told his ranch foreman curtly, “It’s over, Shorty. With me and Callie. It’s time to put out the fire and call in the dogs.” Time to admit their love just wasn’t strong or pure enough.

  Finished with one rear wheel, Shorty went over and started working on the other. “I see. Does she know that?”

  “I would certainly hope so.” Cody gritted his teeth as he joined in the shoveling and thought about the easy way Callie had betrayed him again. “I made it plain enough.”

  Shorty sent a shovelful of muck flying. It barely missed Cody. “If a duck had your brain, it would fly north for the winter.”

  Cody sent another shovelful of muck back at Shorty. It missed him, too, but just barely. “Anyone ever tell you that your advice is about as welcome as a skunk at a lawn party? ‘Cause they should.”

  Shorty helped clear the second wheel. Finished, he grabbed the two empty grain bags Cody had brought along and put them under the wheels for traction. “I’m tellin’ you, trying to talk to you this afternoon is like being in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.”

  Cody picked up the shovels and emphatically tossed them both into the bed of his truck. He’d meant what he said about feeling as dangerous as a bobcat this morning. He couldn’t recall ever being in a fouler mood. He felt as if it were Christmas morning. He’d got up and discovered absolutely nothing under the tree. “You got something to say to me, Shorty? Just spit it out. And be quick about it.”

  “All right,” Shorty generously agreed, making no effort to spare the sarcasm as he inched off one mud-covered glove. “Since you went to all that trouble to invite me so nicely, I will. What in tarnation are you doing out here when you’ve got a wedding to go to?”

  “I told you,” Cody repeated, unable to recall when he’d felt so disillusioned. “It’s over between Callie and me. So I am not—I repeat—I am not marrying her.” Not even if hell freezes over.

  Shorty bristled at him, then paused and shoved the brim of his hat off his brow. “Even if it means you lose the ranch?”

  Cody shrugged, very much aware that while it was Max who had showed him how to build an empire, it had been Shorty who had taught him all there was to know about the day-in, day-out routine of punching cattle. It had taken fourteen long years to make the Silver Spur what it was today. “I built this one up. I can always build up another one,” he announced confidently.

  Shorty humphed, but did not dispute Cody’s claim. “I thought the Silver Spur meant more to you than that.”

  It did. But Callie, damn her conniving soul, meant even more. “Uncle Max never should have tied my owning it to marrying Callie,” Cody countered.

  Shorty gave him a pitying look. “In my opinion, that is the first sensible thing your Uncle Max ever did as far as you were concerned. I loved him, too, God rest his soul, but Max overindulged you to a fault. He never should have let you shut out the whole goldurned world. Or hide out there in the outpost for days at a time. But he did, and now the rest of us poor souls are having to deal with the fallout.”

  “Which is what?” Cody spit out, more wrought up than he could ever recall being.

  Shorty threw up a hand. “Your determination to end up alone and penniless while that bride of yours is set to inherit everything.”

  Cody blinked, sure he’d heard wrong. “What are you talking about?”

  “Callie’s going to the wedding anyway,” Shorty related. “I saw her a few minutes ago, driving off with Pearl. She had her hair all in curlers and a wedding dress slung over her shoulder, but knowing that gal the way I do, I have every confidence she’ll look as purty a
s a picture by the time that ceremony gets started over at the bull’s-eye.”

  “Hold it. Callie’s showing up at the wedding anyway?”

  Cody tried but could not contain his shock. He couldn’t believe she would go there without him, especially knowing that he would rather be dragged buck naked through the streets rather than show up to participate in that dog-and-pony show!

  Shorty got in the truck, drove it out of the mud, then shut off the engine and got back out again. “Yeah. What were the terms of the will again? She shows up, willing to marry you...and you’re not there... and she gets everything. Yep. Sounds like that is one smart cookie you’re turning down, Cody. Gotta hand it to her. She fixed it just fine. The way things are going, she is set to inherit everything.”

  “Not everything,” Cody interrupted irritably. “I still get the bull’s-eye property... as long as she shows up.”

  “I’m sure that’ll really satisfy you,” Shorty drawled sarcastically. “Especially since the two of you will be living right next door to each other. You on your little tiny spread with enough room for maybe ten to twenty head of cattle if you’re real careful and manage your property carefully, and Callie with her gazillions of acres and hundred thousand head of cattle. Yeah, you ought to be right happy, the way it sounds to me.”

  “I can’t believe she would actually do that.” Cody threw down his heavy work gloves and kicked the bed of the truck. Then kicked it again for good measure. “She said she wasn’t interested in any of the money! Or the land! She said all she wanted was to make me happy!”

  Shorty shrugged and headed back to his own battered pickup. He called over his shoulder, “Guess you were wrong about that, too.”

  00:23

  “HE’S NOT COMING. I just know it,” Callie told Pearl miserably as she carried the garment bag holding her wedding dress into the changing tent. Outside, the guests were beginning to arrive. Five hundred chairs had been lined up in neat rows, three separate altars arranged. And they only had twenty minutes to go.

  “Now you just hold your horses, gal. And don’t give up on that man of yours yet.”

  “I only wish he were my man,” Callie murmured as she set down her makeup case with a disgruntled thud. “But Cody is so dampably self-reliant, I don’t think he will ever be anyone’s man.” She had to accept it; he would always have that wall around his heart.

  Oblivious to Callie’s depression, Pearl poked her head outside the changing tent. “Unless I am mistaken, that is his truck coming toward us now.”

  Callie’s hopes rose, then fell, then rose again. “I don’t think I want to talk to him before the ceremony,” she said querulously.

  “I don’t think you have any choice. But I’ll try to head him off.”

  Pearl stepped outside the tent, closing the flaps behind her.

  “Cody, stop right there! The groom cannot see the bride before her wedding,” Callie heard Pearl say.

  “Who says I’m the groom?” Cody growled.

  Before Callie could do more than draw a breath, Cody charged inside.

  They faced each other breathlessly. To her dismay, the tux he should have been wearing was nowhere in sight. Worse, Callie noted, Cody’s jeans, shirt and boots were covered with mud. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing,” she remarked, “but you look like you lost.”

  “Cute.”

  “Pearl’s right,” Callie said stiffly. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

  “Tough,” Cody countered in a low, tense voice. “We have to talk.”

  Callie did not want to be hurt any more and he had already hurt her plenty. Her head held high, she sashayed away. “I think we already did that.”

  “Callie—” He reached for her arm.

  With some deft footwork, she evaded his grip. “Look, Cody, if you’re here to talk me out of agreeing to marry you today, forget it. Unlike you, I am perfectly willing to go through with the ceremony. And then, as per your explicit wishes, I am walking away.” My heart intact.

  He regarded her with a stone-faced expression that indicated to her that he hadn’t changed his mind about her one whit. “So you’re selling the Silver Spur cattle operation?”

  “No,” Callie replied archly, “I’m giving it away.” She held up a hand before he could interrupt. “And don’t try and talk me out of it, because Cisco has already drawn up the papers and they are all signed.” This was the first thing Callie had done upon arriving at the wedding site.

  “I see,” Cody said heavily, as if he had suspected she would betray him all along. “To whom are you turning this ranch over, may I ask?” he said tersely, as if braced for the worst.

  Callie tilted her chin at him defiantly as she finished taking the curlers out of her hair. “Why do you care?” she challenged.

  “I care.”

  “About the land,” Callie asserted, swallowing hard to hide her hurt as she brushed her hair into soft, flowing waves. “Not about me.”

  “I never said that,” Cody countered. He left the tent briefly and returned with the garment bag containing his tux.

  “You didn’t have to say it,” Callie told him wearily as she sat down before the mirror Pearl had brought in for her and began to apply her makeup. “I saw it in your eyes.”

  Cody routinely shucked off his muddy boots, shirt and jeans. He scrubbed his face and hands with the wet washcloth he had brought in. If Callie had thought he was there to marry her because he loved her, she would have been overjoyed. As it was, she knew he was just doing it to collect on his inheritance.

  “I cared about you more than you’ll ever know,” Cody asserted, hastily pulling on his black tuxedo pants and starched white shirt.

  Ha! Callie thought as she shrugged out of her own shirt and jeans and into her petticoat, camisole and dress. “Then why are you running away from what you and I could have, Cody?” She lifted her skirt and pulled on first one thigh-high stocking, then the other. “And don’t deny it,” she said, drawing the flower garter over her slender ankle to just above her knee before slipping on her white satin pumps. “You are running. Take it from an expert. I know.”

  Cody stood with his shirt unbuttoned, his tie dangling on either side of his collar. “Because you’ve spent your life running,” he guessed.

  “Yes,” Callie said softly as she fitted her veil and headpiece over her hair. Unable to do up her buttons on her own, she gave up and turned her back to Cody.

  He did them up deftly, the warmth of his fingers ghosting over her skin.

  “First, from the sordid truth about my pa and brother Buck. Then from the possibility of anyone—especially you—finding out I was from a family of criminals. Then from our brief, failed attempt at marriage. And a series of jobs. And even the second chance at a marriage with you and the opportunity to build myself something strong and solid and enduring here in Montana.”

  When he had finished helping her with her dress, Cody put both hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “You say that as if the two things are one and the same.”

  “They aren’t,” Callie countered, meaning it. “Because in the final analysis the land Max left me, by itself, doesn’t matter a plugged nickel to me.” The only thing she had ever really wanted was to marry Cody.

  Cody shook his head. “And yet you’re willing to be here and stand up in front of everyone who’s anyone in this entire state and say ‘I do’ while I say ‘I don’t.’”

  Callie buttoned up the front of his shirt and began working on correctly knotting his bow tie. “Yes. I am willing to do that. And you want to know why I am willing to do that?” Callie poked a finger at his chest. “I am willing to do that because I love you more than life itself and I don’t give a hoot and a holler who knows it. Do you hear me, Cody?” she said as her pent-up feelings came tumbling out, surprising them both with their ferocity. “I love you,” she said thickly, as happy, frustrated tears misted her eyes. “I always have and I always will and—”

  A stunned look on his
face, Cody pressed a finger to her lips. “What did you say?” he interrupted, coming a little closer.

  Callie’s heart took a little leap, then settled into a strong, steady rhythm. “I love you,” she repeated in soft defiance.

  Silence of a different sort fell between them. Cody rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.

  And Callie thought, but couldn’t be entirely sure, that she saw the beginning of the sparkle come back into Cody’s eyes.

  Cody continued, more seriously. “Although, Callie, if you’d just told me sooner about your pa and Buck bothering you, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “I was afraid what you’d do to them if you found out.”

  Cody hooked a foot under the chair that had been set up at her vanity table and dragged her onto his lap. “You may have a point there. I wanted to kill ’em both seven years ago, and that is nothing to the emotion I feel toward them now.”

  Callie rested her head on his shoulder. “And I was also afraid you wouldn’t believe me when I said that I hadn’t known they followed me here, and that I had not ever wanted anything to do with any of their schemes to get rich off you or anyone else, for that matter.”

  “Forty-eight hours ago, I probably wouldn’t have believed that,” Cody admitted, stroking her back.

  “But you do now?” Callie persisted, looking deep into his eyes. She was aware she was wearing her heart on her sleeve again; she couldn’t help it.

  Cody nodded.

  Callie swallowed, almost afraid to hope. Yet she wanted a lifetime of love and laughter with Cody so much. “What changed your mind?” she asked softly.

  “A lot of things. Max’s admonition not to mess things up again. I wanted our eight seconds. A blistering lecture from Shorty, who by the way was right on every count. The knowledge in my heart of what I should and should not do. And last but not least, the fact that you didn’t pack up and leave, but instead charged on out here and changed into your wedding dress. I know how you hate people thinking poorly of you or making fun of you, and you set yourself up for some powerful ridicule just showing up here today, especially since you’re not even planning on keeping the ranch.”