The Bride Wore Denim

by Lizbeth Selvig

  He pulled her bra back down, adjusted her shirt, and closed up her sweatshirt, hugging it together in front of her. Softly he kissed her, and she had no idea what to do with the feelings he’d evoked. The concept of anyone thinking her more beautiful than her stunning sisters was foreign to her. The fact that it was rugged, beautiful Cole, only made tears threaten to fall.

  “Don’t cry,” he said lightly. “I told you I’d stop.”

  “I think I’m crying because you did.”

  “Aw, hell, I can fix that.”

  He pulled her into another kiss, this one softer—sensual, deep, and slow.

  They both heard the high-pitched gasp at the same moment and pulled apart, eyes meeting in a question.

  “Hello?” Cole called.

  Nobody answered. A second later, footsteps pattered away through the leaves in the woods.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  Her heart sank. There was only one thing it could have been. Nate wouldn’t have gasped like a girl. Lily would have burst in on them like an excited little squirrel.

  “Skylar,” she said. “She must have seen us.”

  There was no sign of Skylar in the main living areas when Harper and Cole stole back into the house. They found her bedroom door closed.

  “The light is off,” he said. “Maybe we didn’t hear her after all.”

  “Maybe not, but we should peek in to make sure she’s here. It would be awful to find she’d slipped out and we didn’t know it.”

  Harper cracked the door open enough to let light from the hallway illuminate the bed. The tips of Skylar’s strawberry blonde hair stuck out from beneath the blanket.

  “It couldn’t have been her we heard,” Cole said once they’d closed the door again. “She couldn’t be this sound asleep already if she was out in the woods five minutes ago.”

  “Don’t put anything past a fourteen-year-old girl with a crush.”

  “You still believe she has a thing for me? She’s been perfectly normal ever since you first mentioned it. Personally I think you’re seeing things that aren’t there. She’s just a nice kid.”

  “And you’re just a nice guy who’s such a guy. I hope you’re right. We’ll know tomorrow morning.”

  SKYLAR HELD HER breath until the door closed and blackness filled the room again. She’d known they’d heard her in the woods, and she’d known they’d come right back and check on her. This had been the best defense she could think of. She rolled onto her back, unclutched her fingers from the blanket, and stared at the ceiling with tears burning in the corners of her eyes.

  Cole and Harper?

  She should have known. She should never have told Harper how handsome she thought Cole was. Now Harper had noticed him and moved in.

  Deep inside, Skylar knew her thoughts were foolish and silly, but her chest literally ached since seeing Cole with his lips against Harper’s. She hadn’t meant to make a sound, but the kiss had totally shocked her. It hadn’t been any weenie, friendly little kiss either. It had been one that made Skylar’s stomach flip in wonder and excitement. It should have been forbidden. If her mother ever heard that the two chaperones had been out in the woods kissing and Skylar had seen them, she’d be furious.

  At first, a small, mean-spirited corner of Skylar’s heart wanted to tell her mother exactly what she’d seen. But she’d never do that to Cole. And she liked Harper. Harper was the first person in the world to take Skylar’s side on anything—and to make this whole dream happen had been amazing.

  She buried her head in her pillow and let a few confused tears wet the pillowcase. She had to get through the weekend without letting Harper know she’d seen anything or that she cared. She’d already scoped out a few spots where she wanted to paint. She wasn’t sure if she’d come up with ideas that would work for the contest, but looking for one would keep her away from Harper. And from Cole.

  Finally, after plotting her strategy, as much as it felt completely lame and she hated it, she made one last adjustment to her pillow and snuggled into its softness. Now that she knew Cole was at least in the house, she felt safer if not better. Closing her eyes, she let herself drift to sleep at last.

  What happened the next morning threw her whole plan off track. Lily and Nate greeted her from their seats around the dining room table. Cole stood at the stove with a huge, handsome smile on his face.

  “Hey, Sky, can I make you some pancakes?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  But then Harper handed her a mug filled with hot chocolate and pointed toward the living room.

  “Come with me?” she asked, and Skylar had no choice but to nod, sure for a second she was in trouble.

  But when Harper sat on the sofa and patted the seat next to her, she was the one who looked guilty. “I think I need to apologize to you,” she began. “You came back outside to the lookout late last night, didn’t you? I don’t care a bit if you were there. I only want to make sure it was you.”

  Skylar had not prepared for direct confrontation. She wanted to lie and put her plan to ignore the whole situation into practice, but she couldn’t. She’d been told often enough in her life to cheer up and stop being so gloomy but never that she was a person who couldn’t be trusted.

  “Yeah.” Her voice felt half its strength.

  “And you saw me kissing Cole.”

  Skylar’s face flamed with embarrassment. She didn’t want to talk about this. “So? It’s not my business.”

  “You’re right.”

  That surprised her. Skylar shrugged.

  “On the other hand,” Harper continued, “I promised your mother everything would be appropriate this weekend. I’m sorry we got personal when you guys were around.”

  “So basically you don’t want me to tell my mom.”

  “I would never say that. You tell your mom anything you need to. This is about you and me.” She hesitated as if she wasn’t sure she should say the next thing. “And, I think I might have made you angry because I know you like Cole, too.”

  If her face had been hot before, it was burning now. “No. No, I . . . don’t.”

  “It’s okay. Cole is . . . kind of awesome. Right?”

  She could only shrug again.

  “Anyway, I want you to know I’m sorry. There won’t be any more embarrassing kissing during the weekend.”

  That should have made Skylar feel 100 percent better. Instead, her stomach fell, like she was disappointed or something. She scowled. “Why would you even tell me that?”

  “I like you. I’ve started thinking of you as my friend, and friends should be honest with each other.”

  She had to think about that. How many times had she been told to be honest, be honest, be honest? No adults had ever said they had to be honest back.

  “Do you love him? Cole?”

  The question tumbled out. She couldn’t believe she’d asked. Harper looked a little surprised.

  “I . . . don’t know,” she said. “I like him very much. But I don’t even live here, so I don’t think it matters.”

  “What if you did live here?”

  Harper laughed. “Then you and I would have to duke it out over him.”

  Somehow, no matter how Skylar felt when she started talking to Harper, she felt better when she was done. Harper wasn’t like the other adults in her life. She didn’t take everything so dang seriously and make Skylar feel like she had to do the same.

  “Yeah,” she said. “That would suck.”

  Her mother would have lectured her for an hour about her language. Harper only laughed.

  The rest of the day turned into one of the coolest of her life, and nothing could have surprised her more. Harper knew so much about painting and drawing it was like a paintbrush turned into a magic wand in her hand. She gave them lessons on shading and on perspective and on famous painters. She had books for them to look at and new paints for them to try. But she wasn’t strict about the lessons or anything. Everything was simply more fun when she talked a
bout it. And when they were done for the morning, she let them wander anywhere they wanted. They could work or think or search for things to draw or paint. For hours. The only rule was, if they took horses and went farther than a mile away, they had to bring a walkie-talkie with them. And they could stay out until sunset, but they needed to be back to the outlook by dark.

  Skylar felt like a grown-up. Like a real artist.

  And she created the picture she knew she would enter in the exhibition. She got the idea from one of Harper’s art books containing a picture of one famous artist’s draft sketch and then his finished painting. Skylar started by sketching a mountain path and a sweetly kissing couple in the bottom left corner of the canvas. Beyond the couple, the entire Kwinaa Valley and the Teton Range spread across the canvas. The beginning of the path in the corner and the leg of the girl remained a pencil sketch. As the picture evolved, the shading grew more detailed until it burst into the whole rainbow palette of colors Skylar always saw in the mountains. By the time she had the canvas nearly filled and finished, she loved it.

  She wanted to call it Hopeful World.

  “That’s amazing.”

  She turned around in her small copse of trees to find Nate. At first a small fist of resentment that he’d invaded her private painting spot squeezed in her chest, but then he smiled. He had a dimple in each cheek and bangs that fell across his forehead in a super-cute, pop singer kind of way. She couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Are you looking for a place to paint?”

  “No. I stayed around the house to paint. Now I’m hiking to clear my brain. I found this and thought maybe you were here somewhere.”

  He held up a small, pink-and-white striped knit glove, the kind that were only a couple of dollars at Kloster’s Drug.

  “It is mine. I didn’t even know I dropped it. Thanks, Nate.”

  He stepped closer and peered at her painting. “You got those shadows perfectly. I’ve kind of been wondering, do you think you could help me with one of my drawings?”

  He pulled off his backpack and unzipped the main pocket. From it he took his sketchbook. Flattered and nervous, Skylar waited while he flipped pages. He handed it to her. “Here,” he said. “I tried to get the shading on those flowers right but it isn’t quite. Can you see what the problem is?”

  She did. The solution was simple. He had the light source twisted around a little bit. Her nerves vanished, and she sat cross-legged on a patch of grass with him beside her.

  “See how you have the light coming from over here?” She pointed. “And then the shadow in front of the plants? You have to move it to the side.”

  That was all it took to get Nate playing with his pencil, asking questions and reworking parts of the drawing. Skylar pulled out her own sketchbook and doodled while they talked. The time flew past, and before they realized how late it had gotten, the shadows had fallen over the stand of trees where they worked.

  “We need to go,” Nate said. “It’ll take us a good half hour to get to the house. We’ll be back well after dark.”

  “Do you have a walkie-talkie?” she asked.

  “No, I didn’t think I was coming this far.”

  “I’ll pack up my stuff. I need to be careful with the painting ’cause it’s still wet.”

  He carried the eleven-by-seventeen canvas for her, finding his way on certain feet through the growing darkness. By the time they reached the house at last, it was fully dark and Skylar braced for the lecture sure to come. Even Harper wouldn’t forgive breaches of the after-dark rules. She knew all too well the animals and dangers that lurked after sundown for people who weren’t prepared to be outdoors. A wet canvas and a few paintbrushes wouldn’t do any good against a cougar or stepping off the edge of the bluff.

  What they found once inside was as far from a lecture as they could get.

  Harper and Cole sat in the living room with two other adults who seemed vaguely familiar, although Skylar couldn’t place them. Lily stood in the kitchen stirring a pot of spaghetti noodles.

  “What’s up?” Nate asked her.

  “These two showed up about ten minutes ago,” Lily replied. “Cole and Harper seemed really shocked to see them, and they needed to talk, so I said I’d finish cooking the spaghetti. Where have you guys been?”

  “I was painting by another overlook and Nate was out hiking. We found each other and were working on our drawings together. All of a sudden it was getting dark.”

  “You know how good Skylar is with shading and dimension, right?” Nate replied. “She helped me with that flower picture.”

  “Cool. You’ll have to show me.”

  Skylar couldn’t believe how amazing Nate and Lily were being. They didn’t seem like they thought they were better than she was or like they were there to compete with her. They seemed like real friends. She knew them from the homeschool co-op, and Nate and Marcus had hung out a few times, but she’d paid only passing attention to them. Suddenly she felt like she’d found kids from the same planet her dad always told her she lived on.

  “What did you work on today?” Skylar asked, still fighting a little shyness. Lily was such a good artist.

  “I practiced painting pictures of different parts of the house.” She shrugged. “It sounds boring, but I wanted to see if I could make wood look realistic. And I painted an old truck I found in a shed. Cole said it was his grandfather’s. It was fun.”

  “Look at this one Sky is working on.”

  Nate held up the canvas, and Lily stared at it for several long seconds.

  “That is awesome,” she said. “You should enter that in the contest.”

  “I was thinking I might,” Skylar admitted. “Do you really think it’s good enough?”

  Lily smiled. “You could win with a painting like that.”

  Skylar could have died right then and gone to heaven happy—which is what Grandpa Leif always said when something went right. To get praise from her friends felt better than anything had in a long time.

  COLE HEARD THE kids come in and nudged Harper with an elbow. “We should take this meeting to the porch,” he said under his breath.

  She nodded. “Little ears could mean big gossip.”

  The visit from Magdalen and Brian might have been a complete surprise, but what they’d come to report was even more stunning. Once they’d all found seats on the three-season porch off the side of the house, Cole leaned toward them, still amazed.

  “So you got some further results from the explorations. Large deposits, you said?”

  “Deeper analysis on two sections of land that piqued our technicians’ interest,” Brian said. “The findings were so exciting they rushed their results.”

  “What sections of land?” Harper asked.

  “Part of easternmost two thousand acres. Not far from where we are right here,” Magdalen said.

  “The Double Diamond.” Cole steepled his fingers, elbows resting on his thighs. “What are these results?”

  “Potentially the largest deposit of oil on the entire ranch. Of course, this is still no more absolute than the other results, but the indicators are extremely exciting. Should you go ahead with the project, we would recommend starting with exploration in these areas. We could be talking a great deal of money.”

  “Wow,” Cole sat back. “That’s . . . who knew?” He turned to Harper. “Pretty enticing wouldn’t you say?”

  They hadn’t spoken about oil since dinner earlier in the week.

  “Why would it be any more enticing to me than oil elsewhere on the ranch?” Despite the slow burn in her eyes, her reply was still calm. “As with the other information, this has to be discussed with the others.”

  “Of course it does,” he replied. “In fairness, the week you asked for is almost up, and now we’re talking about enough income to save the ranch.”

  “Don’t you mean save two ranches?” she asked. “That is still your priority, right?”

  Her accusation slammed him, n
ot with guilt but with indignation. His first thought had not been for his own financial well-being, but for hers. Still, she was right. Finding oil on the Double Diamond would not hurt his situation one bit.

  “I think you’re talking about events that affect the future much more than the present,” he said. “Any benefit I personally got out of this would depend on what kind of an arrangement the current owners were willing to make.”

  He hadn’t meant to get peevish, but her calm was disintegrating slowly into stubbornness. That was the Harper who dug in and fought the hardest.

  “Good to know that has to factor into the discussions,” she said.

  He looked away, frustrated. Why couldn’t she let go of her stubborn idealism long enough to see what she was rejecting out of hand?

  “You still don’t need to make any decisions about this now.” Brian broke the building tension. “We only wanted to stop by and let you know about this so it could factor into your decision making.”

  “We appreciate the information,” Cole said.

  “We’ll be on our way.” Magdalen stood. “You two obviously have much to discuss. We’ll wait to hear from you once you’ve spoken with the whole family.”

  Once the two were gone, Cole sighed with relief. At least he could talk freely to Harper if outsiders weren’t involved. But instead of finding Harper ready for a discussion, Cole met her halfway across the porch back to the living room.

  “Aren’t you even going to stay and duke it out?” he asked, trying to lighten the mood.

  “With you?” She spun. “No. The bottom line is this isn’t any of your business. This is up to my sisters and me.”

  Her words stung. She was absolutely right, but since Sam’s death Cole had grown accustomed to status as an honorary family member. He didn’t expect to make final decisions, but he’d taken for granted that he’d be given a voice along with the others. She’d just cut him out.

  “I see. Well, you’re right. I’m sorry I misunderstood and thought we were closer than that.”

  “You and I disagree philosophically. People disagree all the time. That doesn’t have anything to do with us personally.”