A Bravo Homecoming

by Christine Rimmer

  Mary announced that breakfast was served. They all filed into the large, comfortable dining room and sat down to eat.

  The food was really good, but Sam was too nervous to eat much. Jonathan, seated on her right, leaned close to her and told her not to pick at her meal. He said she needed food in her stomach.

  In spite of the tension that tugged at the muscles between her shoulder blades and tied her belly in knots, she laughed. “I never thought the day would come when you would tell me to eat more.”

  “That is exactly what I’m telling you,” he replied. “There is nothing as unattractive as a weak and peckish bride.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Peckish?”

  “Irritable from lack of proper nourishment,” he elaborated in the snooty tone of voice she’d come to love.

  So she did what he told her to do and ate some more. There was something so comforting about having him there. She could almost relax a little. After all, like Travis, he knew who she really was. He’d been there with her when she made all the changes that had led her to this day when she would become Travis’s wife.

  Travis’s wife. It seemed so huge and impossible. Panic clawed at her again.

  She ordered it to be gone.

  After the meal, the stylists, cosmeticians and nail techs arrived. Mary played an endless stream of holiday music and everyone got manicures and pedicures. And hair and makeup, too.

  Travis’s sister, Zoe, was a semiprofessional photographer. She took a lot of pictures that morning. She would photograph the wedding party, too.

  Jonathan, in his element, supervised the general beautifying. He advised the twins on nail colors. “Not that one, my sweet. It looks like dried blood—type O, I’m sure. This is your sister’s wedding, but she’s not marrying the Lord of the Night. Let’s go for something a tad less…vampiric, shall we?” He also suggested that Sam’s mom wear her hair in soft waves around her face rather than the tighter curls she usually went for. Both the twins and her mom did what he told them to.

  There was just something about Jonathan. He knew how to bring out the best in a woman, and women, no matter their age, sensed that. They tended to trust his judgment without question.

  A light lunch was provided at noon.

  And then it was back in the limo to return to Bravo Ridge.

  By one-thirty, a half hour before the simple wedding ceremony, Sam was dressed in her bridal finery and pacing the floor of the yellow room. She was beyond nervous by then, and more panicked than ever, so lost in her own anxiousness that she almost didn’t hear the light tap on the door to the hallway.

  But then the tap came again.

  She called, “Come in.”

  Her mother, in a pretty lavender mother-of-the-bride dress, slipped through the door. She carried a large rectangular box in one hand and a bag in the other. Both the box and the bag were of shiny cobalt-blue foil, and both were tied with ribbons in white, silver and various shades of purple.

  Sam got the picture. It was time for whatever special surprise Aleta and her mom had cooked up between them so that Jennifer would feel she’d contributed to the wedding.

  Her mom sighed. “You are a vision.”

  Sam felt the knot of tension in her stomach loosen a little. Okay, she and her mom had never enjoyed that close of a relationship. And Jennifer could drive her crazy with her constant advice on how to be more feminine, with her passive-aggressive remarks that made Sam want to shout at her to cut the crap and man up.

  Still, Jennifer did care. It was so obvious from the hopeful, yearning look on her still-pretty face, from the way her little hands shook just a bit, ruffling the ribbons on the blue foil bag.

  Sam gave her a big smile—a real smile. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Jennifer swiped away a tear with the back of the hand that held the beribboned bag. “Come…let me show you.” She turned for the bed and sat on the edge of it, setting the box to the side and holding the bag so carefully in her lap. Sam went and sat down beside her. Her mom handed her the bag.

  Sam fiddled with the ribbons. It took forever to get them untied. But her mom didn’t try to interfere the way she usually would. She sat there, her hands in her lap, until the ribbons were all undone. Sam sent her a questioning look then. But Jennifer only smiled.

  So Sam reached in and took out a blue velvet box. She opened the lid to find a bracelet sparkling with alternating clear and purple gemstones. “It was my mother’s,” said Jennifer. “Diamonds and amethysts.” Amethyst was Sam’s birthstone. And she’d been named after her mother’s mother. “Your grandmother Samantha’s birthstone was amethyst, too—here. Let me put it on you.” Solemnly, her mother lifted the bracelet from the box. Speechless, Sam held up her arm and her mother hooked the little heart-shaped platinum clasp at her wrist.

  The diamonds sparkled at her, bright as the one in the ring Travis had give her. Sam spoke in a voice that was thick with emotion. “It’s so pretty.”

  “I wanted you to have it. As they say, ‘Something old.’”

  “Oh, Mom…” Sam reached for her mother.

  “Samantha…” Her mother hugged her back.

  It was a great moment. One to remember and treasure. Just her and her mom, with all the tough years and the bad feelings put aside. The knots of tension within her seemed to loosen just a little. And the panic, at least right then, had subsided to a vague shiver of unease.

  There was more in the bag, something borrowed—her mother’s diamond earrings. And a blue garter. Sam donned the earrings, eased the garter up under her dress to mid-thigh.

  And then her mom gave her the box.

  Sam opened it with the same slow care she’d used to untie the ribbons on the bag. Inside, was a large blue book.

  Samantha and Travis…

  “Aw, Mom. A scrapbook…”

  “It’s not finished yet. The last third is empty. That will have the wedding pictures, and the honeymoon, too, and I’ll do more work on the cover, once I get the pictures of both of you…”

  Sam turned the pages. She touched the lock of her own baby hair, the tiny pink sock and the little yellow bib.

  There were lots of pictures of her growing up. Pictures of the Sam she always used to see when she looked in a mirror—the Sam some people mistook for a boy. There were pictures of her in her mom’s arms. And with her dad at the ranch. Riding Old Jay, her favorite gelding, and sitting in the back of her dad’s pickup in a plaid shirt with the sleeve’s torn off. There was even a picture of that awful birthday weekend not all that long ago, and of the cake her mom had made to look like an oil rig, the twins in the background, sticking out their tongues.

  Her mother put her arm around her. “You were always such a very capable child. So…self-sufficient.”

  She leaned into her mother’s embrace. “Yeah, I was that.”

  She moved on to Travis’s section of the book, saw his baby pictures, a blue sock, and a bib that was yellow, like hers. His brothers and sisters were in some of the pictures. She turned the pages and watched her love grow into manhood, saw him in his graduation cap and gown, in a tux, holding out an orchid corsage, and in a hard hat and coveralls on the rig at her dad’s ranch.

  “Aleta sent me everything for Travis’s section,” said her mom. “She really is one of the kindest, most generous women I’ve ever met….”

  Sam looked in her mother’s eyes. “We can all learn a lot from her.” She said the words and then tensed, sure her mom would take it wrong.

  But her mom only nodded. “Yes, Samantha. Yes, we can.”

  They sat there, for a few more minutes, just the two of them. Sam started at the beginning of the scrapbook again, looked at every memento, every snapshot, one more time. Then, with loving care, she put it back in the blue box and folded the tissue paper smoothly around it.

  “I want to show Travis,” she said.

  “Of course. You can send it back to me later, along with the pictures and any keepsakes from the wedding and after.”


  The wedding and after…

  After, when she and Travis would be married. Together. Bonded for life before the whole world.

  Was that what scared her, what made the panic rise?

  She knew then, with certainty, that it was not.

  Her mom told her again that she was a beautiful bride. “I wish you all the happiness your two hearts can hold,” she said. “I wish you more patience than I ever had, more wisdom. And I’m so glad that you and Travis are longtime friends and well-suited. Sadly, your father and I weren’t suited at all. But you will do better, I know it in my heart.”

  So strange and wonderful that her own mom, who’d never in her whole life seemed to understand her, should suddenly be saying just the right things.

  Sam said it again, “Thanks, Mom.”

  And then Jennifer was rising. “I love you,” she said. “I wasn’t always there when I should have been. And I didn’t always love you as you needed loving. I know that. But I did love you. I do love you, Samantha. And I always will.”

  “I love you, too, Mom.”

  Jennifer went on tiptoe and Sam bent down so that her mom could kiss her cheek. It seemed to Sam a kiss of blessing, a kiss of acknowledgment and acceptance. At last.

  Her mother slipped out the way she had come.

  Sam stood there, by the bed, unmoving, until there was another tap at the door.

  It was Mercy. She looked terrific in midnight blue. “Oh, you look beautiful.”

  Sam mustered a smile. “Thanks.”

  “Want some help with your veil?”

  Sam went to the vanity set, took the short layers of organza banded with rhinestones and pearls off the edge of the mirror and handed it to Luke’s wife. She pulled out the padded stool and sat.

  Mercy pinned the veil in place and Sam took the hem and guided it over her forehead, smoothing the ends so it just covered her face. “Perfect,” Mercy said.

  Sam sat for a moment, gazing at her own reflection in the mirror, thinking about her mom and her dad, about Keisha and Walt. About the Terrible Twins and all the Bravos, every one.

  And about Travis, most of all.

  Then she pushed back the stool and rose again. She took her bouquet of orchids and white roses from the stand on the tall dresser.

  “Ready?” Mercy asked in a hushed, excited tone. At Sam’s slow nod, she added, “Your dad’s waiting at the top of the stairs.” And then she was gone.

  Sam’s heart started racing and her hands, around the base of the bouquet, felt suddenly clammy. Her feet in her gorgeous rhinestone-accented wedding shoes seemed nailed to the floor.

  But somehow, she did it, she lifted one foot and then the other and within ten steps, she was at the door. She pulled it open.

  And even with her heart going spooked-rabbit fast, pounding a furious drum roll in her ears, she could still hear the wedding march, floating up from the living room downstairs. And there was her dad in his best black wool suit, standing at the top of the staircase.

  He saw her and offered his arm.

  Her pulse rat-tat-tatting in her ears, she went to him and hooked her arm in his.

  He said, “There’s my beautiful, big, strong baby girl.”

  And she loved him so much right then. He smelled of cigarettes and the moth balls he stored that old rarely worn suit in and she realized he was one of the dearest, truest men in the world.

  Almost as dear and true as Travis.

  He turned, taking her with him, starting down the stairs.

  It was like a dream, only not a dream. A real-life sort of dream. She floated down the stairs on the arm of her father. The carved double doors to the living room stood wide.

  They went through, and began the walk up the blue velvet aisle between the rows of white rented folding chairs. Her family and Travis’s family rose and turned to watch her progress.

  Travis waited at the other end.

  In his eyes, she saw so much love.

  And worry, too.

  For her. For the doubts she saw he knew that she had.

  He knew because he knew her. He accepted her completely.

  As she was now. As she had been. As she would be in the future as the years fled by—so fast. Too fast.

  Oh, she could see it all. And it was good. It was right.

  She was the Sam she had always been. Strong and tall and able to stand toe-to-toe with any man. She hadn’t lost herself after all.

  She was exactly who she’d always been.

  And yet, because of Travis, because of what they were together, she was also so much more.

  It wasn’t anything to be afraid of, these changes that seemed to deny who she was. Because they didn’t deny her, not really. They only made her more.

  She reached his side. The nice minister Aleta had found started to speak.

  But Travis put up his hand. The minister fell silent. Sam gave her dad her bouquet to hold for her and her dad stepped away.

  Travis took her fingers, guided her to face him. He took her veil and lifted it, smoothing it back over the crown of her head and down. Now nothing stood between them, not even that transparent film of bridal white.

  He took her hand again—and then the other hand, too. And his eyes were on her, holding her gaze. He whispered, “Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure? Because I know I pushed you to get married too fast. And if it’s just too soon for you, we can call it off right now. It’s all right. I’ll understand. I can wait, Sam. I see that now. Until you’re sure, no matter how long it takes, I’ll wait.”

  An hour before, she might have nodded. She might have told him she couldn’t do it, she needed more time.

  But something had happened—in those precious moments with her mother, and at the sight of her father. And also, well, just because there is a time in a woman’s life when she has to push her deepest fears aside.

  She has to say, yes. Absolutely. I will. I love you. I will join my life with yours. And we will make something better and stronger together than either of us could ever be on our own.

  This was that time. And Travis was the man. The right man for her.

  She told him, “Yes, Travis. I’m sure. I love you. I want to marry you. I want to marry you right now.”

  He let out a slow breath. “You mean it. You really mean it.”

  “I mean it.” And she kissed him, even though they weren’t even married yet, even though the minister hadn’t been allowed to say a single word.

  No one in the white chairs so much as moved or made a sound—not that Sam cared much what the family did. For her, it was all about Travis. All about the kiss.

  When the kiss ended, he said slowly and clearly, “I love you, Sam Jaworski.”

  “And I love you, Travis Bravo.”

  They turned together to the waiting, slightly baffled-looking minister. “Go for it,” Travis told him.

  A wave of laughter rose from the family behind them. More than one of them applauded.

  And then the minister began, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together…”

  Sam said her vows out loud and proud and sure.

  Travis’s voice was lower, softer, but no less certain. He had the ring ready. He slid it onto her finger, snug against the engagement diamond he’d given her before they knew it would all end up being for real.

  And when the minister said, “You may kiss the bride,” Travis pulled her close and settled his mouth on hers so tenderly, in a kiss that promised everything—his strong hands and his good heart. All the years of their lives.

  And his love, most of all.

  It wasn’t until they turned back to face the family that she noticed her dad had disappeared. Mercy stood in his place holding out her bouquet.

  Sam reached to take it.

  And out the arched front windows, the fireworks began with a bottle rocket shooting toward the wide Texas sky.

  Sam growled low in her throat. “He’d better not burn anything down, or I swear I will kill him.”

&nbs
p; Travis only laughed and pulled her close for another tender kiss.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-1563-4

  A BRAVO HOMECOMING

  Copyright © 2011 by Christine Rimmer

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  ¶¶ Montana Mavericks: The Texans Are Coming!

  ** The Sons of Caitlin Bravo

  †† Viking Brides

  § Bravo Family Ties

  §§ Montana Mavericks: Gold Rush Grooms

  ‡ Talk of the Neighborhood

  ‡‡ Montana Mavericks: Striking It Rich

  ° Back in Business

  * The Jones Gang

  ¶ Montana Mavericks: Thunder Canyon Cowboys

  † Conveniently Yours