The Last Single Maverick

by Christine Rimmer

  Kenny gaped. “Kimberly, what are you doing? Stop that!”

  Kimberly cried all the harder. She let out a low wail and covered her eyes with her hands. Everyone in the ballroom was watching them, staring uncomfortably, the way people do when driving by car wrecks.

  It was a bizarre moment, so strange that Jace wasn’t as angry as he might have been at the sudden appearance of Joss’s cheating ex, at the dousing of the golden light.

  “Kimberly.” Kenny actually took her shoulders and shook her. “Snap out of it. Remember? You’re here to help.”

  “I caaaaan’t. I just caaaan’t,” Kimberly wailed. She jerked free of Kenny’s grip and whirled to face the flower-decked arch and Joss and Jace standing in front of it. “Joss, I’m so sorry. But, you know, I’m not sorry. I’ve always loved Kenny and we’ve been seeing each other behind your back for the past six months now.”

  Kenny blinked and shook his perfectly groomed golden head. “Ahem, Kimberly.” He tried to reach for her again but she jumped away. “Now, stop that.” He cast a frantic glance at Joss again. “Joss, it’s not true. I don’t know what’s gotten into her.”

  “But it is true,” cried Kimberly.

  “Of course it’s not!” Kenny shouted. Then he caught himself. He lowered his voice and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “You told me you would help me. You are not helping. This is not why I brought you here.”

  “Oh, Kenny, I know it’s not. But I just can’t stop myself. I’m sick of it, Kenny. Sick, sick, sick. Sick of the lies, sick of my part in this whole humiliating, ridiculous charade. I can see you for who you really are now. I know that you’re not worth crap. And you know what? This, today? This does it. I’m through with you. Finished. And I’m glad for Joss. I’m smiling through my tears that my cousin got away without ruining her life and marrying you, you big butthead, creep-faced, yuppie dirtbag, you giant pile of designer-clad trash.”

  Kenny made a growling sound. “Why you skeevy little bitch…” His face the color of a ripe tomato, he went for Kimberly.

  But Kimberly only grabbed a nearby vase of wedding flowers and hurled it at his head.

  Kenny ducked.

  The vase kept going until it smacked into the side of Forrest Traub’s face. Flowers and water went flying.

  “Hey!” Forrest lurched upward, trampling the boots of the cowboy sitting next to him.

  “Watch it, buddy.” The cowboy jumped to his feet and punched Forrest in the jaw. Forrest punched him back. The cowboy fell on the woman sitting next to him. She let out a scream, which caused the man on her other side to leap up and go after the cowboy.

  In the meantime, Kenny was chasing Kimberly around the ballroom as Kimberly ran from him, sobbing and screaming and calling him all kinds of imaginative names.

  At Jace’s side, Joss made a low, sad little sound. “What a disaster….”

  That spurred Jace to action. He’d had about enough, too. Kimberly had run down around the other end of the rows of chairs and started up on the far side, coming toward the flowered arch where Joss, Jace, Jackson and the pastor still stood.

  Jace waited until Kimberly fled by him, then he stepped forward between the fleeing girl and Kenny. Kenny tried to sprint around him. Jace only slid to the side and blocked him again.

  “Outta my way,” Kenny huffed.

  And Jace drew back his fist and laid the other man flat with one clean right to his perfect square jaw.

  Jace stood over the jerk. “Don’t get up until I say so.”

  The man in the polo shirt groaned and tested his jaw and glared up at Jace. But he didn’t get up.

  By then, the fight in the chairs had spread to every other short-tempered cowboy in attendance. There were more than a few of them, evidently. The men were fighting and the women were alternately shouting at them to stop and screaming “Look out!” and trying in lower voices to settle them all down.

  Over by the double doors, Kimberly was still crying. Melba Landry had gone to comfort her. Joss’s cousin clung to Melba and drenched the old woman’s flower-patterned purple church dress with an endless flood of desperate tears.

  Melba was talking to her in low tones, soothing her, Jace had no doubt. And probably reminding her that there was peace in the Lord.

  As quickly as it had started, the brawl wound down.

  Things got quiet. Really quiet. The ballroom was in chaos, chairs overturned, vases spilled and shattered, wedding flowers torn and tattered, trampled underfoot. The guests all stood around, clothing askew, hair every which way, looking slightly stunned.

  Jace turned to Joss.

  But she wasn’t there.

  “Joss?” And then he spotted her.

  She was over by the doors, not far from where Kimberly held on to Melba.

  Joss met his eyes. And at that moment, there was no one else in that chair-strewn ballroom. Just him and Joss.

  Her eyes shone bright with tears. She said, “This isn’t going to work. I can’t…” She ran out of words.

  “I understand,” he answered gently. And he did, though his heart seemed to shrivel to a wasted shell inside his chest. “You’re right. It’s all wrong.”

  She threw her bouquet. It sailed over the heads of several shell-shocked guests and into the arms of Annabel Cates, who caught it automatically to keep it from hitting her in the face.

  And then, as he’d been secretly fearing she might do for the last couple of weeks now, Joss lifted her froth of skirts, whirled away from him and sprinted from the ballroom.

  Chapter Fourteen

  RaeEllen appeared at Jace’s side. She glared down at Kenny. “Shame on you, Kenny Donovan.”

  Kenny groaned and started to rise. Jace gave him a look and he sank back to the floor.

  RaeEllen turned to Jace. “You have to go after her.”

  Jace wrapped his arm around Joss’s mom. “You okay, RaeEllen?”

  Her hazel eyes were dark with concern. “Oh, Jason. I swear to you, I had nothing to do with this. I didn’t say a word to Kenny—or Kimberly—about where or when you and Jocelyn were getting married.”

  Jace patted RaeEllen’s shoulder. “I know you didn’t. Joss told him, weeks ago, on the phone. She was just trying to get it through his fat head that she really was moving on with her life.”

  RaeEllen pressed her hand to her heart. “Oh, I just feel terrible about all this….”

  “Not your fault,” he reassured her. “You and Joss have worked things out. She knows you’re on her side.”

  Jackson, his wife beside him by then, asked, “What do we do now?”

  It was a good question. “Hey, everyone,” Jace called out loud enough to carry to the back of the ballroom. “Looks like the wedding isn’t happening. But there’s a party waiting for all of you at the Rib Shack. I want you to head on over there and have yourselves a great time.”

  People exchanged anxious glances.

  Then Clay Traub said, “Great idea, Jace. Come on, everyone, let’s head for the Rib Shack.”

  The guests began filing out.

  Jace sent a lowering glance down at Kenny. “You’re not invited. In fact, you can get the hell out—of the clubhouse, of the resort, of the town of Thunder Canyon. Get out and don’t come back. Do it now.”

  Kenny didn’t argue. He dragged himself upright and staggered out.

  Jace’s brothers, his sister, their spouses and Ma and Pete stuck around to straighten up the ballroom. Kimberly and Melba stayed to help, too, as did RaeEllen. It didn’t take all that long. Twenty minutes after they started picking up the chairs, they all left together, on their way to the Rib Shack.

  All except Jace. He wasn’t going to his own nonreception. Not without his runaway bride.

  * * *

  He found her where he knew she would be—in the Lounge, with a margarita in front of her. She’d taken off her veil and let her hair down. She’d also ordered him a whisky on the rocks.

  He almost grinned. “You have a lot of faith in me.�
�

  “Yeah,” she replied softly, her eyes getting misty again. “I do.” She patted the stool beside her. “Have a seat.”

  He eased her big, fat skirt out of the way and took the stool she offered him.

  She picked up her drink and he lifted his. They tapped their glasses together and drank.

  When she set hers down, she said, “Got something to say to me?”

  “I do.” He thought about the golden light, the magic that had happened back there in the ballroom. But then he decided that maybe it wasn’t magic after all.

  Maybe it was only the most natural, down-to-earth thing in the world. A man seeing what mattered, seeing it fully for the very first time.

  A man recognizing the right woman. His woman.

  And knowing absolutely, without even the faintest shadow of a doubt that she was the only one for him. That he knew what love was after all.

  Because he loved her.

  “I like you, Joss.”

  She almost rolled her eyes, but not quite. “There’d better be more.”

  “There is.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I like you. I want you. You…light up my life. You’re the only woman in the world for me. I want the life we planned, want to be your partner in the Hitching Post. I want our eight acres and the house that needs work and the horses and the dog we haven’t found yet. I want your children to be my children. I want to sleep with you in my arms every night and wake up in the morning with you beside me.”

  Now her adorable mouth was trembling. “Oh, Jace…”

  “There’s more.”

  “Tell me. Please.”

  “What I don’t want is to lie to you—or myself—anymore. I not only like you. I love you. I’m in love with you. It’s real and it’s forever as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Oh, Jace…” Her eyes, unabashedly tear-wet now, gleamed like dark jewels.

  He dared to reach out to touch her cheek, her shining hair. And he whispered, prayerfully, “Damn if I don’t finally get what all the shouting’s about when it comes to love and marriage and a lifetime together. It’s you, Joss. You’ve shown me that. You’ve shown me love. I want to marry you. More than anything. I want to be with you for the rest of my life. And I have to tell you…”

  “Yes? What? Anything, you know that.”

  “What I don’t want is to marry you in that dress you bought to marry Kenny Donovan in—no matter how drop-dead gorgeous you look in the damn thing.”

  She laughed then, that low, rich, husky laugh that belonged only to her. “Okay.” She offered her hand. “Yes, I’ll marry you. And I promise I won’t wear this dress when I do it.”

  He skipped the handshake and reached for her, gently sliding his fingers around the back of her neck, under the splendid, rich fall of her cinnamon-shot hair. And he kissed her. “I love you, Joss.”

  “And I love you. So much. I’m so glad…that you can finally say it.”

  He cradled the side of her face, oblivious to the bartender who watched them, wearing a dazed sort of smile, from down at the other end of the bar. “I’m sorry,” Jace whispered. “So sorry I was such an idiot. So sorry I hurt you….”

  “It’s okay now.”

  “I’ll say it again. I love you. I’ll say it a hundred times a day.”

  She laughed then. “Oh, I’m so glad. I was a little worried.”

  “I know you were.”

  “But I’m not anymore. You have put my fears to rest, Jason Traub. You have given me everything—more that I ever dreamed of. And you know what? I love you with all my heart and it means so much to me to be able to tell you so at last without freaking you out. To know that you love me, too.” She raised her glass again. “To love.”

  He touched his glass to hers. “And forever.”

  “To the Hitching Post. And the house and the horses and the dog.”

  “And the rowdy kids.”

  “And to us, Jace.”

  “Yes, Joss. To us, most of all.”

  * * *

  Not much later, they joined the party that was supposed to have been their reception. They danced every dance, enjoyed the great food Shane Roark had prepared for them, fed each other big, delicious chunks of Lizzie’s fabulous cake.

  It was a beautiful evening. One of the best.

  And after all the guests went home, they took the elevator upstairs to the Honeymoon Suite, theirs for that special nonwedding night, courtesy of Thunder Canyon Resort.

  They made love. It was amazing.

  Better than ever. So good that when they were finished, they made love again. And again after that.

  The next morning at a little before seven, Joss woke alone in the big pillow-top bed.

  She sat up. “Jace?”

  And then she saw him—in the chair by the bed, dressed in a beautiful lightweight suit, holding a handful of wildflowers. He held them out to her. “Marry me, Jocelyn Marie. Marry me today.”

  She didn’t hesitate. She got up, put on a pretty summer dress, took the flowers from him and off they went, stopping only to collect his parents from their suite and her mother from the apartment over the Mountain Bluebell Bakery.

  At the Community Church, the nice minister was willing to be persuaded to perform the wedding ceremony that hadn’t happened the day before. And there in the pretty white chapel on that sunny Sunday morning well before the regular service, Joss and Jace said their vows.

  And when the pastor announced, “You may kiss the bride,” Jason Traub knew that he’d finally found what he’d been looking for. He took his bride in his arms and he kissed her.

  And when he lifted his head, he whispered, “I love you, Joss Traub. Forever.”

  “Forever,” she echoed.

  It was a great moment. The best in his life so far.

  For a while there he really had been the last single maverick, wondering where he’d missed out, envious of his brothers and his sister, who had found what they were looking for, had all gotten married and settled down.

  He’d felt left out of something important, and left behind as well. That was all changed now by the woman in his arms. He was part of something bigger now.

  The last single maverick was single no more.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt of Once Upon A Matchmaker by Marie Ferrarella!

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  Chapter One

  So this was what all the secrecy, giggling and whispers had been about.

  Micah Muldare sat on the sofa, looking at the gift his sons had quite literally surprised him with. A gift he wasn’t expecting, commemorating a day that he’d never thought applied to him. He’d just unwrapped the gift and it was now sitting on the coffee table, a source of mystification, at least for him.

  His boys, four-year-old Greg and five-year-old Gary, sat—or more accurately perched—on either side of him like energized bookends, unable to remain still for more than several seconds at a time. Blond, blue-eyed and small boned, his sons looked like little carbon copies of each other.

  They looked like Ella.

  Micah shut the thought away. It had been two years, but his heart still wasn’t ready for that kind of comparison.

  Maybe someday, just not yet.

  “Do you like it, Daddy?” Gary, the more animated of the two, asked eagerly. The boy was fairly beami
ng as he put the question to him. His bright blue eyes took in every tiny movement.

  Micah eyed at the mug on the coffee table. “I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting anything like this,” Micah told his son. “Actually, I wasn’t expecting anything at all today.”

  It was Mother’s Day. Granted he’d been doing double duty for the past two years, being both mother and father to his two sons, but he hadn’t expected any sort of acknowledgment from the boys on Mother’s Day. On Father’s Day, yes, but definitely not on this holiday.

  The mug had been wrapped in what seemed like an entire roll of wrapping paper. Gary had proclaimed proudly that he had done most of the wrapping.

  “But I put the tape on,” Greg was quick to tell him.

  Micah praised their teamwork.

  The mug had World’s Greatest Mom written on it in pink-and-yellow ceramic flowers. Looking at it now, Micah could only grin and shake his head. Well, at least their hearts were in the right place.

  “Um, I think you guys are a little confused about the concept,” he confided.

  Gary’s face scrunched up in apparent confusion. “What’s a con-cept?”

  “It’s an idea, a way of—”

  Micah abruptly stopped himself. As a reliability engineer who worked in the top secret missile defense systems department of Donovan Defense, a large national company, he had a tendency to get rather involved in his explanations. Given his sons’ tender ages, he decided that a brief and simple explanation was the best way to go.

  So he tried again. “It’s a way of understanding something. The point is, I’m very touched, guys, but you do understand that I’m not your mom, right? I’m your dad.” He looked from Gary to Greg to see if they had any lingering questions or doubts.

  “We know that,” Gary told him as if he thought it was silly to ever confuse the two roles. “But sometimes you do mom things,” he reminded his father.

  “Yeah, like make cookies when I’m sick,” Greg piped up.

  Which was more often than he was happy about, Micah couldn’t help thinking. Greg, smaller for his age than even Gary, was his little survivor. Born prematurely, his younger son had had a number of complicating conditions that had him in and out of hospitals until he was almost two years old.