by Seton, Cora
“I’m not going anywhere,” he assured her and kissed her again. “I’ll always be right here.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
* * *
“This is more like it,” Heloise said when she cornered Austin just before the ceremony. “A proper wedding in front of all your kin.”
“I have to hand it to you, Heloise. You were right.” Austin was glad he and Ella were doing their wedding over again with all the bells and whistles. Ella deserved her day in the sun, and he figured he deserved a real wedding night—one he could enjoy without guilt.
“I’m always right.” Heloise looked around. “Now what about that twin of yours? I notice he didn’t bring a date.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll get there. So will Colt. You don’t think we’ll let the Hall get away from us again, do you?”
“Your cousin Darren sure hopes you will. I heard he’s having money trouble.”
Austin filed that information away for another day. Today was for celebrating. “Let me help you to your seat. The ceremony is about to begin.”
Ten minutes later, Austin stood at the end of a rose petal-strewn aisle in the backyard of Crescent Hall. A white awning shielded him from the worst of the early afternoon sunshine. Richard stood next to him as his best man and behind him Edgars, Zane and Mason stood up with him, too. Austin appreciated their support. Since he and Mason were still in the reserves, they were able to wear their uniforms. Zane, as an active serviceman, wore his as well and so did Edgars—accorded that honor since he was wounded in the line of duty. Austin felt that they acquitted themselves well, and from Richard’s sidelong looks at their accumulated stripes and medals, he was suitably impressed.
As the recorded music struck up and Ella began her approach down the aisle, however, Austin had other things on his mind. Like how much he loved her and how much he looked forward to being alone with her again. She had changed his life, helped him move forward and given him a vision of the future that filled him with hope. One day his brothers—all of them—would return home and together they’d create a paradise here at Crescent Hall. Even the news that Richard wasn’t his son couldn’t take away the rightness of that.
“She’s a beauty,” Edgars leaned past Richard to say quietly. “You’ll have to work hard to deserve her.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes.”
On the other side of Chase, Mason leaned forward. “Dad would be proud of you today.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m proud of you, too,” Richard said and Austin chuckled. For the first time in much too long he could laugh without pain cutting it off. He would always mourn Donovan’s passing, but he no longer blamed himself for it. He’d let that burden go, and he felt lighter for it. Freer. Able to move on.
As Ella moved down the aisle on the arm of her father, she kept her gaze on Austin and her eyes shone with love for him. He was aware it was a miracle that they’d found each other, that they’d stuck with each other and that they’d spend the rest of their lives with each other. Under this wide blue sky, surrounded by friends and family, on the ranch that he’d always loved, he didn’t think life could get any better.
Ella joined him at the altar and they held hands as they listened to Reverend Halpern read the traditional wedding vows again. This time Austin meant what he said when he repeated the words that joined them together. This time he would keep his promises.
When Halpern pronounced them man and wife and Austin bent down to kiss her, he couldn’t help himself. He wrapped his arms around her, lifted her nearly off her feet and kissed her until he could hardly breathe. The small crowd whooped and cheered and when he looked up, Regan, Stella and Maya, Ella’s bridesmaids, were all crying happy tears.
A sweep of his gaze over the gathering told him everything he needed to know. He was loved. He was safe.
He was home.
* * *
Hours later, when the celebration was over and the guests had all gone home, Ella climbed into her side of the bed, tired but supremely happy. She loved the new ring that encircled her finger—the ring Austin had picked out just for her. She loved the feeling of the new life growing within her.
She loved her new husband most of all. She finally felt married now, for real and always. She never meant to leave Crescent Hall—not for long, anyways.
“We made it. We’re actually married.”
Austin climbed under the covers on the same side of the bed, and shoved her over to the other side. “We’ve been married.”
“Now we’re more married.”
“Oh, yeah?” He propped himself up on one elbow. “Does that mean I can make love to you more often?”
“I’m not sure that’s possible.”
“Oh, it’s possible. Come here, let me show you.”
Ella gladly wriggled into his arms. “I’ll need a thorough demonstration.”
“One thorough demonstration, coming right up.”
The End
The Heroes of Chance Creek series continues with The Marine’s E-Mail Order Bride.
Read on for an excerpt of Volume 1 of The Cowboys of Chance Creek series – The Cowboy’s E-Mail Order Bride. Please note that this novel is not part of the Heroes of Chance Creek series; it is the first in the earlier series, The Cowboys of Chance Creek.
Visit Cora Seton’s website and sign up for her Newsletter here. Find her on Facebook here.
Other Titles by Cora Seton:
The Heroes of Chance Creek:
The Navy SEAL’s E-mail Order Bride (Volume 1)
The Marine’s E-Mail Order Bride (Volume 3)
The Airman’s E-Mail Order Bride (Volume 4)
The Cowboys of Chance Creek:
The Cowboy’s E-mail Order Bride (Volume 1)
The Cowboy Wins a Bride (Volume 2)
The Cowboy Imports a Bride (Volume 3)
The Cowgirl Ropes a Billionaire (Volume 4)
The Sheriff Catches a Bride (Volume 5)
The Cowboy Lassos a Bride (Volume 6)
The Cowboy Rescues a Bride (Volume 7)
The Cowboy Earns a Bride (Volume 8)
‡
Chapter One
“You did what?” Ethan Cruz turned his back on the slate and glass entrance to Chance Creek, Montana’s Regional Airport, and jiggled the door handle of Rob Matheson’s battered red Chevy truck. Locked. It figured—Rob had to know he’d want to turn tail and head back to town the minute he found out what his friends had done. “Open the damned door, Rob.”
“Not a chance. You’ve got to come in—we’re picking up your bride.”
“I don’t have a bride and no one getting off that plane concerns me. You’ve had your fun, now open up the door or I’m grabbing a taxi.” He faced his friends. Rob, who’d lived on the ranch next door to his their entire lives. Cab Johnson, county sheriff, who was far too level-headed to be part of this mess. And Jamie Lassiter, the best horse trainer west of the Mississippi as long as you could pry him away from the ladies. The four of them had gone to school together, played football together, and spent more Saturday nights at the bar than he could count. How many times had he gotten them out of trouble, drove them home when they’d had one beer to many, listened to them bellyache about their girlfriends or lack thereof when all he really wanted to do was knock back a cold one and play a game of pool? What the hell had he ever done to deserve this?
Unfortunately, he knew exactly what he’d done. He’d played a spectacularly brilliant prank a month or so ago on Rob—a prank that still had the town buzzing—and Rob concocted this nightmare as payback. Rob got him drunk one night and egged him on about his ex-fiancee until he spilled his guts about how much it still bothered him that Lacey Taylor had given him the boot in favor of that rich sonofabitch Carl Whitfield. The name made him want to spit. Dressed like a cowboy when everyone knew he couldn’t ride to save his life.
Lacey bailed on him just as life had delivered a walloping one-two punch. First
his parents died in a car accident. Then he discovered the ranch was mortgaged to the hilt. As soon as Lacey learned there would be some hard times ahead, she took off like a runaway horse. Didn’t even have the decency to break up with him face to face. Before he knew it Carl was flying Lacey all over creation in his private plane. Las Vegas. San Francisco. Houston. He never had a chance to get her back.
He should have kept his thoughts bottled up where they belonged—would have kept them bottled up if Rob hadn’t kept putting those shots into his hand—but no, after he got done swearing and railing at Lacey’s bad taste in men, he apparently decided to lecture his friends on the merits of a real woman. The kind of woman a cowboy should marry.
And Rob—good ol’ Rob—captured the whole thing with his cell phone.
When he showed it to him the following day, Ethan made short work of the asinine gadget, but it was too late. Rob had already emailed the video to Cab and Jamie, and the three of them spent the next several days making his life damn miserable over it.
If only they’d left it there.
The other two would have, but Rob was still sore about that old practical joke, so he took things even further. He decided there must be a woman out there somewhere who met all of the requirements Ethan expounded on during his drunken rant. To find her, he did what any rational man would do. He edited Ethan’s rant into a video advertisement for a damned mail order bride.
And posted it on YouTube.
Rob showed him the video on the ride over to the airport. There he was for all the world to see, sounding like a jack-ass—hell, looking like one, too. Rob’s fancy editing made his rant sound like a proposition. “What I want,” he heard himself say, “is a traditional bride. A bride for a cowboy. 18—25 years old, willing to work hard, beautiful, quiet, sweet, good cook, ready for children. I’m willing to give her a trial. One month’ll tell me all I need to know.” Then the image cut out to a screen full of text, telling women how to submit their video applications.
Unbelievable. This was low—real low—even for Rob.
Ready for children?
“You all are cracked in the head. I’m not going in there.”
“Come on, Ethan,” Cab said. The big man stood with his legs spread, his arms folded over his barrel chest, ready to stop him if he tried to run. “The girl’s come all the way from New York. You’re not even going to say hello? What kind of a fiance are you?”
He clenched his fists. “No kind at all. And there isn’t any girl in there. You know it. I know it. So stop wasting my time. There isn’t any girl dumb enough to answer something like that!”
The other men exchanged a look.
“Actually,” Jamie said, leaning against the Chevy and rubbing the stubble on his chin with the back of his hand. “We got nearly 200 answers to that video. Took us hours to get through them all.” He grinned. “Who can resist a cowboy, right?”
As far as Ethan was concerned, plenty of women could. Lacey certainly had resisted him. Hence his bachelor status. “So you picked the ugliest, dumbest girl and tricked her into buying a plane ticket. Terrific.”
Rob looked pained. “No, we found one that’s both hot and smart. And we chipped in and bought the ticket—round trip, because we figured you wouldn’t know a good thing when it kicked you in the butt, so we’d have to send her back. Have a little faith in your friends. You think we’d steer you wrong?”
Hell, yes. Ethan took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. The guys wouldn’t admit they were joking until he’d gone into the airport and hung around the gate looking foolish for a suitable amount of time. And if they were stupid enough to actually fly a girl out here, he couldn’t trust them to put her back on a plane home. So now instead of finishing his chores before supper, he’d lose the rest of the afternoon sorting out this mess.
“Fine. Let’s get this over with,” he said, striding toward the front door. Inside, he didn’t bother to look at the television screen which showed incoming and outgoing flights. Chance Creek Regional had all of four gates. He’d just follow the hall as far as homeland security allowed him and wait until some lost soul deplaned.
“Look—it’s on time.” Rob grabbed his arm and tried to hurry him along. Ethan dug in the heels of his well worn boots and proceeded at his own pace.
Jamie pulled a cardboard sign out from under his jacket and flashed it at Ethan before holding it up above his head. It read, Autumn Leeds. Jamie shrugged at Ethan’s expression. “I know—the name’s brutal.”
“Want to see her?” Cab pulled out a gadget and handed it over. Ethan held it gingerly. The laptop he bought on the advice of his accountant still sat untouched in his tiny office back at the ranch. He hated these miniature things that ran on swoops and swipes and taps on buttons that weren’t really there. Cab reached over and pressed something and it came to life, showing a pretty young woman in a cotton dress in a kitchen preparing what appeared to be a pot roast.
“Hi, I’m Autumn,” she said, looking straight at him. “Autumn Leeds. As you can see, I love cooking…”
Rob whooped and pointed. “Look—there she is! I told you she’d come!”
Ethan raised his gaze from the gadget to see the woman herself walking toward them down the carpeted hall. Long black hair, startling blue eyes, porcelain-white skin, she was thin and haunted and luminous all at the same time. She, too, held a cell phone and seemed to be consulting it, her gaze glancing down then sweeping the crowd. As their eyes met, hers widened with recognition. He groaned inwardly when he realized this pretty woman had probably watched Rob’s stupid video multiple times. She might be looking at his picture now.
As the crowd of passengers and relatives split around their party, she walked straight up to them and held out her hand. “Ethan Cruz?” Her voice was low and husky, her fingers cool and her handshake firm. He found himself wanting to linger over it. Instead he nodded. “I’m Autumn Leeds. Your bride.”
Autumn had never been more terrified in her life. In her short career as a columnist for CityPretty Magazine, she’d interviewed models, society women, CEO’s and politicians, but all of them were urbanites, and she’d never had to leave New York to get the job done. As soon as her plane departed LaGuardia she knew she’d made a mistake. As the city skyline fell away and the countryside below her emptied into farmland, she clutched the arms of her seat as if she was heading for the moon rather than Montana. Now, hours later, she felt off-kilter and fuzzy, and the four men before her looked like extras in a Western flick. Large, muscled, rough men who all exuded a distinct odor of sweat she realized probably came from an honest afternoon’s work. Entirely out of her comfort zone, she wondered for the millionth time if she’d done the right thing. It’s the only way to get my contract renewed, she reminded herself. She had to write a story different from all the other articles in CityPretty. In these tough economic times, the magazine was downsizing—again. If she didn’t want to find herself out on the street, she had to produce—fast.
And what better story to write than the tale of a Montana cowboy using YouTube to search for an email-order bride?
Ethan Cruz looked back at her, seemingly at a loss for words. Well, that was to be expected with a cowboy, right? The ones in movies said about one word every ten minutes or so. That’s why his video said she needed to be quiet. Well, she could be quiet. She didn’t trust herself to speak, anyway.
She’d never been so near a cowboy before. Her best friend, Becka, helped shoot her video response, and they’d spent a hilarious day creating a pseudo-Autumn guaranteed to warm the cockles of a cowboy’s heart. Together, they’d decided to pitch her as desperate to escape the dirty city and unleash her inner farm wife on Ethan’s Montana ranch. They hinted she loved gardening, canning, and all the domestic arts. They played up both her toughness (she played first base in high school baseball) and her femininity (she loved quilting—what an outright lie). She had six costume changes in the three minute video.
Over her vehement protests, B
ecka forced her to end the video with a close-up of her face while she uttered the words, “I often fall asleep imagining the family I’ll someday have.” Autumn’s cheeks warmed as she recalled the depth of the deception. She wasn’t a country girl pining to be a wife; she was a career girl who didn’t intend to have kids for at least another decade. Right?
Of course.
Except somehow, when she watched the final video, the life the false Autumn said she wanted sounded far more compelling than the life the real Autumn lived. Especially the part about wanting a family.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want a career. She just wanted a different one—a different life. She hated how hectic and shallow everything seemed now. She remembered her childhood, back when she had two parents—a successful investment banker father and a stay-at-home mother who made the best cookies in New York City. Back then, her mom, Teresa, loved to take Autumn and her sister, Lily, to visit museums, see movies and plays, walk in Central Park and shop in the ethnic groceries that surrounded their home. On Sundays, they cooked fabulous feasts together and her mother’s laugh rang out loud and often. Friends and relatives stopped by to eat and talk, and Autumn played with the other children while the grownups clustered around the kitchen table. All that changed when she turned nine and her father left them for a travel agent. Her parents’ divorce was horrible. The fight wasn’t over custody; her father was all too eager to leave child-rearing to her mother while he toured Brazil with his new wife. The fight was over money—over the bulk of the savings her father had transferred to offshore accounts in the weeks before the breakup, and refused to return.
Broke, single and humiliated, her mother took up the threads of the life she’d put aside to marry and raise a family. A graduate of an elite liberal arts college, with several years of medical school already under her belt, she moved them into a tiny apartment on the edge of a barely-decent neighborhood and returned to her studies. Those were lean, lonely years when everyone had to pitch in. Autumn’s older sister watched over her after school, and Teresa expected them to take on any and all chores they could possibly handle. As Autumn grew, she took over the cooking and shopping and finally the family’s accounts. Teresa had no time for cultural excursions, let alone entertaining friends, but by the time Autumn was ready to go to college herself, she ran a successful OB-GYN practice that catered to wealthy women who’d left childbearing until the last possible moment, and she didn’t even have to take out a loan to fund her education.
