Big Sky Wedding

by Linda Lael Miller

  It was crazy. He was crazy.

  When Cleo entered the kitchen, soon after daybreak, wearing a pair of fluffy slippers and a bright purple chenille bathrobe with a few full tours of duty behind it already, given the signs of wear, she stopped at the sight of Zane, drew in an audible breath and rounded her big eyes so the whites seemed much more prominent than usual.

  “What’s happened?” she asked, small-voiced and clearly expecting to be told that someone near and dear had died, or at least received a sobering diagnosis.

  Zane sighed and his shoulders drooped without conscious instructions from his brain; he’d never meant to worry the poor woman. He hadn’t even expected to encounter her at this ungodly hour, for that matter.

  “There’s no tragedy unfolding,” he said hoarsely. Not for anybody but me, anyway. “This is something personal.”

  Cleo, visibly relieved, steamrolled over to the coffeemaker, took a mug from the lineup on the counter beside it and poured herself a stiff dose of caffeine—the dregs of the last batch, since Zane had been swilling the stuff for hours.

  While her cup steamed on the counter, she hastily built another pot of coffee, and when she turned toward him again, she looked like her normal, exasperated-with-it-all self.

  “You look awful,” she told him, before taking a sip from her mug, making a horrified face and sluicing the contents into the sink. Since the new batch was just beginning to brew, she padded over to the card table and sank into one of the chairs to wait for it, simultaneously directing Zane to take the other one.

  Still only two chairs, Zane thought, tracking no better than he had at any point since the telephone conversation with Brylee. If he didn’t invest in some new furniture, and soon, they’d have to start eating meals in rotating shifts.

  To say he sat down would have been an embellishment; it was more like his knees gave out and the chair seat happened to be situated in just the right place to break his fall.

  Cleo regarded him in shrewd silence for some time, then stealth-bombed him with, “Is this about Brylee Parrish?”

  Zane’s mouth dropped open, and he’d have sworn he heard the hinges creak when he closed it again. He’d groused to her about Landry, and his dad, and even his agent, but said very little about Brylee’s effect on him.

  Cleo gave a rich, throaty laugh, a throwback to her torch-singer days, most likely, and shook her head. “You thought it was some big secret?” she asked. Then she waved a hand in amused dismissal. “Well, come on up to speed, Mr. Boss Man, because the whole county knows you fell for Brylee the first time you saw her. We ladies of a certain age discussed it at the barbecue and between every number called at bingo.”

  Zane didn’t try to deny anything—obviously, that would have been pointless. Anyhow, he was too busy scrambling to get even a slippery grip on how such an event as falling in love could have been so evident to everybody but him.

  And maybe to Brylee.

  He began to feel just a little bit better, but it must not have shown on the outside.

  Cleo assessed him with a sweep of her eyes. He saw fondness in her gaze, along with sympathy and no small amount of wisdom. “Well, now,” she said, “I reckon most people would see something like this as a good thing. So why do you look as though your very best hopes and dreams are about to be repossessed, hooked up to a tow truck and hauled away, like some ole car you can’t meet the payments on?”

  The image she’d painted, colorful as her clothes and down-to-earth as her converted-cooler suitcase, forced a chuckle out of Zane, but it sounded like sandpaper gnawing at rusted iron. “I look that bad?” he countered, stalling.

  “Worse,” Cleo said. She folded her bathrobed arms in front of her and leaned on them, bent slightly forward, like a senator trying to look stern during a complicated but boring investigation into some questionable industry.

  Except, of course, that Cleo really cared what he’d say next. “You gonna sidestep this all day,” she challenged, “or tell me what’s going on? I might be able to help, you know.”

  Zane sighed. Spread his hands briefly, maybe in a gesture of baffled helplessness, maybe just to buy another few seconds. “Brylee’s scared,” he finally replied, keeping his voice low because this was definitely not a subject he wanted to let Landry and/or Nash in on. “She didn’t say as much, but I’m thinking she’s getting ready to run, get as far away from Parable County—and me—as possible.”

  “Well,” Cleo said, drawing out the word as she mused for a while, “that wouldn’t be any kind of solution, of course—running away, I mean—but I can understand her concern. She’s been through the romantic wringer, that girl, and it’s natural that she’d be a mite on the skittish side.”

  “I agree,” Zane said. “I’m willing to give Brylee all the space she needs, no problem. But at the same time, I’m afraid I’m going to lose her for good.” He sighed, shoved a hand through his already-mussed hair. He was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and his whole face itched because he hadn’t shaved and the stubble crop was coming in. Little wonder Cleo thought he looked like a long stretch of rutted road with nothing good at the end of it—he sure as hell felt like one. “Maybe I ought to take Nash, head for L.A., tie up some loose ends, like selling the condo and sorting out my stuff. Brylee’s lived around here her whole life—she has family and friends and a thriving business to think about, while I’m the new guy—”

  Cleo rolled her eyes, but her smile was tender. “Hold it,” she said. “Before you go gallivanting off to California, or Brylee runs off to wherever, why don’t you talk to the woman? You know, hammer out some kind of a plan, agree on a course of action you can both live with.”

  Zane laughed outright this time. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he teased.

  “Because you’ve been too busy chasing your tail, that’s why,” Cleo responded, with righteous certainty. The coffeemaker had chortled through its cycle by then, and she got up to pour some for herself. She offered a refill to Zane by raising the carafe, and then set it down again when he shook his head.

  Privately, Zane reflected that it hadn’t been his own tail he’d been chasing, but Brylee’s. Well, last night he’d caught her. And he’d be a damn fool if he let her go, because it might be ten lifetimes before he met another woman like her. It might be never.

  Slapping both palms down onto the surface of the card table in resolution, he scraped back his chair, stood up and headed out of the kitchen and back to his room, peeling off clothes as soon as he’d crossed the threshold, finally jarring Slim out of his deep slumber on the rug.

  Never mind the dog. Right now, Zane needed a shower. He needed a shave. He needed to shape the hell up and tackle this thing like a man.

  He stepped into a hot shower, soaped up, rinsed, remembered he had a horse to feed and shifted down a few gears. He’d take his time, wait for the rest of the world to open for business—and then he’d home in on Brylee Parrish like a heat-seeking missile.

  * * *

  THE HABIT OF going to work was so ingrained in Brylee that staying home to listen to sad music and use up facial tissue didn’t even occur to her, sorrowful as she felt.

  She dressed in jeans and a blue cotton shirt, brushed her hair and caught it up in a clip, forced down half a serving of fat-free yogurt standing in front of the fridge with the door hanging open, while Snidely gobbled kibble. Soon after she’d given up on breakfast, she brushed her teeth again and set out for Décor Galore.

  Snidely went with her, like always, but her loyal sidekick kept looking over at her from the passenger seat, during the brief drive, as if expecting her to do something wholly un-Brylee-like. Again.

  She smiled and reached over to pat the dog’s ruff. “What do you say we put Amy in charge of the company, spend some of that money we’ve piled up on an RV and hit the trail for a year or two, old buddy? See where the road takes us?”

  Snidely gave a soft whimper at the prospect. For a dog, he could be a real stick in the mud.
<
br />   Brylee felt her shoulders droop as her own enthusiasm ebbed. Leaving her business in Amy’s care wasn’t a problem, because she’d already scaled all those professional mountains, met every career goal, and now she desperately needed a change—a big one—but she wouldn’t just be leaving Décor Galore, Zane Sutton and the heart-threat he represented if she took off.

  She’d be leaving Walker and Casey, too. Shane and Clare and Preston and, in essence, the new niece or nephew due in six months or so.

  She’d be leaving Three Trees, and Parable County, and her church, which, admittedly, she’d been attending only intermittently for the past couple of years. The people who made up the congregation mattered, though, even if some of them did still have their noses out of joint because she’d caved and agreed to hold her and Hutch’s wedding in his hometown instead of her own.

  She’d be leaving good friends, and the annual rodeo, flaking out on her promise to Casey that she’d serve on the panel charged with the responsibility of picking a queen to reign over that year’s festivities.

  She’d be leaving Timber Creek Ranch and her horse, Toby, and alternate Friday nights at the Boot Scoot Tavern, with Amy and the others in their close-knit group.

  By the time she pulled into her parking space next to the warehouse, she was downright disenchanted with the whole idea of a lengthy road trip. Besides, she knew what Walker would say, what Casey would say, what everybody who mattered to her would say—that she was taking the coward’s way out. She’d been burned by love once, yes, and badly. But did that mean she should let plain old, garden-variety fear dictate the course of her life?

  No.

  Still, what were the alternatives?

  She sighed heavily, blinked back tears of frustration—and, yes, bitter sorrow—shut off the SUV and reached into the back for her purse.

  She and Snidely got out of the rig and made their way to the side door, as usual, the one that opened onto the warehouse, near her office. The forklifts were running, transferring boxed merchandise from here to there. Amy was spouting orders like an army drill sergeant.

  With a wan smile, Brylee ducked into her office, with Snidely, and pulled the shades on the window overlooking the main part of the warehouse, a tacit don’t-bother-me gesture she rarely used. One of her most fundamental policies was, after all, accessibility to her people.

  Methodical as a robot programmed to represent her normal self, Brylee put away her purse, made sure Snidely’s water bowl was full and sat down decisively in front of her computer monitor.

  Half an hour later, when she was mercifully embroiled in the accounting program that had been giving her fits on Friday, a knock sounded at her office door, vigorous enough to make the window blinds rattle and cause Snidely, heretofore sleeping near her feet, to lift his head and prick his ears forward.

  “Go away, Amy,” Brylee called, in a pleasant but firm tone. “I’m busy.”

  The door opened. And Zane Sutton stood in the gap, looking like three different kinds of bad news.

  The echoes of last night’s stellar sex marathon sparked like tiny bonfires all over Brylee’s body. She opened her mouth, closed it again.

  Zane stepped inside and shut the door behind him with slightly more force than necessary. “Thanks,” he said acidly, “I think I will come in. Nice of you to ask.”

  Brylee’s face flamed, and her throat went so tight that it hurt to swallow. Damn, but the man was hot, even in old jeans, a plain cotton shirt and barn boots.

  Snidely, no longer alarmed for whatever strange reason, lowered his muzzle to his outstretched forelegs and let his eyes roll shut again.

  Zane, meanwhile, stormed over to Brylee’s desk, slapped both hands down hard on the surface and leaned in until their noses were nearly touching.

  “What—” she managed to croak, but that was it. For the moment at least, her entire vocabulary seemed to consist of one word.

  A muscle bunched in Zane’s jaw, and his eyes blazed with blue heat. “I love you,” he said.

  Brylee stared at him, blinked once or twice, but since most of the English language remained just out of her reach, she said nothing. Her mind, though, was in overdrive.

  Zane Sutton loved her? Yikes. Did she love him back? Yes, her soul cried out, though her tongue was still in dry dock.

  “Listen up,” he went on, calmer now, but his tone as matter-of-factly blunt as ever. “This is how it’s going to be. We’re giving this relationship six months. We’ll ride horseback, go out to dinner, take in a movie once in a while—hell, we can even play miniature golf if you take the notion—but I’m not walking away from whatever’s happening here, and, by God, Brylee, neither are you.”

  She finally found her voice, though it was little more than a squeak. “Did you just say you love me?”

  His chiseled features softened almost imperceptibly, but Zane still meant business, that was just as clear. “That’s what I said,” he practically growled. He was still braced against her desk, his face was still a fraction of an inch, if that, away from her own. “Tell me you don’t feel the same way, Brylee, that we don’t have something special happening here, and I’ll walk out of here and never bother you again. But that’s the only thing that will do the trick.”

  Brylee stumbled over options for a moment. She couldn’t tell Zane she didn’t love him—because she did. She knew that, knew it with everything she was and everything she had.

  This was, just as he’d said, special. As in, probably never-again special.

  “I love you, Zane Sutton,” she said. “I wish I didn’t, because that would be safer and simpler, but I do.”

  Zane grinned then, and relief glimmered in his eyes now. “You agree to the plan, then?” he asked, after a few moments, during which the earth seemed to alter its orbit around the sun, at least for her. “Six months of getting to know each other, a normal courtship?”

  Brylee swallowed, blinked back another spate of tears, happy ones this time. She nodded, managed a misty smile. “And I won’t even insist on a round of miniature golf,” she offered.

  He threw back his head and laughed at that, and the sound was filled with joy.

  “You could kiss me now,” Brylee suggested.

  Much to her surprise, Zane straightened his back then, eyed her solemnly and shook his head no.

  “That might lead to sex,” he explained gravely, and in his own sweet time.

  “Well, not instantly,” Brylee responded, in full blush, at last trusting her legs to hold her up and getting to her feet. “Not here in the office, I mean...”

  When she stood facing him, a mischievous grin curling her lips at the corners, Zane took her shoulders gently but firmly into his hands.

  “No sex,” he repeated.

  “Are you kidding?” Brylee asked, once she’d caught her breath. “Last night was—”

  “Last night was all the proof either of us should need that we’re good together in bed,” he interrupted, serious as St. Peter guarding the pearly gates, keeping the would-be crashers at bay.

  “But...this is—”

  “But nothing, Brylee,” Zane said. “Sex complicates things, muddies the waters. This is the most important thing that’s ever happened to me, and I want to get it right.”

  Brylee’s eyes widened. Another shift altered the terrain of her heart, which was still raw from the last upheaval, swapping deserts for oceans and stony canyons for green meadows.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay. But it just so happens that I have a stipulation to make myself.”

  His grin slanted, and love danced in his eyes. “Shoot,” he said, and waited to hear her terms.

  She slipped both arms around his neck. “We’re not sealing this deal with a handshake, mister,” she informed him. Then, her lips a breath from his, she whispered a command. “Kiss me, cowboy. Right here and right now.”

  EPILOGUE

  Six months later

  THREE TREES FIRST PRESBYTERIAN church was packed with wedding guests th
at mid-December evening, as fat flakes of crystalline snow drifted lazily from a twilight sky.

  Candles flickered, casting spells all their own, and the bridesmaids—Amy, a Madonna-pregnant Casey and Clare—wore red velvet gowns, floor-length and trimmed in white fur, with hats to match. In lieu of flowers, they carried muffs embellished with sprigs of holly, and the giant evergreen in the entryway behind Brylee and Walker perfumed the air and splashed white fairy lights over the bride’s veil and white velvet gown.

  Up front, with the minister and Nash and Landry, Zane looked downright elegant in his perfectly fitted tuxedo. His gaze, along with that of everyone else in the sizable church sanctuary, was riveted on Brylee, her face covered by a billowing, rhinestone-studded veil, her arm linked with Walker’s.

  Brylee’s heart tripped into a faster beat, and happiness brimmed to overflowing within her, but she was only human, and a little trepidation, especially considering her last wedding, seemed natural.

  The first chord of the march sounded, ringing through the familiar church.

  Casey looked back, winked at Brylee and started, with remarkable grace for someone due to give birth in approximately fifteen minutes, toward the altar.

  Amy followed, beaming with delight, and not just because Brylee was finally getting married for real. Amy had just been made acting CEO of Décor Galore, and she and Bobby were in counseling, too, with every hope of working their way back to each other.

  Clare, the last to make the long, measured walk, took a moment to turn around, hug her aunt hard and whisper, “This is it, Brylee. Be happy.” With that, she, too, headed up the rose-petal-scattered aisle.

  Walker looked down at Brylee, smiled and squeezed her arm. “Ready?” he asked.

  Brylee drew a very deep breath, let it out slowly. “Ready,” she replied.

  Then it was zero hour. The moment had come.

  Brylee closed her eyes briefly, offered up a silent and very fervent prayer and allowed Walker to guide her, since she was in a daze, seeing nothing but the gossamer netting of her veil and Zane, standing tall at the front of the church, waiting for her, watching her with a love she knew to be solid, true and forever.