“I don’t know why it has to be about grabbing credit. It shouldn’t be if you’re doing it for the right reasons.”
Bob laughed and licked his fingers. “Okay. That right there—that naïveté is part of your charm. No wonder the ladies love you.”
There was only one lady in the world whose love mattered and she had chosen to move to London. It should have been enough to stick a fork in their relationship, but Jude still wasn’t done. He still couldn’t give up on her, and if that meant letting her go to London to work for Tori, then so be it. It would give him a chance to get his own ducks in order, and then he might even go over there and get her. Or at least let her know that he’d be there when she was ready.
“So anyway, Copenhagen said they might be willing to discuss possible sponsorship of that riding school of yours if you win the world championship next year. But there are some pretty strict stipulations and contingencies. You know how Copenhagen is. They are not going to give away anything unless it benefits Copenhagen. But the specifics will be another conversation for another day and we will talk about that when the time comes. But it’s something. Another prize for you to keep your eye on this year. See, this is when being a champ really pays off. We can ask for the good stuff. But first things first. I have the contract here.”
Bob picked up a manila folder that was lying next to him on the booth bench and slid it across the table toward Jude. “Go ahead and sign it while you’re here. Once things get rocking and rolling at the Expo, we might not get to take care of business.” Bob took a ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket and tossed it onto the table.
Jude opened the folder and gazed at the familiar Copenhagen logo emblazoned on the top of the contract. He started to read through all the legalese mumbo jumbo. When he got to the bottom of the first page, he realized he hadn’t retained a single word of what he had just read. His attention kept being diverted by the voice in his head that said, What are you doing, man? Your body hurts. Your heart’s not in this nearly as much as it was when you won the championship the first time around. You’re not hungry enough to pull it off again.
The thing that was the most distracting was when he realized this wasn’t just negative self talk—his heart really wasn’t in it. He didn’t even want to be here—signing his life away, maybe even literally—to a company that really didn’t care if he lived or died or ended up in some sort of lame limbo in between. He was only important to them as long as he was making them money. He wasn’t feeling sorry for himself. He knew that was the honest-to-God truth. He had been a commodity when he was winning and a liability when he’d stopped. Maybe they were crazy to take a chance on him again, at his age and the physical condition he was in.
Suddenly being back in Celebration working for Ethan at the Triple C seemed like the only viable plan.
Even if Juliette was in London he still wanted to be in Celebration. Of course, it would’ve been better if she were there, but he loved her enough to know he had to let her come to that conclusion on her own, to choose Celebration in a similar way that he had. He’d come all the way to Vegas to realize there was no place like home.
He closed the folder and slid it back across the table toward Bob.
“You didn’t sign it.” Bob tried to push it back, but Jude put his hand on the folder.
“I’m not signing it. I’m not going to ride again. I will fulfill my last contractual obligation to Copenhagen this weekend at the expo—Curtis said I could sign autographs if I didn’t feel like riding. I don’t feel like riding. I’m done. Consider me retired.”
It was the most freeing feeling in the world to say those three words and mean them. No hesitation. He knew what he wanted.
He may have fallen off the circuit this year and wasn’t able to defend his title, but at least he’d gone down as the world champion. No matter what, the title was his. It was something no one could take away from him. Not Copenhagen. And certainly not his dad.
His father had told him he’d never accomplish anything remotely like that, but he’d done it, sometimes despite himself.
He may not be the current champion, but he would always be a champion.
It was time to take what he had learned and put it to good use. The first thing to do was to stop living in the past.
* * *
There was a great turnout for the autographing. It was vindicating to know that fans would still line up around the building for him to sign their On-Off Shirts, posters and programs.
Or at least it was fun for the first hour or so. Then it got a little tedious. It was the same drill: “Hey, who would you like me to sign this to?” Occasionally, he would have to ask the person to spell the name. Because if a person waited in line that long to see him, the least he could do was make sure he spelled their name right.
There was still a pretty good line with only about five minutes left in his appearance obligation, so his handlers were moving people through at a pretty good clip. Toward the end, he barely had a chance to look up at a person before the next one was hustled through and he was asking the same question all over again.
This time, the person in front of him laid down a simple piece of paper with a message on it: “Jude, will you marry me?”
He got those occasionally, but this was the first one today. He smiled, but he didn’t look up.
“Hey, who would you like me to sign this to?”
“Juliette, please. That’s with two Ts and an E on the end.”
In the split second between her speaking and him looking up to see if his ears were playing tricks on him, the sound of her voice made every cell in his body stand at attention.
He looked up to find Juliette—his Juliette—standing in front of him. The message on the note that she had handed him registered. He glanced back down to make sure he had read it correctly. He had. He looked back up at her to gauge her reaction.
She was smiling at him. “Well? What’s it going to be, cowboy? Are you going to disappoint me after I’ve come all this way? I’ve always wanted a Vegas wedding.”
“Are you serious?” he asked. “Are you proposing to me?”
She shrugged. “And what would you say if I was?”
“I’d say, I’m sorry folks,” he called to the remaining people in line. “I appreciate you waiting for me, but I’m going to have to leave now. This beautiful lady right here just asked me to marry her and I said yes. I let her get away once, and I try to never make the same mistake twice. So if you’ll excuse me, I am going to get married.”
The crowd erupted into cheers and whistles as Jude hopped over the table and pulled Juliette into his arms and kissed his bride-to-be.
* * *
Two hours later, they were standing at the altar in the Little Elvis Wedding Chapel off Las Vegas Boulevard. “Elvis,” who was officiating their wedding, was just finishing up a tender, if not slightly off-key, version of “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
It couldn’t have been more perfect if the real Elvis himself had sang it for them—on pitch.
Juliette was wearing a borrowed veil and the dress that she’d worn on the plane when she’d arrived. The veil was her “something borrowed.” The bouquet with blue silk flowers, which was part of the wedding package, was her “something blue.” The “something new” was her gold wedding band that they’d picked up at a jewelry store on the way to the chapel. But her “something old” had to be her favorite part of this bridal tradition. The “something old” was their lo
ve. It had lasted decades and stood the test of time to finally see them uncross their stars and vow to spend the rest of their lives together.
After Elvis pronounced them husband and wife, they made their way down the aisle and through the chapel exit to a rousing rendition of “Burning Love.”
With Juliette’s suitcase in tow they went back to Jude’s hotel. She’d come straight to him from the airport and was still carting around her luggage.
Drunk on the rush of being newly married, they’d gone straight to the room and consummated their brand-new marriage. Afterward, as they lay there blissfully exhausted, tangled up in each other, Jude said, “So how are we going to do this long-distance thing? We can make it work. The only thing that matters is that you’re happy.”
She nuzzled his neck and settled deeper into the crook of his shoulder. “That’s so sweet of you. I feel like the luckiest woman in the world. There’s no doubt that we’ll make this work. I guess the first thing we need to figure out is the schedule of where you’ll be each week.”
“That’s easy. I’ll be in Celebration, when I’m not in London. I can go back and forth as much as possible. Maybe we can switch off every other weekend.”
“Wait, what?” Juliette said. “I’m not going to London. I was talking about your competition schedule.”
“You’re not going to London?” He pulled away and rose up on one elbow so he could look at her.
Juliette smiled up at him sheepishly. “I’m not. When it came time to board my flight, I couldn’t make myself get on the plane. I called Tori and told her I couldn’t come.” Jude’s mouth fell open.
“So you turned down the job?”
“No. I would’ve, but I didn’t have to. Tori said if I was having anxiety about moving, I was welcome to telecommute and come to London for the occasional office visit. She admitted she’d been surprised that I was willing to move and leave you behind.”
Jude made a stabbing motion at his heart.
“How was it that everyone but us seemed to recognize that we really are meant to be? They all saw it long before you and I finally let ourselves believe it.”
“Yeah, we finally got a clue like, what, five hours ago?” he joked.
“I told Tori that initially I thought moving would be good for me since you’ll be on the road—”
“I’m not going on the road,” Jude said.
Juliette wasn’t sure if she was understanding him correctly.
“What about the circuit and the Copenhagen sponsorship?”
Jude crooked the elbow of his free arm and shrugged. “Bob gave me the contract today, but maybe it was similar to the way you couldn’t get on that plane—I couldn’t sign. What kind of an idiot would I be to risk injuring myself—possibly hurting myself to the extent that I couldn’t make love to you? I want a life with you. I want to have babies with you. I want to grow old with you.”
She melted into his arms. He told her about Ethan’s generous offer and how he would be working as a foreman at the Triple C while he got the rodeo school up and running. Jude’s next step would be to establish his own legacy—their legacy—right in the middle of his family’s land.
“The only thing that could make that homecoming any better would be to come home with my wife.”
He kissed her slowly and tenderly. When they finally came up for air, Juliette said, “We’re going to make that happen. Because, cowboy, I’m never letting you get away again.”
* * * * *
Catch up with everyone in Celebration with the other books in the CELEBRATION, TX miniseries!
A BRIDE, A BARN, AND A BABY
THE COWBOY’S RUNAWAY BRIDE
Available now wherever Harlequin Special Edition books and ebooks are sold!
And if you loved this story, be sure to catch FORTUNE’S SURPRISE ENGAGEMENT, Nancy Robards Thompson’s contribution to THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS: THE SECRET FORTUNES!
Keep reading for an excerpt from DO YOU TAKE THIS BABY? by Wendy Warren.
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Do You Take This Baby?
by Wendy Warren
Chapter One
One little mistake. That’s what Gemma Gould had made. One little mistake...that she was going to pay for the rest of her life.
“Beer or Bellini?” she muttered, keeping her head lowered as she manned the bar set up in her parents’ backyard. Today’s coed bridal shower for her youngest sister, Elyse, was turning into her own worst nightmare.
“Let’s go, everyone.” Elyse’s maid of honor stood at the Goulds’ sliding glass door and clapped her hands. “Grab your burgers and your drinks and head to the family room. Elyse’s episode of That’s My Gown! is about to begin.” The announcement made Gemma’s blood curdle in her veins.
Perspiration trickled down her back, hot and damp and sickening. Maybe she could say they were out of peach nectar for the Bellinis and that she had to run to the market. For about three days. Or better yet, she could fake an appendicitis attack—total rupture—and disappear for a week or more.
Nine months ago, Elyse had insisted that Gemma accompany her on a trip to New York to shop for a wedding gown (the selection on the West Coast being far too limited), and they ran into one of Elyse’s college friends who, as it turned out, was working as a producer on the TV show That’s My Gown! The next thing Gemma knew, she was Elyse’s “entourage,” tasked with the responsibility of murmuring “ooh” and “aah” as Elyse modeled an endless parade of gorgeous wedding gowns. Simple.
Only it hadn’t gone so well.
“I’ll have a Bellini, please,” requested the sweet, high voice belonging to one of Elyse’s eleven bridesmaids, “and could you hurry, Gemma? I missed the episode when it aired on TV. I hear it’s a hoot!”
Gemma smiled with her teeth gritted. Yeah, it’s a hoot, all right. Pouring a slushy, Creamsicle-hued drink into a stemmed glass, she passed it over the portable bar. “There you go, Collette.”
“Thanks,” chirped the tiny brunette. “You’re such a good sport to let Elyse show the episode today.” She reached a toned arm across the top of the bar
to grasp Gemma’s shoulder meaningfully. “You know, it’s very powerful the way you two have decided to embrace humiliation and turn it into something super fun. You’re an inspiration.”
Gemma gaped at the girl. “Thanks.”
Scooping ice into the blender and pressing Crush while Collette hurried away, Gemma kept her gaze averted from the guests who were streaming toward the family room.
The fact was, until someone mentioned it ten minutes ago, she’d had no idea the episode was going to play on her parents’ fifty-two-inch plasma TV during the bridal shower that she was cohosting.
All of her family and plenty of the other people here had already seen the episode. It had been the talk of the town when it first aired on TV. And in a town as small and, lately, as wedding-obsessed as Thunder Ridge, she and Elyse had become instant celebrities.
Morosely, she watched the blender chop the hapless ice cubes into tiny shards. I know just how you feel. She’d heard all the witty comments about her appearance on the show—that she, always the bridesmaid and never the bride, must have been suffering from PTBS—post-traumatic bridesmaid’s syndrome. Or that, at almost thirty-four, she’d had a “senior moment” on TV. And of course there were the people who felt “just horrible for poor Elyse,” whose big sister had fallen dead asleep (and actually snored) while Elyse was sashaying along the runway in her very favorite gown.
Yep, Gemma had nodded off, snored, probably even drooled a little on a national TV show. The cameraman had caught her catnap—and Elyse’s outrage—on-screen. The show added thought bubbles and sound effects in postproduction, making it appear as if Gemma had fallen into a stupor after a few too many strawberry margaritas at brunch and suggesting that Elyse was a bridezilla, just waiting for her sister to wake up so she could smack her unconscious again.
Good times.
After loudly sobbing out her humiliation, Elyse had decided to face the episode head-on, showing everyone she was rising to the occasion by laughing at it herself. Nonetheless, Gemma had been making amends for ruining Elyse’s fifteen minutes of fame ever since.
The Cowboy Who Got Away Page 17
