Meg's Best Man: A Montana Weekend Novella

by Bruner, Cynthia

  She reached for her messenger bag and realized she had never checked it for damage. A tube of sun block had been squished open, but the mess could have been worse. She wiped it out. It was an easier thing to fix than Gage’s boots. She put a nice fleece jacket inside the bag. It was still hot outside now, but it never stayed that way in the mountains.

  Meg left the camper and, for the first time all weekend, locked the door. She wandered down the logging road slowly, listening to the birds. She watched a chickadee shell a seed on the branch of a pine tree and wished she had time to stop and sketch, but she didn’t. Leah would either be awake or have given up on napping by now. Meg wanted to help out any way she could.

  She was so engrossed in the bird and he was sitting so still that Meg didn’t see Gage seated on a rock at the end of the logging road. He looked mad. She didn’t think he had anything to be mad about. He glanced up at her and let out a big sigh. “I’m sorry,” he said. He didn’t sound sorry, he sounded irritated.

  She took a few cautious steps forward. He still had that big green thing in his arms, and she wanted to get a closer look. “You have a towel,” she said.

  “Yeah. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “You were bringing me a towel.”

  “I thought it would be funny. I thought it was just the sort of thing a valet would do. I didn’t actually think you’d be taking a shower, outside, naked. At least I think you were, not that I… what were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t thinking that I’d be running into a Peeping Texan.”

  He grumbled and rubbed his palm against his forehead. “Yeah. Here, you want this?” He stood up and held the towel out to her. She recognized it from the large stash of towels at the cabin. Something darker green and shiny was sitting on top of it, though. He noticed her looking, and snatched it off and shoved it into his back pocket. “I ate the mint.”

  He’d brought her a towel and a mint. She didn’t know whether to be amused or freaked out. To give herself a little time to decide, she took the towel back to the camper. And she locked it again. Then she came back to find Gage still waiting, and still looking cranky. He looked that way as he took the messenger bag from her and slung it over his own shoulder and the whole time they walked up the long driveway.

  When they came in sight of the cabin and the guests gathered in camp chairs in the meadow, he handed the bag back to her. “Thank you,” he said. She didn’t know what he was thanking her for, but before she could ask, Joshua was waving a spatula and calling him over.

  “It’s about time!” Josh was yelling at him.

  Meg spotted a few friends she had not seen earlier and went over to catch up. A few minutes later she caught sight of Leah on the deck, and she headed that way, even though it meant being near Gage. He was still with the other men at the new grill. Leah came over and gave her a hug. “Did you get some rest?”

  Meg nodded. “Did you?”

  “I did! Josh found some earplugs for shooting and I put those in and slept like a baby. I’m so glad we got most of the decorations done. Catherine has tomorrow’s reception dinner covered, and Josh and Caleb have dinner covered. Well, sort of; they’ve been arguing about the right way to grill, of course. And I see Gage went down to visit you again.”

  “He is my valet.”

  “Mm hmm,” Leah said, adding a little Texas drawl to the sound. “And I suppose a man deciding to become your valet happens to you all the time.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Doesn’t it happen to everyone?”

  “Only once for me, and now I’m marrying him.”

  Meg gave her a warning glance. “Don’t even let it cross your mind, Leah.”

  “I’m not thinking anything except what a beautiful day it is.”

  They were soon handing out paper plates full of potato salad, hamburgers, and brats. Cadence gathered orders like a pro, Leah and Meg assembled the plates to be delivered, and Josh, Caleb, and Gage argued about when to flip and what constituted done. Up on the edge of the deck as they were, they looked like a comedy routine on a stage. As far as Meg could tell, Joshua told everyone what to do, Caleb told him he was wrong, and Gage did it his own way anyway. Leah and Meg had to stop twice they were laughing so hard.

  Eventually everybody but the servers had a plate, and Joshua made up one for Leah, explaining that he put the sweet relish on her brat even though he thought it was awful and she really should try the dill. When Meg reached for a plate for herself, Gage grabbed it out of her hand. “Dog or burger?”

  “Burger, please.”

  “And how do you like it done?”

  “Anything but burned.”

  Gage glared at the burner. “I think we may be out of those. How about singed?”

  Meg peeked at the grill. He wasn’t exaggerating. “That would be great.”

  He got her ketchup, pickles, no relish of any kind, and potato salad order ready for her. She reached for her plate again, and again he pulled it away. “Where would you like to sit?”

  Leah, who was finding the whole routine amusing, patted the seat next to her. On her other side, Joshua was busy poking his brother in the shoulder for some reason. Meg sat down next to Leah, and Gage set the plate down in front of her and disappeared into the crowd. Meg closed her eyes and sighed. The man was relentless. When she opened her eyes, it occurred to her that she didn’t have any silverware or anything to drink, but before she could get up again, he reappeared to drape a paper napkin across her lap. Another paper napkin was over his left arm, and he was holding a small bottle of citrus soda over the towel like a fine wine. “Will the green do, or would you like the brown vintage?”

  “Green, please.”

  Gage opened it and handed her the cap. “Would you like to sniff the cork?”

  She gave him the stink eye and Leah giggled. As he went to pour out the soda he realized she didn’t have a cup. It took him three more trips to assemble a cup and fork and to get his own plate. Then Gage pulled a chair closer to her and sat down, knocking her elbow and dropping some potato salad into her lap. He didn’t even notice. Luckily the napkin was there to catch it.

  Joshua and Caleb were now loudly playing some sort of game that involved flicking each other with a finger. It looked painful. Leah gestured to them and asked Meg, “Are they always like this?”

  Meg nodded. “Don’t ask me why.”

  “Maybe their love language is flicking,” Gage said.

  Leah’s eyebrows raised. “Love language? Are you reading marriage books?”

  “Nope. Parenting books.” He let that comment hang in the air for a while. Leah and Meg were both silent, waiting for another shoe to drop.

  “My sister made me read a couple parts of a book,” Gage continued. “She was trying to figure out which love language my nephew had. I said he was five and the only love language she needed to know about was the hold-him-down-and-tickle-him language. It’s a pretty good sign if, when you stop, the kid starts screaming for more. I figure when he gets a little older he’ll speak the driving-too-fast-on-the-four-wheeler language. I’m fluent in that one, too.”

  “Boys,” someone said firmly, and years of experience brought Meg to attention. It worked on Joshua and Caleb, too, and the flicking stopped. Catherine sat down at the table with them, glowered at her sons, and then smiled sweetly at Leah. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m excited,” she said, and she looked that way, Meg thought.

  “We’re taking a lot of people down to the house tonight, just to let you know. Hopefully the rest of them won’t keep you up all night.”

  “Sonya’s dance lesson should tire them out!”

  So Sonya was in charge of today’s mysterious dance lesson. That didn’t reveal anything at all, since Sonya liked all kinds of social dancing. Meg asked for more details, but Catherine and Leah weren’t talking. “They don’t want us to know so we don’t make a break for it,” Joshua said. “And don’t ask me, I’m sworn to secrecy.”

  “It had better no
t be clogging,” Caleb offered. “Aunt Sonya just about made me crazy the Christmas she took up clogging.”

  Meg gave Catherine a pleading look. “Please tell me it isn’t,” she said.

  Catherine smiled. “I’m not telling.”

  All the men at the table moaned. “That would be the worst thing ever,” Caleb said.

  “No,” Gage said. “Line dancing would be worse.” That brought an even louder moan.

  “I like line dancing,” Leah said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Line dancing is for girls,” Caleb informed her. “Men don’t line dance.”

  “I’ve seen cowboys line dance.”

  “Then it must have been in Texas, because no self-respecting Montana cowboy would ever be caught line dancing.”

  “Hey, now.” Gage held his palm up in an attempt to stop Caleb.

  Caleb was undaunted, and he gave Gage a scrutinizing look. “Well, have you ever line danced?”

  There was a brief, deep silence at the table, until Meg and Leah started laughing. Caleb waved an accusing fork at Gage, and Joshua smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. “I can’t believe you’re my best man.”

  “That’s where all the women were.” As soon as the words were out of Gage’s mouth, he turned to Meg and insisted, “That was a long time ago.” She could have sworn his face was turning red. Was it over the line dancing or chasing women?

  Catherine interrupted the commotion. “Well, we all know that Texas is where the real cowboys are.”

  No, Aunt Catherine wouldn’t do that to her, would she? Some stories were meant to fade into obscurity, and hers was definitely one of them. She could feel her own face starting to get hot.

  Joshua’s eyes grew wide and he started laughing, which was not pretty because he had just taken another bite of hamburger. “I almost forgot about that!” he said. Everyone else at the table looked confused.

  Meg shot Catherine a pleading look, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. “One summer Meg said she wanted us to all go to Texas so she could meet a real cowboy.”

  That started a cacophony of laughter and a flurry of fork waving. “I was ten,” Meg said, but she was pretty sure no one heard her. She shook her head and laughed at herself. She could barely remember her reasoning at the time, but it had something to do with a movie she’d seen. Since she was a member of a family with cattle ranching in their blood, the story might live forever.

  Gage turned to her with his trouble-causing grin. The second things were quiet enough, he said, “Did you ever make it to Texas?”

  She shook her head, feeling like she was being set up for a punch line.

  “Then that pretty much makes me your dream come true.”

  More groans and laughter followed, during which Meg said, “You line dance and haven’t got any cowboy boots. You can’t possibly be a real cowboy.” His grin never wavered. “Darlin’, I’ve got another pair, and I’ll go clogging in them if I have to.”

  Soon after dinner Sonya took over. As a pastor’s wife, she had perfected the art of gently coercing people, and her skills were on display this evening. The wedding invitation had encouraged all musicians to bring their instruments. Now Sonya sent the musicians off in search of one, and in record time she had them playing a simple folk tune with just four chords. It was lively and sounded vaguely Celtic to Meg. Things didn’t seem to be going well for the anticlogging crowd.

  It was the most beautiful time of day. The sun was low in the west but not yet setting, the scattered wildflowers were still blooming, but there was a hint of a cooler breeze. It smelled of new, growing things. Things down on the flats were heating up, but June in the mountains of Montana was still springtime.

  Soon everyone else was summoned to the “dance floor,” the part of the meadow that would be the aisle of a wedding chapel the next day. Sonya told everyone to find a partner, and Gage instantly took Meg by the elbow. “This is part of my valet duty,” he assured her. Sonya had everyone line up across from their partner, women and girls on one side and men and boys on the other. It was a motley bunch of dancers, with kids and grandparents and complete strangers paired up. Those who tried to hide were lured in by whatever charm, or threats, Sonya felt it necessary to use.

  She had every other couple switch places to mix the boys and girls. Now Meg was standing across from Gage and between Caleb and Joshua. “This looks like square dancing,” Joshua said.

  “This isn’t a square, it’s a rectangle,” Caleb corrected his brother.

  Sonya informed everyone that they would be doing four, count them, four moves, and anyone on earth could learn that many. She also said they’d better learn them because they would do them over and over again for the next twenty minutes.

  She called it contra dancing. For the first move, everyone stepped forward, passed in back of their partner, and backed up to where they were. It took a ridiculously long time for everyone to get it right, which made them all laugh. For the second move, the women turned to the man on their left and they both got into a ballroom dancing position and turned around one and a half times. There were two more moves, and when all the moves were completed in order, Meg and Gage had moved one position toward the right, giving them a new set of neighbors to dance with.

  Sonya kept everyone going until all she had to do was call out the name of the move, and then she had the makeshift band begin to play. “Slowly,” she suggested. “At least at first.” The music started, sounding not much better than an orchestra tuning up. And the crowd of dancers were a disaster. But Sonya kept cheerfully calling out the steps and words of encouragement.

  Just when it all seemed hopeless, something shifted. The band found its rhythm and so did the dancers. Any time Meg forgot the next move, there was a partner there who remembered it, and the reverse was true as well. For each round she do-si-doed and swung once with Gage and then with whoever was to her left. When they hit the end of the long line, they switched places and came back the other way.

  Because of the way contra dancing worked, Meg ended up dancing with every single man and boy in the long line, and she laughed her way through every bit of it. Gage was smiling and gracious to every dance partner and was pretty smooth on his tennis-shoed feet. When they made it through the whole line, Sonya encouraged the band to speed it up, and they danced faster and faster until it all fell apart in a foot-stomping, hilarious mess. The band took a well-deserved bow, and a few of the dancers and musicians offered to switch places.

  There was hardly enough time to get some water before Sonya was teaching the band another simple song. This time almost everyone came back to make happy fools of themselves again, no coercion needed. Sonya added two new moves to their repertoire and arranged them in a new combination, and as complicated as it seemed at first, Meg got to a point where Sonya calling the next move seemed to go straight from her ear to her feet without her having to think about it.

  It was evening, but during summer in Montana the sun lingers into the night. The cooler air soothed the dancers, who had worked up a sweat. It was a hardcore and determined crew of newborn contra dancers that stayed for a third and then a fourth song—and demanded something more complex. Sonya’s voice was getting hoarse but not quieter. She led them through new moves and patterns with enthusiasm. Meg wished she could have seen the dancers from above, as they must have looked like flowers unfolding and shifting across the meadow.

  Meg was beginning to like the moment in each cycle when she came back to Gage’s arms. He was tall, that was certain. But he had a way of holding her that was firm and steady. They could spin like crazy across the dirt and grass, but his arms were like the eye of the storm. For someone who seemed to break things a lot, there was nothing but grace in his dancing.

  And while it seemed at first that she had to lean back to look him in the face, she found that up close she didn’t notice very much other than his amber eyes and the dark streaks of sweat at his temples that did little to tame his wavy hair. And alwa
ys, every moment he held her, the grin. She couldn’t help but smile back.

  Then he would gently lead her into the next move, charm his next dance partner, and be there to pull Meg into the dance again.

  When the song was over, the musicians nursed sore fingers, the dancers were worn out, and Sonya sounded like a frog. Meg teased Caleb about line dancing, since they had in fact been in a line, and Caleb said that if you got to hold a girl it didn’t count. That sounded a lot like Gage’s reasoning to her and she would have teased him, but Meg let the conversation drop because Caleb seemed to have his eye on one of Joshua’s friends. As she expected, he scurried over to where the girl was standing.

  A plastic glass of water appeared in front of her. “Here you go, Mouse Girl. Turns out you can dance as well as you write.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Thanks for the water.” She looked through the crowd until she spotted Leah, who was sitting with Joshua.

  “Leah’s fine,” Gage said, without looking behind him to see what she was looking at. “You’ve been looking like a nervous mother hen.”

  “I have not!” Had she? Meg hoped Leah hadn’t noticed.

  “So how does she look to you?”

  Leah was smiling, and Joshua reached up gently to lift a strand of hair from her face. “Happy,” Meg said. “Josh, too.”

  “I think your work here is done,” Gage said with a smile. “All that’s left to do is walk down the aisle without tripping.”

  She laughed. “Oh, sure, plant that idea in my mind. And it’s not as easy as it seems!”

  “From what I’ve seen, you could dance down it very well.”

  “Wouldn’t that be classy? No, I’ll walk down, high heels and all. The skirt on that dress is so skinny I’ll have to take itty bitty steps, so there’s no chance I’ll be going too fast, either. And I may have to arrange the bride’s train or swat a bee. Or fan Leah’s face if she faints. Or bounce the hordes of rejected women who will be weeping in the back as Joshua is taken off the market. It’s a very complicated job, being the maid of honor.”