by Liz Ireland
“Why, sure.” Amos looked aghast. “That’s the best part of being married.”
“Especially in this town,” Jim said. “Why, half of Amos’s marriages didn’t even last longer than the honeymoon.”
“That’s right,” Amos agreed.
Cody shifted uncomfortably, then looked at Ruby’s beautiful face and the humor dancing in her eyes. Their marriage wouldn’t last longer than the shortest of Amos’s four. Why did that thought suddenly make him feel so gloomy?
He remembered that it was her suggesting the marriage that had given him the courage to tell his uncle he was giving up his position as deputy. Suddenly, he knew that he could not only stand up through a marriage ceremony, but also that he wanted to launch Ruby into her new life in style.
He sat straighter. “Of course we’re going on a honeymoon!”
She beamed a smile across at him, that same smile that always made his heart feel as if it were kicking up its heels. Strange that they’d lived in the same town all their lives, and yet a month ago, he’d barely known her and would have avoided getting to know her better if it had been his choice. Now he couldn’t imagine her not being his friend. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about her, and her silly laugh, and the way she’d felt in his arms when he’d kissed her….
Suddenly, he felt the same sort of amazement he’d experienced when, after twenty years of avoiding asparagus, he’d bitten into a piece and discovered he liked it.
He swallowed, feeling an unbearable tenderness swell in him. He cared for Ruby Treadwell. He wanted to make her happy.
“I guess we could go to San Antonio,” Ruby suggested. “That would be easy.”
Easy. He shook his head. All his life, he’d wanted to start a ranch. Ruby’s spunk had given him the impetus to jump-start his dream. Now it was his turn to give Ruby what she always wanted.
“Or what about Dallas or Houston?” she said. “It’s a long drive, but what do we care?”
Drive? That would mean spending his wedding night on the road. No, thanks! Even if it wouldn’t be a wedding night in the traditional sense, he still wanted to have a little fun. Or at least a glass of champagne.
“I was thinking Mexico,” he blurted, before she could suggest something really dismal, like a honeymoon in Lubbock.
She gasped. “Mexico?”
“Now, say, there’s an idea,” Jim said.
Amos nodded. “Why, sure, Mexico’s just filled with romantic little places.”
Ruby practically vaulted across the table and scooted next to him in the booth. “Oh, Cody, I knew I was doing the right thing when I decided to marry you!”
She wrapped her arms around Cody and planted a big noisy kiss on his cheek that caused quite a stir from Jerry. He chuckled and pointed at them with his spatula. “Look at that. Young love!”
Jim rubbed his cheek thoughtfully. “It’s amazing it still happens, especially in this town.”
Amos shook his head. With four marriages and divorces under his belt, he was probably right to remain skeptical. “I guess it’s nice while it lasts.”
That was just the trouble, Cody thought as Ruby grinned happily at the three men. When Ruby had her arms around him, it was difficult to remember that his marriage wouldn’t last, that it was doomed before he even said “I do.” And suddenly, as Ruby squeezed his hand, he realized that the hardest part wasn’t going to be saying vows in front of his parents and his entire hometown.
The hardest part was going to be not confessing to his wife that he’d accidentally fallen in love with her.
8
“WEDDINGS ARE always a little touch and go,” Merlie assured Cody with a comforting pat on the back.
Cal, all duded up in a suit for the big occasion, loosened his tie and agreed. “They’re especially touch and go when the bride doesn’t show up.”
It was noon already, time for the wedding, and Ruby was nowhere in sight. The whole town was sitting in the church, waiting.
Cody and Cal’s parents were in the front pew, waiting.
Cody was standing in the back of the church, in a tux, worrying. Had Ruby decided to bug out? Had plan C been scrapped?
If so, should he be depressed, or angry, or relieved?
His loved ones were rallying around him. They were also making him damned nervous, right down to baby Lily, who in her best white dress and bonnet peered anxiously at him from her stroller.
“Maybe you should try calling her again,” Sam suggested.
Cal sighed. “She didn’t answer the past fifteen times, why do you think she will now?”
Sam’s wife, Shelby, fluttered forward, her mass of red curls a vivid eye-opener against the pastel suit she was wearing. She put her arm around Cody and glared at Cal. “Don’t listen to that brother of yours. You have nothing to worry about. Remember? Sam didn’t show up for my wedding, either.”
That day would be difficult for anyone in Heartbreak Ridge to forget. Sam had discovered an unsavory story about Shelby’s past and had shown up at the church, late, to call off the wedding.
Sam frowned. “For heaven’s sake, honey, the wedding was canceled that day. Do you want Cody here to think Ruby’s changed her mind, too?”
Shelby waved her hands frantically, realizing she’d made a strategic error. “No, no, of course not. I only meant that Sam and I were married anyway, despite the little hitch in the proceedings. Everything worked out for the best.”
“Eventually,” Cal said gloomily.
Everyone glared at him, but none so irately as Merlie. “What did you come here to be?” she asked him. “The best man or the best wet blanket?”
Now that Cody thought about it, asking Cal to stand by him at his wedding was a little like asking a lion to a lamb shearing.
“I told you she was trouble,” Cal told Cody.
Merlie laughed. “I’m sure Cody needed a lot of reminding that Ruby wasn’t the average American girl.”
Sensing that she was making little headway in bolstering Cody’s spirits, Shelby straightened, her hands on her hips. “People, can we please try to be a little more positive about this wedding ceremony? Poor Cody is a bundle of nerves!”
Cody had to bite back laughter. Nervous he might be, but his relatives looked like they were sweating bullets!
Just then, four hulking shadows appeared at the door. The brothers Treadwell, who were serving as ushers at the wedding, were dressed in almost identical dark suits with white carnation boutonnieres. Together, they looked like the defensive line for Brooks Brothers.
“Uh-oh.” Out of some big-brother instinct, Cal took a step closer to Cody—close enough to whisper as he gaped at the hulk family, “Are you sure you know what you’re getting into?”
Cody, whose mouth had gone dry the moment he’d seen the four grim faces, whispered, “Almost sure.”
Sam and Shelby and Ruby’s brothers spoke in unison, accusingly. “Where’s Ruby?”
“As if Cody’s stashed her away somewhere!” Merlie said with a laugh.
But Bill was staring at him as if he had stashed her away.
“I haven’t heard from her since last night,” Cody said, reflexively lifting his hands in innocence.
“You didn’t call her this morning?”
“Of course,” Cody answered. “But I spoke to Farley, and he said she wouldn’t talk to me, that it was bad luck.”
Farley nodded. “That’s true. I told her that it wasn’t the case, and that the superstition was that she wasn’t supposed to see the groom till the wedding, but you know how she is—stubborn. She wouldn’t accept a ride to the church, either. She said she wanted to drive herself.”
“And when did you all leave?”
Lucian, whose only remnant of his normal attire was the camouflage pattern in his silk tie, said, “Ruby made us get here early, to make sure the flowers were here. We left the house two hours ago.”
Shelby gasped. “Was that the last time anyone’s seen her?”
The broth
ers stared at each other blankly.
Merlie shook her head. “This is what happens when you try to do things slapdash. Something always goes awry, and this time it’s the bride.”
Cody wondered. Had she gone awry? Or had this been her plan all along? To skip out while the towns-people—and especially her brothers—were otherwise occupied?
He imagined her in her Mustang driving hell-for-leather toward that urban heaven she’d always imagined. He wondered where she’d picked. He hoped for her sake that it was a place with nonstop excitement, where the men all looked like Antonio Banderas.
That thought made him smile. He would always be rooting for her, he guessed.
“Maybe we should send out a search party,” Lucian suggested.
“No!”
Everyone turned to Cody, staring at him in surprise. The way he’d hollered, they probably thought he didn’t want to find his bride. “I mean, maybe we should wait a little longer. She’s just a quarter of an hour late.”
He wanted to give her a good head start.
“She wouldn’t be late for her own wedding,” Buck reminded him. “She might have had car trouble.”
“Ruby knows more about cars than any of us.”
“She might need a lift into town, though.”
That was a quandary. If Ruby was on the side of the road waiting for a ride, she’d never get it. Everyone was already here.
Sam nodded. “Why don’t the rest of you stay here, and I’ll go look for her. If she gets here and I’m not back in fifteen minutes, start the ceremony without me.”
“Wait!”
Merlie and several others gasped. That foghorn yell could belong to only one person.
Ruby!
Cody felt his lips pull into an impossibly huge grin. She’d made it!
Everyone turned to see the bride jumping from a paneled truck that bore a cartoon of a tap-dancing potato underneath the words Salty’s Famous Chips. Farley and Lucian, looking as astonished as everyone else at her arrival, stepped aside as she ran up the church steps. Ruby’s dress was a dazzling sheath of white satiny material dripping with swirls of tiny pearl beads mixed with sparkling white sequins. Under any circumstances it would be an eyepopper, but in the sunlight it was dazzling.
When she reached the vestibule and pulled off her cowboy hat, Cody gasped.
Everyone gasped. Her hair, like her dress, was dazzling.
Dazzlingly white.
“Heavens to Pete!” Merlie exclaimed. “It looks like you dipped yourself in Clorox, Ruby!”
Ruby rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I did, in a way. Only I think I left the bleach on my hair too long.”
Her locks were a startling Jean Harlow white.
Cody thought she looked great. In fact, his heart did an impressive leap when her bright eyes met his. He knew it wasn’t a real marriage. He knew he wasn’t Antonio Banderas. But for some selfish reason, he wanted to get married on his wedding day.
She clomped forward. “Wouldn’t you know it—I locked my keys in the trunk of my car, along with my shoes and my veil!” She lifted the beaded hem of her dress to reveal her red cowboy boots. Somehow, they’d all missed those. “See?”
Merlie laughed.
“Why didn’t you just get the trunk open?” Buck asked.
She put her hands on her hips. “I tried, but I couldn’t jimmy the lock, and I sure as heck was not going to break a window and rip through the seats. That’d ruin the resale!”
“Then how did you get to town?” Cody asked.
“Oh, easy. I walked and then I caught a ride with a potato-chip truck headed for the Stop-N-Shop.” She smiled at Cody. “Think I’d gone berserk on you, groom?”
He laughed. She’d been calling him groom for an entire week. “It crossed my mind.”
“Oh, ye of little faith!” She looked at the many pairs of eyes staring at her. “Can we get married now?”
Everyone was shuffling toward the door when Shelby stopped Ruby. “Where’s your bouquet?”
Ruby’s sharp intake of breath indicated that she had forgotten this one detail. “Bouquet? Doesn’t that fall under the heading of flowers, Farley?”
Her brother looked abashed, then defensive. “No one said anything to me about a bouquet!”
Before the two could become embroiled in turmoil, Cody stepped forward. “It doesn’t matter.”
He was anxious to get this show underway.
“What’s the poor girl supposed to do with her sweaty hands?” Merlie joked.
“I don’t know where we can get flowers at this late date,” Shelby said.
“I do,” Ruby answered. She went down the Treadwell defensive line, plucking carnations out of buttonholes. “Sorry, boys, but I need these more than you do.” She gathered the four measly carnations in her fist and held them proudly. “There! Now we’re ready.”
Cody practically danced to the altar. The first strains of the wedding march began, and when the entire congregation stood, turned, and caught sight of the bride with a collective gasp, Cody couldn’t help smiling wistfully. As usual, Ruby was giving Heartbreak Ridge a jolt to the system. Only the town, unlike Cody, didn’t know that this was her farewell performance.
Heartbreak Ridge would be a far duller place without her. That was the thing about small towns—every person counted. Just like the hole that had been left when Henry the barber died, Ruby’s leaving would create a void. Who else could keep the gossip mill going with innocent scandal? Who else could fill Ruby’s red boots?
Who else could fill the void she would leave in his heart?
He couldn’t help admiring her style, though. The rest of the world might think she looked peculiar, but Ruby on Bill’s arm carried herself as if she thought she was at a royal wedding, and Cody felt as smitten as a prince in a fairy tale. Only instead of the perfect fairy-tale bride coming down the aisle, there was a short powerhouse in a tight white low-cut dress that practically set off sparks as she walked. Her hair was so white he wouldn’t be surprised if it glowed in the dark. Her flimsy bouquet was already wilted in her fist. And every step she took revealed a pointy red boot jutting out from under her skirt.
Cal leaned toward him. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Cody laughed. “I’m sure.”
In fact, he was sure of several things. First, that he was marrying the pluckiest gal in town, and maybe the whole state of Texas.
And second, he was absolutely sure that it would be harder than ever to get that divorce.
“MARRIAGE AGREES with me, groom,” Ruby said, twirling in the new brightly printed skirt she’d bought in the Mexican market just minutes before.
“Playa Del Sol agrees with you,” Cody said, sitting in a high-backed wicker chair and looking her up and down admiringly. “I guess this is just the first taste of the jet-setting life you’ve always wanted and are finally going to have.”
“I hope so!”
Their hotel was situated on the corner of the little Mexican coastal town’s main square, and since it was nightfall, the sounds of music and laughter drifted toward them from the plaza, making Ruby do a little jig.
“Do you know this is practically my first night outside of Heartbreak Ridge?”
She danced toward the window in an improvised samba step. Watching her hips jiggle across the room, Cody felt his mouth go dry.
He should have gotten two rooms. Maybe it still wasn’t too late. Since they were supposed to be a married couple—heck, they were a married couple!—he’d only reserved a double, naturally. He’d reserved the room when he was still in Heartbreak Ridge and he and Ruby were pals, comrades in league against her brothers. Their one stolen kiss hadn’t really prepared him for how he was going to feel once they were married.
He was lusting after his wife.
His jeans suddenly felt two sizes smaller, and he shifted uncomfortably in the squeaky wicker chair. Maybe it would help if he forced himself to think of her as his soon-to-be ex-wife.
/> “You look flushed.” Her brow puckered with worry. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Fine.”
“Maybe you should lie down on the bed.”
He looked at the bed—the suddenly very small-looking double bed—and imagined the tortured hours ahead, lying next to his soon-to-be ex-wife in celibate agony. He was in no hurry to go there.
For some reason, when he’d planned this honeymoon in the quaint Mexican town, he hadn’t reckoned on how it would feel to already know that his marriage to the woman he’d come to love was winding to its inevitable close. Nor had he reckoned on how it would feel to have a forbidden desire for someone he was legally married to.
He shook his head. “Maybe I just need some water.”
She tackled him as he was on his way to the bathroom. “Don’t drink the tap water!”
“That’s right.” He frowned. “Well, maybe we should go to dinner.”
“Good, I’m starved!”
It wouldn’t surprise him if Ruby was the one bride in the world who could eat like a stevedore on her wedding day.
He got up. “Maybe some food’ll take the edge off.”
“The edge off what?”
He could hardly explain to Ruby that he had the hots for her. That wouldn’t make for a very comfortable honeymoon!
Cody forced a grin. “My appetite, of course.”
Unfortunately, he reminded himself, the appetite that was really hungering, his sexual appetite, was just going to have to starve to death. Ruby was a virgin—the very idea made sweat bead on his brow—and if there was one thing he was determined not to do, it was get carried away and do something she might regret later when she was finally free and on her own.
For that matter, he might regret getting more involved with her, too, when he was in Heartbreak Ridge alone.
That sad thought was enough to douse the fire smoldering inside him—temporarily, at least.
“Let’s go,” he said, leading her out for a night on the town.
AFTER THREE glasses of wine, Ruby’s happiness meter was rocketing skyward. She’d never thought life could be this wonderful. “You know how I feel, Cody?”
Cody smiled indulgently. “How?”
“Blissful!” She hiccupped. Unfortunately, she’d never had the greatest tolerance for wine. But this might be the only wedding night she ever had, and she was determined to celebrate.
