“I’ll be here,” calls Rich, and I summon the courage to push the swinging door open.
There’s a strange pocket of silence in Merry’s restaurant, and it doesn’t take more than a blink to know where it’s coming from.
Austin.
He stands by the hostess station, hands in his pockets, quiet spreading out from his skin and taking over every part of the store nearby. Out here, in public, he’s mysterious, almost cold. Why? Why’s he so different when he’s behind closed doors? The dance move he did back in his kitchen, just to make me laugh, flashes into my memory like it’s projected on top of him.
He looks up, and he sees me.
My heart strains against my rib cage, battling under the weight of—what is this? It’s relief, that I recognize from the way my feet hardly touch the floor on the way over to the station. And fear. The back of my lungs feel cold. Almost frozen. On autopilot I slip a menu from the holder at the back of the station. “Table for one?”
Those blue eyes on mine have turned my knees to rubbery springs. “Please and thank you,” says Austin. A twitch at the corner of his mouth gives him away. He’s trying not to smile. And I’m trying not to blush. It’s not working, but at least I have an excuse—I was back in the kitchen, with those pancakes.
I put him in the center of the restaurant, smack dab in the middle of everything.
He grits his teeth and sits down. “You don’t have to do this, you know.” His big hands make the menu look tiny. “I’d rather sit at the corner.”
“I don’t think you deserve to sit in the corner.” I take out my order pad. “What can I get for you? Coffee? A swift kick in the pants?”
“Front or back?” Austin eyes the menu. “You can’t kick me in the balls, Brooke, that’s not a proportional response.”
“We’ll agree to disagree.” Every nerve in my body is lightning up, turning on like the Christmas tree they raise every year in town square. I haven’t let myself get swamped by the anger, but now it’s there, twinning up with a desire I can’t shake. What a time to be alive. “Orange juice?”
Austin closes the menu and looks up at me. “I need a waitress.”
“I am a waitress, so you’re in luck.”
“I need a waitress to come with me, right now.”
“I’ll bring you some coffee.” I shove the pad back into my apron pocket and turn to leave. Austin catches me by the elbow. That’s the stuff, some hidden part of me sighs. I brush his hand away, letting my touch linger a heartbeat longer than necessary. I can’t help it. “Is there something else you needed?”
“Come back,” Austin says urgently. “Come back to the ranch. Come back to the competition. We can still do this.”
Hope like a wildfire blazes through me, leaving a pure hot want want want in its wake. “What are you saying?”
His eyes sparkle like the sea turned to hard jewels and shot through with sunlight. “Didn’t you hear the news?”
“I’ve been staying at the Kilroy with the covers pulled over my head. I didn’t hear any news.”
“There’s a surprise make-up round. Today. In two hours. For the contest. It’s a free-for-all round, and we can take it. We can win the whole thing.”
I’m already shaking my head. “I’m done with all that.” I’m done with you, even though it doesn’t feel like it right now.
“Do it for me.” Austin stands up, and there it is—that hush that falls around him wherever he goes. I swear I feel the wind whip up outside, gathering leaves and turning them into a whirlwind. He’s too big for the diner, too wild and too strong, but he stands tall. His eyes never leave mine.
“Why?”
“Because I care about you, Brooke.” He doesn’t raise his voice, but he doesn’t lower it, either. Everybody in the diner can hear him. That means the whole world can hear him. “I love you.” I’m going to fall over dead. “I should have come after you the moment you walked out of that barn, but I thought—I thought I’d give you the space you wanted. Only I don’t want that space. The ranch is empty without you. All that land, and it might as well be your burned-down farmhouse. Nothing can live there without you.”
My face could cook an egg. “Austin....”
“Brooke.” He offers me his hand. “Come with me. You’re not a quitter—look at you.”
“You love me?” I look him straight in the eye. It’s the most impossible thing he’s said all day. Maybe ever in his life. “You don’t hate me?”
“I don’t think I ever hated you. I just didn’t know how much I loved you until you walked out that door.” He laughs out loud. “I tried not to fall for you, Brooke, but I fell harder than anything.”
I bite my lip. If I admit this now, in front of everyone—oh, screw it. “I love you, too. Did you rig the contest? Because if you did, if you so much as let Hal think—”
“I did not rig the contest. I’m still trying to win it. And I want you to see it. You’ve seen everything else. I swear. Everything else. But it’ll be hard to do it without you. It’ll be impossible.”
“Go with him!” shouts the grandmother at the corner table. “You get ‘em, honey!”
“Yeah,” says Merry from the other side of the diner. “What are you waiting for?”
“How much time do we have?” I put my hand in Austin’s and try to catch my breath.
“Three hours.”
Chapter Nineteen
Austin
“Park, park, park,” Brooke chants in the passenger seat, knuckles white around a pie plate. “Park. You have gone past easily a hundred spots. Park.”
“I’m trying to get us close.”
“Let us out so we can run!”
“You can’t run with the pie.”
“Watch me.”
When I first walked into that diner this morning, I saw the worst sight in the world. Brooke, with most of the light gone out of her. She was dimmed, a sad smile on, and the sight of it crushed my heart under its heel. The only thing that’s the same about her now is that waitress uniform. “Are you going to change?”
She grins. “Change into what? I don’t have any other clothes.” Then she narrows her eyes. “You’re trying to get me naked now? Now of all times?”
“The heart wants what it wants.”
“The dick wants what it wants.” I pull the truck and the trailer into a miracle pull-through and jump out of the cab. Brooke’s already out by the time I get around to her side. She’s laughing at her own joke. “Faster, Austin.” The laugh drops away. “You’ve got to hurry up.”
“Oh, now you want me to hurry up?” Brooke was meticulous about this pie. We put it into the oven at the last possible second. And now we’re going to be late. “Shouldn’t have spent so much time on decorating that pie.”
“You should’ve chosen a simpler idea. Come on, Goatie,” she says, and it’s such an incredible display of confidence that I almost have to stop and kiss her.
I lock eyes with Goatie and grab his lead rope. “Come on, boy.”
He walks down the ramp. He just...walks down the ramp, like he isn’t the most stubborn goat in the entire universe. Trots on down on the lead rope and gallops toward the carnival.
The event barn here is bigger, more like a sprawling event complex, and it’s surrounded by all the carnival booths. Brooke hustles ahead of me to the gate. They wave us through, and we plunge into the crowd. Brooke is on a mission. I thought I’d be the one to lead us through, but she’s so determined that people dive out of her way left and right. My pulse pounds. The thing I didn’t tell Brooke is that I don’t know if this will be enough. I don’t know if a pie and a goat will take us to the top—not after she left me with an eggplant parmesan and a stammered speech about how fresh crops represent the spirit of Paulson. Even Hal Kilroy wasn’t taken with that one.
He’d better be taken by this. Or else...or else I don’t know what I’ll do.
There’s one possibility. It’s been looming above me since Brooke’s house burned down.
It’s like an itch that won’t go away no matter how much I scratch, or tell myself it’s off the table, or ride Connecticut out into the hills until we’re both a sweaty mess.
For the hundredth time, I push it out of my mind.
The main event barn on the fairgrounds is a spic-and-span thing with bright lights and fancy fixtures. They built it a few years back to attract bigger shows to the Harvest Fest. Tonight the energy feels like the minute before a fancy show. People are standing up straight, moving fast, big smiles. Their eyes drift over us and down to Goatie, who wears a wreath of yellow rabbitbrush around his neck.
“They should have called this the Paulson Theater and Big Top,” says Brooke, like she’s reading my mind. She cuts a glance at me. “You sure you didn’t make all of this up?”
“Swear on my life, Hal Kilroy called me just this morning and said the sponsor wants a final round. They waited until the last minute so everybody would have to rely on their wits.”
“And their pumpkins.” Brooke grimaces. “This isn’t very unique.”
“Are you kidding me? They never saw the last pumpkin pie. You took it with you and ran.”
“Oh. Right.” Her cheeks go red. “It was really good, by the way. I ate all of it that night at Kilroy’s.”
“You ate a whole pumpkin pie in one night?”
“Uh, yeah. It was a pretty bad night.” She lets this hang in the air, and I can’t help but feel a thrill of pleasure. For a few days I thought I was the only one who missed her. But one night, Merry was at the Riverbend. She’d perched up at the bar to talk to Greg, and before I knew it, I’d heard all about her new hire, the younger Carson sister who seemed so, so sad. It isn’t like her, Merry had said. She’s always been a spitfire. I’d rather see her mad than sad.
One side of the barn has been outfitted with a theater, and we’ve come up alongside the main stage in a hallway that’s probably meant for actors and scene pieces and not goats. “Okay, now I wish I’d changed,” frets Brooke. “Nobody else is going to show up at this thing in their work clothes.”
“So you’ll stand out.” The uniform is cute as hell. “Good. Let them all see you, standing out.”
She glances up at me with a nervous smile on her face. “Are you sure you want this? Not that many people heard what you said in the diner. There’s still time to walk it back.”
Goatie or not, I am not leaving this woman unkissed for a second longer. I wrap my free hand around the back of her neck and pull her in close. She kisses me back with a deep sigh, and through the palm of my hand I feel an unfathomable amount of tension release. No wonder Brooke’s been in a fighting mood since she was in high school. Clearly, nobody took the time to kiss her like this, long and lingering and hot.
Mrs. Howard clears her throat. I’d know that sound anywhere, but I still don’t pull back right away. Neither does Brooke. She smiles against my lips, and after several heartbeats pulls back, pressing the back of one hand to her lips.
“Don’t drop that,” I warn her. “This is our last chance.”
“Is it?” Her eyes shine. “I don’t know that it is.”
“If you two are ready...it’s time to present your final display to the judges.” Mrs. Howard looks from Goatie to Brooke and back again. “A goat and...some pie?”
“Yes,” Brooke says. “That’s what we brought.”
Mrs. Howard has no answer to that. “Go on in.”
We go through between the heavy velvet curtains that have been pulled back for the occasion. Murmurs from the people in the theater proper bounce along the back wall and wrap around us. I can hear every breath Brooke takes. “This seems weird, Austin,” she says, words soft and quick. “Why would they have a re-do? Nobody does that.”
Then we step out onto the stage.
At first, I can’t see anything. The stage lights are bright and pointed at us. They’re working at full power. Brooke blinks, cradling the pie in one hand and putting the other to her eyes. “Hi,” she says, and everybody out in those seats laugh.
I blink hard, trying to clear my vision. There’s Hal Kilroy and the rest of the judges. There’s...Brooke’s sister, and her husband Asher. The dark-haired man sits next to his wife in the second row, a sly grin on his face. And behind them is a whole row of white-haired ladies, every single one of them dressed in red.
Hal Kilroy steps forward. “We wanted to give all of the participants one more chance to shine before we vote. What have you brought to show us today, along with our sponsors, the ladies of the Paulson Senior Center?”
This is it. This is my big shot, and I don’t care that I’ve been doing all this work to impress a bunch of thirsty older ladies. It all makes sense. They’re not thinking about 4-H requirements and nitpicking. They wanted to see some teamwork. We’ve got it. We’ve got it in spades.
“A love story,” I say out loud. A gasp, then a silence, and Brooke is looking at me with her big gray eyes, holding onto that pie plate for dear life. “A hate story.” A low murmur from the people in the crowd. “We don’t have much to offer you, aside from this goat and this pie, but what they represent—” I’m willing to look like a fool in front of anybody for her. “Two people coming together in spite of all the odds. In spite of all the odds, we’ve found happiness. At least I have.” Me too. Brooke mouths the words to me on the stage in front of God and everybody. “We both have.” One of the old ladies fans herself with her hand. “In the beginning, it was about a billboard. And a farm. And then the fire came.”
I tell them the whole story, with certain parts omitted. I tell them how Brooke refused to marry me for my money. “I should have known she wouldn’t take it, because she’s a Paulson girl. Born and raised here. Working all her life here. She wasn’t going to set her feelings aside just for some cash.” I tell them how she tried to sleep in her own barn, rather than put anybody else out. I tell them about my mom. They knew my mom. “She’d never have let me go through with it. And as soon as Brooke moved in, she threw herself into this contest. And this is a woman you want on your side. She’s loyal, and fierce, and snappy—” They laugh, but it’s such a kind sound. “And I have to admit something to you, and to you, Brooke. I made another mistake today.”
“Oh, god,” she says, and there’s another swell of laughter.
“I asked my brother Luke to help me with something.”
“Why?” Brooke laughs. “Why would you do that?”
“I’m here!” shouts Luke. “I’m here. I found it.” He barrels onto the stage, boots clomping, hat flying off in the wind he’s creating. He stops to pick it up and shoves it back on his head. “Here.” He jogs up to me and presses the little box into my hand. “I got it. Go get her, man.” He shakes my hand too vigorously. “Good luck, Brooke.” He tips his hat to her and jumps off the front of the stage, crouching down low and scuttling to a seat nearby. I’m not surprised at all to see Julie May there, too.
“Brooke.” I turn to face her, and everything else in the room falls away. “We brought this goat here to represent how Paulson never gives up. How stubborn it is, to the very end. That’s how I feel about you. As stubborn as this goat. I love you as much as he loves being a pain in my ass.” I flip open the box with one hand and show her what’s inside. “This was my mother’s ring. I think what you’ll like most about it is that she wasn’t a Bliss. She saw my dad for all his faults, and loved him anyway. It’d be an honor if you could find it in your heart to do the same.”
She opens her mouth.
“I’m not done yet.” A tittering laugh floats up above the old ladies and warms my heart. “I promise you, Brooke, if you marry me I’ll never give you a single dime.”
“I accept,” she shouts. “Yes!”
Then she’s kissing me like a teenage fool, one arm thrown around my neck and the other barely hanging on to the pie. “Why?” I murmur into her mouth. “What convinced you?”
“Remember that night in the stable?” she said. “As long as I can have more of that, and
more of your breakfast food, I’ll never leave.”
“Really? Eggs and bacon? That’s all—”
“Because I love you, you idiot.” She pulls back so she can look me in the eye. “I think part of me has always been in love with you, at least a little. That’s why it hurt so damn bad when you told your dad I wasn’t cut out for college. I just convinced myself that it was about hate instead.”
“You want to go to college?” I want her closer, closer. “I’ll build you a college, if that’s what you want.”
“Let’s see the ring!” somebody down front shouts, and I hold up the box even while I kiss her.
“Let’s go home,” Brooke says.
“Not a chance. I’m staying here to see if we won the whole shebang.”
“I want to see you naked.”
“And you’ll get what you want, sweet thing. Be patient.”
* * *
Brooke doesn’t get her wish right away. The awards ceremony is at seven, three hours away. We spend the entire time showing off Goatie and the pie, which didn’t get nearly enough airtime at the final round. It’s an intricate crust drawing of the skyline of Paulson, the mountains in the background. It’s a stunner.
But nobody’s more stunning than Brooke. She sneaks off at some point and comes up with a dress—probably her sister’s doing—and I’m obsessed with it. Who knew she looked so good in a green wrap dress? I do now.
She wears it when we stand together in the crowd, up in front of the big outdoor stage at the fair. All of Paulson’s here, with the fellow contestants down front. Goatie is back in the trailer, curled up with plenty of food and a warm blanket.
“I can’t believe it,” Brooke says. “I can’t believe we’re going to get married. You. You of all people.”
“You could be a little nicer about it.”
She kisses me then, long and deep. “Stop,” she says, like I’m the one who started it. “They’re announcing the winners.”
I’m not sure I care at all about the billboard. Not anymore. I wanted to prove to Paulson that I belong here, and nothing makes me feel like I belong more than being with Brooke. It’s not Paulson I should’ve been trying to impress. It’s the woman who didn’t care about any of that.
Never the Cowboy’s Bride Page 12
