The Wedding Crasher and the Cowboy

by Robin Bielman

  “Did you know your left eye is slightly lighter than your right?” he asked.

  “Did you know there’s a speck of green in your right eye and not in your left?”

  “Did you know if someone stares at your pupil, it starts to look like the center of a daisy?”

  No, she did not know that. Was that because no man had stared deep enough into her eyes to tell her? Or because Maverick had a way with words that snuck under her skin?

  “Did you know a person’s pupils dilate when they look at something they like?”

  “What are you suggesting, Shortcake?” he asked evenly.

  “Not suggesting. I can see it with my own two eyes. You like me, Maverick Owens, even though you don’t want to.”

  “I’ll admit you intrigue me, Kennedy Martin.”

  “Is this a new feeling or a carryover?”

  He didn’t answer her right away, and the sounds of puppies suckling filled the space. The nursing grew louder.

  And at exactly the same time, they did two things: pried their eyes from each other to look across the room at the noisemakers, and laughed.

  If she thought Maverick’s dimples were dangerous, combined with a laugh, he might just kill her. That he seemed to have no clue how sexy he was made him that much more attractive.

  “I don’t think you’re going to need those bottles,” she said.

  “Maybe not, but I’ll still be on watch.”

  “Want some company?”

  His brows did a nosedive.

  “I’m not tired and this is pretty exciting stuff that I will probably never witness again, so I could keep you company. Not that I want any of the puppies to have difficulty feeding, but if one did and I got to bottle feed them, I might have to admit again that ranch life has its pluses. And wouldn’t you love that, cowboy?”

  “I don’t need your validation to know how great ranch life is.”

  She opened her mouth to say she didn’t mean to insult him, but he beat her to the punch.

  “But,” he added, “far be it from me to deprive you of a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be with newborn puppies on their very first night.”

  She grinned. “Thank you! I promise I’ll keep any further questions I have to a minimum.”

  “Do you ever not ask questions?”

  “Rarely. I just have this thirst for knowledge that needs to be quenched.”

  One corner of his nice mouth perked up, giving her a tiny peek at the sexy indentation in his cheek. “Well, if I’m stuck with you, might as well get comfortable.” He picked up her glass of water, grabbed his own, and walked to the couch. She sat next to him, leaving about a foot between them.

  They had a perfect view of Barley and her puppies and for several comfortable minutes watched in fascination.

  “Can I ask you something?” One more question, then she’d stop.

  His head lolled forward in exhaustion. His chest rose and fell. He wore a pea green T-shirt tucked in behind his belt buckle but otherwise loose, and light-blue jeans that looked as soft as pajamas. His arms were tanned and sinewy. He really had it all going on.

  “What happened to keep you from becoming a vet?” she asked. His tiredness didn’t beat out her curiosity.

  He lifted his chin. His stubbled jaw tensed before it relaxed and he said, “Life.”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  Crossing his arms, a clear sign he wanted to close himself off rather than open up to her, he once again took a deep breath.

  “I shared my story with you, and I’d really like to hear yours,” she said softly. She hoped that appealed to his sense of fairness, but more than that, she genuinely wanted to know what had happened. He’d been so determined to become a veterinarian. So excited when he’d gotten accepted to the doctorate program at UC Davis, if she remembered correctly.

  Rather than answer her, he got up to check on Barley and the puppies. She fought the urge to follow him for a closer look, deciding to give him some space. A couple of minutes later, he sat back down.

  “How about I get you a beer? Would that help?” Surely he had some in the fridge.

  He chuckled. “Probably.”

  “Done.” She jumped up and grabbed a couple of beers. They clinked bottle necks and each took a healthy sip.

  “I wouldn’t have taken you for a beer drinker,” he said pensively.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, cowboy.”

  “And a lot I do,” he offered in a tone she couldn’t decipher before he drank down the rest of his beer, his throat a nice place for her eyes to land while he did so.

  She seriously had to stop thinking the word “nice” in connection with him. It blurred all the frustrating memories of him too much.

  “My first year in graduate school, I met a girl,” he said, staring out at the room. “The girl. Her name was Nicole.”

  Kennedy stayed quiet. She barely moved a muscle. She wanted to soak in whatever he gave her without any interruption.

  “She wanted to be a vet, too. We started dating, fell in love. She was amazing. Smart. The kind of person who always put others before herself. And she got as excited about animals as I did. Then the summer before our third year, she got sick.”

  “No,” Kennedy whispered so quietly, she didn’t think Maverick had heard.

  “The night I’d planned to propose to her was the night she told me she was diagnosed with ALS.”

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry, Maverick.” There was no cure for ALS. The disease made famous by Lou Gehrig killed everyone it met. Maverick didn’t need to explain further, not to her. The progressive loss of muscle control that took away a person’s ability to walk, talk, eat, and eventually breathe had a two-to-five-year life expectancy rate after diagnosis.

  “We had talked about traveling after we graduated and before settling into marriage and our careers. Nicole had a bucket list two pages long of places she wanted to see. Weird foods she wanted to eat. Languages she wanted to hear firsthand. So instead of finishing school and risking missing out on that, we quit school and traveled.”

  “How much longer did you get with her?”

  “A little over two years. The last few months we were here, of course. Her parents wanted to be with her, too, and she needed medical attention.” He’d yet to speak to Kennedy, his focus somewhere else in the room.

  “Did you marry?”

  “No. I proposed, but…”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said again, taking his incomplete thought as a signal he didn’t want to elaborate.

  “Thanks. She was amazing through it all, waking up every morning with a smile, and she never felt sorry for herself, so I didn’t either.”

  “She sounds really special.”

  He nodded. “She was.”

  “I’m sure she was grateful she had you.”

  At that, he finally looked at her. Pain and melancholy were etched in his temples, the corners of his eyes slanted downward. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “I know.” She leaned the side of her head against the back of the couch. She almost reached out to touch him. “Don’t get used to it or anything.”

  “I won’t.”

  Did that mean he didn’t want to hear her talk sweetly to him? Or that he planned to keep his distance as much as possible? She didn’t know why, but both bothered her. The latter more so.

  They settled more fully, him slouching and putting his feet on the coffee table, her bringing her legs up and snuggling with a couch pillow in her lap.

  “Thanks,” she said. For telling me all that. She’d been trusted with something he held close, a gift she wouldn’t take lightly.

  “We’re even now,” he told her.

  Which should make her happy, but it only fueled her desire to challenge him again and again un
til she got everything she desired out of him. The question was, what exactly did she desire? And why was her heart once again beating faster than it had in a very long time?

  Two years ago…

  Dear Nicole,

  Today is the day three years ago that I proposed to you and you said no. You looked at the ring in my shaking hand and told me to take my question back. To save it for someone who could say yes.

  But you could have said yes. You could have been my wife for however long it lasted. But you said it was better this way. That you loved me and we didn’t need a piece of paper to prove it. I said okay because all I wanted was for you to be happy, but your refusal broke my heart. I hated how logical you were sometimes. “Save the ring for your forever someone,” you said. Well, that’s not going to happen.

  I tossed the ring in the lake today. Cole told me I was being ridiculous and should have returned it a long time ago. How could I return something that meant everything to me at the time? You said no, but that didn’t mean I wanted to take back the gift. I wanted it between us, even tucked away in my sock drawer, as a tiny symbol of how deep our love was. The wound was also my lifeline. Until today.

  Miss you like crazy,

  Maverick

  Chapter Ten

  Four days until the wedding

  Maverick woke with something soft and cozy attached to his side. A female something that filled his chest with warmth. She smelled good, too. He wrapped his arm more tightly around her in case she got any ideas about moving.

  This was the most peaceful he’d been in forever.

  His eyes flew open. The woman curled against him wasn’t Nicole. Instead, she had wavy blond hair, freckles that made her look sexy, courage to be admired, and she stood only an inch or two above five feet, not just under six. She was healthy. Distracting. And they didn’t typically get along.

  You got along last night.

  He lifted his arm, guilt warring with contentment at the position he found himself in. He’d let a moment of vulnerability get the best of him last night, but not today. Kennedy had five days left on the ranch. She was temporary. Crashing a wedding because she thought, what? The groom shouldn’t go through with it?

  He heard her on happiness, but he didn’t want her causing unnecessary trouble and damaging the inn’s good name. The couple looked in love, but… He’d never known Kennedy to be impulsive. That she came all this way to check on Reed, for whatever reason, did speak to the kind of person she was. She saved people—in and out of the ER, apparently.

  She stirred as he tried to maneuver out of their too-close-for-comfort position.

  That last part was a lie. He’d been plenty comfortable.

  “Morning,” Kennedy said, sitting up and seemingly unconcerned with the way they’d just been huddled together.

  “Morning.” He stood, eager to put space between them and to take a closer look at Barley and her puppies. Mom and babies had done well during the night, and he and Kennedy must have fallen asleep around one. The vintage clock on the mantel now read six thirty.

  “How does everyone look today?” she asked from the couch.

  “Good.” He kept his back to her, pretending to stare inside the whelping box when he was really trying to figure out what this new, feels-good relationship between them meant. He didn’t want to be rude, but he craved time to himself before he started on his tasks for the day.

  Slowly, he turned around, the perfect idea hitting him. “I should get you back to the inn. How about I drive you to Baked on Main first?” He’d survive ten extra minutes with her if it meant a Kennedy-free day after that.

  Only, when he looked at her gentle eyes and tousled hair and soft, rose-colored lips, the urge to scoop her up and take her somewhere special, where just the two of them could get to know this newer version of themselves better, hit him like a force of nature.

  “Okay,” she said quietly. “If that’s what you want.”

  If that’s what he wanted? What did that mean? Didn’t she want to get away from him, too? They’d spent more time together in the past two days than they would have during two weeks of college. They’d spoken way more words. Stared at each other way too much.

  Shared more than he thought himself capable of.

  “What do you want?” he asked. He had no idea where the question came from.

  She straightened her back and shifted to the edge of the couch, hands pressed into her lap. “Okay, don’t laugh, but I had a dream last night.” When he didn’t respond, she continued. “I was riding a horse!” She grinned.

  He raised his eyebrows. That didn’t tell him much.

  “It wasn’t a real horse.” Now this was getting interesting, and he couldn’t help the slight curve taking over his mouth. “It was a horse on a carousel. I think I was at an amusement park or something. But the thing is, I hate carousels. I fell off one when I was four and broke my wrist and I’ve been afraid of them ever since.”

  He still failed to see where this was going and how it concerned him.

  “So…I think this means I’m supposed to get ‘back on the horse.’”

  She gave him a cautious smile this time, and hell if it didn’t stir some protective, give-her-everything-she-wants instinct in him. Not that she wasn’t perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but as much as she liked helping people, he did too. He just did it far more quietly. And preferably without notice.

  Not that much went unnoticed in Windsong. He’d left ten bales of hay for Texas Tom before the sun had risen a few weeks ago, and by midmorning the old man had driven over to thank him. The bales had been unexpected, so Maverick had no idea how he’d known it was him.

  “Roosters talk,” his grandmother used to say. He’d started to believe her.

  “You want to go horseback riding?” he asked.

  “Not really, but I think I should.”

  “I think want trumps should in this case, but if you’re dead set on it, we can see if Hunter has some time today.”

  “Oh.” She dropped her gaze to the hardwood floor. “Okay.”

  “If we hurry, we should be able to catch him at the barn.”

  She nodded, and a minute later they hopped in his truck, made a pit stop at the bakery, and pulled up to the barn at seven a.m. on the dot. As Maverick cut the engine, Hunter ambled out of the barn looking like he had a fight in him—Maverick was late this morning—until he saw Kennedy slide out of the truck with a wave in his direction.

  Then Hunter’s face practically split in two. “So this is how it’s going to be the rest of the week,” his brother said.

  Maverick had no idea why he kept getting himself in these situations with Kennedy and nosy members of his family. He knew better. “No, this is how it is this morning only. You have time to give Kennedy that riding lesson you mentioned to her?”

  Hunter looked between him and Kennedy, deep in thought—too deep for Maverick’s liking. Which meant his younger brother was about to say something wildly inappropriate or try to bargain with a chore or two, and Maverick wasn’t in the mood for either.

  “Actually, never mind,” Maverick said. “I’ve got this.”

  “Awesome,” Kennedy said, chiming in before Hunter could say anything. “Let me just take my doughnuts to my room and do a quick change of clothes and I’ll be right back.”

  “I hadn’t meant—” Too late. She moved to the truck to grab her food and then toward the inn like she was trying to shave several seconds off her time. He hadn’t meant right now, but she’d made the decision for him.

  Hunter slapped his thigh and laughed. “She’s got you wrapped around her little finger.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “You are even more clueless than I thought if you can’t see she likes you and you like her.”

  “There is no liking.”

  Hunt put a hand
on Maverick’s shoulder. “There is a lot of liking and I’m glad. It’s past time you allowed yourself some fun.”

  He shrugged off his brother. “We’re not having fun, either.”

  “Well, whatever you want to call it. Nicole has been gone for three years and you’ve been living like a monk ever since. You’re leaving in less than two weeks to fulfill the promise you made to her. From now until then, have some non-fun with a gorgeous, smart woman who is under your skin whether you admit it or not.”

  Maverick scrubbed a hand over his jaw. His brother didn’t know everything. He’d had hookups here and there, just nothing more than one night.

  “Don’t think too hard about it. Go with your gut. That’s what you’ve always told me. What is your gut telling you right now?”

  His own words coming back to bite him in the ass didn’t feel very good. Because the truth was he did like Kennedy. She challenged him in a way no one else ever had, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it until she’d stood in front of him with heels sinking into the grass and a fiery expression on her face.

  “Right now it’s telling me to get her on a horse.”

  “A horse?”

  “My horse. You got things covered for the next couple of hours?”

  “Absolutely.” Hunt sauntered away but turned after only a few feet to add, “I’ll let you know what you owe me later.”

  The damn guy had already won the puppy pool with a guess of six; what more did he want? “You do that.” Maverick wasn’t too worried. His brother forgot to collect payment more often than not. He owed the lucky skunk at least a dozen wagers.

  Stepping inside the barn to greet Magnolia and outfit her, he rubbed down her neck. “Morning, girl. We’ve got an extra passenger today. You cool with that?” Her tail lazily swished back and forth, telling him yeah, she was good with that. He’d never admit it aloud, but he looked forward to taking Kennedy on her first-ever horseback ride.

  She kept surprising him. Kept him on his toes. Kept him wondering what she’d say or do next. When had the enemy become something unique and different?