The Bride Wore Red Boots

by Lizbeth Selvig

  “Dear Gabriel Harrison. Today has been one of the best days of my life. I heard that you are alive and living in Wyoming in the United States of America. I hope you remember me. I am Jibril al . . . ”

  Her hand dropped to her side and, for the third time in twenty minutes, tears made it impossible to speak. She covered her mouth and lifted her eyes to Gabe’s. He took the papers and turned the letter from Jibril over. From the back, the photo of a bright, brown-eyed young man with thick black hair and a confident smile, stared out at her.

  “That’s . . .?”

  “Jibril. His parents and aunts and uncles swept him and his cousins away that day before the chaos ended. They told the children all the soldiers were killed, and then they escaped as a family from the city. They didn’t want any more contact with us because we were too dangerous. And they didn’t let anyone know who could tell us the truth. This uncle just happened to move back to Baghdad a couple of years ago.”

  There were no words to say that matched the feeling in Mia’s heart or the look on Gabriel’s face.

  “You didn’t tell me.” She kissed him.

  “I had this planned.” He looked around them and lifted her hand with the ring to his lips. “This was more important, and finding Jibril had nothing to do with it. If you said yes, I knew I had the best engagement present ever.”

  “Wait. If I said yes? You had doubts?”

  “A class clown never knows if people really like him, or just like his silly clown nose.”

  “I hate clown noses.”

  “Nah, you don’t. You just say that. I know for a fact now, because you said yes.”

  “I did. But tell me about Jibril.”

  “I guess there are more pictures at home. We can learn more when we get there. But he’s eighteen. He’s going to school in Canada, because he couldn’t get into the United States back when he applied. He’s since gotten a visitor’s visa, and he hopes to parlay that into a student visa. He wants to go to Northwestern in Chicago and study journalism.”

  “Oh, Gabe, you could maybe meet him sometime.”

  Gabe nodded. “Maybe.”

  She hugged him, the warmth in her chest spreading until she thought it might explode like fireworks. She’d never had to deal with so much emotional bursting in her life.

  “Maybe he can be here for the wedding, although there might not be time.” Gabe gave her one more crooked, secretive smile.

  “Ummm, not time?”

  “Read the last page.”

  It was a handwritten note from Harper, scanned and sent along with the rest of the e-mail.

  Dear Mia and Gabe,

  Now that your family is complete (for the moment), I have a very personal wish. You and I have had our sibling moments, Mia, but I love you second only to Cole. You are the big sister I’ve always cherished. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, too. Please, consider sharing our wedding day. I want us to be brides together. The start of a new Paradise dynasty. Of course it’s up to Gabe, as well. But I pray with all my heart you’ll twist his arm until he says yes.

  I love you both. Congrats on Rory and Jibril.

  Harpo

  She didn’t cry this time. She couldn’t for the disbelief that blew every other emotion out of the water.

  “That’s only six weeks away,” she said. “Wait. How did she even know?”

  “I asked her permission, along with your mother and your grandmother. They all stood in for your dad. You don’t have to decide right now. She knows it’s our wedding.”

  “Yes,” she said again. “If you want to.”

  “I want to tomorrow.” He grinned. “I’ll marry you here and now.”

  “Do it. Marry me now. Just us and God’s mysterious ways.”

  He looked down at her feet. “Only if you go get those lucky red boots out of your suitcase. This isn’t something a guy wants to leave to chance.”

  “You are a clown, you clown.” She laughed. “There’s no chance involved. This is love. Perfect, fast-acting, forever love.”

  His lips devoured hers and lightning drove through her, hot, fast-acting, forever. Perfect.

  “I do,” she murmured.

  Keep reading for a look at the first book in Lizbeth Selvig’s

  Seven Brides for Seven Cowboys series,

  THE BRIDE WORE DENIM

  When Harper Lee Crockett returns home to Paradise Ranch, Wyoming, the last thing she expects is to fall head-over-heels in lust for Cole, childhood neighbor and her older sister’s former longtime boyfriend. The spirited and artistic Crockett sister has finally learned to resist her craziest impulses, but this latest trip home and Cole’s rough and tough appeal might be too much for her fading self-control.

  Cole Wainwright has long been fascinated by the sister who has always stood out from the crowd. His relationship with Amelia, the eldest Crockett sister, wasn’t as perfect as it seemed, and with Harper back in town, he sees everything he’d been missing. Cole knows they have no future together—he’s tied to the land and she’s created a successful life in the big city—but neither of them can escape their growing attraction or inconvenient feelings.

  As Harper struggles to come to grips with new family responsibilities and her forbidden feelings for Cole, she must decide whether to listen to her head or to give her heart what it wants.

  Now Available from Avon Impulse!

  An Excerpt from

  THE BRIDE WORE DENIM

  THANK GOD FOR the chickens. They knew how to liven up a funeral.

  Harper Crockett crouched against the rain-soaked wall of her father’s extravagant chicken coop and laughed until she cried. This time, however, the tears weren’t for the man who’d built the Henhouse Hilton—as she and her sisters had christened the porch-fronted coop that rivaled most human homes—they were for the eight multicolored, escaped fowl that careened around the yard like over-caffeinated bees.

  The very idea of a chicken stampede on one of Wyoming’s largest cattle ranches was enough to ease her sorrow, even today.

  She glanced toward the back porch of her parents’ huge log home several hundred yards away to make sure she was still alone, and she wiped the tears and the rain from her eyes. “I know you probably aren’t liking this, Dad,” she said, aiming her words at the sopping chickens. “Chaos instead of order.”

  Chaos had never been acceptable to Samuel Crockett.

  A bock-bocking Welsummer rooster, gorgeous with its burnt-orange-and-blue body and iridescent green tail, powered past, close enough for an ambush. Harper sprang, and nabbed the affronted bird around its thick, shiny body. “Gotcha,” she said as its feathers soaked her sweater. “Back to the pen for you.”

  The rest of the chickens squawked in alarm at the apprehension and arrest of one of their own. They scattered again, scolding and flapping.

  Yeah, she thought as she deposited the rooster back in the chicken yard, her father had no choice but to glower at the bedlam from heaven. He was the one who’d left the dang birds behind.

  As the hens fussed, Harper assessed the little flock made up of her father’s favorite breeds—all chosen for their easygoing temperaments: friendly, buff-colored Cochins; smart, docile, black-and-white Plymouth Rocks; and sweet, shy, black Australorps. What a little freedom and gang mentality could do, she mused, plotting her next capture. They’d turned into a band of egg-laying gangsters, helping each other escape the law.

  Despite there being seven chickens still left to corral, Harper reveled in sharing their attempted run for freedom with nobody. She brushed ineffectually at the mud on her soggy blue-and-brown broom skirt—hippie clothing in the words of her sisters—and the stains on her favorite, crocheted summer sweater. It would have been much smarter to recruit help. Any number of kids bored with funereal reminiscing would have gladly volunteered. Her sisters—Joely and the triplets, if not Amelia—might have as well. The wrangling would have been done in minutes.

  Something about handling this alone, however, fed her
need to dredge whatever good memories she could from the day. She’d chased an awful lot of chickens throughout her youth. The memories served her sadness, and she didn’t want to share them.

  Another lucky grab garnered a little Australorp who was returned, protesting, to the yard. Glancing around once more to check the rainy yard, Harper squatted back under the eaves of the ostentatious yellow chicken mansion and let the half dozen birds settle. These were not her mother’s pets. These were her father’s “girls”—creatures who’d sometimes received more warmth than the human females he’d raised.

  Good memories tried to flee in the wake of her petty thoughts, and she grabbed them back. Of course her father had loved his daughters. He’d just never been good at showing it. There’d been plenty of good times.

  Rain pittered in a slow, steady rhythm over the lawn and against the coop’s gingerbread scrollwork. It pattered into the genuine, petunia-filled, window boxes on their actual multipaned windows. Inside, the chickens enjoyed oak-trimmed nesting boxes, two flights of ladders, and chicken-themed artwork. Behind their over-the-top manse stretched half an acre of safely fenced running yard, which was trimmed with white picket fencing. Why the idiot birds were shunning such luxury to go AWOL out here in the rain was beyond Harper—even if they had found the gate improperly latched.

  Wiping rain from her face again, she concentrated like a cat stalking canaries. Chicken wrangling was rarely about mad chasing and much more about patience. She made three more successful captures and then smiled evilly at the remaining three criminals who eyed her with concern. “Give yourselves up, you dirty birds. Your time on the lam is finished.”

  She swooped toward a fluffy Cochin, a chicken breed normally known for its lazy friendliness, and the fat creature shocked her by feinting and then dodging. For the first time in the hunt, Harper missed her chicken. A resulting belly flop onto the grass forced a startled grunt from her throat, and she slid four inches through a puddle. Before she could let loose the mild curse that bubbled up to her tongue, the mortifying sound of clapping echoed through the rain.

  “I definitely give that a nine-point-five.”

  A hot flash of awareness blazed through her stomach, leaving behind unwanted flutters, and she closed her eyes, fighting back embarrassment. Her voice was still missing when a large, sinewy male hand appeared in front of her, accompanied by rich, baritone laugher. She groaned and reached for his fingers.

  “Hello, Cole,” she said, resignation forcing her vocal chords to work as she let him help her gently but unceremoniously to her feet.

  Cole Wainwright stood before her, the knot of his tie pulled three inches down his white shirt front, the two buttons above it spread open. That left the tanned, corded skin of his neck at Harper’s eye level. She swallowed hard. His brown-black hair was spiked and mussed, as if he’d awoken, and his eyes sparkled in the rain like blue diamonds. She took a step back.

  “Hullo, you,” he replied.

  His pirate’s grin, wide and warm and charming, hadn’t changed since they’d been kids. It had been dorky when he’d been ten and she eight and they, together with Harper’s five sisters, had played at being the only pirates who’d sought treasure on horseback rather than from a ship’s deck. Then she’d turned twelve and one day found she would have rather been a captured princess than one of the crew. Because that smile had no longer been dorky. It had been a nice fantasy—but Amelia had always made herself the pirate’s princess. The highest Harper could rise was to being the round butterball of a maid servant.

  Cole’s family had owned Paradise’s neighboring ranch the Double Diamond. The Crockett daughters and the Wainwright son had all stayed friends through high school, even though Cole had chosen Amelia for, first, the homecoming dance, then Snow Ball, and finally prom. Once the years of exploring their adjoining land on horseback and hanging out being ranch kids had ended, Cole and Amelia had quickly become The Super Couple—gorgeous on gorgeous. Harper had let her secret Cole fantasies fade away, finished high school, gone off to her wild and failed college years, and kept track of Cole and Amelia only the rare holidays they all visited Paradise Ranch at the same time—like last Christmas when she’d spoken to Cole one-on-one for the first time in years.

  His relationship with Amelia had been complicated. Dating for two years after graduation, staying apart for another three years, getting back together so that the family had for a long time considered Cole and Amelia all but married. Then, unexpectedly three years ago, the Super Couple had broken up—amicably but permanently, they’d insisted, even though some people still believed, even hoped, they’d reunite.

  They hadn’t. It didn’t look as if they would. But everyone was still friends.

  Except for the eighteen months after Harper’s father had purchased the Double Diamond. Cole and Mia had broken up, and Cole had disappeared without a trace.

  Eventually he’d come back, and the past two winters he’d worked for Sam Crockett on Paradise. Everyone said he was fine.

  “Earth to Harpo.”

  His hand waved in front of her face. She shook her head, and suddenly she was staring at him, having missed every word he’d said. And there were flutters, deep and unmistakably caused by his proximity.

  She blinked. “Oh! I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

  He laughed again. “Are you all right?”

  No. No, no, no. This was unacceptable. As happy as she was to see him, these were not the memories she’d been after. This was not a reaction she wanted—this electric anticipation that had been thrumming through her body ever since he’d walked into the church that morning almost late for the service.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You still do it.” He peered at her, grinning again.

  “Do what?”

  “Go off into that little artist’s daze. I always wondered what you were seeing while you were in those trances. Usually you’d disappear after one of them, and we’d find you in some corner painting or drawing. But you weren’t big on showing me your work. I was left thinking you’d gotten some great vision or prophecy. Like now.”

  She nearly choked on her laughter. “I do not do that! And believe me, I was having no visions of any kind. I was seeing three chickens laughing at me, so I was plotting revenge.”

  That was a lie, but he didn’t need to know it.

  “Well, you did go into trances, but who am I to argue? If this was only revenge plotting, I think you’re justified. You are kind of a mud ball, aren’t you?”

  His familiar, mischievous voice finally calmed her, sent her gaze downward to survey the damage to her only dressy clothes, and, most importantly, made her think the whole episode including the wet clothing, was funny. She lifted her eyes.

  “I dunno. I think mud is the new chic.”

  “Aw, Harpo, if mud is in, then you look fantastic.” He hesitated and studied her, his bright blue eyes as warm as his smile. “You look pretty fantastic even if mud isn’t a fashion statement.”

  She lifted her face to the sky, letting the rain that was starting to slow into huge drops burst like little water balloons on her cheeks, keeping the heat in them from showing.

  “Yeah? Well, thank you, my old silver-tongued friend. But you know you’re going to look equally fantastic if you stay out here much longer.”

  Without thinking, she brushed raindrops off the shoulders of his shirt, skimming their broad expanse twice with cupped fingers. Then she flicked drops from his hair. The tousled, just-out-of-bed look was beginning to flatten like the chickens’ wet feathers.

  He stared at her, and she jerked her hand away, dismayed by her bold touches.

  “You should get back inside,” she said. “I was on my way to the barn to find Joely, but the chickens’ gate got unlatched. I had to side track. I’ll get these last three chickens and join you.”

  “I’ll help. It’ll go faster.”

  “That’s silly. You’ll only get muddy, too.”

  “No, just wet. Because u
nlike you, I’m good at this.”

  “Oh, wow. There was a gauntlet hitting the lawn with a giant, rippling splash.”

  He grinned. She returned it.

  “He who returns the most remaining chickens to the yard, gets to . . . ” Cole made a show of thinking up the prize. “Put anything he wants on a piece of Melanie’s lefse and make the loser eat it.”

  “Oh my gosh, what are you? Ten?” She sputtered with more laughter.

  Melanie Thorson, the Southern belle wife of Paradise Ranch’s foreman who was, in contrast, a first generation Norwegian-American through and through, had learned to make the best lefse this side of Oslo. The trouble was, a mean person could stuff it with anything from cinnamon sugar to pickled herring.

  “Deal or no deal?” Cole asked, his handsome nose now dripping water.

  “Oh, it’s a deal. But I warn you, the winner? She is going to come up with something really disgusting.”

  “Dream on. One, two, three, go. Catch one if you can, Harpo.”

  The three chickens had huddled for safety and shelter beneath a huge linden tree, but the instant Harper and Cole took off, the birds clucked into panic mode and went three different directions like possessed bobblehead dolls. Harper went after the Cochin that had left her in the grass and caught her in seconds.

  “Hah!” She held up the chicken in triumph, only to see Cole with a flapping Plymouth Rock hen.

  “Lucky,” he called.

  “You keep thinking that,” she replied.

  They reincarcerated the two chickens and turned to the last escapee. This hen, Harper knew, was the oldest chicken in the flock, the only Rhode Island Red, a hen that had been around at least five or six years. She was wily and stubborn and laid a lot of eggs.

  “Roxie Red,” Harper said, in the same tone she might have said “Lizzie Borden.”

  “They all have names, don’t they?” Cole asked.

  “He always named them, but I don’t know what they are. Who can tell them apart? She stands out, the old, cranky biddy.”

  “Don’t you worry your head,” he teased. “Let me take care of her.”