I don’t care what other people say, he’d told her. I care what I think.
And then he’d kissed her silly.
The more boxes Abby piled on the sun porch to move over to Gray’s house that weekend, the more Lily felt the need to muse loudly about things like the way everything smelled like manure out here in the boonies, especially the people. Or how she could never tolerate the lack of sophistication out in these fields, but she knew some simple women enjoyed being stashed away in a barn while their men found more invigorating company in town.
But the more Abby bit her tongue and thought about Gray—being near Gray, looking at Gray, touching Gray, kissing Gray—the less those comments seemed to sting.
Then it was Saturday at last. And she was standing in the childhood bedroom that no longer looked like hers after she’d emptied it of all her things. She climbed into the simple gown she planned to wear to the courthouse to become a wife—Gray’s wife—and her mouth still didn’t feel like hers.
She could see her hands in the mirror and knew she wasn’t shaking, so she didn’t know why it felt like she was anyway. Like there was a trembling thing lodged deep inside of her that made it hard to pull in a breath. Because even that shook.
Still, she wasn’t scared at all. The way maybe she should have been.
She was … excited. Probably more hopeful than was wise. She concentrated on that fizzy, buoyant feeling and told herself it was as real as she made it.
Because she was ready.
She was ready to marry Gray. She was ready to be a wife and maybe someday a mother. She was ready to change her life in every conceivable way with this one, possibly lunatic act.
She wasn’t sure she cared how crazy it was. She knew every nook and cranny of her life as it was now and she didn’t hate it, but she also knew that it would be exactly the same ten years from now if she didn’t do something to change it.
Abby wanted to change. She wanted to see if she could change.
And she really, really wanted to kiss Gray some more.
When she was dressed, she made her way down the stairs from her bedroom for the last time as a single woman, wishing she didn’t have to go through this part. She could already hear her mother’s voice in her head, and she felt herself stiffening with every step—
“Surprise!”
Hope’s voice there at the bottom of the stairs didn’t make sense. Abby blinked as she took the last few steps, but the vision didn’t go away. Hope and Rae were standing there in the arched opening to the front room, grinning wildly at her. And more than that, dressed in matching navy dresses.
Abby blinked again, but this time, to keep herself from tearing up.
“You said you didn’t want bridesmaids,” Rae said through her smile. “And we absolutely listened to you.”
“Of course, we listened to you,” Hope agreed staunchly. “That’s why we’re here as your chauffeurs, nothing more.” She waved a hand over her dress, then Rae’s matching one. “As you can see, we’re wearing the appropriate uniforms to perform this necessary duty on this, your special day.”
Abby’s eyes filled again, and blinking didn’t do a thing to stop it. She didn’t know whether she was smiling or crying, or maybe both.
But it didn’t matter, because they were all hugging each other, tight and familiar. If this wasn’t the kind of occasion that called for the sort of group hug they would normally avoid like the plague, nothing was.
When they pulled away, Abby saw that her friends’ eyes were suspiciously bright too.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispered fiercely.
“Of course we’re here,” Rae replied instantly, in the same tone.
“Especially with the gorgon in town,” Hope added.
And, being Hope, didn’t bother keeping her voice down.
Abby opted not to look past them to see whether her mother—coiled in Grandpa’s chair the way she always was, because she loved nothing more than making her petty little statements from the very place Grandpa had always dispensed his measured, calm wisdom—had heard.
Her heart was flipping over and over in her chest in a way that she would have worried was unhealthy on any other day. Today, she suspected it was merely that same fizzy joy.
Excitement. Anticipation. Worry mixed together with hope.
All of the above.
Grandma took a few pictures of the three of them and waved them off as they’d piled into Rae’s rattley old truck the way they’d done hundreds upon hundreds of times before.
It could have been any Saturday from back in high school. The three of them on a bright morning, sharing that long drive into town. Abby sat in the back and gazed out the windows as Rae drove too fast down the county road. She stared out at the fields she knew so well, in all seasons.
She was leaving these fields for the last time as Abby Douglas, resident vestal virgin of Cold River and the surrounding valley. She would return to them as Gray Everett’s wife, and there was something in her that didn’t know whether to mourn the loss or celebrate the change.
Both, she was sure. It could be both.
She could already feel homesick for the easy, comfortable routines of her grandmother’s house even as she was excitedly looking forward to a new life in that ranch house Becca had showed her, room by painstaking room.
Including the one she’d be sharing with Gray.
The feeling that moved through her glowed, then rode that same internal shiver down to lodge between her legs.
Hope and Rae were bickering good-naturedly over the music the way they’d been doing since they were all ten years old. Abby tried to school her expression into something that didn’t scream Gray’s bedroom, Gray’s bed, Gray’s body when Hope turned around in her seat to stare at Abby in the back.
Over and over again.
“You’re making me self-conscious,” Abby complained after approximately the fifty-fifth time.
“I can’t help it. You’re beautiful.”
Abby knew that wasn’t true. But today, in a car with her closest friends on her way to marry the man she’d loved forever, she let it slide.
More than that, she allowed herself to imagine that maybe, just today, it could be a little bit true.
It seemed to take no time at all before they were winding their way down into Cold River. It was one of Colorado’s bright blue days that looked as if it might shatter if the wind picked up. And the sunshine made it look a whole lot warmer than it really was.
Abby was usually cold, especially as the winter weather moved in, but today she couldn’t seem to be anything but boiling hot.
As if she were already someone else.
“Are you ready to marry Gray Everett?” Rae asked as she sped toward the river. “Are you ready to become Mrs. Gray Everett, at last?”
“Abby is a modern woman, Rae,” Hope chided her. “You don’t know what name she’s going to choose. Or use.”
“She used to doodle Mrs. Gray Everett all over her notebooks in eighth grade,” Rae retorted. “I feel like she made this choice a long time ago.”
“Family names are very important, loaded choices in a woman’s life,” Hope said loftily, as if she’d dedicated her life to studying the issue of surnames despite only ever having the one herself. “I don’t want you to pressure her.”
Rae’s response to that was typically profane, if more muted than usual because she was pulling up in front of the courthouse.
As her friends continued to argue—with their typical laughter and obvious enjoyment of each other, but it was still an argument—over what Abby might or might not call herself in a few hours, Abby looked out the front window of the truck.
Her heart kicked at her. Hard.
Because Gray was there.
Waiting.
And when relief flooded her at the sight of him standing tall and strong and utterly still at the top of the stairs, Abby understood that despite all those boxes she’d packed and carried down the stairs,
and despite the way he kissed her on Thanksgiving that had kept her going for the past two days, some part of her had expected him to change his mind. To come to his senses.
But there he was.
He looked better than any dream she could have conjured up. He wore a dark jacket over a button-down shirt that clung to the chest she’d felt pressed against her, too briefly, out there in his yard. His belt buckle looked polished, and he was wearing his darkest jeans. And his boots and his Stetson, in case she’d forgotten that every inch of him was a cowboy.
Her cowboy.
Because before noon, she was going to be his wife. Abby’s heart might actually burst wide open. It was possible it already had.
“You guys are the best chauffeurs ever,” she said, cutting off Hope arguing about medieval property rights, of all things, “but you’re missing the most important part of this ride.”
“If you mean Hope’s inability to admit other people might have a point of view just as valid as hers,” Rae said hotly, “even if she doesn’t agree with them, I’m with you.”
But Hope followed Abby’s gaze through the front window and up the steps to the courthouse doors.
“She doesn’t mean that at all,” Hope said, her smile widening.
Rae swiveled forward to look, and for moment, all three of them sat there in the truck, gazing out the window at Gray.
Abby felt that slipping, nostalgic sensation again, as if this were one of the thousands of times in their past the three of them had sat somewhere and done exactly this. Because they had. All over Cold River and the surrounding valleys, including those shameful years when they’d conducted embarrassing drive-bys out in the fields to see if they could spot Gray working on one of his fences.
Preferably without a shirt.
“Well,” Rae said after a moment, her voice thick, “who doesn’t love a happy ending?”
Abby leaned over the seat and stuck her head between her two friends. She looked back and forth between them and did her best not to be the one who let her tears spill over. Again.
But it was close.
“I know you guys think this is a bad idea,” she said softly. “I’m not sure I disagree with you, to be honest. But the fact that you’re willing to come with me and act like it’s nothing but happy endings and dreams come true means more to me than I could ever say.”
“If you make me ruin my eyeliner, I will kill you,” Rae whispered fiercely, blinking furiously.
“That’s our job, Abby,” Hope said. “One we will always do, no matter what. Believe it.”
Abby took a deep breath. And somehow she kept herself from tipping over into the great sob that was expanding in her chest, tempting her to lose it completely.
But she was getting married because she was practical, not emotional. She doubted Gray would be impressed if she fell out of the truck in a sea of tears. So she pulled herself together and pushed open the door, then stepped down out of Rae’s truck with as much grace as she could muster. Only then did she head for the man who waited there for her.
For her.
And Abby knew she wasn’t beautiful. She’d been plain every day of her life and in case she’d been tempted to forget it, Lily had made her disappointment in her only child’s looks clear over the past couple of days.
The word “plodding” had been used. Repeatedly.
She knew she wasn’t beautiful, and she told herself that didn’t matter to her, because it shouldn’t. It had nothing to do with her life. It had nothing to do with this wedding.
Still, there was something about the way Gray’s gaze locked on her when she started toward him. The way his dark green eyes lit when he saw her, then held.
Abby knew perfectly well she would never, ever be beautiful, but today she was wearing a long white dress. She had her hair down around her shoulders, and Grandma had helped her curl it, with a whole lot more patience than Abby had ever lavished on herself or her looks.
She might never be beautiful, not really, but she thought this is what it feels like.
Especially when Gray met her halfway down the steps, took her hand in his, and stood there for a moment.
As if it wasn’t twenty-nine degrees. As if they had all the time in the world, out here on a breathlessly cold November morning with the sun dancing over the river and shaking the bare tree branches.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
Abby wanted to wrap herself up in Gray’s voice. Rough and low, all drawl. All cowboy.
“I’m ready,” she said.
She didn’t tell him she’d been ready for years.
“I see you brought some witnesses,” he continued, and Abby felt her face go red, the way it seemed to do every thirty seconds around this man.
“I’m sorry. I know we agreed to keep it small, but—”
“I brought one myself,” Gray said, in that soothing way of his that made Abby want to do something horrifying, like purr. “Becca read me the riot act. She’s turning into a little general.”
But he grinned while he said it.
That was how, even though Abby had agreed to a wedding ceremony that was purely municipal, because this marriage was supposed to be only practical, they ended up with a small crowd.
Abby couldn’t say she minded. It felt right that she had her friends and Gray had his daughter as they did this thing. Colorado allowed couples to marry themselves, but neither one of them had wanted that. Or, it turned out, to do the courthouse thing alone.
“I asked your grandmother,” Becca whispered to Abby in the courthouse hallway as they waited their turn. She was wearing a dress too and had obviously taken time with the braids she’d put into her hair and made into a kind of crown. “She said she had her hands full already, and that she trusted me to take pictures. So don’t worry. I will.”
Abby didn’t know whether her grandmother had meant her hands were full with Lily, or with the reception Martha had decided she was throwing whether Abby liked it or not. Who argued with Martha Douglas when she was on a tear?
Way back when, Grandma had babysat for Douglas Fowler, the patriarch of the Fowler family who had owned and operated the Grand Hotel that had been standing on the corner of Main Street and River Road since there’d been nothing to the town besides a feed store and a few big dreamers. She’d informed Abby that it took her a single phone call to secure a big enough room so Martha could invite the whole town to her only grandchild’s wedding reception.
There had been no real response Abby could give but a thank you.
“I trust you to be an excellent photographer,” Abby assured Becca and watched the girl bloom a bit as if Abby had showered her with praise. It made her want to keep doing it.
But they were being called in. Gray was taking her hand again, warm and sure. Her friends were behind her, and Becca was looking at her with almost too much delight to bear.
Now that it was finally happening, Abby would have given anything to slow down again. She wanted to lose herself in each moment. The things she had to sign. The way they stood in the fussy room with its Colorado flag, drenched in the sharp sunlight from outside. She wanted to linger over every vow Gray repeated in his uncompromising way, as if he was making it law. She wanted to stretch out in the words she said in return. Love. Honor. She wanted to stop time, standing there in front of a judge with so many smiles at her back she was sure she could feel them holding her up.
But it went so fast.
Her heart was beating wildly in her chest as Gray took her hand in his and slid a gold band into place on her left ring finger.
Abby said, “I do.”
And just like that, she was Gray’s wife.
She stared at the ring on her hand, trying to make sense of it, but couldn’t. Then Gray’s hand was on her jaw, tipping her chin up to angle her face toward his. And he settled his mouth on hers once more.
This part felt real. That hard, hot punch of heat. The way the touch of his lips rolled all throughout her body, making her ache.
Making her long for more.
Making her forget where she was.
Her ears were ringing, but then she realized that it was their witnesses. Hope, Rae, and Becca, cheering for them.
Hope and Rae started talking about getting over to the Grand Hotel, but Abby couldn’t seem to catch a full breath. And she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Gray.
She loved the way his eyes crinkled in the corners. She loved the way his hard mouth curved—and if she wasn’t mistaken, even more than it had a few weeks ago, when he’d made his outrageous proposal in Grandma’s living room.
He’d dropped his hand from her face, but he kept hold of her hand.
She could touch him now, she marveled. Whenever she liked. His hand was wrapped around hers, and no one would glance at it twice, not anymore.
They were married. It was done.
Which meant the only thing left of this quick wedding of theirs—before they started their actual marriage and got into all those big life changes Abby was almost fully certain she was ready for, as practical and levelheaded as she was meant to be—was the wedding night.
The one thing she didn’t feel practical or levelheaded about at all, no matter what she might have said on Thanksgiving.
11
After the ride over from the courthouse in Gray’s truck with Becca talking excitedly from the back and leaning forward to show Abby photos every few seconds, Abby and her new family—a word that seemed to sit like a smooth, sweet stone in her gut as she considered it—walked into Cold River’s Grand Hotel together.
The Old West landmark still maintained its nineteenth-century splendor. There were bright chandeliers, glorious moldings, and embossed ceilings. Abby knew the back bar had been imported from the east by wagon and that robber barons and copper kings had spent their nights here when the hills of Cold River had been rumored to hold more gold than Breckenridge. The fanciest parties in town had been thrown here then, and they still were.
But the kinds of parties that happened here these days would have made Abby feel like an alien, if she’d ever been invited. The hotel had made a name for itself as a destination wedding jewel, bringing in trade from Denver brides who wanted a touch of Colorado’s Old West history in a charming, accessible mountain setting.
A True Cowboy Christmas Page 14