The Maverick's Holiday Masquerade (Montana Mavericks: What Happened At The Wedding 5)

by Caro Carson

  “The library. Built in, um...”

  “No trickery.”

  “Well, I went to story hours there as a little girl, so I can guesstimate that the building is roughly twenty-five years old.” She gestured to the other side of the street. “I know this one exactly. The community center is brand-spanking-new, built after the flood. The funds came in from an anonymous donor.”

  Ryan didn’t stop her monologue, but he knew all about the Grace Traub Community Center. Shane’s birth father had contributed the money in honor of Shane’s deceased birth mother.

  “They built it in the perfect spot,” she said, drawing him back onto the sidewalk as they continued past the community center. She stopped to point out the two-story town hall across the street, telling him about the monthly town meetings and how accessible he’d find the mayor when he moved here.

  Looming at their backs was the church where the day’s wedding had taken place, a traditional structure with a steeple that reached for the night stars. Wide, white steps led from the arched double doors down to the sidewalk. He ignored them.

  “Living in a town this size is efficient. I’ll give you the classic example, one every good Rust Creek Falls resident makes use of eventually, even though we all joke about it. You get your marriage license at the city hall.” Kristen turned to look up at the church. “You walk across the street to the church and make your promises in front of the preacher, and then you head to the community center to cut your cake and have your first dance.”

  A bridal couple would have to pass the exact spot where they stood. Ryan had parked behind the church this afternoon and had entered through a side door. It hadn’t been an intentional move to avoid church steps. He never did that—they were only concrete, after all. Tonight, they looked ominous, a ridiculous trick of the mind after an emotional day.

  Kristen started up the steps ahead of him, taking them briskly, talking cheerfully. “Having the reception at the Fourth of July celebration today was a real departure from tradition.”

  It had been cold the day his mother left him. The church had been having some kind of Christmas festival, and he’d been given one of those cheap plastic snow globes. He could remember the hard feel of it in his hands as he’d watched his mother walk away.

  “I’ve never seen a patriotic wedding like today’s. The red, white and blue thing worked out great, didn’t you think?”

  Ryan put his boot on the first step and he saw, in his mind’s eye, a shattered snow globe. He’d dropped the snow globe after his mother left. He’d forgotten that. For thirty years, he’d forgotten that, until now.

  He saw the splattered water darkening the white steps. The shards of plastic. The bits of glitter that weren’t as magical when they weren’t clustered together. He didn’t remember being sad in that moment, only resigned. He’d known before his fourth birthday that nothing good lasted very long.

  Kristen’s voice came down softly from above him. “Ah, church steps.”

  Her intuition was amazing to him. From the first moment they’d danced together, she’d been able to read the most subtle change in him.

  She came down to the sidewalk. When he kept staring at his boot on the step, she slipped her hand into the bend of his elbow, as if he were escorting her to a formal affair. “Maybe if a man stood on a set of church steps with his bride beside him, it would give him a better memory to wipe that old one away.”

  She set her foot next to his, the fancy leather scrollwork of her boot obliterating the vision of the shattered snow globe. She was a bold one, this delicate-looking beauty raised in the land of glaciers and grizzlies.

  “Maybe it would,” he said quietly. “Maybe the ghost of young Ryan Michaels would finally disappear.”

  He wanted to believe so. Everything good didn’t have to end. He’d just handled too many divorces and worked with too many people who were on their third and fourth marriages. In Rust Creek Falls, it seemed possible that two people could stick to one promise. Something good could last.

  “I think young Ryan Michaels turned into a good man,” Kristen said softly.

  He lifted Kristen’s hand to press a kiss in her palm. Everything seemed possible today, that the child Ryan Michaels and the man Ryan Roarke weren’t so completely separate. That he, Ryan, could even meet the one perfect woman for him.

  Kristen climbed the step to stand face-to-face with him. She rested her forehead against his, and he closed his eyes.

  “Maybe,” she said, “a man and a woman could decide to skip the church steps altogether. They could get their license and say their vows, too, in the town hall.”

  “But that’s not how it’s usually done in this town. If the bride had grown up here, she might feel like she missed out on her big day.” If she tied herself down to a man no one knew, a man who was a stranger to the local norms. “People would talk.”

  “People would wonder why, but if it made the grown-up version of Ryan Michaels happier not to think about church steps at all, then she’d be happier if she could skip that part, too. They’re promising to be a team from that day forward, and if it would make a less stressful wedding day for them as a team, that would be all that mattered.”

  “Kristen.” He hadn’t been looking for her; he hadn’t thought a woman would ever understand him so well. Yet she’d been here in this tiny town in Montana, and he’d known, somehow, to come and find her today.

  Fate. Destiny. Magic. He was ready to believe all of it.

  He picked her up off the step and whirled her into the street. She landed lightly on her feet, laughing with him, gesturing toward the Traub Community Center. “Of course, they’d still have a grand reception. Everyone would come, but it would be just the two of them alone on the dance floor for their first dance.”

  “It wouldn’t be a first dance for us.” Ryan took her into his arms to waltz once more. In the middle of the street in their own private town, he led her in the elegant steps of the ballroom dance, thighs brushing in the dark as she hummed a country-western tune.

  The fireworks were inevitable. The park was only two blocks away, so the fireworks were spectacularly close, their umbrella shapes forming shimmering willow trees over Ryan and Kristen as they continued to waltz, turning around and around on the solid yellow traffic lines that crossed the dark pavement under their boots.

  It was just as inevitable that the fireworks would end, their last burst of thunder echoing off the buildings around them. Ryan and Kristen stopped, slightly out of breath from their dance, slightly breathless in their shared laughter. He had to kiss her, and he did, even knowing where that would lead. After long minutes of bliss and need, when the escalating desire made her whimper and he felt the sound in his soul, he broke off the kiss. “Let me take you home.”

  “Yes.” Her fingers tightened in his hair, tugging in a way that was all the sexier because he was sure she hadn’t done it consciously. She pressed herself closer to him, soft breasts against hard chest. “No—I mean, yes, but there are too many people at my house. Where are you staying?”

  Maggie’s.

  Impossible. He would never bring a woman to his sister’s guest bedroom, anyway, but with a ten-week-old in the house, either Maggie or her husband were up every three hours. Sleep was a precious commodity there, which was why he’d booked himself a hotel by the airport in Kalispell.

  Yes. He’d forgotten for a second that he’d booked that hotel after staying with his sister the night before. He’d done it to be kind, wanting to make his predawn flight without waking Maggie and her family in the morning. Kindness was paying off. He could take Kristen to the hotel. They’d have a few hours of bliss, maybe catch an hour of sleep and then...

  Damn it. It wouldn’t work. He’d rise and pack his things, turn his rental car in at the airport and board the plane to begin ten hours of travel. He couldn’t leave Kri
sten in a hotel room twenty-five miles away from Rust Creek Falls. It failed every test on every level.

  The fantasy disappeared in a puff of imaginary smoke. The day was over. This was not his real life, and he couldn’t make love to Kristen Dalton as if it were the start of something essential. He was leaving.

  “What is it?” she asked. Headlights illuminated her face for a brief second as a car drove through the intersection beyond the church and town hall. Another followed close behind, driving away from the park now that the Fourth of July was over.

  He let go of her shirt—his shirt—and walked her back to the sidewalk. “My flight is early out of Kalispell. God knows I don’t want to go, but I have to. I’ve got commitments.”

  “We’ve still got tonight.”

  “To make love?”

  “Nothing less.”

  His blunt question hadn’t fazed her. Nothing less made him want her more fiercely than ever, but what he wanted was not what was best for her.

  “And then what? I’ll kiss you goodbye and leave you in a hotel bed by the airport, with no way to get home, and no promise that I’ll ever come back.”

  She winced at that picture. A pickup truck turned onto Main Street and drove past them.

  “Kristen, that’s not going to happen. You’re not the kind of woman who wants a one-night stand, but when I don’t know what I’m going to do with my future, I can’t promise you anything different.”

  “Like you said, that’s not going to happen.” Her soft hand rested on his jaw, so tenderly that it didn’t cause him any pain despite taking that hit from the horse earlier. “You’ve got the heart of a true cowboy.”

  If today had shown him anything, it was that he wasn’t a small-town rancher at all. “A true cowboy? What does that mean?”

  “A true cowboy lives by a code that isn’t so different from a knight’s code of chivalry. You won’t make a promise you can’t keep. You’re telling me that you won’t sleep with me tonight because you can’t stay the whole night and see me safely home? That’s the most caring, romantic thing I’ve ever heard.” She gave his chest a light smack and sighed with regret. “It’s sexually frustrating at the moment, but romantic.”

  Her talk of cowboy hearts would only keep them both in this Montana fantasy. He needed to act like the lawyer he was and cut to the facts.

  “We’ve found something amazing today, Ryan. This isn’t going to disappear in the morning.”

  “But I am.”

  She flinched. If he’d ever needed proof that lawyers could be bastards, there it was. She withdrew her hand and looked at him with a little frown of reproach. “You don’t need to drive that point home. I get it.”

  A passing car’s headlights cast her shadow on the sidewalk and stretched it to the church steps beyond. Ryan didn’t trust himself to speak.

  “I understand that your job isn’t the kind you can just leave on a moment’s notice. I know it won’t be easy for you to break away for a while, but once you’ve fulfilled all your commitments, you’ll come back. I’ll be waiting for you right here in Rust Creek Falls.”

  Her expression was open and honest and her words were full of promise. It was all too good to be true. Or rather, it was all too good. Nothing good lasted very long. He knew it, but judging by her hopeful blue eyes, she did not.

  “I haven’t made a decision. You shouldn’t wait for me.”

  She bowed her head briefly, and his heart ached for hurting her.

  “I’m sorry,” he began, but she cut him off.

  “Please don’t. I don’t want you to say anything that will make you feel bad while we’re apart.” She looked over her shoulder at the cars and trucks that drove through the intersection, then nodded to herself a little sadly. “Here’s what I think. This magic between you and me isn’t going to disappear. I will still want you next week, and next month, and the month after that. You go and take care of whatever you need to take care of, then make your list and tally up your check marks. I have faith in you, Ryan. I’m going to leave now, while our day is still perfect and I can do it without falling apart.”

  She rose up on her toes and kissed him, hard and quick, on the mouth. “Hurry and come back. I miss you already.” She turned and started walking away.

  Ryan was so dumbfounded she was out of arm’s reach before he called out, “Wait!”

  She spun around, hope in her expression.

  It was a hope he didn’t feel. “I’ll drive you to your ranch.”

  She plastered on a smile that looked almost genuine. “There’s no need. At least a dozen people who are going my way will drive past me at the corner and give me a lift. It’s a small town, remember? Being able to hitch a ride is a definite check in the plus column.”

  Then she turned around again, and this time, he let her go.

  She’d be better off without some outsider from LA interfering with her secure life and her small-town dreams. Still wearing his shirt, she headed back to the life he’d interrupted today, a life that made her happy.

  His gaze settled on the swish of her hem and the backs of her legs. Woman Walking Away, that was what he’d title it, if he could capture it in a photograph. He could paint it from memory, if he could stand the pain.

  He was no artist. There was no way that losing Kristen after one perfect day could really hurt as much as watching his mother leave him while he’d held a snow globe in his hands. No way—but damn if it didn’t feel close.

  At the corner by the church, an SUV stopped and Kristen climbed in. She was gone.

  A second of childish memory suddenly surfaced. He hadn’t dropped that snow globe. He’d thrown it on the ground deliberately with all his three-year-old might, shattering it into a thousand pieces. This new bit of knowledge about Ryan Michaels fit Ryan Roarke. If he had a snow globe now, he’d hurl it at those church steps with all his might, too.

  Ryan shoved his empty hands into his pockets and turned to walk in the opposite direction, heading toward the river that would lead him back to the park.

  Back to the Porsche.

  Back to reality.

  Chapter Five

  October

  “I hate this stupid column.”

  Kristen let go of one side of the newspaper to flick the offensive page.

  “Which one?” Kayla sat behind her on the bed, patiently working a wide-toothed comb through Kristen’s hair.

  “Rust Creek Ramblings. It’s still going on and on about ‘the power of the punch’ and how many couples fell in love because of that Fourth of July reception. Ouch!”

  “Sorry.” Kayla was silent for a moment as she tugged a little harder at what must have been a particularly stubborn knot. “Maybe there is something to that poisoned punch theory. Don’t you think it’s awfully coincidental that people were acting so strangely? I mean, Will Clifton got married that night but didn’t even realize it until the next morning. Our own cousin got arrested for dancing in a fountain and then fell in love with the police officer. That’s a pretty crazy way to fall in love. Then Levi and Claire—”

  “Levi and Claire were already married.” Kristen snapped the paper shut and glowered at her sister’s reflection in her dresser’s mirror.

  “Well, they’re even more in love now.”

  If that stupid punch had made everyone realize who their true love was, then why hadn’t Ryan come back yet? He’d drunk the punch with her. Kristen tossed the newspaper facedown onto her comforter.

  “I need to get the bobby pins.” Kayla went into the bathroom they shared in the sprawling log house on the Circle D, the same ranch house they’d lived in all their lives. The bathroom connected their individual bedrooms. It had double sinks and enough counter space for two women to keep all the cosmetics and accessories they could need. Their brothers had dubbed their mini
suite “the girls’ wing” years ago, and they’d kept away even after the fiercely pink Keep Out signs had been outgrown.

  Kristen and each of her siblings had inherited land within the Circle D. Her brother Jonah, who had the advantage of being an architect, had designed and built a log cabin on his share, but Kristen and Kayla still lived in the girls’ wing of the main ranch house. Owning land was not the same thing as having the money to build a house on the land.

  Someday, she’d build her own house. Maybe someday would arrive when Ryan did.

  “Okay, let’s do this.” Kayla returned to toss a card of bobby pins onto the newspaper. She plopped herself down behind Kristen and picked up the comb again.

  Kristen moved the bobby pins to read the back page. An ad for next year’s rodeo season taunted her. This year’s season was already over. June, July and August were the touring months in the northwest for the professional rodeo, summer months that had come and gone.

  Where was Ryan?

  She wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t come knocking on her door in July. He’d told her that he had commitments to keep. He’d said it with regret, but people were relying on him. Rodeo riders signed contracts at the beginning of the season, after all, and contracts had to be honored.

  The entire month of August, she’d hoped the tour would bring him back her way, close enough to visit her between rodeos. She’d looked up schedules and wondered which towns he was choosing to compete in, but no one named Ryan Michaels appeared in any of the events within a day’s drive of Rust Creek Falls. Although she ached to see him again, she hadn’t been too worried. The bigger rodeos with the bigger prize money were in the cities farther away. In September, when the season was over, he would come.

  Every day in September, she’d dressed with care. Every single day, because every day had been the day Ryan might return.

  But now, somehow, it was October.

  Without warning, tears stung her eyes, an ambush she couldn’t defend against, a sign that she was losing her faith in Ryan. She hated these odd moments where the voice of doubt would suddenly seem to be the voice of reason. Face the facts: he’s not coming back.