“Approve? I’m flabbergasted!” Eagerly she hurried past rows of empty stalls, taking it all in. “It’s beautiful!”
Contrary to every expectation she would have had, it was beautiful. The ranch hands had cleaned, scrubbed and polished. They’d stacked hay bales, tied ribbons to the beams and draped cottony bunting from the rafters. They’d hung safety lanterns. They’d created a cozy seating area. They’d decorated. Somehow, incredibly, they’d managed to turn a barn into…a cathedral.
Or something that felt very much like it.
“Is this where we’re getting married?” she asked.
Everett seemed too enchanted by her reaction to respond at first. Then, he nodded. “Unless you’d prefer somewhere else.”
“Somewhere else? I wouldn’t think of it!” Hugging herself, Nellie turned in a circle. She grinned. “It’s so…unconventional!”
That meant it was perfect. At least it was for her.
“Oh.” Everett frowned. “No one wants ‘unconventional.’ You’re being polite and ladylike again.”
His words dashed her hopes in a heartbeat. Brought back to earth by his commonsense statement, Nellie remembered how silly she was being. Of course no one wanted “unconventional.” She’d been hearing that all her adult life—sometimes about herself.
With effort, she rallied. “What I meant was, this appeals to me because I don’t have a family to invite to a conventional wedding,” Nellie said as matter-of-factly as she could. Through long practice, she was able to shrug. “My friends and coworkers would hardly fill up two pews, much less half a church!”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.” Everett’s sympathetic gaze followed her. “I read all your letters—Oscar gave them to me last night,” he went on, “but they didn’t mention—”
“No, they wouldn’t have.” Giving him a smile, Nellie went to him. She took his hands in hers. “It’s all right, Everett. I was an only child, and my parents died a long time ago.” She offered him a squeeze. “Do you think I’d have turned out this way if I’d had someone watching over me for all these years?”
Contrary to her expectations, he took her joke seriously.
“I like the way you turned out,” Everett said.
Nellie wished she could believe that. But Everett didn’t know the real her…and if she succeeded, he never would.
“Someone else likes the way you turned out, too,” Everett teased. He nodded toward her feet. For an instant, Nellie thought she was going to have to display her “unconventional” boots again. Everett must have been disappointed to have glimpsed them. He’d been polite about them, of course, by pretending to be more interested in her knees than her wardrobe.
“Have you noticed your entourage?” he asked now, gesturing toward the shaggy dog who’d been following her around. By now, the cat from the kitchen had joined the lovable mutt, too. “Counting my dog, my cat and the mare who was nosing around after you outside, you have a veritable menagerie started.”
Nellie laughed. “Now you’re just being silly. Horses don’t follow around people! They’re not like dogs and cats.”
Everett shrugged. “The evidence at hand, as you say, can’t be ignored.” His eyes glimmered at her. “Around these parts, Nellie, you are beloved. By my livestock, my vaqueros—”
“Ha! If only that were true,” Nellie joked, unable to hear more talk like that. But, tellingly, her voice cracked on the words. She did want to be beloved, if the truth were known. She wanted to lavish affection on Everett—and on his various animals and his ranch hands and Edina and Marybelle, too. She wanted to give away her pent-up love. She wanted to quit holding it close for fear that no one would want it if she offered it.
She hadn’t known she’d been doing that until right now.
“You could be beloved,” Everett assured her, pulling her closer, “if you wanted to be. If you would accept an ordinary man and a barn-bound wedding and a passel of funny traditions.”
Nellie was afraid to hope for so much. “Well, I am powerfully curious about all those traditions,” she allowed.
“We’ll be getting to them shortly,” Everett promised. “All fifty-nine of them that my ranch hands made me promise to try.”
At his wry but accepting grin, she practically fell in love on the spot. Why did Everett have to be so remarkable…and so increasingly out of her reach? The more he revealed his almost flawless, gentlemanly self, the less she measured up to him.
“And I do fancy the idea of getting married in a barn,” she added insouciantly, trying her very hardest not to envision that selfsame ceremony. But it was no use. In a heartbeat, Nellie pictured Everett standing handsomely and earnestly by her side while she said her vows in a dress handmade by Marybelle and Edina. If only that reverie could be more than just a dream!
“Well, my barn has never looked better,” Everett confirmed.
“But I’m afraid I just don’t see an ordinary man around here,” Nellie told him, playfully pretending to look for one. Smiling, she brought her hands to his suit coat lapels and patted them in demonstration. “All I see is a fine gentleman!”
“A fine gentleman? That’s what you see?” Everett stalked nearer, seeming displeased by her compliment. He glowered down at her. “Look closer,” he said, then he kissed her again.
Swept away beneath his kiss, Nellie clutched his lapels and just held on. Her heartbeat galloped; her breath left her in a single surprised utterance. All she could feel was wanting. All she could do was kiss him back. Because there had never been anything she’d wanted more than to kiss Everett. There had never been anything she’d needed more than to feel his mouth on hers, his hands on her waist, his body pressing insistently closer.
Kissing Everett was like finding a lucky penny that never could be lost again. It was like understanding the meaning of poetry and music and art in a single instant. It was like wanting a drop of water and being presented with an ocean.
Nellie had never dreamed of having as much as she felt in Everett’s arms. She had never known she could be so passionate, so needful…so wrong. It was wrong to do this to Everett and his ranch hands. It was wrong to pretend, even for a good cause.
But oh, how she wanted to go on doing it!
Surely the Almighty would understand why she needed to do this. Surely He would forgive her this one lapse in a lifetime filled chockablock with efforts to see more, do more, be more.
Surely He would give her a few minutes more of this.
Instead the tall, blond vaquero rushed inside the barn like an unwanted heavenly timekeeper, putting an awkward end to Nellie’s prayers for more time alone with Everett. Guiltily, she and her “fiancé” leaped apart while the ranch hand came nearer.
It took Nellie a solid ten seconds to recollect that, as an officially engaged woman, she was allowed to socialize with her fiancé. She was allowed to gaze wistfully at Everett, to indulge her impulse to hold his hand…to satisfy her curiosity about him.
It was the most liberating realization she’d had all week.
“Aha! There you are, patrón!” The lanky vaquero pointed outside, oblivious to the barn’s fancifully decorated interior. “Come quick! You’re already late for the bunkhouse jamboree.”
Everett quirked his dark eyebrow. “You must be mistaken.”
“No, I ain’t! Last night, at dinner, you said you’d come.”
“To a jamboree?” Everett sounded skeptical. “Impossible. I make it a practice never to attend jamborees—especially if they’re happening in the bunkhouse. A shindig, maybe. A party—”
Nellie didn’t believe him. “Why not? It sounds like fun!”
“Fun? This won’t be a fancy, big-city soirée, like you’re used to,” Everett warned. “This won’t be a ball or a gala—”
“It’ll be a jamboree!” the vaquero supplied ob
ligingly.
“—or anything like what you’re missing from San Francisco.”
Nellie frowned. She wasn’t missing anything. But this wasn’t the time to say so—especially since she, as a Godey’s-style “wishy-washy, swooning female,” ought to have been wanting a fashionable diversion to occupy herself with. So, dutifully, she smiled at the vaquero. “We’d be delighted to attend.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” The youth shot Everett a victorious look, then swept off his hat. Holding it in his hand, he gave Nellie a bow. “I’m Casper Dietson, ma’am, at your service.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Dietson.” Nellie shook his hand. “I was very sorry not to get your name yesterday before you went to town, nor last night in all the hubbub at dinner.”
“Shucks, that’s all right, ma’am.” Casper plunked on his hat. “I didn’t reckon it was safe to tell you my name until now. But now that you’re here for good, I guess it’s all right.”
At that, Casper delivered a delighted grin to his patrón.
Under his glowing approval, Everett bore up stoically.
Then Casper took a second hasty glance. “What’s that you’ve got on yourself, patrón? A suit? And specs? Ain’t that somethin’? I never known you to tolerate fancyin’ up like that.”
Stone-faced, Everett blinked. He tugged at his hat, indicating a decision was at hand. “I guess I was wrong about that jamboree, Casper. Miss Trent likes parties. So I do, too.”
His acquiescence had a revitalizing effect on the vaquero.
“Well, I suppose you oughtta like the jamboree! It’s on account of the two of you that we’re having it!” Casper chuckled. He beamed at them both. “It’s for your engagement!”
“Well, isn’t that nice?” Nellie nudged Everett. “Dearest?”
He recognized her cue and smiled. “Perfect, sweetheart.”
Casper squinted at them both. Then he shook his head. “If you two don’t beat all,” he said happily. “You’re as cute as a pair of june bugs! I aim to tell all the fellas that right now!”
The vaquero hurried off, clearly pleased as punch with his hacendado’s new love match…and dying to share his excitement.
Everett stiffened. “I’ve got to stop him.”
“What for?” Nellie put her hand on his arm. “We want all your men to believe we’re crazy about one another, don’t we?”
“Of course we do. For your newspaper story.” Unmoving, Everett compressed his mouth. He cast her a plaintive look, full of nicked male pride and patent disbelief. “It’s just… He said we were cute together, Nellie. He called me a june bug!”
She suppressed a grin. “I heard him.”
“So—” as though it were obvious “—I have to stop him.”
At that, Nellie gave him a long look. “You know what? Even when you’re disgruntled and childish, I think you’re adorable.”
“Childish?” His jaw tightened. “Adorable? Impossible.”
“You keep saying that,” Nellie told him, unable to hold back a grin. “To you, ‘impossible’ seems to signify agreement.”
Before Everett could respond to her banter, Casper halted at the barn door. “Come on, you june bugs!” he shouted with a hurry-up gesture. “Git your feet moving. Time’s wastin’!”
Nellie laughed. “Come on, june bug!” She gave Everett a poke. “We don’t want to miss the party in our honor, do we?”
“Heaven forbid.” With a chivalrous gesture of his powerful arm, he escorted her ahead of him. “After you, Miss Trent.”
A few steps onward, Nellie realized he wasn’t alongside her. She stopped. She looked back. “Aren’t you coming?”
“Yes. First I’m consoling myself by watching you walk ahead of me. It’s the least I deserve.” Everett lifted his devilish, dancing-eyed gaze from the vicinity of her bustle to her face. “From where I’m standing, the jamboree’s already happening.”
She laughed. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Absolutely.” He grinned. “I think you like it.”
“Why, Mr. Bannon!” Nellie gave her bustle a coquettish wiggle. “Would you look at that? I think I just might.”
Everett’s husky laugh was enough to make her day.
For a heartbeat, as they smiled at one another, Nellie felt certain they were in perfect harmony. She took unabashed delight in Everett’s scandalous appreciation of her physical charms—even swaddled, as they were, in boys’ boots and last year’s dress and a halfhearted attempt to style her hair in a fetching fashion—and she imagined that he, for his part, found an equal enjoyment in her teasing and unladylike repartee.
But then Casper hollered for them both again, wanting them to hurry, and Nellie snapped out of her impracticable reverie.
She could not make decisions based on what she felt about Everett, she reminded herself. She had to act based on what she knew to be true about him—what she knew to be true about herself. Everett had told her he wanted a swooning, compliant lady. However much Nellie tried, she could not be that for him. Not forever, at least. So unless Everett informed her otherwise between the bunkhouse jamboree in their honor and the “wedding day” they’d ostensibly reach in a week or so, Nellie would have to make do with what was real.
If she could remember what was real, that was…
She was meant to be using this time to recover from her arduous train journey—not to fall in love with her host. She was supposed to be writing a newspaper story about disingenuous mail-order marriages—not enacting a similar fraud on herself.
If she fell entirely in love with Everett, would that make it all right? Nellie wondered. Or would that only make it hurt more on the inevitable day when Everett delivered the return train ticket he’d promised her…and made it plain he could not love her back?
“Cheer up, my beautiful bride-to-be.” Catching up to her, Everett gave her a consoling squeeze of his hand. “If you’re dreading having to endure a rustic territorial party, we’ll only stay long enough to make the vaqueros happy. I promise.”
Nellie gazed up at him. “How long will that be?”
Hours, she hoped to hear. Days. Years and years and years.
But Everett didn’t seem to understand. “Not long,” he said brusquely, then he offered her a smile and took her away.
Chapter Seven
When Everett saw Nellie glance up at him and, in her sweet and undeniably sensuous voice, ask him how long they’d have to tolerate the vaqueros’ engagement party in their honor, he couldn’t help being gutted. He’d wanted her to want to accompany him there. He’d wanted her to yearn to be by his side—the way he increasingly longed to be by hers—no matter where they went.
Instead her dolefully voiced question had let Everett know unequivocally that no matter how sophisticated he tried to be, he could never be the man Nellie wanted. He could never be the man she needed. He could never, ever, be the man she loved.
But that didn’t mean Everett intended to quit trying.
Because Everett Bannon, in his heart of hearts, was not a man who quit. When Nellie had arrived, he’d felt reborn. His reaction to her, contradictorily, had proved he could not stop.
There was too much at stake to stop. Everett had thought he could stop caring, stop wanting, stop needing; now, with Nellie nearby, he could do nothing else. He’d thought he was done with living cheerfully and well; with Nellie at his side, every new moment was a celebration. He’d thought there was nothing more for him to discover; with Nellie there to provoke laughter and surprise and contradictory reactions to everything, Everett knew, beyond a doubt, there was everything left to discover.
All the world’s secrets could be found in Nellie’s heart.
Everett knew he could unlock them. All he had to do was try. He knew he could win. All he had to do was throw himself int
o every manner of mad shenanigans and prewedding hoopla.
So, over the course of his vaqueros’ rowdy jamboree—and at all of the many events that followed it over the next several days—Everett did exactly that.
He indulged every tradition. He tried every good-luck charm. He got fitted for a wedding suit, wore a “fruitfulness-enhancing” leafy Slavic headpiece, and slumbered with apples, asparagus and gold coins under his pillow to ensure (variably) a happy marriage, a sweet-tongued wife and future prosperity.
He tripped his way through folkloric dances—laughing as Nellie blushed and skipped and showed admirable prowess with the complicated steps—and selected himself some trusted groomsmen. He let a roving medicine showman predict his prospects…and smiled along with Nellie when those prospects were good.
But Everett didn’t restrict his efforts to bunkum like springtime flower selecting and itinerant fortune-telling. He also spent every moment he could with Nellie, talking and sharing and laughing and stealing kisses. In hardly any time at all, he could scarcely envision his household without her in it.
Simply put, Nellie fit there. She fit with him.
She understood the wildness and vitality and freedom of the West. She seemed to like it, too. In her hands—and with his vaqueros’ instructions—a lasso became a thing of grace and beauty. Blessed by her smile, Everett’s ranch hands and horses and hodgepodge of pets became something more than they’d been.
Thanks to Nellie, his band of miscreants became a family.
Everett didn’t want to lose that. But as he sat at a late-night campfire with his entire world surrounding him—however meager it was—watching Nellie be adorned with garlands of woven flowers in some almost-forgotten marital tradition that Ivan had insisted they observe, Everett had no idea how to hold on to it.
It was possible, he knew as he smiled anew at Nellie, that he was the only one who felt the pull between them. It was possible that she, as a citified sophisticate with more suitors than shoes, was still merely pretending to care about him.
Weddings Under a Western Sky: The Hand-Me-Down BrideThe Bride Wore BritchesSomething Borrowed, Something True Page 22