Weddings Under a Western Sky: The Hand-Me-Down BrideThe Bride Wore BritchesSomething Borrowed, Something True

by Elizabeth Lane

  She should have been finding out what Everett really did wear to sleep in…how he felt in her arms and how she felt in his. She should have been loving him. Instead, Nellie reckoned morosely, she was packing for a return trip to San Francisco that she did not want. She was preparing to go back to a life that had never felt emptier or—paradoxically—more constricting.

  She was giving up before she’d truly gotten started.

  If she could have packed away her feelings as readily as she’d packed away her belongings, things might have been different, Nellie knew as she stuffed in her petticoats and snapped shut her satchel’s latch. But she couldn’t stop thinking about Everett. She couldn’t stop wishing things could have been different between them. She couldn’t stop wondering why he’d finally decided to give her that train ticket and send her away.

  In her most fearful moments, Nellie believed it was because Everett had glimpsed the real her…and then disapproved. But—

  A banging sound outside her window cut short her thoughts.

  Nellie jumped, staring in that direction. She had arranged this hotel room—admittedly hastily—after leaving Everett’s ranch yesterday. Everyone had assured her that the Lorndorff Hotel was reputable. She’d been promised she would be safe there until it was time for her train’s departure.

  The thumping sound came again, louder this time.

  Evidently, Nellie realized, she’d been misinformed. Someone—or something—was outside her hotel room window.

  But she had not traipsed across several states and territories on her own during her time as a reporter for the Weekly Leader to surrender meekly to any threat. With a second glance at her packed satchels, she judged her escape route to the door and then lifted her chin with inherent pugnaciousness.

  She’d been through too much to back down now, Nellie decided. Whoever was outside the window of her hotel room had chosen the wrong woman to pester this morning.

  It might feel…invigorating to confront whatever was happening outside, Nellie thought as she eyed the drawn draperies with her fists tight, and assert herself against it.

  Likely it was a squirrel. Or a cat. Or yet another bunny. Everett hadn’t been utterly wrong about her erstwhile menagerie.

  Just in case, Nellie armed herself. She stood tall.

  A shadow crossed her window. More thumping could be heard.

  The window sash lifted. Before she could yell for help or even reconsider her position, a dark-haired man stepped inside.

  Nellie gawked at him. “Everett? Is that you?”

  At her outburst, he turned around fully. He looked like Everett. Except he was dressed in rugged canvas pants and a white Henley shirt, not a suit and tie. And he wasn’t wearing spectacles. And his hair was all mussed from climbing inside. And she’d have sworn he was sporting three days’ growth of beard, even though it had only been yesterday since she’d seen him.

  “You look so…wild,” Nellie blurted. “And so manly!”

  The devilish grin he threw her only reinforced that rogue impression. “This is who I am, Nellie,” Everett said. “I’m wild and I’m rough and I don’t wear eyeglasses. I don’t like suits and I’ve never written poetry and I can’t abide wine.”

  Frozen in place and entirely unsure what to do next, Nellie clutched the makeshift weapon she’d grabbed: a broom left over from a maid’s recent hotel room visit. It wobbled in her grasp.

  Audaciously Everett eyed it. “What are you going to do with that?” He grinned again. “Clean up my muddy footprints?”

  “Better yours than mine.” With nothing left to lose, Nellie stuck out her boys’ boots proudly. “This is who I am, Everett. I’m ambitious and smart and I don’t like sewing. I loathe Godey’s Lady’s Book and I’ve never had a fainting spell. Ever.”

  He nodded. “Did you finish writing your article?”

  “I forwarded it to my editor already, along with a proposal that I be allowed to work on a freelance basis. I know more than ever now that writing about parties and hors d’oeuvres will never make me happy.” Still confused by seeing him there, Nellie set aside her broom. “I’m not planning to stay in town, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she assured him. “I’m leaving shortly—”

  “I have a better idea.” Everett held out his hand. It trembled slightly. “Come with me, Nellie. Be with me. Please.”

  Even more perplexed by that, she wrinkled her brow. “Didn’t you hear me? I just told you I don’t like sewing. I don’t like ladylike pursuits like reading about fashion and giggling inanely. So I can’t imagine why in the world you would—”

  Love me in spite of it all, Nellie finished silently.

  “I know. And I love that about you,” Everett said.

  She blinked. “I must have gotten tipsier than I thought. I thought you just said—” She stopped. “No. I’m imagining you.”

  At that, he gave a husky chuckle. “Tipsy? Over two and a half swallows of whiskey? Yesterday? I doubt it.”

  “But I must be!” Because you’re here. “I must—”

  “Come with me, Nellie.” Again Everett offered his hand. He wiggled his fingers enticingly. “Springtime is a time for second chances, and I’m asking you for mine, right now. I’m sorry for what happened yesterday. I’ll try never to hurt you again. I didn’t understand—I should have asked you what you wanted, instead of trying to decide for myself what you wanted.”

  Nellie frowned anew. “I like being outdoors, Everett,” she specified with her heart pounding, just so he’d be sure to know the truth. She couldn’t move on until she knew he understood. “I like hearing your bawdy jokes, and I like kissing you and I like you, so much, in every way, boldly and unstoppably and in no way politely, and I know that makes me less than perfect—”

  “You’re wrong,” Everett told her with evident certainty. This time, he didn’t wait for her to take his hand. He caught hold of hers, then he squeezed her tightly. “You are perfect, Nellie. I can’t believe you’d think anything else.”

  “But I don’t know how to embroider,” Nellie pointed out, quite notably, she thought. “Surely you’ll want a wife who—”

  “I want you,” Everett said. “And if you want me, too, then nothing else matters. Not eyeglasses or boots or bustles.”

  Entirely overwhelmed by that, Nellie gazed at him. “I didn’t like your spectacles,” she confessed. “Or your suits. Or your poetry readings. I like you best as you are right now.”

  “Fine. I’ll give away my eyeglasses, hide away my suits and never read a sonnet again. Now can we run away together?”

  At that, she laughed. “You can’t mean it.”

  “I just climbed to the second floor of this hotel, opened your window and came inside,” Everett pointed out, looking more rascally—and more irresistible—than ever. “I mean it.” His grin broadened handsomely. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Miss Trent, I’m officially kidnapping you. This is a romantic, unplanned elopement we’re having. The least you could do is cooperate.”

  “If you want cooperation,” Nellie said sassily, a little of her verve returning with him, “then you’ve got the wrong girl.”

  Then she realized the astonishing thing he’d just told her, and the truth hit her at once. This was the kidnapping tradition Edina and Marybelle had told her about! This was… It was…

  It was Everett, showing her he loved her with a wedding to prove it or without one. And right now, given the way she’d been dithering, he probably believed it would be without one.

  Without her.

  All she knows is that she has to make a choice, Edina had said about the traditional bride in the scenario she’d been describing days ago. And if she chooses wrong, the glorious wedding she’s been dreaming about will go up in smoke. Poof!

  At the remembrance, Nellie shook her head. She glanced at Ev
erett next, saw the heartrending vulnerability in his face, and knew that this choice was no real choice at all.

  “I would rather have you than all the fancy weddings in the world,” she told Everett truthfully. “I would rather be by your side in a horrible rainstorm than inside, alone by a cozy fire, without you. I would rather take my chances loving you—”

  “Loving me? Did you just say—”

  “—than know I would be blessed by leaving you. If it comes down to you or a beautiful barn wedding…I choose you, Everett. I choose you every time, again and again. I choose you. Forever.”

  Again, he asked, “Did you just say ‘loving me’?”

  His astounded expression almost broke her heart. “Not yet. Not exactly. But I do.” Impulsively Nellie took his face in her hands. She gazed into his eyes and spoke every truth she’d ever tried to hide. “I love you, Everett. I love your strength and your generosity and your way of tugging down your hat when you decide something important. I love your smile. I love your hands. I love your bristly beard stubble—” here, she rubbed her palm delightedly over it and discovered that it felt both soft and scratchy “—and I love your gruff ways and your tender heart. I love you, Everett! If I ever gave you cause to doubt that, I’m truly sorry. It was only because I was afraid. I was afraid you wouldn’t love me back. But now you’re here—”

  “I’m here because I love you back,” he said simply.

  “—and everything is all right because of it.” Decisively Nellie turned. She snatched up her satchels. With one in each hand, she bit her lip, then gazed inquisitively at Everett. “Do I jump in your arms now? Do you carry me over the threshold? Do we walk away arm in arm? What happens next?”

  His intent, loving gaze swept over her. “Next I tell you I love you, Nellie. Because I do.” Bravely Everett inhaled. “I love your smile and your vitality and your touch. I love that you can keep up with me. I love that you keep me on my toes!” He delivered a chuckle that warmed her clean through. “I love your kindness and your graciousness. I love your knack for writing and your talent with a lasso. I love…everything about you.”

  He brought her close, then confirmed his words with a kiss. With her hands still full of her baggage and her heart still full of her newfound second chance at love, Nellie could only hold on…and kiss Everett back with all her soul.

  “As far as what comes next goes,” Everett continued, wrapping his arms around her middle and smiling, “I guess we’ll have to decide that together, just like everything else.”

  “Well, then,” Nellie said. “I have an idea.”

  “I’m not at all surprised,” Everett told her gladly.

  And not long after that, she shared it with him.

  Chapter Ten

  Ten minutes later, Everett emerged from the front entrance of the Lorndorff Hotel with Nellie held close in his arms.

  Squinting against the bright springtime sunshine, he stepped over the hotel’s threshold with exquisite care, making sure there was no chance of tripping or falling. This wasn’t the main door of their eventual home together, so the usual superstitions about a hapless bride bringing about bad luck on her wedding day—and hence needing to be carried over the threshold by her groom as a safeguard—didn’t strictly apply. But after having been baptized in the mores of at least six different cultures’ wedding traditions, Everett was taking no chances. He wanted his future with Nellie to be long and happy.

  Right now, he could envision it no other way.

  Secure in his arms, Nellie peered toward the street. She clutched her hastily grabbed satchels and squinted, like Everett had, against the glare. “Are they there?” she asked in a low voice, heedless of the curious townspeople who were beginning to stop and gather on the raised sidewalk nearby. “You said they’d all come with you to town. You said they’d all be there.”

  They’re there, Everett was about to say…but then his vaqueros did it for him. As they had on that fateful night near the campfire, his ranch hands lifted their voices together to sing their song about Nellie. It was unaccompanied by guitar music. It was off-key and unquestionably rowdy. But it was, this time, a celebration…and to Everett, that’s all that mattered.

  Because Nellie loved him, and he loved her. In a world full of uncertainty and long odds and hard choices, they’d somehow had the good fortune to find one another, the audacity to fall in love…and the courage to claim that love, no matter what.

  If that wasn’t a miracle on the order of steam engines and ready-made shirts and good tinned beans, then Everett didn’t know what was. He smiled, then set Nellie on her feet.

  She set down her satchels. He straightened his shoulders. Then, hands clasped, they raised their arms in the air.

  The din that greeted them was overpowering. It was loud and joyous and contained not a whit of ladylike or gentlemanly behavior—but it did contain plenty of hollering and a good deal of whooping. It came from all his ranch hands and Edina and Marybelle and all their friends and neighbors, too. And that was exactly the way Everett and Nellie liked it. Together.

  “Aha. They’re there,” Nellie said, grinning beside him.

  “You have no idea,” Everett told her. “I heard that later they’re planning to ‘surprise’ us with fireworks and mescal.”

  His wife-to-be—his real wife-to-be this time, and not his sham mail-order bride—squeezed his hand tightly.

  “Not much surprises you, dearest,” she teased. “Does it?”

  “Only how lucky I am to have found you, sweetheart,” Everett returned ably, again recognizing what she wanted. “That will surprise me for the rest of my life.”

  And as Everett delivered Nellie his most genuine smile yet, he knew that it was true. He was lucky. Beyond lucky.

  “You know,” Nellie mused aloud, “I think we are adorable.”

  “Yes,” Everett agreed, feeling sappy and overcome, “but I’ll still wallop any man who calls me cute as a june bug.”

  “Hmm. Then I guess, since I’m a woman, that’ll just have to be my province.” After a hug that felt as big and as strong as her generous heart, Nellie nudged Everett to head toward home. “Git your feet movin’, june bug!” she said with a nudge and a saucy laugh. “We don’t want to miss a minute.”

  “I’m piling up memories already,” Everett told Nellie, picking up her satchels to carry. Then he followed her full-chisel toward their future. Because from where he stood, that future looked to be full of laughter and singing and a whole heap of loving…and, if he didn’t miss his guess, a wedding night to remember, too. Reminded of that, he gave her another grin. “I aim to give you a few more memories to cherish later, too.”

  On the verge of being surrounded by all their vaqueros and friends, showered in well wishes, and feted as the savior of the most formerly woebegone man in Morrow Creek, Nellie stopped.

  “Too late.” She kissed Everett full on the mouth. “I’ve already started in on those happy memories. There’s one now!”

  Then she wrapped her arms around Everett, lifted her head at a jaunty angle and prepared to give him what he felt certain would be an interesting, invigorating and love-filled life.

  Now and forever after…just the way Everett wanted.

  * * * * *

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  ISBN: 9781459230538

  WEDDINGS UNDER A WESTERN SKY

  Copyright © 2012 by Harlequin Books
S.A.

  The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:

  THE HAND-ME-DOWN BRIDE

  Copyright © 2012 by Elizabeth Lane

  THE BRIDE WORE BRITCHES

  Copyright © 2012 by Kate Welsh

  SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING TRUE

  Copyright © 2012 by Lisa Plumley

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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