Jace had deliberately not said anything to Artie about Celie's change of heart. He knew Artie. Artie would have a solution. And the last thing he needed right now was a ninety-year-old know-it-all telling him what to do.
"She's just gettin' nervous," Jace answered.
Artie nodded as he slapped ham on bread and slathered mustard on top. "I'll say," he agreed. "Told me she wasn't marryin' you."
So much for circumspection. "What'd I tell you? Nerves," Jace said, trying to sound calm.
Artie stuck another piece of bread on top of the ham, whacked through it with the butcher knife and handed Jace the sandwich. "You sure it's just nerves?"
"Of course I'm sure."
"So we're still gonna wear them tuxes?" Artie, for all his grousing, seemed to be looking forward to his tux.
"We're going to wear the tuxes," Jace said firmly.
"That's what I told her."
Ho, boy. Jace raised his brows, imagining Celie's reaction to that. "And she said?"
"Didn't say nothin'. Just got all red in the face and sort of steamy lookin'. That's what made me think she was ticked at you."
"How can you lie to that defenseless old man?" Celie's voice was shrill on the phone against his ear.
"Huh?" Jace had been expecting Taggart to call back about some lumber. He straightened up now, hearing Celie instead. His heart began beating double time. "Hey, Cel'. How are you?"
"Don't you 'Hey, Cel' me! Why haven't you told Artie?"
"Told him what?"
"You know very well what! He still thinks the wedding is on."
"It is."
"It's not! You know it's not. You're going to look like a fool."
Jace paused. "Maybe I will," he said slowly.
"I guess that's up to you."
Celie was sitting by herself in the kitchen listening to the clock tick and scratching Sid the cat's ears when she heard footsteps on the porch.
Whoever was at the door, she wasn't answering it.
She didn't want to see anyone, didn't want to talk to anyone. Didn't want to tell one more person that no, she wasn't going to marry Jace Tucker tomorrow even though he was telling everyone she was!
"They can just go away," she told Sid, who scraped his jaw against her ankle and butted her calf with his head. "We don't need anyone, do we?"
But before Sid could respond, the door opened and Polly, Sara, Lizzie, Daisy and Jack all poured into the room, banging and talking and jostling.
"Hey, Aunt Celie!" Jack beamed at her.
"Hi, Aunt Celie!" Daisy and Lizzie chimed.
"Hi, Cel'," Polly said, "Got your dancin' shoes on?"
Celie just stared at them all. "What on earth are you doing here?"
"We came for the wedding," Sara said. The rest of them nodded.
"And tonight we're going to The Barrel," Polly said cheerfully.
"What?"
An evening spent at The Barrel bar down in Livingston near the date of a wedding was a tradition among local women and had been since World War II when a rancher's daughter, set to marry in the morning, had met a visiting sailor there and had run off with him instead.
"Tempting fate," they had called it ever after. Women who did it and went on to marry their chosen man had good marriages—or so the story went.
"I'm not getting married," Celie insisted.
The girls looked scandalized, Jack looked stunned.
Polly rolled her eyes. "You do whatever you want tomorrow, but I'm not missing a night at The Barrel. Get dressed. Let's go pick up Mom and Cait. Get those dancing shoes on!"
It was crazy, Celie thought. Insane. Ridiculous. How could you go out to test fate against a man you were determined you weren't marrying?
But they went. The Barrel was loud, rocking, riotous and crowded as The Barrel usually was on Friday night. Not Celie's sort of place at all.
Jace had been here, though. Celie remembered that he'd rescued Sara last winter when she'd come here looking for a ride home. There were a hundred girls here more suited to Jace than she was. She wanted to go home.
"How about him?" Cait, her best friend from high school and now her stepsister, poked her in the ribs.
"What? Who?" Celie turned, baffled, "What are you talking about?"
"Him." Cait pointed to a hunky young cowboy wearing skin-tight stacked Wranglers and a hot-pink shirt. He was playing pool, bending over the table, giving them a very nice view. "We're supposed to be offering you alternatives to Jace," Cait reminded her.
"I don't need alternatives," Celie said. "I'm not marrying Jace."
"Or him." Felicity Jones nodded her head in the direction of another handsome man dancing with a hungry-looking female.
Celie shook her head and looked away. "Not interested."
They offered up half a dozen more—a stud playing Keno, two rodeo cowboys clearly just passing through, a dapper-looking gent with a handlebar mustache.
"There are some interesting specimens here," Polly said finally after she'd looked over the crowd. Then she looked at her sister. "But none quite as interesting as Jace."
Celie, whose traitorous mind had been thinking along the same lines, deliberately turned away.
She didn't want to compare Jace to the rest of Livingston's manhood. She already knew the verdict. He was better than all of them. Handsomer than all of them. More wonderful than all of them.
The problem wasn't what Jace was lacking, damn it!
The problem was her!
She felt like curling into a tiny ball of misery. Polly touched her shoulder. "Come on. I think it's time we went home."
Jace had been to his fair share of stag nights.
He'd always laughed and joked and commiserated with the poor son of a gun who, in scant hours, would be relinquishing his freedom, trading his free rein for a double yoke.
Now on Friday night at the Dew Drop, his buddies held a stag night for him—and he could only hope that the woman he loved would be at his wedding.
"You sure you're ready for this?" Taggart teased him after he'd raised his glass in a toast. "Celie doesn't seem to be too thrilled."
"Celie's nervous," Jace said. "She got jilted once, remember."
Everyone remembered. There was a moment of silence as they stared into their beer and thought about that jerk Matt Williams.
Then Taggart shrugged. "Well, hell, man, you're not Matt. She oughta know you won't do that to her!"
"Right," Shane Nichols seconded it. And half a dozen local cowboys agreed.
And they were right. Jace wouldn't. Ever.
But it was looking very much like she was going to do it to him. She hadn't come around as he had hoped. She hadn't been bowled over by his determination. She hadn't come to tell him she was sorry, that he was right. She hadn't said she loved him.
He wasn't even sure now that she did.
Maybe for her it had been a shipboard romance.
Maybe he had swept her off her feet, made her giddy, caused her to dream—but only briefly. Maybe now that she was back in Elmer, her memories of the pain of the past meant more to her than he did.
She was still saying she wasn't going to marry him.
He was still insisting she was. It was just nerves, he'd told everyone. Celie was just remembering the past, remembering what had happened to her last time. And who could blame her? he'd said. But this time wasn't going to be like last time. Of course the wedding was still on. He'd see them at the church at three o'clock on Saturday.
"Here now. Time for a toast by the best man," Jace heard Artie say, and he turned to see the old man raise his glass. "To the best doggone feller I ever known," Artie said, "and to the gal I love like—" he faltered momentarily and cleared his throat "—like a granddaughter. I'm so glad they're gonna spend the rest of their lives makin' each other happy!"
* * *
Ten
« ^ »
"She's not gonna do it, you know." Jace came and stood in the doorway to Artie's bedroom as the old man was ju
st climbing into bed.
He had to say something, had to prepare Artie. He couldn't let him get all dressed up tomorrow and stand there at the front of the church next to Jace, expecting to see Celie walk down the aisle to meet them when she wasn't going to.
Jace swallowed past the hard lump in his throat and pressed on. "She isn't gonna marry me, Artie."
Artie turned from the bed slowly and straightened up again. "No?"
Jace shook his head. "'Fraid not." He mustered up a wan smile.
Artie wasn't fooled. "You love her."
Jace swallowed again. "Always. I'll always love her. But she—I don't know anymore. Maybe she doesn't really love me." It was hard to get the words out. He hunched his shoulders and bent his head.
"So what're you gonna do?" Artie asked.
Jace's faint smile turned wry. "You mean you're not going to tell me?"
Artie grinned just a little at the hit. "A feller doesn't live ninety years without learning a few things," he said. "Don't mean to boss you. I guess I just reckoned you could use a little hard-won wisdom."
"I still could," Jace admitted. "If I go there tomorrow and she doesn't come—"
It didn't bear thinking about. Yet maybe it was exactly what he deserved—a just revenge for whatever part he'd played in Matt's jilting her all those years ago. Was the world really that fair?
"Well now," Artie said. "Lemme tell you a little story." He sat on the bed and nodded toward the rocking chair.
Jace, knotting his fingers together, obediently sat down. Would it be zen this time? he wondered. Or some other self-help guru Artie had stumbled upon. It didn't matter, Jace decided. He just needed help.
"Long time ago," Artie said, "when I was younger than you are now, I met the girl of my dreams…" He leaned forward, rested his forearms on his knees and stared down at the braid rug beneath his feet.
So it wasn't going to be zen? It was going to be personal? The story of Artie's courtship of Maudie? Jace leaned forward, too.
"I was cowboyin' out in Washington State," Artie went on. "Big spread owned by a feller named Jack Carew. He had a couple a thousand head of Herefords, a ranch that run for miles into the sweetest country you can imagine, and the prettiest daughter you ever did see."
"Maudie?"
But Artie didn't reply. He went right on. "I fancied the daughter somethin' fierce. But I was just a broke cowpoke workin' on her daddy's ranch. Didn't have nothin' to recommend me, that's for sure."
"Except your charming personality," Jace said dryly.
Artie lifted his head. "Well, sure. 'Cept that." He gave Jace a faint grin and flexed his bony shoulders. "Turned out to be enough. Turned out she fancied me, too." The old man flushed slightly. "We had a, um … bit of a fling. Well, it wasn't a fling really. We was serious. And I asked her to marry me."
Jace nodded. And they'd lived happily ever after for fifty-odd years. So what did this have to do with him and Celie?
"She said yes. But her daddy said no. Said I couldn't support her the way she ought to be."
"I hope you told him to go to hell," Jace said.
Artie's mouth twisted. "Couldn't. He was right."
"But—"
The old man shrugged and bent his head again. "He was. She'd had pert much ever'thing she could want, includin' a college education. Her ol' man was right when he said she was wastin' her time on me."
"I didn't know Maudie had a college education."
Artie's head snapped up. "Will you stop talkin' an' start listenin' fer a change? I ain't talkin' about Maudie!"
Jace's mouth opened. And shut. He stared at Artie as if he'd never seen the old man before. Not Maudie? Then who—?
"She didn't care what I had," Artie went on, a faraway expression on his face. "Told me so. Told me she loved me an' all that didn't matter to her, that I just had to believe her." He sighed. "But I didn't."
He sat up straight and threw his shoulders back and stared straight ahead. "I was too worried her old man was right. Figured he had to be, him bein' so smart an' so suecessful an' all. She wanted me to run away with her. Told me we didn't need him. Didn't need anybody but each other. But I didn't believe her. I didn't want to get hurt. Didn't want to hurt her. So I played it safe," he said bitterly. "I quit an' I came back to Elmer. Didn't even tell her where I was goin'." He let out a sigh, then added almost as an afterthought, "Couple a years later I married Maudie."
And?
Jace just looked at him, trying to make the connections Artie expected him to make. Hell, this was harder than zen. He didn't say anything, just sat there trying to figure it out.
"I loved her," Artie said. "She loved me. I shoulda taken the risk."
"You don't know that," Jace said. "It might not have lasted."
Artie met his gaze. "It lasted," he said simply.
Jace shook his head, disbelieving. "But … but Maudie … you and Maudie…"
Artie sighed and rubbed a hand over the wisps of white hair on his head. "I loved Maudie. I was faithful to Maudie. Always. Even after Anna came…"
"Anna? That was her name? She came? To Elmer?"
"Tracked me down," Artie said, his gaze still faraway. "Took her three years. Daddy wasn't inclined to tell her where I'd come from, and I never had. But she was stubborn and determined. She still loved me," he said wistfully. "An' she brung somethin' to show me." His gaze came back to meet Jace's. "Our daughter."
"Daughter? You had a—" Jace felt as if he'd been punched.
"Have," Artie corrected. He smiled faintly. "Still have. She doesn't know."
"But you do? You keep track—" Jace was floundering. "Where—?"
"Here. She's here," Artie replied. "Always has been … ever since. It's Joyce."
Jace stared. Joyce? Celie's mother?
"Then you … you're … you're Celie's grandfather? For real?"
The old man's eyes shimmered. He nodded. "Yep."
"Good God." A thousand questions swirled in Jace's mind. "But what—how?"
Artie shrugged. "I was married to Maudie. Anna understood. She didn't want to hurt her. Neither did I. Anna stayed because she and her father didn't agree about the baby. She needed a friend. And that was me. I couldn't marry her, but I could be there for Joyce, be her stand-in father. So that's what I was."
Jace tried to bend his mind around that. He remembered Joyce's mother. She'd been a teacher in the Elmer school. A widow, he'd always thought. Now he looked at Artie, feeling dazed.
Artie shook his head. "It coulda been different," he said. "I shoulda believed in her love. That's all I'm sayin'." He leaned forward again and fixed Jace with a steady stare. "You don't need my advice. When you find a love like that, you do exactly what you're doin', boy. You believe."
After the night at The Barrel, Celie didn't go home.
The house was full. Besides Polly and the kids, her other sister, Mary Beth, and her husband and their triplet daughters were coming up for the wedding.
"There's not going to be a wedding," Celie had insisted.
But Polly said, "When you mobilize triplets, you don't change your plans. Wedding or not, they're coming."
And, even later, a plane from Mexico would be bringing Sloan.
They could all visit. The triplets could play with Jack. Mary Beth and Polly would be glad to get together. They didn't see each other all that often. Tomorrow they could all go out and visit Joyce and Walt. A good time would be had by all.
They'd never miss the wedding that wasn't going to happen.
At least that's what Celie told herself late that night when everyone else had gone home and she checked herself into a motel room in Livingston.
It was a cold room with thin walls and even thinner carpet. Depressing. Grim. Looking exactly the way she felt, which was awful.
Why did she feel so bad? She was doing the right thing.
But Jace was going to be hurt.
He was going to show up for the wedding. He was going to stand up there in front of all thos
e people and wait for her. It was going to be worse for him than it had been for her with Matt. She hadn't marched up the aisle. She'd taken his call privately. She hadn't had to make the announcement, face the crowd, see the pity, hear the snickers.
Not then.
Later, of course, she had. And she couldn't deny that it had hurt.
She didn't want Jace to be hurt. She loved him. That was the whole point of not marrying him. Wasn't it?
Celie flung herself down on the bed. Oh, God. She didn't know anymore.
Was it Jace she was protecting? Or was it herself?
For years she would have loved to have made a fool of Jace. And he knew it. If he was everything she'd once thought he was, he would never make himself this vulnerable. He would never give her the chance. He'd be laughing at her—not giving her the chance to let the world laugh at him.
So why was he doing it?
Because he loved her. Really.
Celie rolled over and stared at the ceiling, letting the words enter her mind—and finally, enter her heart. She'd heard them; he'd said them.
But she hadn't really believed them before. Hadn't really understood them. Hadn't known how vulnerable they made him, hadn't realized the depth of his faith.
He loved her.
That meant he trusted her—not just for a week on a ship or the month of a fling—but forever. It meant Jace saw something in her, believed in something in her beyond even what she was capable of seeing.
He was right. It had nothing to do with Tamara. It was only about the two of them. About their faith in each other. Their trust in each other.
Celie knew that Jace believed.
The question was: did she?
"We look mighty handsome in these here tuxes," Artie said, studying Jace's white face and his own ruddy one in the mirror as they waited, resplendent in their formal finery in the room just behind the church.
They were all dressed up with just minutes to go—and Jace was feeling sicker by the second. He shouldn't have pushed her. He should have waited. Let her give him the ring back, courted her some more. Been persuasive. But he hadn't. He'd been his usual stubborn self—he'd pushed too hard, trusted too much and dared her when he never should have dared.
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