Last Year's Bride (Montana Born Brides)

by Anne McAllister

  “He’s the owner.” Nell corrected. “Cole is The Boss,” she said as if he was made of capital letters. And she gave them a steely look, reminding Cole of his sixth grade teacher, Mrs Hard-ass-ty. A grin touched his lips.

  “Understand?” Nell eyed them unblinkingly.

  Every one of them nodded fervently—even the walking dead. The cameraman said, “We got it.”

  Nell favored them with a brilliant smile. “Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Cole figured he would just show them what to do and they’d do it. He didn’t count on cameramen pointing cameras at him and some guy with sound gear hovering and waving something in the air while he did it. He scowled, self-conscious and suddenly tongue-tied. He jammed his hands into his pockets.

  He was sure Nell noticed, but she didn’t say, “Just ignore them,” as if he could. Instead she said to the reality guys, “You want your spot in the limelight? Ask questions. Get involved.”

  They did. And once Cole began answering them and showing them, his natural instincts and his know-how took over. He forgot the cameras and the rest of the crew. And if he never quite forgot that Nell was there, well, he never could seem to forget about Nell.

  It was, he told himself, just that he had never had her here in winter. He’d fantasized about having her with him often enough, even when he was trying not to. But actually having her here, watching, listening, smiling, was somehow balm for his worn-out soul.

  He knew it was a mistake. He knew he shouldn’t bask in the attention. He knew it would just make things harder to walk away in the end. But her being here now wasn’t his idea. He hadn’t made her come to Marietta. That had been her choice.

  So, damn it, he was going to take advantage of it. If he was going to spend the rest of his life without her, why not stock up a few memories to make the years of loneliness a little more palatable?

  She knew he’d be a natural. For all that Cole had a silent, suck-it-up-and-get-it-done approach to his own life, he was patient with other people.

  The summer she’d dated him, Nell had dragged Cole along when she’d shot a short promo piece on a bunch of Girl Scouts at a horseback riding event. He’d been amazing with the girls, endlessly kind and low-key, helping them, making things easier for the leaders who were not exactly going to win cowgirl of the year awards. She’d seen him with the little kids who came to the rodeo, showing them how to hold a rope or resin a glove. She’d seen him take time with old ladies who’d batted their lashes at him in Reno asking if he was a ‘real cowboy.’ He’d even posed for a picture with some of them.

  And if he didn’t thrill to being on camera now, and if he thought he had nothing at all in common with her reality TV guys, he still treated them respectfully. Keith had grown up on a farm in the Midwest, so he had the most experience. But Seth was a born and bred SoCal surfer, Chandler was a trust-fund multi-millionaire from Connecticut, and Mac, well, Mac never said where he’d come from. But he’d made sure they all knew right off that he was at the top of the investment company he worked for, and he didn’t have time for foolishness.

  Cole treated them all equally. He didn’t act like they were stupid when they didn’t know what he had learned at his father’s knee. He didn’t find fault when they screwed up. He just showed them again or showed them another way to do what needed to be done.

  Keith took to it easily. Chandler actually made an effort. Seth rolled his eyes, but when Cole said, “Here. Hold this,” he held it, and did what Cole told him to until Cole told him to let go.

  Mac was trying to get a cell phone signal all the time the other guys were feeding cattle. Cole didn’t say comment except to say, “Try mine.” He handed Mac his own phone.

  Nell knew Cole didn’t get service most places on the ranch. Mac found that out pretty quickly, too. And once he knew it wasn’t just his phone that didn’t work there, he stopped trying, tucked his phone back in his pocket and handed Cole back his much older, more battered model. “Thanks. I’ll try later when we get to the house.” And then he pitched in and helped, too.

  “I suppose you want me to teach them how to deliver a calf, too,” Cole said to her when the calves were fed and they were on their way back to the ranch house. The crew and the reality guys were riding in the bed of the truck or the pickup they’d brought along. She and Cole were in the cab together, just the two of them. It had been Cole’s idea. Nell wanted to bring up their future, but at the moment she thought she should just concentrate on the present, on the fact that Cole had cooperated, that he might be discovering what she already knew, all on his own.

  So she just grinned “How did you guess?”

  Cole rubbed a hand against the back of his neck in a gesture she found endearingly self-conscious at the same time she knew he’d hate it that she thought so. “Cows don’t go into labor when you want them to,” he said gruffly. “Sometimes it’s the middle of the night.” She understood he was trying to put her off.

  “Yes, so you said.” But she kept right on smiling. “We’ll do it whenever it happens. Day or night.”

  Cole frowned. “All the way in from town? I don’t see how. You should stay out here.”

  “The crew like to have their own space.”

  “I didn’t mean all of them.”

  Nell blinked. “Me?” Then a smile really did light her face. “Are you inviting me to come stay with you? And your dad?” Had he actually finally told Sam they were married?

  “No,” Cole said hastily and began back-pedaling. “I just thought you could have a room here. My grandmother and Sadie could share.”

  “Your grandmother and Sadie already share. Bella needs her own space,” Nell reported wryly. “She sleepwalks. Or says she does. And Amy talks in her sleep, according to Maggie. And Maggie sprawls everywhere and Beth likes her privacy. It seemed better to give them their own space,” she added with a sigh. And less likely that someone would bolt, thereby creating another crisis.

  The women’s sleeping arrangements had been part of yesterday’s crises. Every day had its own. She was surprised the guys had faced the bunkhouse with relative equanimity if not enthusiasm.

  “Reminds me of the army,” Keith had said.

  And Chandler had added, “Or summer camp.”

  Seth had rolled his eyes for the hundredth time. All Mac had cared about, of course, was whether or not he could get a cell phone signal.

  When they got back to the ranch house, Nell gestured toward the shelter where she’d watch the dailies. “Can you stay and have a look at what we got?” she asked.

  But predictably, Cole shook his head. “Place doesn’t run itself. I’ve got tack to mend, wood to chop. Then I have to head up near the ridge and break ice to open the creek.” He slanted her a grin. “You want to send a couple of guys along to help?”

  “I’ll send them all,” Nell said promptly.

  His eyes widened in surprise. Then Cole’s mouth twisted. “Right. You want me to tell ‘em how to break up ice on the creek for the camera?”

  Nell shook her head. “No. You can show them what to do today off-camera. I need the cameramen here for the canning and the apple pies. But tomorrow they can break ice on camera, and you won’t have to demonstrate. Deal?” she offered him a hand to shake.

  Cole looked at it—and her—suspiciously. “You’re serious?”

  “Better than having them hanging around here. They’ll just be in the way. Or doing something they shouldn’t.” She knew from experience that Mac, Seth, Chandler and Keith at a loose end were not a good idea. “Be a great thing if they learned to chop ice. Who knows when they might need to.”

  Cole looked doubtful. “Chop ice? Feed cattle? In Southern California?”

  Nell shrugged equably. “It’s always good to get out of your comfort zone. Keeps you flexible. Helps you deal. You never know what life will throw at you.” She gave him a bright smile.

  But Cole’s expression was grave. Whatever he was thinking, it wasn’t putting a smile on
his face. He looked almost grim. “You don’t, do you?”

  True to Nell’s promise, the four reality guys were ready to go with Cole when he had finished chopping wood. One of them, the lean blond one called Chandler, who looked as if he would have been more at home in a boardroom, even showed up out by the woodpile and offered to chop wood.

  “You don’t get extra credit,” Cole told him.

  Chandler laughed. “Not that I couldn’t use some.” But then he smiled a wry smile and shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I just need to work off a little ... aggression.”

  Cole understood all about working off aggression. He didn’t ask about Chandler’s. It wasn’t his business. He didn’t want to know. He had enough of his own. He had already chopped Sadie and his dad to kindling several times over for getting Nell out here, for putting him in this situation, just when he’d finally come to terms with getting the divorce.

  “You know what you’re doing?” he asked, though, before he turned over the axe.

  “Summer camp,” Chandler affirmed, and shed his jacket.

  Cole had never met anyone who went to summer camp. People who did sounded like they lived a rarefied existence to him. But he had to admit that Chandler handled the axe competently, chopped wood smoothly, and from the fierce look on his face as he swung the axe, definitely hadn’t been kidding about the demons he was exorcizing.

  Convinced that Chandler wasn’t going to slice his hand off, Cole had left him to it and went back to the shop in the barn to work on the tack. On his way he did his best not to notice Nell’s bright red jacket in the shelter by the generator truck. He made himself walk straight past on his way to the barn, refusing to let his feet veer to the right, to stop by and watch the footage she’d invited him to see, and incidentally to breathe in the soft flower scent of her shampoo.

  Unfortunately it didn’t stop him thinking about her all the time he was mending the tack. But at least she was no longer there to tempt him on his way back to find Chandler had gone through all the larger pieces of log Cole had left him. He was carrying the firewood around to the side of the porch where he added it to the woodpile. Cole help him carry the last of it, then said, “Round up your buddies and meet me at the pickup. We’re going to chop ice.”

  Chandler grinned and rubbed his hands together. “Oh, good. More chopping.”

  The others came out of the bunkhouse, where Seth and Keith had been playing cards judging from their conversation as they piled into the truck. Mac, Cole noted, was on his phone.

  He shut it off when he got in the back seat of the crew cab and looked at Cole. “Chopping ice? Just a little busy work?”

  “No.” That was Keith, the ex-farm-boy, who understood at once why they were chopping ice. “Cattle need to drink. No stock tanks up there.” He waved a hand toward the foothills. “And you’d have to chop the ice in them even if there were.”

  Mac seemed to mull this over, digesting it, then nodding. “Right.”

  Cole wasn’t sure he was convinced, but when they finally got where they were going and slogged through the snow to get to the creek, he seemed willing to go along with the plan.

  It was actually more enjoyable than Cole had expected. He rarely found much to enjoy about chopping the ice in the creek. Usually he was alone and while he didn’t mind that, sometimes the wind was biting and sometimes there were cows actually waiting, and then he had to work with one eye on them because they were not your docile dairy cows. They didn’t care much for men on the ground and more than once had knocked him off his feet.

  Today, however, as soon as all five men got out of the pickup, the few cattle he could see all remained at a respectful distance. It didn’t take a lot of demonstration to show them what to do, and Chandler, of course, was still eager to get chopping. Mac, too, it seemed was eager to whale away at the ice in the creek. Cole stepped back and let them have at it.

  Keith began talking to him about the ranch, asking questions, which got the others interested. Cole rarely had anyone to talk to, much less anyone actually interested. But Keith was, and then Seth started asking questions, and Cole began to talk. When they traded off so Seth and Keith chopped while Chandler and Mac took a break, Cole decided that turnabout was fair play. He started asking questions, too—about the program, about how they’d got into it, how they liked it, what they thought of the director.

  “Nell? She’s the best,” Chandler said at once. “Better than Grant, and everyone knows it.”

  “Even Grant,” Mac said flatly, leaning against the fender of the truck and crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Be fair.” Keith stopped chopping to chip in his view. “Grant knows she’s good. He gave her the job. She’s proved herself, and now he’s happy to leave the episodes to her.”

  “Because she’s better at it, and he wants the show to succeed,” Chandler insisted. “Did you meet Grant?” he asked

  Cole knew who Grant was. Nell had talked about him often enough since she’d gone to work for him. He knew the words she’d used to describe him: clever, brilliant, mercurial, insightful.

  “Of course he is,” Cole remembered saying. “He hired you, didn’t he?”

  He had imagined Grant Merrick as some burly sixtyish studio exec. Some married burly sixtyish studio exec. One who was faithful to his wife. He hadn’t envisioned the handsome tuxedo-clad man who might have been forty at the outside who’d been holding Nell in his arms on the dance floor at the Valentine’s Ball.

  “Don’t really know him,” he said now.

  “He’s a sharp guy,” Chandler said.

  “Weasel,” Mac corrected.

  Chandler grinned. “Just because he hit on Maggie. And why not? You didn’t even act like you wanted to be engaged to Maggie.”

  Mac grunted, jamming his hands into his pockets. “You don’t hit on the talent,” he muttered.

  Cole didn’t ask anything more. But he wondered if Grant hit on Nell. Why wouldn’t he? What man wouldn’t hit on a gorgeous personable talented woman like Nell?

  “Let me chop for a while.” Cole shoved away from the truck and strode over to take the ice shovel from Seth’s hands.

  On the way back down to the ranch, he took them by the cabin where he and Sam were staying because they wanted to see where the original homestead was.

  “Wouldn’t mind staying here,” Chandler said, studying the log house from the truck. “When we come back maybe you can trade with us?” he added hopefully.

  “Come back?” It was the first Cole had heard about it.

  “We’re doing two episodes here,” Keith said. “Coming back in May when you do the branding. Didn’t you know?”

  Cole rubbed a hand against the back of his neck. “Haven’t been paying a lot of attention.” Had Nell mentioned they were coming back? Had Sadie? Or his grandmother? He knew Sam wouldn’t have. Sam never told anyone anything.

  “We’re going to Hawaii next,” Seth told him with a grin. “My kind of place. Not that this isn’t, er, interesting, but I’m more into surfing.”

  Apparently the ‘challenges’ came in all forms. Cole just nodded. What was there to say? He didn’t imagine there were a lot of people who were more into chopping ice on frozen creeks and delivering calves in spring snowstorms than they were into swimming and surfing on sunny beaches. And he had no doubt Nell would be among them.

  He also had no doubt that she was good at what she did. All the guys had said so. And later that afternoon when he’d brought a couple of cows down to the calving shed because they looked as if they might go into labor in the next day or so, Chandler whistled at him from the kitchen and beckoned him in where he got to watch the end of the pie baking that she and the crew were shooting in the kitchen.

  It was pure Nell, telling stories. She had pressed Gran into teaching them how to bake a pie from scratch. And as Cole watched, Maggie and Amy struggled to follow Gran’s lead and her encouragement. He didn’t know if Nell had coached his grandmother ahead of time, but while Cole had
imagined Em wouldn’t be any more comfortable in front of the camera than he had been, she seemed perfectly comfortable in front of the camera.

  Nell slipped over next to him as he shut the door and whispered, “Your grandmother is a natural.”

  Cole raised his brows doubtfully. But as he did so, Gran deftly stepped in as Maggie looked about to burst into tears when the crust didn’t cooperate.

  “Sometimes,” she said, giving Maggie a pat on the shoulder, “good pie crust is just having a light touch and knowing when to leave well enough alone.”

  Maggie looked dubious, but at Gran’s conspiratorial wink and smile, she swallowed a sniffle and nodded. “If you say so.”

  Gran nodded. “That’s my girl.”

  Maggie did sniffle then and rubbed at her eyes before she and Gran lifted the crust off the pastry board

  “Wonderful,” Nell murmured, and Cole looked down to see that she had what looked like a tear at the corner of her eye, too.

  What the hell was that all about? Crying over pie crust? Thank God he had the guys to deal with. At least none of them had burst into tears. Yet.

  “I don’t expect they will,” Nell said mildly after dinner when he confronted her about it.

  “They’d better not,” he said darkly.

  Nell just laughed, and seeing her laugh made his lips curve into a smile. Seeing Nell always made him smile. It was what made this whole week or however long it was, so damn hard.

  He hadn’t intended to stay for dinner. But just as he had finished getting the cows into the paddock near the calving shed, one of the cameramen came out and asked him a question. Then there was another question, and another. And somehow he’d got swept into the general hubbub, answering questions, then trying to quell the most annoying of Sam’s suggestions about what he could do to show off the ranch. Sam seemed to be spending most of his time at the ranch house, answering his own share of questions, Cole realized. But he was far too eager to get the cast and crew involved in things they didn’t need to be—at least in Cole’s estimation.