The Bride Wore Denim

by Lizbeth Selvig

Harper spun her gaze to the door as Cole stepped through it. No thoughts, no analysis preceded her leap from the bed. He met her in the middle of the room and caught her into the folds of his soft shearling-lined denim jacket, letting her burrow into it as she prayed to escape the reality in the room.

  “I thought you were out with the cattle,” she said.

  “I was. But Rico, Neil, and Bjorn sent me packing. I’m sorry I missed your plane.”

  It didn’t matter. Only this mattered—the combination of his wind-scented coat; the cradling warmth of its lining, the warm, musky scent of his skin; and the hard heat of his chest beneath her cheek. She wanted nothing more than to be part of him, to never leave this sanctuary, and maybe to weld his arms to her body so he’d never be able to let her go. For the first time this trip, she let herself forget about Mia and indulge in fantasy.

  “That’s nothing to be sorry for.”

  Warm lips rested on the top of her head. Slowly her body molded to his, tension drained from her shoulders and spine, and reason returned. Her brain kicked back into gear. With huge effort, she relaxed her python-squeeze on his torso. He lowered his kiss to her forehead.

  “Hi,” he said. “You okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Have you seen Joely yet?”

  Oh, God, Joely. She hadn’t forgotten, she’d just pushed her sister far to the back of her mind until she’d come to grips with her mom.

  “No.”

  “Melanie is sitting with her now. I sent Leif down to get something to eat. I can wait here when you’re ready to go visit her.”

  “No!” She latched back onto him again. “Please come with me. Everyone says she’s much worse than this.”

  “It’s not good, sweetheart.”

  All she let herself hear was the sweetheart.

  After a moment more of indulging her childlike helplessness, Harper pulled away again, hating her fear, hating her need for someone else to show the strength.

  “I’ll go. I need to see her. But does it make me awful that I don’t want to?”

  “Of course not. None of us wanted to come yesterday either—not to see this.”

  The walk to Joely’s room across the ICU floor took thirty seconds that dragged like a broken clock. Everything felt broken in this place—a place that existed only because of damaged and shattered people.

  Melanie stood when they reached Joely’s door. Her smile was wide and sincere as she embraced Harper as Leif had. “She’ll be glad you’re here.”

  Such a silly, clichéd thing to say, Harper thought absently, avoiding looking at the bed. Joely couldn’t be glad about anything at the moment.

  “It’s wonderful of you to be here, Mel. This is above and beyond when you have a family.”

  “Above and beyond Christian charity and duty? Nonsense. And it’s only a duty because it shouldn’t have happened. We love you all—Joely and your mom are family to us, too. Now, you two go in. Be warned. Don’t get freaked out if buzzers go off and people come running. She’s fighting hard right now.”

  Those words nearly sank what remained of Harper’s bravado. She only nodded and took Cole’s hand. Melanie edged out of the room and, finally, there was no choice but to face the truth.

  It wasn’t Joely lying in the bed. The person there had purple-and-yellow skin, eyes swollen shut, a head swathed in bandaging, a disfigured jaw, and tubes snaking everywhere as if attaching the body to the Matrix. Nothing of her sister, save the relatively unscathed hand lying atop the covers, looked like the stunning beauty that was Joely Crockett.

  Harper’s stomach roiled in unacceptance. “No!” She began to cry. “Oh, God, how can she survive this?”

  “She will.” Cole drew her close and murmured into her ear.

  He let her creep forward to take Joely’s uninjured hand but held her from behind, his arms securely around her waist, his body a brace at her back.

  “Joely,” she whispered. “It’s me, Harpo. I’m here now, and I’ll stay as long as you need me. The other girls are coming, too. We’ll take care of you.”

  “That’s exactly what you needed to tell her,” Cole said. “She’ll know. I believe that.”

  He was pulling out all the cowboy poet stops. Had he always been this way? She didn’t remember. Maybe her brain was muddled when it came to him, too. Whatever the case, childhood now seemed a million years ago—shattered by the all-too adult truth surrounding them.

  “I’m so shallow,” she said, loud enough for both Cole and Joely to hear. “All I can think about is how broken her beautiful face is. I don’t want her to be disfigured.”

  “You know what? That means you’re thinking positively. It’s better than despair. The universe is telling you something.”

  For the first time, she smiled. “You sure are in touch with your feminine side today, Mr. Wainwright. You don’t have to make stuff like that up for me.”

  “Who says I’m making it up?”

  She leaned back for a few seconds against his solid, safe chest, still not thinking in any depth about what she was doing.

  Melanie headed home, and Cole insisted Leif do the same, insisting they could keep an eye on both Joely and Bella until after dinner. For two hours they alternated between the ICU rooms. Twice, a response team rushed to Joely’s side, pushing drugs, stopping terrifying seizures. Each time, Harper lost a slice of faith. Each time, Cole shored it back up.

  They played cribbage in her mother’s room. They played Go Fish at Joely’s bedside. They talked about pregnancy testing the cows, about the aborted old-fashioned roundup, and about hospital coffee.

  They avoided the topics of oil wells or selling the ranch.

  Even more assiduously, they refrained from talking about the saddest part of the accident so far—the mare Joely had been bringing to Wyoming that hadn’t survived the terrible accident.

  Harper found the hospital and all it held a terrible world—more surreal than the experimental drug times that had gotten her kicked out of college. She never talked about them, and yet she’d go back to her wasted years and shout her weaknesses to the universe if it meant guaranteeing Joely’s and Mom’s recovery.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go back to the ranch?” she asked Cole as the dinner hour neared. “This has to be excruciatingly boring for you.”

  “It’s not boring at all. You’re here.”

  At that one line, she panicked.

  “Cole. Don’t. Don’t say that, I feel guilty enough. I need a rock and you’re it—the safest place I know right now. But the emotions are so raw—like at Dad’s funeral. The feelings don’t mean—”

  “Harpo. Stop. You’re overthinking again. I said I’m with you, so it isn’t boring. I like being here with you and for you. That’s all. I didn’t propose.”

  His smile, amused and tolerant, sent her sinking, embarrassed, into the recliner in her mother’s room.

  “Man,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m such a wreck.”

  “You have every right to be. But trust me, then, to have your back. There’s time much later to sweep you off your feet.”

  Oh, if only you could. Or maybe you already have. “Good luck with that.”

  “How little you really know, Miss Crockett.”

  “How little any of us knows about the Crockett sisters.” The surprised voice from the doorway made them both turn.

  Amelia stood there, dressed as haphazardly as Harper had ever seen her in a pair of dark-blue sweat pants, a pink turtleneck beneath a multicolored ski sweater, and a pair of red cowboy boots. She hadn’t been due in until the next day, and for an instant Harper stared at her, waiting for the know-it-all, take-charge sister to appear. Instead a tear traced down her cheek.

  It took no more effort to run to her than it had to run to Cole. They grabbed each other, and to Harper’s astonishment, Amelia squeezed tightly.

  “Is she okay?”

  “Mom seems stable.” Harper straightened. “How did you get here so quickly? I thought y
ou had surgery scheduled.”

  Amelia shook her head. “It wasn’t life-threatening. I rescheduled and rearranged everything for the next two weeks, pulled what clothes I had in my hospital locker out, and got on the first flight I could.”

  “Who picked you up here?”

  “I took a cab. I didn’t want to make anyone take time to come get me when I wasn’t expected.”

  She didn’t add anything about needing to be here to check on the medical staff’s decisions, not trusting anyone to organize things, or being indispensable. Harper chalked it up to shock and the weird mind tricks the ICU played on them all.

  Once she and Cole walked Mia through the shock of seeing both patients, some of Mia’s medical calm surfaced, but it turned out to be a welcome comfort. Giving a rare glimpse of her true bedside manner, Mia engaged the staff with intelligent questions Harper never would have thought to ask, even managing—with sweet talk and dogged logic—to peek at the charts; something she definitely shouldn’t have been able to do without another doctor’s approval. By the time she’d been at the hospital for an hour, everybody had in-depth knowledge about the true nature of Joely’s and their mother’s injuries and prognoses. Not that the knowledge was encouraging.

  Finally, Mia gave the staff a rest from her inquiries and settled in for her watch shift. She turned her doctorly intensity on Cole and Harper.

  “It’s nearly six o’clock, you two. You should go home and take a break. I’ll be fine for now. I’m used to long nights.”

  “What about dinner for you?” Harper asked. “We can stay a while longer.”

  “You think hospital food scares me?” Mia snorted. “Believe me, I’m good. We’re all in for some long days, I’m afraid. Go. Rest. You’ll be needed later.”

  “Someone will come and spell you in a few hours,” Cole promised.

  Mia waved a hand in dismissal. “Don’t worry about that. I got the original admitting doc to agree to come in and talk to me before he leaves for the night. He’s here until midnight. I’ll stay until I see him. If we need to leave them for a few hours overnight it’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

  “I’ll come back first thing,” Harper said.

  “Perfect.”

  Hugs flew abundantly. Harper wished with all her heart that this ease with her sister would remain. Maybe it would.

  “Don’t harass the docs too much,” Cole said, grinning slightly.

  “What, and be untrue to my nature? Dream on,” Mia replied.

  Harper turned away and sighed. It would be good to leave, she decided. Getting away from the beeping monitors, the walls steeped in worry, and her two family members wrapped in pain could only help.

  “Call if you need something or if there’s news,” Cole added.

  “Of course,” Mia replied. “I’m going to Skype with the triplets a little later. We’ll talk about whether they need to rotate coming up.”

  “I’m sure we’ll all have to deal with our schedules as we learn more,” Harper said. “I can stay a while.”

  “That’s good.” She smiled.

  “Tell the movie stars I love them.” Harper offered one last hug and followed Cole gratefully from their mother’s room.

  Exhaustion struck as they waited for an elevator.

  “You all right?” Cole asked.

  “I’m glad to be leaving. I feel awful because you and the others have been here for two days with this.”

  “We’ve all had time to acclimate. You need your chance to absorb it all.” They entered the elevator. “What would you say to not going right home? I’ve been hoping you’d let me take you to dinner so we can talk away from the family.”

  “I think that sounds wonderful.”

  “There’s a new place in town called Basecamp Grill. They have great food and even greater cheesecake.”

  She sighed with pleasure and slumped against the wall of the elevator as it finished descending. “What’s that they say in the military? You have the conn, Mr. Wainwright.”

  The elevator doors parted on the main floor.

  “Okay, soldier. Basecamp and cheesecake it is.”

  Chapter Twelve

  NOTHING SHOULD HAVE seemed right in the midst of all the worry and uncertainty, but everything was right in Cole’s world with Harper at his side. They passed the closed shops on Main Street, heading for the newest eatery in Wolf Paw Pass—a converted grain mill that featured not only a firewood stove but an attached craft brewery started by a guy Cole had known back in high school.

  Since the town had grown with the building of the medical center and the presence of more military, Mickey Franz’s little home-brewing hobby had become a local hit. Wolfheart, he called the stuff. To beer aficionados it was apparently top notch. And the food was excellent, too. Once inside, they were led to a corner table near a fireplace. The room smelled like a fragrant campfire, and amber light filled the restaurant, glinting off the full wall wine rack along one end. Harper collapsed into her chair and wiped her fingers across her cheeks and eyes. A sigh rolled from her lips.

  “You must be exhausted.”

  “Yes, but so’s everyone. I’m all right.”

  “This is hard. No sense trying to pretty it up. You were great with your mom and sister, though. You talked like they were right with you, listening.”

  She shrugged. “Nervous blathering.”

  The emotions she’d cycled through this afternoon and evening had let him see every nuance of Harper Crockett—fear, shock, determination, despair, forgiveness, desperate need. It had been an insight into his evolving history with her. She’d been cute in high school. She’d been lovely and feisty as a college co-ed. She’d been ethereal and unreadable as a twenty-something. He’d been blown away by her passion at her father’s funeral and then by her paintings in Chicago. Now he was simply love-struck. Like a kid, like a moony-eyed calf, like a big dork. Whatever legend said about cowboys being tough and hard wasn’t true. Tonight he was living proof.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said.

  “I’ve missed you. Thanks again for staying all day at the hospital. It would have been hard alone.”

  “Happy to.”

  Silence fell, the first real quiet between them since she’d flown into his arms earlier that day. He could only hope that had meant something more than a reaction to grief, but he wasn’t sure. She still held her distance. Even he didn’t know exactly when it had started for him, but since their time in Chicago, he didn’t doubt what he wanted in the least.

  “Can I start you with something to drink?” A waitress in a khaki skirt, white blouse, and hiking boots stood beside the table, cheery and encouraging.

  “I’ll have a Wolfheart Stout,” he said.

  “Do you have a Riesling?”

  “Yes. A glass?”

  “I’m tempted to order the whole bottle.” She smiled faintly. “But, no. Just a glass.”

  He chuckled. “You can drink a bottle, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Nope. I’m a sloppy drunk. Puts every brain cell that isn’t killed to sleep. I’ve seen enough coma-action today.”

  “It’s good to hear you joke about it.”

  “Yeah? Well it makes me feel guilty.”

  “Stop. Nobody will ever doubt how awful this is for you. You need to be okay, and laughing helps. However lame the joke.”

  “It’s surreal, Cole. The whole thing. First Dad, now Mom and Joely. Is this some sort of end-of-the-line curse? Is Amelia right? Should the rest of us get out before Paradise kills us all?”

  The words dug into his heart with surprising force. “No, honey, no. There’s no curse. Things happen, bad things. You know that. We ride it out, that’s all.” He studied the play of emotions that crossed her face. Fear, exhaustion, a touch of anger. He nearly lost it himself when the sheen of tears coated her eyes but didn’t fall. “Do you want to sell Paradise Ranch?”

  “I . . . don’t. But if anything happens to Joely, it’s all over. There’s nobody. You
said you don’t want it. We went through all this.”

  “I know. I know. But this is no better a time to be talking about that than the day of your father’s funeral was. We have to let Joely and your mom heal, and then there can be decisions.”

  “I know you don’t want to sell yet. But how close are you to being able to buy back the Double Diamond acres? Maybe that’s what you should do.”

  His heart hurt even more. She’d hit the center of his personal dilemma and didn’t even know it. Six weeks earlier his only motivation had been getting the Double Di back. But since Sam’s death, he’d been more intimate with Paradise’s inner workings than he’d ever had a reason to be. Joely had given him the ranch’s books to look over, and she’d asked his advice on everything from cattle, to employee management, to Mountain Pacific Oil and Gas. He had some opinions about where Sam had gone a little wrong, but he’d also seen the incredibly well-oiled machine Sam had run. He still wanted his land, but in four short weeks, he’d also become invested in Paradise.

  “A full year minimum. They’ve laughed me out of the bank twice already. Mostly I need to show a steady income for that much longer. Plus get together the rest of the down payment to make the loan feasible.”

  “So we need to try and keep the ranch another year at least.”

  “Look. Joely made a decision to try and make that work. Let’s honor her wishes and take one day at a time. What dredged all this deep interest up anyhow?”

  “Death. Dying. Losing the ranch person by person. I’m scared, that’s all.”

  For the second time that day, she let a tear slip from the corner of her eye. It traced half way down her cheek before she wiped it away, but another formed to take its place. Cole stood, dragged his chair around the corner of the table until it was right next to hers, and pulled her into his arms. All he wanted was to protect her. Harper looked at everything from such an emotional perspective. Her artist’s eye and her artist’s soul tried to make beauty from everything, and there was no beauty to be had in any of this.

  Her body felt fencepost stiff in his embrace. He rubbed her upper arms. “Breathe, Harpo,” he said.

  But once she did, a sob surfed out on a long, quivering wave of air. The sound cracked the dam she’d held in place all day.