Despite a knack for shopping, Aurora had never dressed to match bakery products before, but in the past four years she’d done a lot of things she’d never done before. She bought a bar, she ran a business, she quilted—quilted, how odd was that!—and she had girlfriends.
Girlfriends. Imagine.
Wait until they heard that someone who claimed to be Sam’s brother was in town.
* * *
“HURRY,” JAKE SAID.
“Why?”
“We’re going to a wedding.”
“We can’t go to a wedding without being invited,” his prim daughter declared.
“We’re not actually going to attend the wedding,” he said, hustling her back to the truck. “We’re going to meet your uncle Sam. Unless you can think of what else we can do in a town that’s closed.”
“We could go back to Lewistown. Or Billings. We could go to the movies.”
Three logical suggestions, and he didn’t even consider them. He wanted to see Sam. Needed to see Sam. He was so close, and after all these years he didn’t want to wait until tomorrow.
“We could wait until tomorrow,” his daughter continued. “When we could arrive at a more opportune time.”
“A more opportune time? Someone should monitor your time spent watching Masterpiece Theatre.”
“That would be you, I guess.”
“Got that right.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Downton Abbey. Are you not aware how popular it is? The whole world—”
“She’s heading north. Keep your eye on the car.”
“You’re going to scare her if you follow her. She might even call the police.”
He sighed. The woman was stunningly beautiful. He’d almost fallen off the sidewalk when he’d opened the door of the bar and she was right there. She had the oval face and flawless skin of a model; those cool blue eyes had assessed him with the aloof attitude that beautiful women often have.
He had not impressed her, and she didn’t care if he knew it. “I don’t think she scares easily.”
“She asked me if I was being kidnapped.” Winter made a big show out of making sure her seat belt was fastened correctly.
“The woman has a big imagination.”
Winter turned that serious blue-eyed gaze upon him, a look he’d grown used to in the four and a half days since he’d become her father. “She said she’d keep me safe and call the police. No, the sheriff.”
“That was nice of her,” Jake said, impressed that a stranger would go to the trouble. She would have rescued a little girl and risked missing that important wedding she was in such a hurry to get to.
“I liked her hair. Maybe I should grow mine long.”
“You could.” Ah, yes. The hair. Silver-blond and fashionably long and straight. Dangly earrings that appeared to be flowers, the same flowers on her dress. A body that stood out, despite being covered by a puffy vest. Even the ugly suede boots did nothing to detract from the woman’s beauty.
“She looked like a movie star. Like someone famous.”
“Maybe she is.” He’d seen that long, silver-blond hair before, he thought. Onstage where he’d performed? No, he couldn’t picture her singing country. Or rockabilly.
His serious child thought for a moment. “What would she be doing here? Would someone famous own a bar?”
“Probably not,” he conceded. “Someone famous might own a bar, I guess, but not work there. She looked like she worked there.”
“I guess.” Then she paused. “I want to go home.”
“Yes,” he said, keeping his eye on the red Subaru SUV flying along the road. “You’ve said that before.”
“I don’t want to be on a road trip.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know you.”
“Which is the point of the trip.” He thought about the virtue of patience, and how he’d never known he’d had any until two weeks ago, when he got the phone call from Merry’s lawyers. Another short week came and went and then he’d gassed up the truck and ushered his new daughter into the front seat.
“I want to go home,” she repeated, this time louder.
“Which is a problem,” he pointed out, hoping he sounded paternal and calm.
“You don’t have to rub it in,” she muttered. “I know I’m a problem.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” Jake despaired of getting this fatherhood thing figured out. “I meant the fact that you want to go home is a prob—an issue—something to figure out.”
“I’m sorry.” She fiddled with the zipper on her jacket. When she was stressed she couldn’t keep her hands still. He wondered if she’d ever picked up a guitar.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about.” He was sorry for her. Winter. And why had Merry named the child after a season?
As for Merry Lee, ambitious and beautiful, it was hard to empathize with the woman who had kept his child’s existence from him for eleven and a half years.
Merry’s first album had gone platinum, as had the second. She’d married someone in Europe, had a child, was rich, he’d heard. But Jake hadn’t paid much attention. They’d had a three-month affair when he filled in for her guitar player on a summer tour, ended up married in Vegas and then they’d gone their separate ways. Merry wasn’t so merry and had a mean temper when she wasn’t in front of an audience. The quick divorce had been a relief, and the brief marriage to Merry Lee was something in the distant past.
Until now.
Winter was now digging through the console. “What about the GPS?”
“Try it,” Jake said, grateful for the change of subject. “Maybe the Triple M Ranch is on there.”
“Like an address?” She reached into the console between the seats and retrieved the GPS.
“Yeah. If not, look it up.” He gestured toward his cell phone, a state-of-the-art iPhone he’d bought for the trip. “Try texting Sam again. Maybe he’ll answer and give us directions.”
“I don’t think it’s right to crash a wedding,” Winter huffed, typing into the device. “We could be escorted from the premises.”
“Excuse me, Miss Manners,” he said, making her smile just a little bit. “If you can find a store between here and this ranch, we’ll buy a gift and make the whole thing legitimate.”
They both eyed the expanse of open land ahead of them.
“Fat chance,” she muttered, frowning at the screen. “There’s nothing between here and the Triple M. It’s a historic ranch and was founded by a man from Scotland named Angus MacGregor. There’s even a picture.” She held the phone up so he could see.
“MacGregor,” Jake repeated. “That’s the name of the groom, so we’re heading to the right place. Are there directions?”
Winter looked stricken. “We can’t go there. We really could get in trouble.”
“We won’t get in trouble,” Jake promised his overly serious child. “We’ll owe them a gift, which we will buy tomorrow. You can pick it out. We won’t stay for the food or the dancing. We’ll find Sam, get the key to his house and get off the road. We’ll ask the butler to give him a message.” He grinned. “What do you say?”
“Not funny. I’ll text him again. Getting off the road would be okay,” Winter agreed, setting the GPS device into its dashboard cradle. “But we’re not going into the reception.”
“Unless the bride requests a song,” he added, and then wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He’d learned, over the past six days, that she didn’t care much for teasing. She didn’t think he was all that funny, and she had little use for music. He suspected she was tone-deaf, which was odd considering that her parents were musicians.
His daughter rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”
“Hey,” he protested, “she might be a fan.”
<
br /> “You are so not going to sing.”
Trying to make her laugh, Jake broke out in a bluesy, off-key version of a seven-year-old hit song.
She ignored him, something she was good at. She didn’t care to answer too many questions. In fact, in the week he’d known her, she’d said little about her mother, even less about her childhood. Apparently her mother’s cousin had acted as nanny early on, but she’d married and had her own children. Winter had spent the past six years in boarding schools and summer camps.
Except for this year.
This year she had a father.
For better or for worse.
And whether she wanted one or not.
* * *
AURORA DIDN’T CARE if Jake Hove—if that’s who he really was—followed her out to the Triple M. The male guests at the wedding—and there would be a lot of them, considering that the town’s population was overwhelmingly male—were more than capable of taking care of a stranger who might want to cause trouble.
If he turned out to be Sam’s problem, then Sam could deal with him. If he was really Sam’s brother—and Aurora had had time in the car to ponder the resemblance between the two men, deciding they did share certain physical characteristics—then Lucia would no doubt explain the situation to Meg and Aurora the next time they met for coffee or lunch or a glass of wine.
Planning this wedding had given Aurora what Lucia called “girlfriend time.” Now that she’d experienced it, Aurora intended to continue the practice. Between girlfriend time and quilting lessons, she was slowly filling the lonely hours with friendships instead of compulsively scrubbing woodwork in the bar.
In the past four years since moving to Willing, she’d discovered it was easy to cry and scrub at the same time. Aurora thumbed her iPod and listened to Joshua Bell’s new release.
Three young men flagged her down after she’d navigated the long road to the main house, a large white building that looked as if it were a ranch house on a movie set.
Les, the youngest member of the town council and a sweet young man, stepped over to her car.
“Hey, Aurora.”
“Hey, Les.”
“We’ll park it for you,” he said. “The yard’s still a little muddy, so Owen has asked everyone to walk on the gravel and go straight to the barn. Unless you’re going to the house...? You can go on the grass to the front, because it’s not so bad. Ms. Loralee and Shelly are in there with Meg.”
“All right. Thank you.” She stepped out, ignored the appreciative looks from the young men and retrieved her bag and her purse, then trudged across the grassy yard to the front steps of the wide covered porch. She stepped out of her muddy boots and left them off to the side before opening the heavy door and walking inside.
One of Lucia’s little boys greeted her. “Hi, Miss ’Rora. You look nice.”
“Thank you, Matty.”
“The baby won’t stop crying,” he said, peeling paper from a frosted cupcake. All dark hair and dark eyes and wearing a white button-down shirt and black pants, six-year-old Matty was adorably rumpled. Aurora suspected the shirt wouldn’t be clean for very much longer.
Sure enough, a baby wailed from another room. “Uh-oh. Is that Laura?”
“Yep.” He carefully licked the frosting violet from the top of the dessert. “Grandma says she needs a nap. My mom made a lot of these.”
“How many have you eaten?” She suspected this wasn’t his first. She also suspected his mother didn’t know he’d been sampling the dessert.
“Today?”
She nodded.
He frowned in concentration, trying to remember accurately. “Four.”
“Wow.” Aurora had little experience with children and absolutely none with young boys. Lucia’s three children often seemed like strange, energetic creatures who made a lot of noise and couldn’t sit still.
“I ate seven last night,” he confided. “Without frosting. For supper.”
“Aurora!” The cupcake eater’s mother came rushing into the hall. “We were getting worried about you.”
“I was delayed. Sorry. I had a—”
“Matty! I thought I told you no more cupcakes.” She plucked the half-eaten cake from her son’s sticky fingers. “Go to the barn. Now. Tell Sam you’re all supposed to stay with him now.”
“Okay.”
“And stay in the barn this time,” she said.
“Where’s Mama?” Mama Marie was Lucia’s mother-in-law and a devoted grandmother. Well known in town for her Italian cooking and generous nature, she was known to everyone as “Mama Marie” or simply “Mama.” Aurora was a little afraid of her. She often had the impression that Mama Marie looked at her and disapproved of what she saw.
“She’s keeping Loralee from driving Meg insane.”
“Is the mother of the bride giving the bride more advice?”
“She keeps fussing over Meg’s hair, wants her to put on more mascara. You know the drill.”
“Right.” Loralee was not known for subtlety. Flamboyant, softhearted and outspoken, she was best experienced in small doses. “What can I do, besides guard the dessert and distract Loralee?”
“We’re going to get everyone out of the house and into their seats in the barn. I imagine the groom is getting edgy.”
“The groom has been edgy for weeks.” Aurora wondered if Owen thought Meg would change her mind again, the way she had done when she was eighteen and refused to run away with him for the second time. According to Meg, the first elopement hadn’t gone according to plan.
“And please tell Meg she looks beautiful. She’s stressing over her hair.”
“I’ll bet she’s gorgeous,” Aurora said, following Lucia up the wide mahogany staircase to the second floor.
“She is,” Lucia said. “Even if she doesn’t think so.”
“Does Sam have a brother?”
Lucia stopped at the top of the stairs. “Yes. Why?”
“I think he’s in town.”
“In town? This town?”
“You weren’t expecting him?”
“He and Sam have talked a couple of times, but Sam didn’t say anything about him coming here. They’ve wanted to reconnect, though. It’s been a long time since they’ve seen each other.” She seemed puzzled. “I thought we were going to fly to Nashville this summer, after the—”
“I told him you were here,” Aurora said. “He wanted to know why everything in town was closed, so I explained about the wedding.”
Her friend looked thoughtful. “I’ll tell Sam to call him right away. I made him turn his phone off this morning so we could get out here early. Otherwise it’s insane. The phone never stops ringing with business calls.”
“Is he planning another trip to, um, the jungle?”
“He’s always planning another business trip, another documentary,” Lucia said. “And then there’s the book project. But we have a wedding and a honeymoon in Belize first. At least that’s what Sam says now.”
“I think he’s more than ready for the wedding,” Aurora said. “When is it going to be?”
“Soon. But we’ll do something small,” she confided. “Something this summer, after school is out. By the way, I love your boots.”
“Thank you.”
“Vintage?”
“No.”
“They’re so original I thought maybe—”
“Aurora! Thank goodness.” The bride, who looked stunning in a simple ivory scoop-necked lace dress that skimmed her slender body and stopped below her knees, fairly flew out of her room to where they stood at the top of the stairs. She’d refused to consider a traditional wedding gown and had instead ordered her dress from Nordstrom, online.
A bold move, Aurora had thought at the time. But typical Meg and totally
beautiful.
“What do you need?” she asked the bride.
“What time is it?” Meg smiled, but she looked a little harried. “Time seems to be moving very slowly this morning.”
Lucia checked her watch. “You have five, maybe ten, minutes. Guess what. Aurora found a man this morning.”
Meg seemed impressed. “What kind of man?”
“Sam’s brother, or so he says,” Aurora answered, following Meg back into the bedroom, Lucia trailing behind them. “They do look alike. A little.”
“What did you do with him?” Meg went over to the window, as if by looking outside she would spot him. The large, freshly painted pale blue room faced the back of the house, with three tall windows facing the barns and the hills beyond. Lace curtains hung to the polished wood floors and an enormous bed, its mattress covered in an exquisite blue and white Irish chain quilt, took up most of the space.
“I left him in town, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he followed me here. He knew that Sam was at the wedding.”
“Wow. What does he look like?”
Aurora frowned. “Handsome, of course. Like his brother. And he’s very confident.”
“Confident,” Lucia repeated, frowning a little. “What does that mean? He’s obnoxious?”
“No,” Aurora said quickly, not wanting to insult Lucia’s future brother-in-law. “He seems very self-assured, as if there isn’t anything that bothers him.” She threw up her hands. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s as if any kind of trouble would slide right off the man.” She sat on the bed and ran her hand along the delicate stitching.
“Sam’s calm like that, too.”
“Maybe it runs in the family,” Meg suggested.
Lucia joined her at the window. “It could. They had a pretty rough childhood and haven’t seen each other in years. Sam’s going to be thrilled he’s here.”
“He’s here, all right,” Aurora said. “His daughter is—”
“Daughter?”
“You didn’t know he had a daughter?”
Lucia shook her head slowly. “I didn’t even know he was married.”
“Not exactly a prerequisite,” Meg pointed out. She smoothed the front of her dress nervously.
The Husband Show Page 2