Ticket to Bride

by Liz Isaacson

  An idea floated across her mind. Maybe she should sneak into town and do another dance around the statue. Maybe Ellora could help Navy get Gavin to tell her all his secrets.

  She let the idea move back and forth, front to back, as she braided her hair. She put on a flirty sundress in purples and blues and pinks and slipped on her strappy sandals that made Gavin roll his eyes. But she was pretty sure this type of footwear was acceptable at a hodgepodge market. A hodgepodge market that they were attending with two people over the age of eighty.

  She slicked on her favorite pink lip gloss and grabbed her purse. She wandered down the dirt tire tracks toward the street, where Gavin would see her when he arrived. Before she could get there, his truck turned onto the lane, and she moved to the grass to wait for him.

  He got down out of the truck and for a moment, Navy thought he’d sweep her off her feet and then plant a kiss on her lips. The disappointment when he didn’t was severe and swift, and it was then that Navy realized how deep she’d already fallen.

  “Morning,” he said instead. “It’s a tight fit, but I think we’ll make it. It’s only a half an hour to Waco.”

  She peered past him and into the cab, where Nancy watched her with an extreme look of interest. Navy put on a smile that felt timid and tired, and allowed Gavin to help her into the truck. She glanced at the tiny patch of space behind the steering wheel. No way Gavin would fit there. Maybe one of his legs.

  He somehow managed to squish himself onto the remaining seat, and he leaned into her to slam the door. “Oof,” he said before twisting so most of his weight rested on the door instead of her.

  An awkwardness filled the cab that Navy didn’t know how to crack. But Nancy said, “Gavin said the work at your cottage is coming along nicely.”

  “It is,” Navy said. “Having hot water was such a huge improvement, I’m not sure anything else is needed.”

  “Oh yeah?” Gavin asked. “You think not having a front door is okay?”

  “Well, someone knocked it down.” She grinned at him and glanced at Nancy. Her smile faded at the placid look on the elderly woman’s face. “He knocked it down.”

  “It was an accident, Grandmother,” Gavin said over Navy’s head. “The hinges were rusted through.”

  The conversation flowed easily from there to Aunt Izzie and Uncle Marvin, and Navy was just beginning to enjoy herself, cramped as she was, when Nancy asked, “So how have things been going on the match-front?”

  Navy froze, and next to her, Gavin stiffened. She didn’t dare look at him. Her voice cracked when she said, “Oh, I’m not looking, Nancy. Remember? I’m on my escape from reality right now.”

  Nancy patted her knee. “Oh, that’s right. Must’ve been the other girl who said she was staying right here in Bride until she found her match.”

  Navy swallowed, but her mouth tasted sour. Her stomach squirmed. “How many women do you help each week?” she asked.

  Gavin cleared his throat, but Navy still didn’t look at him. It was an innocent question. The matchmaker could choose to answer or not.

  “It depends,” she said. “But heading into summer, we’ll get a lot more. I had four last week.”

  “Sometimes she has two or three each day,” Matthew, Gavin’s granddad, said, his first contribution to the conversation at all.

  “Wow. Two or three a day.” Navy let the topic drop, and Gavin picked it up with, “Granddad, how’s Aunt Ally doing?”

  Navy let the conversation about Gavin’s aunt, the only sister to his father. She didn’t really listen, and she didn’t really participate. Her mind marinated over what she’d said, and how Gavin would perceive it, and what she could do to fix the damage before their relationship was deemed terminal.

  As soon as they arrived at the hodgepodge market, she excused herself. “I just need to make a quick phone call.” She flashed what she hoped was a winning smile and scampered away.

  “Please don’t be working today,” she muttered as she pulled up Lynn’s phone number and hit call. “Please don’t be working today.”

  The phone rang once, twice, three times. Navy’s hopes crashed, then soared when Lynn said, “Girl! You finally called.”

  “Hey, Lynn.” The relief swept through her so quickly she couldn’t keep it from infusing her voice.

  “What’s going on? Did you meet a man already? You’ve been down there what? A week?”

  Navy bit her bottom lip, her emotions spiraling all over the place. She pictured her best friend with her dark hair and light eyes. She had soft hands and quick wit and had taught Navy to always watch for the tiniest of details when it came to babies. Lynn was married, with two teenagers, and by all accounts, she and Navy shouldn’t be so close. But they were.

  “You better start talking,” Lynn said. “Or I’ll send Roy down there to find out what’s going on. Or he’ll just put out a call. I’m sure the Sheriff in Bride knows you’re in town and can go check on you.”

  “Don’t send your cop husband down here,” Navy said with a light laugh. Lynn was forever threatening to sic Roy on Navy. “But I did meet someone.”

  A squeal nearly deafened Navy. “Shh,” she said. “It’s not what you think.”

  “What I think is you got on a bus and went five hundred miles south to find your match. And you met a man.”

  She hadn’t figured out a way to ask about his birthday yet. And though Nancy had said a few other things, none of them really defined Gavin as her match. “He’s a great guy. Handy with a hammer. Tall. Handsome.”

  “Sounds dreadful.”

  Navy giggled again, glancing over her shoulder to see where Gavin and his grandparents had gone. They were moving down the row of parked cars at a snail’s pace. She followed at a distance that she wouldn’t be overheard.

  “But I wasn’t—I mean, what if there’s a guy in Amarillo I’m supposed to meet? I was only here for vacation.”

  “Just trust the process,” Lynn said.

  But Navy didn’t know what that meant, or how to trust something she didn’t understand. Her own process of trying to find a boyfriend had never worked, and as far as she could tell, she wasn’t doing anything different with Gavin.

  “I don’t know the process.”

  “You know,” Lynn said. “Dating, going out, spending time together. See if you like him.”

  Oh, Navy liked Gavin. She knew how to flirt with him. How to get him to look at her with that flame of desire in his eyes. How to make him laugh. Since she’d dated so much, she knew exactly what to do.

  And that was exactly the problem. She was still doing what she’d always done. So she couldn’t expect a different result this time.

  Gavin glanced over his shoulder, prompting Navy to say, “I have to go, Lynn. I’ll call you later.”

  “You better. I want more regular updates now that I know there’s a man in play.”

  Navy smiled, hung up, and hurried to catch up to Gavin. She let her fingers brush his, but he didn’t grab on. She didn’t either. It was obvious he didn’t want to flaunt their budding relationship in front of the most famous matchmaker in Texas.

  Navy supposed she couldn’t blame him for that, but a terrible thought struck her right between the ribs. Maybe he’d brought her out here to Waco so no one else in town would find out about their hand-holding.

  She tried to dismiss the thought. They’d gone to The Stable together. The bark park. The hardware store.

  Still, the idea wouldn’t go away. Gavin had never openly displayed his affections for her, limited as they were. Only when they were alone.

  That’s normal, she told herself. This is new.

  She closed her eyes as Gavin stepped up to the ticket booth and said, “Four, please.”

  She prayed that she wouldn’t ruin this thing with Gavin—whatever it was—before it could truly get started.

  10

  Gavin enjoyed wandering around the hodgepodge market with Navy and his grandparents. They ate too much fried food from a
truck, laughed, and told stories. He liked Navy’s quick smile, her helpful hand when Granddad stumbled, her calm demeanor in tough situations. He chalked all of those admirable qualities up to her pediatric nursing training.

  But he couldn’t get her words from that morning out of his head. Oh, I’m not looking, Nancy. Remember? I’m on my escape from reality right now.

  Her escape from reality. So holding his hand wasn’t real for her? Or the way she watched him with those penetrating eyes, practically begging him to come over and kiss her? That wasn’t real?

  He hardened his resolve, pushed out the disruptive thoughts. He wasn’t going to be her vacation boyfriend. This wasn’t a fling for him.

  So he couldn’t hold her hand again. It wouldn’t kill him. He’d learned that a broken heart didn’t actually kill a man when Joan had left him standing out at Sterling Ranch by himself, at a wedding altar he’d constructed with his own hands.

  A jilted groom, right there in Bride, Texas, which was famous all over the country for its jilted 1800s bride. No wonder he disliked Ellora Shepherd so much—and every woman who rolled into town on a bus and worshipped her statue. And Navy fit right into that group as if she were their founder. So had Joan.

  He sighed, alerting Blue to his mental and emotional turmoil, as he kicked off his boots and leaned back into the couch. He’d dropped Navy off thirty minutes ago and made sure his grandparents were safely inside their house after that.

  For Saturday night, it was early still, but Gavin’s exhaustion nearly overwhelmed him. His phone chimed, and his heart shot to the back of his throat. Maybe it was Navy.

  It wasn’t. Instead, Steve’s name came up on the screen. “Hey,” Gavin said, his troubles evaporating. “How was the trip to California?”

  “Good,” Steve said. “Great. You should come next time.”

  Right, Gavin thought with an eyeroll tacked on. “I don’t want to infringe on your family vacation,” he said in the nicest voice he could muster.

  “Carol wouldn’t mind.”

  “I’m sure she would.” Gavin cleared his throat. “So what’s up?”

  “Wondered if you wanted to go fishing tomorrow after church.”

  “Yeah, sure.” It was a ninety-minute drive to the Kingsland Slab where they fished, but Gavin suddenly craved the time away from Bride, away from Navy, away from everything that had become normal in his life.

  “Anything new happen while I was gone?” Steve asked, as if he’d already heard. Since his wife was a waitress at Two Cups, one of the premier hotspots for talk in town, he probably had.

  “Got a new job fixing up the Shepherd cottage,” he said. “That’s about it.”

  “Right,” Steve said. “Okay, see you tomorrow.”

  Gavin hung up, knowing full well he’d have to tell Steve everything. Gavin had a few friends in town, but not many. Most knew what had happened with Joan and had let him retreat to his quaint house, the dogs, and his grandparents’ massive yard. Steve had been there the longest—since Gavin’s days at Sterling Ranch even.

  Gratitude filled him that he had someone rational to talk to about his maybe-relationship with Navy. He couldn’t mention anything to Grandmother, not after the Joan disaster. After all, she’d consulted with Joan four times over the course of a year before she accepted his proposal. And four months later, she skipped town after yet another meeting with his grandmother.

  Gavin had never asked her what she’d said to Joan. He wasn’t sure he cared, because he thought it was all bunk anyway. The statue. The myth. The matchmaking. All of it, pure fantasy.

  Which meant Navy—and any hope of having a real relationship with her—was pure fantasy too.

  Gavin made sure to sit on the inside of his grandparents the next day. He wasn’t trying to be rude. He simply needed to protect himself from the blonde bombshell who walked in with sixty seconds to spare, her hair all twisted up like she was going to the prom and a dress as dark as night clinging to her curves.

  He sucked in a breath as she sat next to Grandmother, as they started whispering, as she glanced down the row to him. He gave her a single nod and focused on the pulpit, every cell in his body angry at him for not sitting where he could touch Navy.

  Pastor Adams spoke about enduring through trials, and Gavin kept all his attention on the man’s words. Gavin had been through a fair few trials, from losing his job to all the dating fiascos. His grandparents were aging, and he expected he’d lose one of them in the near future. But he’d never been through something truly terrible.

  His unfulfilled dreams of owning a ranch came forward in his mind. He hadn’t been looking, and something whispered to him that he should be. But that will take me from Grandmother and Granddad, he thought.

  And he wasn’t sure where the next thought—Call Aunt Ally—came from, only that it was there.

  His spirits buoyed, and a new plan fell into place to start the search for a ranch again and to call his aunt about moving to Bride to help with her parents. He’d mentioned it to her a few times before, but she’d been reluctant to leave her job in Dallas. Gavin understood, but more time had passed, and perhaps she could retire or find something to do in Bride.

  The service ended, and Navy appeared at Gavin’s side. “What are you doing this afternoon?”

  “Goin’ fishing with a friend.”

  Her eyebrows rose and her eyes widened. “Oh. I didn’t know you liked to fish.”

  “It’s Texas,” he said as if that explained everything.

  She fell a half-step behind, and Gavin felt bad for dismissing her so readily. “Have you ever been to the Llano River? It’s gorgeous.”

  “No,” she said. “I did see it a lot on that website I was looking at about the festivals.”

  “Yeah, they do stuff all summer long. The fishing is good about now until June. Steve and I will go a lot.”

  Steve stepped in front of them as if summoned by the mention of his name. “Gavin.” They man-hugged, complete with loud clapping on their shoulders. “And you must be Navy Richards.”

  A pit opened in Gavin’s stomach. If Steve knew that, he already knew everything else. Sure enough, he kept his winning smile in place for Navy as he shook her hand, but his eyes flashed to Gavin’s several times.

  Gavin settled his weight on his back foot and folded his arms. “So you’ll drive?” he finally asked so Steve would stop talking to Navy.

  “Yeah, I’ll be there in say, forty-five minutes?”

  “I’ll be ready.” Gavin tipped his hat to Navy and walked out of the church. He hoped she’d follow, that maybe he could stop by her place tonight to show her his catch, but he made it to his truck without her.

  His phone remained silent while he put together his fishing gear, food for the afternoon, and an assortment of toys for Blue. Misfit and Miles wouldn’t come—Gavin didn’t trust them in the Llano River in the spring.

  Steve arrived, and Gavin hefted his gear and backpack into the truck bed. “Thanks for embarrassing me at church,” he said.

  Steve, a ginger-haired man who couldn’t grow a beard to save his life, laughed. And laughed. “She’s nice.”

  Gavin grunted, put up the tailgate, and got in the truck. Steve joined him, still smiling. “And beautiful.”

  “She came to Bride on a bus, danced around the statue the first night she was here, and met with my grandmother the very next morning.”

  Steve cringed as he backed onto the street and set the truck heading west. “I can see why you like her, and why you don’t.”

  “She’ll only be here for a few more months.” At least five more, he thought but kept to himself. “And I’m looking for a ranch, so maybe I’ll leave town before she does.”

  “Anything good out there?” Steve asked. He’d taken to equipment repair, a service offered by the hardware store, when the ranches around town had dried up.

  “Maybe,” Gavin said. “I haven’t looked in a while, but I feel like I need to again.”

  “I’l
l come work for you.”

  “I know you will.” The conversation turned to Steve’s vacation, and how Gavin’s parents were doing in West Virginia, before circling back to Navy.

  “She’s from Amarillo,” Gavin said. He filled Steve in on everything he knew about Navy, which was admittedly a lot more than he’d told her about himself.

  “So does she know how you feel about the legends of Bride?”

  “I think I’ve been clear.”

  “But she doesn’t know about Debbie. Or Ginny. Or Tabitha. Or—”

  “No,” Gavin barked to get him to stop talking about all his past female failures. “She doesn’t know anything about any of them.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Says the man who married the woman who came into town on a bus, danced around the statue, and met my grandmother the next morning.”

  “It was two mornings later,” Steve said with a smile. His grin faded quickly. “But seriously, Gavin, sometimes it does work out.”

  “Sure.” But Gavin had five examples of how sometimes it didn’t work out. And he wasn’t up for a sixth.

  Thankfully, once they started fishing, the conversation stalled. Gavin soaked up the warmth of the late-April sun. Snacked on his beef jerky and homemade trail mix that Grandmother put almond M&Ms in. Cast his line over and over, hoping for that bass to latch on.

  The beauty of Texas Hill Country surrounded him, and he let the gurgling sound of the river soothe his soul. Allowed the clean breeze to sweep the cobwebs from his mind. The gray and brown rocks, the bright green grasses and trees, the brilliant blue sky all combined to create a picture of perfection Gavin was sure didn’t exist anywhere else on God’s great earth.

  And he was thankful God had put him here. Right there in Texas, where he could experience a slower pace of life. He felt closer to the Lord while fishing than he did while sitting in church, and Gavin finally cast all his burdens away while he cast his line out again and again.

  Several hours later, he said, “Thanks,” to Steve as they pulled up to Gavin’s house. “We should go again next weekend.”