“What changed all of a sudden?” Rory asked, her mind evidently moving on the same track as his. “And do you really think Ryan’s ready to settle down?” Rye always claimed he loved Clara, but he hadn’t exactly waited around, pining for a chance with her. He liked women and they liked him. The girlfriends never lasted long—a month, maybe two, and Ryan’s latest ladylove would move on. A few more weeks would go by and he would turn up with someone new on his arm.
Walker said, “I don’t know what changed. And I’m with you. I hope he’s ready.”
“It’s just...not like Clara to suddenly decide Ryan’s the guy for her after all these years of saying he’s not. On the phone, she told me she was wrong before, that she really loves him and she knows they’ll be happy together.”
“She told me the same thing. She said she finally got smart and decided to marry her best friend.”
Rory scrunched up her nose. “Well, I can see that. I guess...” And then she shook her head again. “No. I don’t get it. If I can find the right moment, I’m going to try to talk to her some more, try to find out if she’s sure about this.”
“Better talk fast. It’s two weeks until the wedding.”
She dropped her head back and stared at the headliner. “Ugh. You’re right. I don’t want to make that kind of trouble. Ryan’s always wanted to marry her, so no big surprise there. And Clara’s no flake. She’s strong and steady. If she’s doing this, it must be what she wants.”
They were climbing up into the mountains, the highway twisting through rocky moraine, pine-covered slopes rising to either side. Here and there, wide patches of snow from last week’s storm caught the sunlight and sparkled like sequins on a pretty girl’s white party dress.
“You want to stop at Clara’s?” he asked as they began to descend into the Justice Creek Valley.
“It’s after four.” The sun had already slipped behind the mountains. “It’ll be dark soon. Let’s just go on to the ranch. I’ll see her in the morning.”
* * *
Rory admired the view as they approached the Bar-N.
Nestled in its own beautiful, rolling valley with mountains all around, the Bar-N had been a working cattle ranch for five generations. The N stood for Noonan, which was Walker’s mother’s maiden name. The place had come down to Walker and Ryan from their mother, Darla, and their uncle, John Noonan. Four years ago, Ryan had sold his interest to Walker and moved into town.
Walker still kept a few horses, but the cattle were long gone. Nowadays, the Bar-N was a guest ranch. The homestead, in the center of the pretty little valley, contained a circle of well-maintained structures. Over the past couple of decades, Walker and his uncle before him had built five cozy cabins. There were also four full-size houses. The houses, constructed over the generations, had once served as homes for various members of the Noonan clan. Walker offered two of the houses, the cabins and the fully outfitted bunkhouse as vacation rentals.
Of weathered wood and natural stone, the main house had a wide front porch. Walker’s German shorthaired pointer, Lonesome, and his black cat, Lucky Lady, were waiting for them when they arrived.
Rory laughed just at the sight of them. They were so cute, sitting patiently at the top of the steps, side by side. When Walker got out, the dog came running and the big black cat followed at a more sedate pace. He greeted them both with a gentle word and a quick touch of his hand. Then he started unloading her things.
Rory grabbed her tote and went to help, taking a suitcase in her free hand and following him into the house and up the stairs. He led her to a room in front. She hesitated on the threshold.
He set down the suitcases on the rag rug and turned to her. Rory met his eyes—and felt suddenly awkward and completely tongue-tied. Bizarre. She was never tongue-tied.
“There are hangers in the closet and I emptied out the bureau,” he said. “I’ll just get that last big bag for you.” He eased around her and headed back toward the stairs again.
Once he was out of sight, Rory entered the room that would be hers for the next two weeks. It had a big window on the front-facing wall and a smaller one on the side wall. There was a nice, queen-size bed with a patchwork quilt, a heavy bureau of dark wood, a small closet and a bathroom.
The bathroom had two doors.
She opened the outer door and found herself staring across a short section of hallway into another bedroom, a small one with a bow window overlooking the backyard. Not Walker’s room, she was reasonably sure.
Curiosity had its hooks in her. She zipped across the hall to have a quick look around that other room.
Definitely not Walker’s. Walker liked things simple and spare—but this room was too spare, too tidy. Not a single item on the dresser or the nightstand that could be called personal.
She went back to the bathroom and stood frowning at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. Seven years of knowing Walker and this was the first time she’d been upstairs in his house. She wondered if this might be the only upstairs bath.
Would she and Walker be sharing? That could get awkward—well, for her, anyway. If Walker saw her naked, he’d probably just pat her on the head and tell her to get dressed before she caught a chill.
The front door opened downstairs. Rory shut the outer door, ducked back into her bedroom and got busy putting her things away.
Walker appeared in the doorway to the hall. “Alva left dinner, so that’s handled.” The Colgins, Alva and her husband, Bud, helped out around the ranch and lived in the house directly across the front yard from Walker’s. He rolled in the last bag. “Where do you want this?”
“Just leave it—anywhere’s fine.” Was she blushing? Her face felt a little too warm. Would he guess that she’d been snooping?
If he guessed, he didn’t call her on it. “Hungry?”
“Starved. I’ll finish unpacking and be right down.”
He left and Rory continued putting stuff in drawers—until she heard his boots moving across the floor below. Then she shut the door to the hallway and zipped back into the bathroom.
She opened the medicine cabinet and the cabinet under the sink. There were the usual towels and washcloths. Also, bandage strips and a tube of antibacterial ointment, a bottle of aspirin long past its use-by date and a half-empty box of tampons.
Tampons left there by a girlfriend?
Walker with a girlfriend...
He didn’t have girlfriends. Or rather, if he did, Rory had never met any of them.
He did have an ex-wife, Denise. Denise LeClair was tall, blonde and smoking hot—and long gone from Justice Creek.
Denise had moved to Colorado from Miami six years ago. She’d met Walker and it had been one of those thunderbolt moments for both of them. Or so everyone said. According to Rory’s cousin Clara, Walker’s ex-wife had sworn that she loved him madly and she only wanted to live her life at his side right there at the Bar-N.
One Rocky Mountain winter had obliterated that particular fantasy. They’d been married less than a year when Denise filed for divorce and headed back home to the Sunshine State, leaving Walker stunned at first, and later grim and grumpy.
Rory had actually met Denise only once, a few months after the wedding—and hated her on sight. And not because Denise was necessarily such an awful person...
Yes. All right. The embarrassing truth was that Rory had crushed on Walker from the first time she’d met him, seven years before. Even way back then, when she barely knew the guy, Rory’d had kind of a thing for him.
But it had never gone anywhere and it never would. There were issues, the debacle of Denise among them. True, they were all issues that could be overcome, if only Walker wanted to overcome them. But he didn’t. And Rory accepted that.
Walker was her very good friend. End of story.
He seemed to have more o
r less got over Denise in the past couple of years. But there hadn’t been anyone else for him since his marriage. He claimed that there never would be, that he was like his uncle John, a solitary type of man.
Rory stepped back and stared into the wide-open cabinets. Linens, bandage strips, ointment, aspirin. And the tampons. And four still-wrapped bars of plain soap. No men’s toiletries.
So, then. Walker had his own bathroom. Mystery solved.
Rory sank to the edge of the tub. She felt like a balloon with all of the air let out, droopy with disappointment that she and Walker didn’t have to share.
Bad. This was bad. She was long over that crush she used to have on him. Long past dreaming up possible situations where she might see him naked. She needed to pull it together.
For two weeks, she would be living here. Walker would provide the security her mother insisted she have. Nothing would happen between them. She would get through the days until the wedding without making a fool of herself. And then she would return to Montedoro and get on with her life.
Because she and Walker were friends. Friends. And nothing more. They were friends and she liked it that way.
She jumped to her feet and glared at herself in the mirror to punctuate the point.
And she ignored the tiny voice in her heart that said she did care, she’d always cared—and that was never going to change.
Chapter Two
“It’s a little strange,” Rory said when they sat at the table in the big farm-style kitchen, eating Alva Colgin’s excellent elk stew with piping hot drop biscuits, which Walker had whipped up on the spot. “Staying here, in your house...”
He sipped his beer, the light from the mission-style fixture overhead bringing out auburn lights in his brown hair. “You have complaints?”
She split a biscuit in half. Steam curled up from the center. Those blue eyes of his were trained on her. She thought he seemed a little wary. “Relax,” she told him. “No complaints. And I know I was a bitch before. Sorry. Over it.”
He set down his beer. “Weird, how?”
“It’s just not what we do, that’s all.” She’d always stayed at the Haltersham, Justice Creek’s famous, supposedly haunted luxury hotel built by a local industrialist at the turn of the last century. “You know how we are...”
“How’s that?” He forked up a bite of stew and arched an eyebrow at her.
Annoyance jabbed at her. Seriously? He didn’t know how they were? With a great show of patience, she explained the obvious. “Well, we meet up at Ryan’s bar.” His brother owned and ran McKellan’s, a popular neighborhood-style pub in town on Marmot Drive. “Or we hang out at Clara’s house. Or we head up into the mountains.” They both enjoyed hiking, camping and fishing. So did Clara and Ryan. The four of them had camped out together several times—just four good friends, nothing romantic going on. But now Clara and Ryan were getting married. And Rory was sleeping in Walker’s house. “I’ve been here at the ranch maybe six times total in all the years we’ve known each other—and tonight is the first time I’ve seen the upstairs. Wouldn’t you say that’s a little bit weird?”
He was looking at her strangely. “You really don’t want to stay here. That’s what you’re saying, right? That’s why you’ve been so pissed off about having me handle your security.”
Wonderful. Now she’d succeeded in making everything weirder. She set down half of the biscuit and picked up her butter knife. “No, Walker. That’s not what I’m saying.”
“It’s not what you’re used to, is it? Too far out in the sticks, no room service, iffy internet access.”
“Not true. Wrong. It’s beautiful here. And very comfortable. I promise you, I’m not complaining.”
He went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “I admit it’s just easier for me, if you stay here at the ranch rather than the hotel. But if you want, we can—”
“Will you stop?”
“I want to work this out.”
“There’s nothing to work out. I just said it was a little weird, that’s all. I was only...making conversation.”
“Making conversation.” His mouth had a grim set.
“Yes. I talk. You answer. I answer you back. Conversation. Ring a bell?”
He set down his fork. It made a sharp sound against the side of his plate. “Something is really bugging you. What?”
“Nothing,” she baldly lied. “There’s nothing.”
But of course, there was.
It was the two doors to the bathroom. Because of those two doors, she’d thought about seeing him naked and that was not the kind of thing a girl was supposed to be thinking about her very good friend.
For years, they’d had everything worked out between them—for him, everything was still worked out.
But for her, well...he kind of had it right, though she would never admit it no matter how hard he pushed. She didn’t really want to stay here—and not because it wasn’t a luxury hotel.
Uh-uh. There was just something about staying in his house, something about having him as her bodyguard, something about Ryan and Clara suddenly getting married, something about everything changing from how it had always been. It had her mind going places it shouldn’t go.
It had her heart aching for what it was never going to get.
He sat back in his chair, tipped his head sideways and studied her with a look that set her nerves on edge. “Whatever it is, you need to go ahead and tell me.”
She played dumb. Because no way was she having the I want to jump your bones, but hey, I get that you’re just not that into me conversation. Not tonight. Not ever again. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
Yes, she did. So what now? Truth or lie?
Lie, definitely. “No, really. There’s nothing.” She faked a yawn and hid it behind her hand.
He fell for it. “Tired?”
She lied some more. “Exhausted. It’s—what? One in the morning in Montedoro. I’m just going to finish this amazing stew and go on up to my room...”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I am. Really. Just a little tired is all.”
And that was it. He let it go.
After the meal, she helped him straighten up the kitchen. Then she went upstairs, had a nice bath and called Clara’s house. Clara wasn’t there, so Rory left a message saying she’d arrived safely after an uneventful flight and would see her in the morning for the final fittings. They were all—bride and bridesmaids—meeting at Wedding Belles Bridal on Central Street at ten.
Rory hung up and climbed into bed. She was certain she would lie there wide-awake for hours stewing over her inappropriate interest in her very good friend Walker. But she turned out the light and snuggled under that old quilt and smiled because the pillowcase smelled like starch and sunshine.
And the next thing she knew, thin winter sunlight was peeking between the white cotton curtains. She sat up and stretched and realized she felt great. Lucky Lady sat at the end of the bed, lazily licking her paw.
Rory beamed at the big black cat. All those weird emotional knots she’d tied herself up in the night before? Untied.
Honestly, if she still had a little bit of a crush on Walker, so what? She didn’t have to get all eaten up over it. It just wasn’t that big a deal.
* * *
Walker drove her into town. He found a parking space right on Central Street in front of Wedding Belles, under a streetlamp all done up for the holidays with an evergreen wreath covered in bright colored Christmas ornaments and crowned with a red bow.
Rory unhooked her seat belt. “I’ll call you when we leave the shop.”
He didn’t fall for it. “I’ll see you inside.” He went to feed the meter.
Still hoping that maybe he’d
give up and go hang with Ryan or something for a while, Rory entered the shop.
Wedding Belles was everything the name implied. Big, beautiful dresses in a delicious rainbow of colors hung on racks along the walls. More dresses tempted the buyer from freestanding displays. It was a truly girlie kind of place, and the final fitting was just supposed to be Clara and her attendants.
Best man not included.
Walker came in anyway. He assumed the bodyguard position, out of the way, near the door.
Clara was already there. She stood in the center of the shop, all in white, on a round white fitting platform in front of a silver-trimmed cheval mirror, her brown hair loose on her shoulders. She had her head tipped down at first, a pensive expression on her pretty face. Her dress was a gorgeous thing, with a layered organza skirt, three-quarter length lace sleeves and a fitted lace-and-beadwork bodice. Clara looked adorable in it. Another woman, probably the shop’s owner, was busy fussing with the layers of fluffy organza hem.
As always, Rory had a camera with her. She whipped it out and snapped a few quick shots of the bride, who seemed lost in a world of her own, and the seamstress kneeling at her feet.
Clara looked up, her faraway expression vanishing as if it had never been. She beamed and held out her arms. “Rory!” The other woman stepped aside so Clara could hike up those acres of skirt and jump down from the platform for a hello hug.
Rory stuck her camera back in her tote and ran over to wrap her arms around her favorite cousin, who smelled of a light, flowery perfume—with just a hint of coffee and pancakes. Clara must have been at her restaurant, the Library Café, already that morning. “God,” Rory said. “It’s so good to see you.” They grinned at each other.
Clara kissed her on the cheek and jumped back up on the platform. “This is Millie. She owns the place. Millie, my cousin Rory.”
“Hey,” said Rory. “We’ve met. Sort of.” She’d talked to Millie on the phone a couple of times, giving the shopkeeper her size and measurements so her dress could be made up and ready for today.
A Bravo Christmas Wedding Page 2