by Liz Ireland
Something in his voice startled her. Perhaps he thought she was being selfish. “I’ve thought out some benefits for you, too, Cody. For one thing, I know you’ve had trouble working up the spit to tell your uncle that you don’t want to be his deputy anymore, but now you can use me as an excuse.”
“You? How?”
“By telling him that I don’t approve of your doing police work. That I worry it’s too dangerous.”
“Too dangerous to be a policeman in Heartbreak Ridge?” he asked, astonished. “That’s a stretch!”
“Okay, okay, it’s not the most rational fear in the world, but neither is a fear of the dark and cougar attacks.” He smiled, and the reminder of their sharing that blanket under the stars nearly made her blush. Somehow, it didn’t seem appropriate to bring up that intimate moment when they were hashing out their marriage. “You can tell him that I watch too many cop shows on TV and that I worry I’ll be a widow.”
He frowned. “When will you have time to worry about being a widow? You’ll be a divorcée before the ink on the license dries.”
“You have to tell him this before the wedding,” she said, “when you announce that we’re getting married. Then, just think—if everything works out, once this marriage is all over, we’ll both have our freedom.”
He mulled over her proposition, giving her a spark of hope that she was winning him over.
“And not only that,” she continued, “but I think that marriage of ours might allow us to trick the Heartbreak Ridge jinx.”
“How?”
“By having us get our disastrous relationship out of the way. The marriage is predestined to doom. What else bad could happen?”
He waved his hands anxiously. “Talk like that is just asking for trouble.”
“Well, at least when our marriage goes belly-up, we’ll know it’s our own doing and not some local love voodoo.”
He laughed. “The frightening thing is, I’m beginning to understand the twisted logic in what you say.”
Yet something still seemed to make him hesitate.
Maybe he flat-out didn’t want to marry her. Despite that he’d kissed her more thoroughly than any man ever had so she went weak in the knees every time she thought about him, she had no reason to believe Cody cared for her beyond being her friend.
And there was always Leila Birch on the horizon. He probably still preferred that wan grocery girl, Leila, over her. Why, she would never know. Except, of course, that Leila was blond and pretty and quietly feminine, not to mention well-liked and well-adjusted….
Translation: Every man’s dream.
The depressing truth was that Leila was her exact opposite, which was probably what Cody and every other man in the world wanted. Heck, it was even what Ruby wanted for herself—but it was too late for her to pretend to be a well-adjusted ladylike creature in Heartbreak Ridge. Turning her reputation around in this town would be about as easy as teaching a mermaid to do the splits.
But of course it was for the best that Cody didn’t really care for her. Just because the man made her heart thump like crazy, it didn’t erase the fact that he was tied to a town she was itching to get out of.
She decided to give her proposal one more push. “If you’re worried about Leila, I think this might be just the ticket to catching her.”
His eyes rounded in amazement. “By marrying you?”
“No, by getting dumped by me. Haven’t you ever noticed that men who get left get all sorts of sympathy? Look at your brother. For the first few weeks after his divorce, every woman in town was baking her fingers to the bone and traipsing up that mountain to take him casseroles. Some of them made multiple trips, till they realized he wasn’t interested and that they’d hiked all that way for nothing.”
He seemed amused by this. “So at the very least I’ll have a well-stocked refrigerator.”
“I think Leila will really go for you when you’re divorced.” Even if admitting it made Ruby grind the tops off her molars.
Cody thoughtfully tapped his forefinger against his lip. “I’ve heard that widowers get even more sympathy than divorced men.”
She planted her hands on her hips. “You can forget that. I’m not going to die so you can hook Leila Birch!”
He laughed. “Okay.”
“If you think I’m—” She was revved up to yell at him some more when the last word finally registered. “Okay? You mean you’ll do it?”
He grimaced. “I have the sneaking suspicion that you’d hound me until I said yes anyway, so I might as well save myself the aggravation and capitulate right away.”
She jumped off the desk and let out a whoop of joy. “Oh, Cody, you’re the greatest!”
He shrugged modestly. “What’s a little matrimony between friends?”
“I’m serious!” She wanted to hug him, plant a huge kiss on his cheeks or better yet his mouth, but she was afraid she might scare him off. She’d promised him a platonic marriage, and no matter how carried away her feelings were apt to get around him, he was doing her an enormous favor and she owed it to him to keep their marriage on the up-and-up. Strictly business. The notion that his would-be wife was secretly lusting after him might send Cody running scared.
“There aren’t many men who would do what you’re doing for me, Cody,” she said with awe.
“Not many sane ones, anyway.”
She savored the moment. “Now we can start working on plan C for real. There’s all sorts of stuff to do.”
“Like what?”
“Well, first of all we have to tell everybody.”
He laughed. “No problem. All we need to do is tell Merlie, and the rest of the town will know within minutes.”
She tsked. “I’m not talking about telling the town. I’m talking about you telling your uncle and me breaking the news to my brothers.”
“Would you like me to go with you?”
She nodded. “If you feel up to it.”
“I still have one good eye left,” he joked.
Ruby laughed. “They’ll be pleased as punch that I decided to settle down with such a buttoned-down, upstanding local. Actually, it’s your family I worry about. Do you think they’ll approve of me?”
“I won’t ask for their approval. After all, they’re not divorcing you, I am.”
“Well, maybe by the time the day of the wedding rolls around, they’ll be used to the idea.”
“Whoa!” Cody sprang to attention. “Wait a second…wedding?”
She froze. The panic in his eyes didn’t bode well. “Of course. I told you it was going to be legal.”
“But I assumed we’d be eloping.”
“Elope?” Ruby was horrified. “I could never do that!”
Her groom looked baffled. “But why not? We’re just going to get divorced anyway.”
“But we have to make it look like we tried,” she argued. “Also, if I elope and my brothers find out, they might try to chase me down and drag me back.”
“How?”
She crossed her arms and looked him pointedly in the black eye to let him know what a foolish question that was.
“But if they’re that prone to intercede, wouldn’t they try to stop the wedding, too?” Cody asked.
“No, because they’ll have to give me their blessing.” He was hesitating again, and Ruby saw her freedom slipping through her fingers. “It won’t be any big deal. It’s just like a big party.”
Cody frowned. “Weddings take all sorts of planning.”
She clucked her tongue. “Like what?”
“The invitations, the clothes, the ceremony, the reception.”
She rolled her eyes. “We tell everybody at the Feed Bag to tell everybody to come, we show up at the church, and afterward we throw a party. How hard could that be?” She grinned. “Besides, haven’t you ever dreamed of a church wedding with a white dress and all that?”
Cody rocked on his heels. “I’ve never dreamed about wedding dresses, no. But then my coloring doesn’t s
uit white.”
She laughed, sensing tacit agreement in his humor. “Oh, Cody, it’ll be a blast.”
He chuckled along with her. “I guess it had better be. Who knows how soon either one of us will talk somebody into marrying us again?”
“ARE YOU out of your cotton-pickin’ mind?”
Cody had expected his brother, Cal, to be stunned. He’d anticipated kindly concern and counsel from Sam. One thing he hadn’t counted on, though, was that Merlie—who, after all, was office support staff, not family—would be the most appalled of the three.
“I thought you were taking up with Ruby Treadwell sort of to see how the other half lived, so to speak. Or maybe just as a delayed adolescence. Or maybe to help her.”
“I did want to help her.”
“And he ended up like the missionary who was eaten by the cannibals,” Cal said with a sigh.
Sam, ever the diplomat, attempted to temper the comments. “Now don’t let’s forget that we’re talking about the woman Cody’s chosen to marry.” He frowned. “That is what happened, right?”
Cody blinked innocently and lied as best he could. It wouldn’t do to let them know that Ruby had chosen him. “Of course. What else could have happened?”
Merlie chuckled. “I think the sheriff wants to know whether your sweetheart’s got a bun in the oven.”
Cody didn’t have to feign shock. The possibility that people would jump to the conclusion that Ruby was pregnant had never occurred to him.
“The rumor circulatin’ around town’s that you and her spent a night out in the wilderness,” Merlie said.
“We did. But it was all perfectly innocent,” Cody explained, then quickly added, “not that it’s anyone’s business but our own.”
“It’s not,” Sam agreed. “I’m sorry I brought the subject up.”
Cody appealed to his brother. “I’d hoped you would be happy for me, Cal. In fact, I was hoping you would be my best man.”
Cal looked about as thrilled by that prospect as he would about being his brother’s pallbearer. “Are you sure this is what you want to do, Cody? I mean, after all, look at me.”
Who could help it? With his deeply tanned skin, beard and dark blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, Cal looked like an advertiser’s idea of a mountain man. And all of this, supposedly, was because Cal’s marriage had failed miserably. But at least Cody didn’t have to worry that matrimonial disillusion would turn him into a brokenhearted shipwreck of a human being. His marriage was already over, and it hadn’t even begun yet.
Merlie laughed at Cal. “Well, let’s see, Cal. Cody could look at you for a bad example or he could look at Sam for a good one. Now which do you think he’ll pick?”
From having worked with her for years before going into hibernation, Cal took her ribbing with good grace. “If he was wise, he’d take mine. But that’s just my personal opinion.”
“He might follow your bad example if you’d make it look a little better,” Merlie joked. “You could start with a haircut.”
Cody cut them off. “I’m not following anyone’s example. I’m following my heart.”
The three sets of stares that met that bald statement nearly made him laugh. Cal and Merlie gaped at him, slack-jawed. Sam’s expression held amazement and a tiny dollop of approval.
It was that dollop of approval that gave Cody the nerve to blurt, “After the wedding, Ruby and I are starting up a ranch.” He looked at his uncle, praying he would understand. “I’m sorry, Uncle Sam, but soon I’ll have to resign as deputy.”
That statement was met by stony silence.
So this was it. The moment he’d been dreading. Four generations of Tucker lawmen were spinning in their graves; any minute the sky would cave in on the little sheriff’s office. Cody fully expected to be berated, tossed out on his ear, shamed, cast out from Heartbreak Ridge like Cain being booted over to the land of Nod.
After a minute that was pretty close to eternity to Cody, Sam smiled. “Maybe Ruby’ll be good for you, after all.”
Cody blinked. “You mean…it’s okay?”
His brother laughed. “It wasn’t exactly a mystery that you didn’t like your job, bro.”
“I’ve been expecting you to say something for months,” Sam added.
He was stunned. “You guessed?”
Merlie nodded. “Maybe what tipped us off was your choosing to read Modern Irrigation and Animal Husbandry Today over hanging out at the Feed Bag eatin’ pie like another deputy sheriff who went berserk but shall remain nameless.” She glared at Cal.
Sam reached out and shook his hand. “Whenever you decide to leave, we’ll miss you. But we wish you luck.” He added, almost as an afterthought, “And congratulations on your wedding, of course.”
Cal grinned. “Of course.”
Cody got up and put on his hat. “Think I’ll stretch my legs a bit.” If they could manage to hold him up. Lord knows they felt rubbery.
Merlie cackled. “You mean you’re going to give us an opportunity to gossip about you?”
He laughed. “That, too.”
When he left the office, though, he was shocked by how he felt. He’d done it! He’d blurted out his resignation—and that was that. He could begin a whole new life. It had been that simple.
An entire year of agonizing over his job, and all he had to do was say a few simple words and he would have had his uncle’s blessing to leave! No one accused him of letting Sam down or shirking his responsibility. They understood completely. And the most amazing thing was, he owed it all to Ruby!
He felt jubilant, like dancing in the street. When he saw Ruby coming out of the drugstore, he whooped for joy, ran right to her and swept her off her feet and into his arms.
She let out a yelp of alarm.
“Cody Tucker, have you gone insane?”
“You’re my Glinda,” he told her.
“Who?”
“Glinda the Good Witch, the one who told Dorothy that all she had to do was click her heels together and she’d be back in Kansas.”
Ruby laughed. “This isn’t getting any clearer.”
“I told them! Just came right out and said it.”
Her eyes widened. “You told your uncle and brother that we were getting married?”
He nodded. “Well, yes, that too. But most important, I told them I was starting a ranch and would be leaving the sheriff’s office. They weren’t even a bit surprised!”
“That’s great.” Her eyes narrowed. “What did they think about us getting married?”
“Oh, they congratulated me.”
Her brows knit together worriedly. “They think you’ve lost your mind, don’t they?”
He laughed. “Well, what do we care?” She was as light as a feather, and he gave her a little toss in his arms. “How about lunch?”
“It’s only ten-thirty!”
“Coffee then. I’m in a mood to celebrate!”
He marched across Main Street with his future bride in his arms. Heck, he felt as light as a feather, so much so that his boot heels barely touched the asphalt.
The Feed Bag was just gearing up for lunch. Jim and Amos, regulars, sat at the counter talking to Jerry, who as usual hovered over his grill, spatula in hand. When Cody and Ruby came in, ringing the bell above the door, the three men looked up and gawked at the sight of Cody carrying Ruby over the threshold.
Cody set Ruby on her own two feet and grinned. “Two coffees, Jerry.”
“Weeeellll…” Jim’s drawl stretched the simple word into several syllables as he swiveled on his stool. “If it ain’t the jailbirds—I mean, lovebirds!”
Amos chuckled and reminded Cody of his protestations mere weeks ago. “Developments between you two have made people start wondering what goes on behind bars in this town.”
Cody, who usually endured teasing at the Feed Bag in silent misery, steered Ruby toward the back and realized suddenly that he didn’t give a damn what anybody said. He was rather proud to be seen with Ruby. She l
ooked especially beautiful—radiant, almost. Of course the glow probably had something to do with the harsh overhead light filtering through her orange hair. Nevertheless, just being next to her made him stand a few inches taller.
“You three can cut the jokes. Ruby and I are getting married.”
The announcement brought forth a collective exclamation. “Married!”
Ruby crossed her arms, as if steeling herself for an argument.
Jim gulped. “You’re not kiddin’?”
Cody shook his head.
“When are you two tyin’ the knot?” Jerry asked.
“Next week.”
If Cody thought he was going to get away from Amos and Jim by moving to a booth, he was living in a fool’s paradise. The two men scooted down the bar until they were even with them.
“Guess you two have a lot to plan. Who are you invitin’ to the wedding?”
Ruby blinked. “Everybody, of course.”
That was a given. In Heartbreak Ridge, population sixty-four, it was impossible not to invite the whole town. Or woe to you if you didn’t. Martha Louise Newman’s mother had forgotten to ask Bethany Sides to Martha Louise’s baby shower, causing a rift in the town that took almost a decade to heal.
“Your parents coming in from Houston, Cody?”
Cody jerked to attention. His parents had retired to Houston, his mother’s hometown, after Cody graduated high school, and at the very idea of bringing them all the way to West Texas for his sham wedding, his courage began to falter. But if he was getting married, he had to invite them. Yet how was he going to be able to stand in the front of a church before his parents and everyone in his hometown, people who knew, respected and trusted him, and recite solemn vows he knew to be a lie? He wasn’t that good an actor!
Ruby eyed him worriedly at the same time she beamed a smile at Jim and Amos. “Of course, if they can make it. It’s short notice, but Cody and I don’t want to wait.”
“Eager to get to the honeymoon part, huh?”
“Oh, well, we’re not sure we’re even going on a honeymoon,” Ruby said.
Jim and Amos swung on Cody in amazement. “You gotta have a honeymoon!”