Never the Cowboy’s Bride

by Wilde, Amelia

  Never the Cowboy’s Bride

  Amelia Wilde

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Connect with Amelia

  Also by Amelia Wilde

  Chapter One

  Austin

  The hand that comes down on my shoulder cuts into a collection of the most woe-is-me-bullshit thoughts I’ve ever thought in my life, but there you have it: me, Austin Bliss, standing in the crowd at the Harvest Festival Opening Ceremonies and trying to figure out what the hell just happened to my life.

  “I didn’t think I’d find you here, Austin Bliss. I heard you were out of town.”

  This crowd, right now, is the last place I want to be on the planet. I could’ve stayed on the ranch and avoided it. But in Paulson, that’s not done. I was born here, I was raised here, and I want to belong here. I don’t want to feel like Paulson is a coat that’s too sizes too small. I don’t want to feel like the ground has shifted beneath my feet. But it has. The ground should be fucking ashamed of itself.

  You take one flight to New York, and everything changes.

  That’s what I get for wanting to settle the mystery of the account that’s shadowed every part of my life since my dad died a year ago. Every month, money appears. And every month, I wonder when I’m going to owe someone for it.

  Now I know. The money was coming from my dad’s secret brother. It’s the kind of drama I can’t stand in movies, and here it is, in my own life. Only Dad’s not here to reckon with it. I am, which is why I flew to New York. Which is why I told my cousin, Roman Bliss, to stop the payments. But he couldn’t. It was out of his hands, he said.

  I turn toward the hand and into the smiling, wrinkle-worn face of my dad’s oldest friend, one Hal Kilroy. The gleam in the man’s eyes makes it easy to believe they once climbed the water tower and tried to dye the water purple. The two of them were the stuff of legend in Paulson. Now half the legend lives, and half is under the ground, and I’m here, trying to find my footing. “Everybody’s here, Hal. That’s why it’s so ungodly hot.”

  “Isn’t that the truth? Biggest crowd I’ve seen in years.”

  The crowd shifts and swells around us, dust rising from beneath our feet. They’ve done their best with the grass, but come September, the grass is ready to hibernate.

  It is a huge crowd—I hadn’t noticed, because I got so wrapped up in my own head for a minute there. The surprise cousins nobody knew about. The money in the bank account that’s mine now, whether I want it or not. Mine and Luke’s. All of it pops into my head like fireworks the very moment my concentration gets dim enough to see them. They are always there. Ever since two weeks ago.

  “Wait. Is something different happening this year?”

  Hal nudges me with an elbow. “I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you.”

  I groan out loud, which makes the two ladies ahead of us turn around with suspicious looks. “Just clue me in, Hal. Something get planned while I was gone? Did everybody decide to get heavily involved in Wendell’s speech?” The mayor, whose name is Wendell Briggs, considers the Harvest Festival Opening Ceremonies to be his own personal State of the Union. But as far back as I can remember, it’s never drawn a crowd like this one. A strange energy hovers in the hot air over all of us. People whisper, heads bent close together. It wasn’t like this last year, was it? I’d have noticed. Wouldn’t I?

  The national anthem blares from the speakers at the sides of the stage, then cuts out abruptly. Everybody in the crowd cheers over the sound. There’s a harsh transition to Born in the USA and then Wendell comes out, waving in a huge, exaggerated motion. Let it be said that he never does anything halfway.

  “Happy Harvest Festival,” he says into the mic.

  “Happy Harvest Festival,” the crowd replies, and for a fleeting second I have the distinct sensation of being in church. We didn’t go much when I was growing up, but the few times we did, I could’ve melted into the pews. Something about it is...very zen. Relaxing. There are expectations in a church. On my other side, a man shoves his way through, elbows out. That did not happen at church, as far as I remember. Nobody was in that much of a yank to get to the front after the service had already started.

  “The Harvest Festival is our time to come together and celebrate everything that Paulson has accomplished this year,” Wendell says. Is it just me, or is there a strange glint in his eye? No, there definitely is. He knows something, and he’s not telling. I’m sucked in, like everybody else’s anticipation is a gravity vortex and I can’t pull myself away. “And we’ve got something very, very special planned for this year’s celebration.”

  “Tell us what it is,” shouts somebody closer to the front, and a ripple of nervous laughter moves through the crowd.

  “All right,” Wendell says into the mic, and a woman somewhere behind me lets out a woo! “I’m very pleased to announce that this year the Harvest Festival will be hosting a Favorites of Paulson competition for our local ranches.”

  My pulse is one of those screaming fireworks that gets let off late in the show. I haven’t been in almost a decade, but I shove down the strong urge to raise my hand.

  “Each round will be judged by a panel selected from the citizens of Paulson, the winner chosen by majority vote. The overall winner after four rounds will be featured in Montana Magazine and will also receive a one-year advertising credit, good for use on the billboard south of town.”

  Shit. Now that would put us on the map. And everybody else on the map, too. Whispers rise around me, buzzing like bees that have been disturbed, and one of them drags a stinger of anxious nerves down the back of my neck. I don’t care much about being on maps, except for this one. I’ve been feeling so weird since my plane touched down from New York. Cheers go up from the crowd, a big round of applause. The people want a contest. The palms of my hands heat like I’ve got them over a fire and my heart races faster than my horse Connecticut can run.

  “Isn’t that great?” Hal laughs in my ear over the sound of applause. “You’re going to win the whole thing, son!”

  “Naw.” I’m not a braggart. My mother didn’t raise me to be one, and my father would have shaken his head at the whole enterprise. He’d have shaken his head, but he’d have entered, all right. He’d have wanted us to win. He just would have been humble about it.

  “Remember,” booms Wendell. “This isn’t like 4-H. We’re going to have broader categories so everybody who wants to can compete.”

  I want more details. I want all those rules in black and white, on a sheet I can read.

  “Sure as my boots you are.” Hal pounds my shoulder again, rocking me back and forth. “Now, I won’t do you any special favors.”

  “Special favors?” The mayor’s talking again, but I can’t hear him—I’m picturing that billboard. I’m picturing Bliss Ranch on the cover of that magazine. I’m picturing exactly how it’ll put me back where I belong, with my feet on Montana soil. We’ll have made it and it’ll have nothing to do with the boys from New York. Nothing against the boys from New York, only...I have everything against those guys.

  “I’m one of the judges!” Hal beams. I don’t think he’s ever had a greater honor in his life, besides h
is several Army deployments. “But I’m impartial. Just because I’ve known you since you were in diapers doesn’t mean I’m giving you automatic votes. You’ll have to work for it.”

  I shift out from under his hand, his palm a lightning rod. “I’d never ask for special favors.” Has anyone heard us? If they have, this whole thing is already tainted. “Don’t even joke about it, Hal.”

  His laugh is loud and deep, a belly laugh that ripples through the people around us. One by one I see how the sound touches them and they turn, smiling, indulgent and happy, eyes crinkling at the edges. Old Hal Kilroy. Moving closer so he can pat my shoulder again. “I’m not joking about it. You’ve got it in the bag.”

  Groups around us separate themselves into individual people, and the next thing that happens is like a ship becoming visible between two waves. You’d never know it was there, and then those waves part, and wham. Ship. Enemy ship. Alarms blaring. Descend, descend, get outta sight, don’t let them see you’re here—

  A matching set of alarms blares in my brain. The mayor’s voice has gone all distorted beneath the echoing thunk of the hate coming off her eyes and spearing me straight through the chest. She’s close. Too close. If she were an enemy ship, and I were a submarine, I’d be sunk.

  “So you’ve got it in the bag, then, do you?” Brooke Carson’s voice cracks through the crowd like the sound of breaking glass. “Is that what you’re planning over here?”

  Hal laughs again, like he hasn’t heard the warning in her tone. Like he thinks we still have time to take cover from the hurricane. “Young lady, nobody’s planning a thing untoward. But can you disagree that Austin Bliss has one of the finest ranches ever to grace our little town? He does, he does,” he chuckles, without waiting for an answer.

  She lifts her chin. “He’s not the only one with a fine ranch.”

  “Of course not!” Hal’s hand feels radioactive on my shoulder. “That’s why the mayor wanted to put the contest together in the first place. If we wanted an award made for the Bliss Brothers, we could’ve driven it out there and presented it without all this fanfare.”

  “You’d have liked that, wouldn’t you?” The smile that spreads across Brooke’s face is a stunner. Wide, full lips. The kind of teeth you’d see in a magazine. It’s gorgeous, and venomous. “That would have been so nice for the pair of you.”

  “Well, it’s always nice to recognize somebody for work well done.” I’m dying. With every word, Hal digs my grave a little deeper, and I can’t tell you why I care. Brooke Carson has hated me for years, even since before her sister and my brother had their falling-out. That was a mistake from the beginning. I told him that, and I was right. Those Carson women... “But no, young lady—”

  “Young lady,” says Brooke, her voice so sharp-edged I could bleed out right here.

  “That’s right, young—”

  I throw my arm around Hal’s shoulders. “It was so nice seeing you here tonight, Brooke.” Lie, lie, lie. “We’ll be out of your way.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “Oh, yes we will. Hal and I have some things to discuss.”

  “Like rigging the contest?” She’s so damn loud. Heads are turning again, and this time I’m not seeing familiar smiles. I’m seeing suspicion. No, no, no.

  “Like where I can sign up,” I say, even louder. This is becoming a scene, and I hate scenes. The last thing I want is to be standing in a crowd of this size at all, and the only thing worse is having that crowd think I’m here to screw with a town contest. I thought the opening ceremonies was a boring speech to be sat through on the way to the month long harvest festivities, but this is a minefield. One flight to New York, and I forgot how to survive in my own hometown. I’m never getting on a plane again.

  “Haven’t you been listening?” The poison from her smile trickles hotly through my veins, and I can’t think of a single antidote on earth. “The registration is starting right now, in the barn behind the stage. Oh—wait. I shouldn’t be helping out the competition. You’ve got plenty of help already, don’t you?” Brooke tips her head back and laughs, and oh, I hate it. I hate the sound of her laughing at me like that. If she’s going to laugh at me, I want it to be because of something I did on purpose, something I whispered into her ear at the perfect moment.

  No—no I don’t. I don’t ever want to make her laugh. I only want to make her see that she can be however she wants. I’m still going to win this contest, fair and square.

  “I don’t want any help,” I say clearly, “and I don’t have any help.” Instead of dragging Hal away from her, I switch directions and go straight toward my worst enemy. “But you look like you could use a hand getting through this crowd. Come on with us.” I brush past her, so close I almost miss the way her mouth drops open in a neat round O.

  “I don’t need a hand from you, not now and not ever,” Brooke says to my back.

  I turn my head so I can meet her eyes. “You’re signing up for the contest, right?”

  “Of—of course I am.” That woman. She wasn’t going to sign up for it anyway, and here I am, pulse racing, my head about to burst from the sheer pressure of being around her. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Then let’s go.” I put on my biggest, most crowd-pleasing smile. “Ladies first.”

  Chapter Two

  Brooke

  Leave it to my big fat mouth to get me in over my head. God. I’ve never seen a pier I didn’t want to jump from, and it was always my sister Everly holding me back, pointing at the signs that said no swimming allowed. The moment I saw Austin Bliss in that crowd, I should have gone far, far away. No engaging allowed. Not with a Bliss brother. And now here I am, following his broad shoulders through the sea of people that parts for him like he owns this place. Of course they think he owns the place. He thinks he owns the place, and he always has.

  He looks back for me a second time. “Keep up, sweet thing. I wouldn’t want to lose you in the crowd.”

  Sweet thing. I want to spit at him, to tell him I’m nobody’s sweet thing, but I’ve already drawn enough attention to myself. I promised I’d turn over a new leaf when I got back to Paulson from Everly’s wedding, and here I am, all the zen from that beautiful plane ride gone, gone, gone. Up in the air, nothing can bother you. As long as he’s not on the plane, no Bliss brother can taunt you with his stupidly good looks and arrogant attitude. Look at him, planning to rig the contest with Hal Kilroy. Look at him, doing it in broad daylight, like he doesn’t care who sees.

  I feel a flash of satisfaction. Maybe he did care who saw, because he came running awfully fast when I broke the news about registration. That’s the Bliss brothers for you—talking through all the important information and needing somebody else to repeat it back. Same as always.

  I should have kept my mouth shut. Now I can’t take my eyes off his arms. His stupid, chiseled arms, one of them thrown over Hal Kilroy’s back, guiding the old man through the crowd like the patron saint of respecting your elders. I sniff, looking away in case anyone is making the mistake of thinking I care what Austin Bliss looks like. I don’t. I don’t. I definitely do not care.

  The registration table is in the big barn behind the stage. It’s the same big barn they’ll have the awards in at the end of the Harvest Festival, and in fact I think it’s too big for this registration “event.” There’s me. There’s Austin. There’s Carol from Carol’s Cherry Ranch, and a few others. Back there in the crowd I didn’t stop to question why the city would be putting on an event for ranchers, but surely there can’t be that many. Fifteen? Twenty? How many of those people are going to spend their time competing in...well, whatever this is?

  There’s a little platform set up on one end of the barn, and Peter Belts, who I distinctly remember as being the most obnoxious class president in high school history, is up on top, looking like he’s won a prize just for being here. Who knows? Maybe he has.

  “Our first entrants!” He claps his hands. “Congratulations for stepping up, everyb
ody. I’m sure you’re wondering how this all came about, but I’m glad to see your enthusiasm. Woo!”

  The woo almost stops my heart and makes me fall down dead. I would, but I’d rather die than die in front of Austin Bliss. Or behind him, as things stand. If he’s going to drag me into this—which he has, no two ways about it—then I’m going to sign up first. He can follow me.

  I pick up the pace and go around them on the left, making a beeline for the table set up in front of the platform.

  “Oh, wow, and here’s Brooke Carson.” Someone has handed Peter Belts a microphone, which he definitely didn’t need, and now my name echoes off the ceiling of the barn. “Brooke, what’s got you so hot and bothered today?”

  “Nothing has me hot and bothered,” I shout back, then try to cover my irritation with a laugh that sounds closer to maniacal than jokey. “Just want to get registered for the competition. When do we need to be here?” Mrs. Howard, who also works at the library, stands behind the table, grinning at me. I can tell she wants to get one of those clipboards in my hands, and fast.

  “The first round starts next Saturday,” he says. “But I bet you’ll be here bright and early.”

  I take the clipboard from Mrs. Howard. “Wait—first round?”

  “We’ve got three rounds, everyone, and since more people are arriving, I’ll get started on my spiel. There will be three rounds over the next two weeks and the awards ceremony will be held at the fair three weeks from Saturday.

  Have I even spelled my name right on this form? Doubtful. “Wait. Three rounds? Three rounds of what?”