Sunflower Lane (27 page)

The day of Annabelle and Wes’s wedding dawned clear as a glass of fresh springwater. A September breeze whipped down from the Crazy Mountains to ruffle the cottonwoods, but by four o’clock when the guests arrived and cars filled the driveway leading to the house, the wind had settled and the air held only a slight nip.

Autumn in Montana was as lovely in its own way as summer.

Upstairs in Sophie’s old bedroom, Annabelle stared after her two junior bridesmaids as they kissed her on the cheek for luck and then romped out into the hall. She felt a lump in her throat when they started down the stairs, hand in hand.

In frothy pink dresses of lace and tulle, Megan and Michelle looked like tiny angels.

“You okay?” Charlotte asked, touching her arm.

She blinked back happy tears. “I just wish that Trish and Ron could be here, could see them. And see Ethan in his tux, carrying the ring.”

“What makes you think they can’t?” Tess asked gently.

Annabelle dabbed at her tears and smiled through them. “You’re right. They know. They’re here. They have to be.”

Diana entered the room, beaming and elegant, her fair hair gently streaked with gray, and a flush of excitement brightening her face. “Reverend Kail is ready. Everyone is here. Are you ready?” she asked Annabelle with a smile.

“Ready? I can’t wait another minute.”

Her mother-in-law-to-be hugged her warmly. Then everyone chuckled as Annabelle sailed toward the door.

“Wait, Little Miss Bride, we go down first, remember?” Charlotte laughed. She smoothed the pale gray skirt of her dress. “I know you can’t wait to marry the guy, but hang in there another minute, okay?”

Laughing, Diana slipped out the door first. Tess and Charlotte walked with Annabelle out to the landing; then they continued down the stairs, all smiles.

Standing at the top of the staircase as her best friends finished their descent, Annabelle felt her heart zoom. Wes stood waiting for her at the bottom.

He wore a black tux, a burgundy shirt, black tie, and a cowboy hat. So tall, so dark, so handsome
.

So mine,
she thought, her heart flying in her chest.

So many people she loved filled the lovely old ranch house. The twins were waiting below for her; so was Ava in a soft blue lace gown, and her friend Mr. Adkins beside her. He looked very distinguished in a tux. Ava had asked whether she could invite a guest, an old friend, but judging by the way the man’s gaze rested on Ava—with a slight mistiness—Annabelle had to wonder if sometime soon another wedding might take place in this beautiful old house.

She smiled at the thought and at that moment, Wes looked up and saw her.

His hard, handsome features softened as he took in her cocktail-length, sophisticated ecru lace gown, her long legs,
and knock-’em-dead stilettos. She didn’t know whether he noticed the diamond drops at her ears, or her hair tumbling to her shoulders in a mass of curls.

But the way he grinned, his eyes lighting as they locked on her, touched her very soul.

She started down the steps and floated toward her future.

“I love you,” Wes whispered right before the ceremony began. His words proved true for all to see when moments later he enthusiastically obeyed the reverend’s order to kiss the bride.

“I don’t have the words to tell you how much I love you. I don’t know if I ever will,” he told her huskily as the guests erupted into wild applause.

“I love you more,” she whispered back, throwing her arms around his neck. While thunderous clapping and words of congratulations engulfed them, Doug Hartigan began passing out flutes of champagne.

Annabelle brushed her hand against Wes’s cheek, knowing this was real, but feeling like it was a dream.

Later—much later—after a gorgeous buffet dinner, and an entire table laden with desserts—they danced their first dance while the guests watched, smiling, and Megan and Michelle, giggling, danced with each other in a corner of the dining room.

“I’m so lucky I found you,” Wes said softly, kissing along the shell of her ear.

“I’m lucky you did, too.” Lifting her face to his kiss, she knew it was true.

This man, this town, and their new family together was everything. Everything she could ever want.

Ethan had gone searching for treasure, but there was no need. The treasure was right here.

Happiness and home and everyone she loved was here, right here in the Good Luck Ranch house—in this town called Lonesome
Way.

Turn the page for a preview of another Lonesome Way novel from
New York Times
bestselling author Jill Gregory

Blackbird Lake

Available now from Berkley
Sensation!

L
ONESOME
W
AY,
M
ONTANA

Carly McKinnon’s day had been cruising along just fine—a perfectly calm, typical, somewhat slow Wednesday in her Spring Street quilt shop.

Until late afternoon when she heard the news that Jake Tanner was back in town.

Suddenly, everything seemed to freeze for a full thirty seconds.

Of course she could still see Gloria Cartright, finished with her afternoon shift at the Lickety Split Ice Cream Parlor, thoughtfully fingering some new calico fabric on the shelves at the far side of the shop. She could still hear the sound of light traffic outside on Spring Street, and she could feel her own breath catch hard in her throat at the mention of Jake’s name.

But she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t
think
—not until the first ice-cold shock of the news had settled into her brain.

“Jake Tanner . . . are you
sure
, Laureen?” she finally asked her assistant, struggling to keep her voice calm and her face composed, as if she were talking about the chance of rain tonight or today’s ninety-nine-cent caramel brownie special at A Bun in the Oven bakery.

“Jake Tanner?” Gloria shook her head skeptically. “That man hasn’t been back more than a handful of times in the past dozen years. Not since he first fell in love with rodeo.”

Shoving the bolt of calico back on the shelf, she eyeballed Laureen as if trying to ascertain if the other woman knew what the hell she was talking about.

“Well, I
didn’t say
I
saw him.” Laureen Rowan glanced back and forth between Carly and Gloria, the small paper bag from Benson’s Drugstore containing her new red lipstick and a pack of sugarless gum still clutched in her hand. “But Deanna Mueller is positive she did. The second I stepped into Benson’s just now she rushed over in a big hurry to give me the scoop. Deanna was at the gas station filling up her minivan when Jake cruised by in his truck. She said there was a big dog leaning over his lap, its head hanging out the window. I never knew Jake to have a dog before, but Deanna insisted they were headed for Sage Ranch. Turned onto Squirrel Road right quick, she said. Deanna swears it was him. She told me, who else could it be, no one is as handsome as that Jake Tanner.”

Tell me about it,
Carly thought. A flush of heat raced through her body.

“Well, duh. That’s for sure.” Gloria nodded knowingly. “That man is smokin’. And he’s all over the TV these days, between the rodeo coverage and those beer commercials of his.” Her bright little black pepper eyes brimmed with interest. “I know if I was a dozen or so years younger,
I
wouldn’t think twice about climbing between the sheets with him.”

“Carly?” Laureen moved toward her boss in concern. “Hey. Are you all right?”

It was only then that Carly realized she was biting her lip, her hands were clenched, and her neck felt as tight as a washrag twisted in the clothes dryer.

“Sure. Fine,” she said airily, forcing her lips into a smile, casually pushing a thick strawberry blond curl back from her usually dreamy green eyes.

“Well, you don’t look fine. You look like you’re going to fall down in a dead faint or something.” Laureen studied her carefully, her own round, pretty face worried. Forty-four and divorced, she was the proud mother of two mutts and three cats, all adopted from Lonesome Way’s overwhelmed shelter.

Laureen didn’t know how to say no to a sad pair of feline or canine eyes. She had a heart as big as Montana and Wyoming combined. With chin-length white blond hair and hazel eyes she was still as pretty as she’d been in high school when she was named prom queen, but she’d gained twenty pounds since her divorce—and had convinced herself she was too fat to ever attract the attention of a man again. But still . . . Tonight she had a date with a rancher from the nearby town of Big Timber.

A blind date that had been set up by her sister-in-law in Butte.

Laureen had been insisting to Carly all week long that this was going to be her very last shot.

No more dates, blind or otherwise. They never panned out, not a single one of ’em. If this guy didn’t call her back, Laureen was done.

“Maybe you should sit down. I’ll get you a glass of water. There’s a bad flu going around Billings. Could be the bug made its way here and you caught it.”

“No, I’m . . . okay. It’s just . . . I didn’t get much sleep last night. Emma kept waking up,” Carly lied.

It was only a half lie, though. Her eighteen-month-old daughter had woken up several times after Carly put her to
bed, but it had all happened long before Carly went to sleep for the night.

A semi-lie is okay
,
she assured herself shakily.
Especially in extreme circumstances.
And Jake Tanner coming home to Lonesome Way—definitely an extreme circumstance.

She felt her heart lurch. Memories burned through her, along with a sprinkling of guilt and a pinch of unease. That thick, longish, jet-black hair. All those rock-hard abs. The slow, sexy kisses trailing down her throat . . .

The man had returned to his hometown only once since she had moved there from Boston nearly two years before—and even then he’d hit town for only a day. Which was one of the reasons she’d felt comfortable settling in Lonesome Way in the first place. Because Jake hardly ever came home. He’d told her as much that one night they’d spent together in Houston.

And that’s what everybody always said.

Jake Tanner was a roamer through and through.

But his family was all here. His brothers, Rafe and Travis, along with their wives, Sophie and Mia, and their children.

All of whom were Carly’s friends. Some of the nicest and best people she’d ever met. The last time Jake
had
come home—when Mia and Travis’s daughter, Zoey, was born a year ago—Carly had heard in advance that he was coming in for a day to meet his new niece and had made sure she and Emma lay low.

Of course when she’d decided to move to Lonesome Way she’d always known Jake might drop into town on rare occasions for a visit, but most of the time she relegated that possibility into the far recesses of her mind as she savored her own sense of peace and delight with small-town life.

“I bet he’s here for his niece’s birthday party.” Gloria’s dark head bobbed up and down. “Zoey Tanner turns one this weekend. I have it on good authority that Travis was none
too happy when Jake said he wasn’t going to be able to make it to her party.”

“You’re probably right,” Laureen said distractedly. She was digging out her new, very red lipstick from the drugstore bag and ripping at the packaging with her nails. “Everyone knows family means everything to the Tanners. Jake must’ve got wind Travis was pissed and changed his mind.”

Panic whipped through Carly. She felt breathless and a little sick to her stomach. She and Emma were invited to Zoey’s party.

If Jake was there, they wouldn’t be able to go.

But that was the least of her problems. . . .

She needed to get home. To hold her daughter. To think.

But it was only four thirty and she didn’t normally close Carly’s Quilts until five. Gloria looked like she wasn’t going anywhere, not while this juicy topic of conversation was on the table. And Laureen—Laureen seemed to have forgotten all the urgency of her big date tonight as she drew a mirror out of her purse and began applying her new lipstick with the careful precision of a surgeon performing a lobotomy.

Time to remind her about that date, Carly decided desperately.

“I know you want to get ready for tonight, maybe get a manicure, wind down, or whatever, so maybe we’ll just close up early,” she began with what she hoped was a breezy smile. Moving briskly across the shop, she began folding bolts of gingham and calico left on the long table beside the shelves and gathering up pattern books the few customers of the day had been browsing through. “I want to go home and check on Emma, too—what with her getting up so much last night. Just to make sure
she’s
not coming down with something.”

True enough. Emma
had
been restless last night. She probably sensed her daddy was headed to town, Carly thought wildly, knowing the thought was totally irrational.
Nervousness flowed through her like a chill autumn wind sweeping down from the Crazy Mountains.

Stop it. Pull yourself together.
She gulped a couple of breaths and dug deep, searching for the hard-won serenity and sense of peace she’d worked so hard to achieve over the years.

Her own childhood hadn’t exactly been a picnic—more like an odyssey of lonely confusion, uncertainty, and fear. But now, at thirty, all of that was behind her. She’d built a life here for herself and her daughter—a life that was solid and steady and filled with the warmth of this tight-knit community. Nothing was going to change that.

She reminded herself that Jake didn’t know about Emma. He had no clue that he even
had
a daughter. Much less that she and Carly were living in Lonesome Way.

He probably doesn’t even remember
me
, she thought, drawing a breath.

Jake Tanner had women falling all over him in every town from here to Alaska. But he was the last man to ever want any ties, any family of his own, any kind of commitment—except to the rodeo life.

He’d made all that very clear the one and only night they’d made love.

What am I talking about? We didn’t make love. We had sex.
Intense, incredible, rock-the-world and light-up-the-night-with-fireworks sex.

It was the lone one-night stand of Carly’s entire life. She’d acted completely out of character. But then, she’d already downed two glasses of wine at the bar of that hotel in Houston and was sipping a third, trying to expunge her lying, psycho ex-boyfriend from her head, when she spotted him.

Jake Tanner. In all his hot cowboy ruggedness. He’d seemed like the ideal candidate to eject Kevin Boyd from her brain for good.

So when Jake glanced over from across the lobby, cocked
an eyebrow, and grinned that sexy cowboy grin, she’d made the first impulsive move of her life.

She’d downed the third glass of wine and gone for it.

The next ten hours had been momentous in every way. But then, of course, there had been nothing. Zip. No phone call from him a day or two later, no
maybe I’ll see you again sometime.
Just nothing. Slam, bam, and . . .

Of course, she’d known that was exactly how it would be. She’d counted on it, even. He’d made it clear over dinner in the hotel restaurant that he wasn’t the kind of man who was into long-term relationships or commitments or anything remotely hinting at permanence.

And we both wanted it that way,
she reminded herself, trying to thrust Jake Tanner and his sexy smile, lean, powerful body, and impossibly hunky muscles from her mind.

That one night they’d spent together in his cushy Houston hotel suite had been, for her, all about rebound sex, pure and simple. They’d made crazed, incredible love all night long. And every bit of it had helped her to forget just a little more about her scumbag ex.

She’d discovered only four months earlier that Kevin Boyd had lied to her. Not just once or twice, but the entire time they were together. It turned out Mr. Fancy Schmancy genius architect wasn’t divorced after all. And he wasn’t a good, upstanding guy, searching for a serious, stable relationship as he’d claimed.

Just the opposite. He was married. With children! Three children, to be exact, one of them a two-month-old
infant.

Carly had gone numb with shock when she discovered the truth. Kevin was a player. A liar. An elegantly good-looking blond jerk with a high IQ and a talent for hiding his wedding ring.

It had taken her long enough, but she’d finally started to grow suspicious and followed him one day when he left her apartment.

She actually caught him with his family, after he’d told her he was headed to the airport and an out-of-town consultation with a new client.

Watching in horror, her knees had sagged as Kevin hugged twin little boys who looked to be about eight or nine, scooped a pink-clad baby girl into his arms, and embraced a woman in a stunning Chanel suit. She’d grabbed onto a brick storefront for support as she watched them all bundle into an elevator in an exclusive doorman building that was
not
the place she’d thought was his home.

It was definitely not the apartment where she’d spent countless nights in his king-sized bed, where dozens of designer suits, pairs of slacks, shirts, and polos hung in the walk-in closet. An apartment always stocked with gourmet food and wine and an extensive collection of antique clocks and timepieces, where expensive works of art hung on all the walls.

And in that last huge fight with Kevin at
her
apartment in Boston she’d glimpsed a side of him she’d never seen before.

The angry, snarling, bordering-on-violent side.

Mr. Genius Architect didn’t even think what he’d done was wrong! Even when she’d forced him to admit to his lies, to admit he’d told his wife he was traveling on business all those days or nights he spent with Carly, he’d shouted at her, and then snatched up the crystal ballerina sculpture her college friend Sydney had given her for her birthday. Even as Carly screamed, “Don’t!” he hurled it at the brick wall behind the fireplace, shattering the exquisite dancer into a thousand shards.

He’d screamed that everything he’d done had been for
them
—so
they
could be together without the financial messiness of a divorce.

In shock, Carly had stared at the man she’d thought she knew. Listened to him try to gloss over his lies—all the things he’d said and done to make her believe that he was
working tons of overtime at the office or conducting out-of-town meetings with clients.

When all along he’d been home with his wife and kids.

It was devastating to discover what an idiot she’d been. A naïve, gullible fool who’d swallowed hook, line, and sinker all his crap about the stresses of being an overworked, in-demand architect. She’d believed him when he claimed he couldn’t have dinner with her regularly or attend her friends’ parties—or even leave town for a romantic weekend getaway—because of a killer schedule and his boss being a demanding pain in the ass. She’d nearly thrown up when she learned there was a
Mrs.
Boyd—and a young family to boot.