The Bride Wore Starlight (15 page)

“I wish there was something I could do.”

“That's nice of you. There's nothing to be done. I'm not sad about the divorce. I'm mad because he's getting off like the wounded player. It's the sense of injustice. I'll be glad when it's done.”

“So, don't tell him all this. Make him go home and wait for the papers like a good little boy—it'll be something novel for him. That's the impression I got.”

She laughed humorlessly. “He's not evil. He's just rich. Some rich people make their lives about getting what they want. I got used to being rich, too. But it was totally fake.”

Alec's cell phone vibrated in his pocket and he frowned. He'd taken the morning off after Mia had called him to ask for his help with Joely. It was only ten thirty, so nobody from the company would be checking on him.

“You can get it,” she said. “It's fine.”

He pulled out the phone and checked the number. His heart sank. Vince again. He hadn't had long enough yet to think up excuses for ignoring his harebrained rodeo ideas.

“I'll wait,” he said, his voice tight.

“Ooh. Sounds like someone
you
should talk to and get the conversation over with.”

“An old buddy. The same way Heidi What's-her-name is your old buddy.”

“Oh dear. Well, fine then. You have my permission to ignore him.” Her smile blossomed, and he laughed.

He was stuffing the phone back into his pocket when the text message notification sounded. He frowned again and pushed the button to view the message.

I know you're ignoring me, but check this out. Just caught him doing this right in the pasture. Tell me it doesn't give you chills of longing.

Alec couldn't resist torturing himself. He scrolled to the attached picture and caught his breath—shocked at the effect seeing the animal had on him. Beads of micro-sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Day-umn.” The curse whistled almost silently through his teeth.

“Something wrong?” Joely asked.

“A ghost from the past,” he replied. “Albeit a beautiful one.”

“Oh? Well now, I think since you've met my past and we found a not-dead-body together, I should get to see this ghost.” She held out her hand and wiggled her fingers for the phone.

“That's failed logic,” he replied. “Those two things aren't related to each other, so they don't follow into me handing over anything.”

“They're both traumas. C'mon, let me look at her.” She grinned so impishly he had to give in.

“Well, it's a him,” he said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

He gave her the phone and the picture of Ghost Pepper caught mid-buck. The horse looked as good as ever. Alec hated the adrenaline pumping through his body. Had it been the adrenaline of excitement, he'd have embraced it. This, however, was nothing but dread.

Joely turned immediately into the equivalent of a little girl who'd been handed a panda baby or a bunny and squealed in delight. “Oh my gosh. What a gorgeous horse!”

“He is that.”

“Is he yours?”

“Hardly. He's the prettiest, sweetest-tempered horse you'll ever meet, until you put anything heavier than a packet of sugar on his back. Then he'll start with this—twist and rage like he's trying to kick out the gates of Hades.”

“This gorgeous thing is a bronc?”

“Yes, ma'am, he sure is.”

“But you clearly know him. Did you ever ride him?”

There it was—the question that was going to drag him for the second time that week into territory he never visited.

“A very long time ago I tried.”

“Tell me about him!”

“How about when we have more time? You said you needed to get back.”

Her gaze went straight through to the most hidden parts of his brain. He could feel her reading the secrets there.

“I know a brush-off when I hear one,” she said. “But I say, it's a ten minute drive home. There's time.”

“There's no story.” The surprise of seeing the old horse had sent him into a spin as effective as the ones that had spun him to the ground years before. “I never did get eight seconds on this crazy bastard. He had most of our numbers. There were a very few over the years who figured him out, but not many. He remains the top bronc even after fifteen years. It was just a surprise to learn he was still around.”

For a moment she appeared ready to question his story. Instead she sank back and handed him his phone. “What breed is he? Appy?”

“Appy mustang. Bred to buck. He came from great bucking stock himself, but unfortunately, his babies haven't lived up to his reputation—they all get his gentle side.”

Focusing on the horse made the conversation slightly easier. It took the spotlight off his former career.

“Who sent the picture?”

“That old friend whose call I ignored. He's keeping him at his place west of Teton Village and wants me to come for some sort of sick reunion. In fact, he talked me into giving him a couple old pictures he remembered of spectacular falls for promo at the rodeo this summer. ‘Ghost Pepper is back.' I said he could have them if he kept my name off the bills.”

“Oh, but how cool would that be to have you be his spokesperson? Think of the crowds.”

“Nope.” He didn't know how to shut her down without being rude. “That's not going to happen, so stop right there. I'm no poster boy for retired cowboys. They'll just turn it into a sideshow. I don't do sideshows.”

He didn't know whether it was it was his tone or some note of warning in his voice, but Joely backed off.

“Fair enough. Are you going to go visit the horse?”

“I have to bring Vince the pictures, but I had no plans to see the horse. Why?”

She shrugged. “I thought maybe I could come along.”

The thought stopped his negative thoughts cold. “Really?”

“Sorry, that was presumptuous. I just like pretty horses.” Her words slowed and she shrugged. “It's probably not such a good idea.”

“No.” His mind raced in a new direction. “No, I think maybe it's a very good idea.”

The words tumbled out before he could censor them. He didn't mind seeing the horse. It was Vince who concerned him. The guy should have been a traveling snake oil salesman. He could, it seemed, sell rodeo to a one-legged cowboy.

“I don't know.”

“Vince wants the pictures by Saturday. You could be my buffer between him and his screwball ideas. In exchange I'll help you move on Friday.”

“Sure,” she said. “But don't you have, like, a job?”

Her bright mood made Alec's unwilling step into the world he'd left behind slightly more palatable. On the other hand, he was letting her pretty face influence him, and he needed to start watching out for that. All he'd wanted to do when he met her was get her to think about taking a few baby steps away from her wallowing. Today she'd taken a couple of kangaroo leaps and was dragging him along.

“I do have a job. But they like me. They won't mind if I take a personal day.”

“A husband, a homeless body, a saddle bronc, a lot of empty calories, and a handsome guy to help move my worldly possessions. It's not even noon and I'm exhausted.” Her laugh was the most carefree sound he'd ever heard from her.

It buoyed him, which was a good thing because, suddenly, the realization she was about to get involved with Vince and that saddle bronc, made him the one who wanted to go home and have a big old wallow.

T
RUE TO HIS
promise, Alec came along with half the population of Paradise Ranch—her mother, Mia and Gabe, Skylar Thorson, and even Grandma Sadie—to help carry in boxes and unpack them in the tiny new apartment. With so many bodies, they made fairly short work of the job. The men muscled in the large furniture—bed, kitchen table, the sofas and chairs—Skylar unpacked bathroom boxes, Mia and their mother worked in the kitchen, and Grandma Sadie made it her job to get the bedroom set up.

Joely found her grandmother starting to shake out sheets onto the bed, her movements still coordinated and efficient even at her age. Grandma was a wonder. She could be elegant as Madison Avenue or the consummate ranch wife, as she was today with soft, worn jeans and a plaid shirt rolled at the sleeves. Her hands were slightly gnarled with arthritis, but they weren't crippled. Her shoulders stooped a little more each year, but she could still stand almost to her full five-foot-five-inch height when she tried. She rested more and drank a little less alcohol than she once had, but she still took a one-mile walk every day and could knit and crochet blue ribbon-winning sweaters, doilies, and blankets in the wink of an eye. Joely fully intended for her to live another twenty years and become the oldest woman in the world.

“Hi, Grandma.” Joely swung into the room on her crutches and made her way to the opposite side of the bed. “You shouldn't have to do this alone.”

“Nonsense.” Her grandmother smoothed the surface wrinkles from the bottom sheet she'd just fitted to the mattress. “I'm not much good with heavy things anymore, but I always could make a mean bed.”

“I know. You taught every one of us.” Joely smiled. “To this day I'm the pickiest bed-maker I know.”

“Then my life had been a success.” Grandma Sadie chuckled and set the folded top sheet on the mattress to start opening it. “How are you doing, child?”

“Other than feeling hounded by my mother and sister to still consider coming back to the ranch? I'm fine.”

“They mean well.”

“I know. And it's not fair to say they're hounding me. Mom just keeps finding disgusting—her words—corners in the kitchen and is taking boiling water to the shelving, all the while telling me I wouldn't have to live in someone else's dirt if I just came back to my old room. Mia is obsessed with me being close enough so she can help me.”

“But you're happy with this choice?”

“Do you want to know the truth? I'm doing it because I dug my heels in, and now I'm too stubborn to change my mind. I only signed a month's lease. I can leave if I want to. But don't tell them that.”

Grandma nodded as if she approved. “I think it's good for you. I do.”

“Thanks, Gram. You and Alec.”

“He's a nice boy.”

“He is. He's also annoying and pushy though.”

“A little like your grandfather. More like your great-grandfather.”

“Grandpa Sebastian and Great-Grandpa Eli. I've always loved the stories about Eli. He was a strong, smart man.”

“Hmmm.” Grandma Sadie adjusted the sheet and Joely propped her crutches against a wall behind her, then balanced on one leg to help. “He was smart. Cagey with a head for business deals.”

“You knew him when you were a little girl, right?”

“We moved to the area when I was twelve,” she said. “Wolf Paw Pass was nothing more than a stopover watering hole for cattle drives through Jackson Hole. Jackson town was not a whole lot bigger.”

“And you went to school with Grandpa Sebastian.”

“I did. Love at first sight. For him.”

Joely laughed. She'd heard the story many times, but everybody loved the tale of how fourteen-year-old Sebastian Crockett had told everyone who'd listen he was going to marry Sadie Howard and then pursued her for the next seven years until she'd said yes at age nineteen. And how they'd been married for sixty-eight years. And how she'd never looked at another man despite threatening that stubborn old cowboy many times he'd better mind his p's and q's or he'd find her keeping time in the house of one of Wolf Paw's wealthy and powerful.

“But, since Sebastian was one of the richest and most influential landowners in Wyoming, he wasn't worried. Much. He minded his p's and q's most of the time.” She smiled in wistful memory.

“You two were the love story of the century around here,” Joely said. “Even I remember that from when I was a little girl.”

“Don't know as we were the greatest. We certainly did stay married a good long time.”

Joely sighed. “I hope my sisters have as much luck as you. I wish Mom could have had longer.”

“They were a great love story, too.”

“Nobody really knows why.” Joely frowned. “Dad was so demanding and opinionated.”

“Not like anyone else in his family.” Grandma Sadie smiled again.

“Touché.”

“I'm glad you have a little of his stubbornness. You'll need it. But I know you're going to be fine.”

“Well, I'm glad you have faith.”

“You always have to have faith, child.”

Joely didn't tell her how shaky her faith was most days. It had started crumbling the first time Tim had cheated on her. What was left had turned to shifting sand the day she'd learned her horse died in the car accident.

But she grinned. “Faith. Always. Got it.”

They finished the sheets and blanket. Grandma Sadie put cases on the pillows and then went to the closet where she retrieved a large box Joely had never seen before.

“What's in there?”

“Something all the women on Paradise Ranch started together the day after your accident. It was for your bed the day you came home. You're not in your room at Rosecroft where you were headed that day, but you are in your own place. And this is definitely a homecoming.”

Joely lifted the cover off the box and stared at the richly colored, quilted fabrics that greeted her. Hesitantly she stroked the textures and then delved beneath the folded quilt to lift it out. “Oh, Gram, what's all this?”

“A prayer quilt. Three sections, all made with fervent prayers that have now been answered.”

Joely spread the quilt out on the bed and stared. Deep blues and blacks made up the top two-thirds of the design, dotted with bright whites and yellows that created a stunning starry sky. In one top corner, a handful of coppery bits of fabric formed a faint but discernible horsehead constellation. A horse the color of her shiny, chestnut Penny.

Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, Gram.”

“And every person designed her own animal for you.”

Across the bottom of the quilt, scattered on rolling fabric hills of deep greens, purples, and maroons, were a dozen animals looking up at the sky. In real life few of the creatures would have shared habitats, but it didn't matter, they all looked realistic and they all fit together like an eclectic family—a horse, a cat, a dog, a cow, an elephant, a kangaroo, a raccoon, a zebra, a penguin, a grizzly bear, an eagle, and a butterfly. Any animal Joely had ever said she loved.

“You love the night sky,” Grandma Sadie said. “I remember finding you asleep on the back porch after you'd snuck out to watch a meteor shower or see the full moon.”

“It's been a long time since I went stargazing.” Joely stroked the exquisite design, each line of quilt stitching warm beneath her fingertips, as if the love and prayers came through at her touch.

“The animals need no explanation. You were always rescuing some poor bedraggled creature.”

“I was,” Joely said absently. “It's been a long time since I've even had pet. Tim didn't like animals in the house.”

Grandma Sadie sighed and shook her head. “I'm not even going to comment,” she said, her tone blunt.

“I don't know why I married him, Gram.” Joely echoed her sigh. “I wasn't as strong as my sisters were when it came to following dreams. Mine was never firm or decisive enough, and I figured Dad was right. He always told me that being a veterinarian was a great idea, but it would be a waste of time to become an equine vet or an exotic animal vet on a cattle farm. So, I didn't buck Dad, I found a different dream. Or so I thought. Tim convinced me when we met we'd do such wonderful philanthropic things together.”

“And, you got approval from him,” Grandma said.

“At first. Then he got just as critical as Dad.” She lowered her eyes. “I'm sorry. He was your son, and I know you loved him and miss him. I loved him, too; we all did. We just couldn't please him.”

Grandma Sadie moved close and stood beside her. She wrapped the top of Joely's head in a warm embrace and kissed her hair. “I know my son's faults. I know my own. Your father was never cruel, honey. Iron-willed, yes. But you need to talk to your mama. She's got insights and strengths you couldn't see when you were growing up. Your father loved you beyond words. He was just terrible at showing it.”

“I love the quilt. I more than love it. I can feel the love in it.”

“There is a great deal of that. Welcome home. I have been praying it's a very good and safe place for you.”

For the first time in months Joely didn't cringe at her grandmother's blatant spirituality. She turned in her embrace and wrapped her arms around Grandma Sadie's waist. “I love you.”

“And I you. Start to follow your dreams now.”

Joely nodded against Gram's soft middle but didn't say that first she had to find if there were any she could even find.

Joely looked at the beautiful quilt again and decided that if nothing else even went in the room it would be complete. But they found another box in the closet and opened it to find pictures from Joely's old room at the ranch. She smiled at the memories and planned where to hang them here. At the bottom of the box were a dozen four-by-six sepia-toned photos in vintage frames. She pulled them out one by one and ogled her ancestors from Eli and Brigitte to Sebastian and Sadie to her mother and father.

“These are gorgeous. I haven't seen these before.”

“I framed them for you. You need your heritage around you.”

Joely set them on her dresser top. “That's cool.”

“I'm glad you think so.”

“Speaking of the past,” Joely said, “I have something for you. What do you know about a man here in town that they call Mayberry?”

Grandma Sadie squinted a moment and then shook her head. “I don't know anybody with a name like that. Then again, I don't spend much time here anymore. All my old gossiping friends are long gone. The wages of living too long.”

“Don't say that!”

“I'm not going anywhere soon,” she said, patting Joely's arm. “But it's true there aren't any of my generation left to speak of.”

“Well, this man was outside the door here two days ago. He's an odd person—like a super-well-spoken homeless man. He's older, has a gray ponytail, and said he knows you. I have a note from him.”

“Knows me?”

“Yes. Because you used to babysit him.”

Sadie's eyes clouded, and she sat on the edge of the bed crooking one finger across her lips in concentration.

“I can't imagine,” she said. “The only children I watched regularly were the Manterville boys. Trampas and Oliver. Talk about your despicable fathers. Mr. Manterville was loud, opinionated, and mean when he drank, which was most days. They said he liked to lock the boys in the hen house when they misbehaved. Mrs. Manterville was a scandalous woman, not because she was mean, but because she smoked.”

Joely snickered. “Wow, how terrible.”

“Oh, my dear, back then it was. Smoking was the province of the men, along with the consuming of liquor. Genteel women wouldn't be caught dead around whiskey or cigarettes.”

Joely couldn't help but laugh. It seemed ridiculous today. Health issues aside, smoking and women had come of age long ago, and the thought of a woman being ostracized for having a cigarette was hard to imagine.

“What happened to them?” she asked.

Grandma Sadie hesitated. “They lost their place—almost ten thousand acres—in a notorious poker game that involved your great-grandfather in fact. Mr. Manterville went to prison a few years later; I don't know what for. Both boys were young teenagers, and they split up and nobody ever heard from them again.”

“That's amazing,” Joely said. “I've never heard any of this.”

Grandma Sadie waved her hand in dismissal. “Interest in that old story died out years ago. Not a soul in Wolf Paw Pass minded one whit that the Manterville family was gone. Life went on better for them not being here.” She laughed in the comforting, wise voice that always blew away fears and spoke of a long future. Joely hugged her.

“The note is in my purse. I'll go get it.”

“Nonsense. We'll finish here first. There'll be plenty of time.”

“I don't think I like the idea of my family being involved in a scandal around a poker game.”

“Oh, now, every family has skeletons.” Grandma kissed her forehead again and patted her cheek, ending the discussion. “Now. Let's get the rest of this room put in order. I'm not sure who this man is you met, but we'll find out.”

Her grandmother was so practical. But, then, she hadn't lived to be ninety-four by fretting over trivial things. Joely always got the impression Sadie Crockett had been one tough bird.

“What would you ladies like to find out? I'll tell you anything you want to know.”

Alec leaned forward into the room, his hands braced on either side of the door frame and his grin advertising every impractical thing Grandma Sadie's calm, wise presence did not. With dust smeared across one broad shoulder of his dark gray T-shirt and his wheat-gold hair half hanging in his eyes, he looked like devilish fun in the flesh. For the first time since he'd so unceremoniously showed her his prosthetic leg, Joely tried to tell he had it. The only possible indication was that he stood on his right leg and let the prosthetic foot rest behind him. But that could have been any person's relaxed stance. He really was amazing, carrying furniture, lifting and bending. He'd mastered his changed body in a way she couldn't fathom.