The Cowboy Takes a Bride (37 page)

There was comfort to be extracted here. Comfort and a vast understanding that love couldn’t be killed. They would always love the people they’d lost, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t love each other as well.

Love.

She did love Joe. Had suspected she’d been in love with him for many weeks. She’d just been afraid to admit it. Consummating their passion had assured her it was true—
but this
—this grief sex cemented everything. She wanted to tell him that she loved him. Loved him so much that her heart was overflowing with it, overflowing and mingling with her sorrow, a bittersweet balm for the dark things in the world. But she was still afraid. If she said it and he didn’t say it back . . . well . . . she didn’t think she could stand that.

So she said nothing, but she showed him how much she loved him. She used her tongue and fingers. Her body was an instrument of everything she felt, giving him full access to her.

Then a mighty rapture rolled through their bodies. A feeling of completeness so true and real it took possession of their minds, hearts, and souls.

She and Joe were one.

Chapter Twenty

Good sense comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from actin’ like a damn fool.

—Dutch Callahan

T
he sun spilling through the window awoke Mariah. For one brief moment, she smiled, her body sweetly achy from the night she’d spent with Joe, but then she remembered. The fire. Her chapel. Clover. Everything.

Gone.

Her smile vanished and the sorrow seeped in again.

She reached for solace, throwing her arm across the other side of the bed in search of Joe, but found nothing except cool, empty sheets.

And a note.

Her hand fisted around the crinkle of notebook paper. She sat up, pushed the hair from her eyes, and squinted in the morning light.

Gone to Will Rogers Coliseum with Cordy and Miracle. Sleep in. The final event isn’t until noon. See you there. Later on, we have to talk.

We have to talk.

That sounded ominous. Joe hadn’t awakened her. Hadn’t taken her with him. What did that mean? Was he going to tell her things were moving too fast? And here she’d been on the verge of professing her love for him. Thank God, she’d never actually said it. All the joy she’d experienced in his arms the night before evaporated, and doubt bombarded her.

Don’t freak. It’s probably nothing. He wants you at the event. That’s a good thing.

What if he wanted to break up?

But why? What had she done? Last night had been so special. Maybe that was it. Maybe it had been too special and
he’d
freaked. Maybe he wasn’t ready for this deeper step. Well, maybe she wasn’t ready for it either. If he wanted to back off, take a break, then okay. She could go back to light and easy. That’s the way she’d wanted it in the first place. But then, but then . . .

She’d fallen in love.

Oh God, she was in love with him and he didn’t feel the same way about her. He still loved Becca. That’s what he wanted to talk to her about. To let her down easy. He must have sensed she was feeling more for him than he was feeling for her and he wanted to untangle things before they got too knotted up.

Except the leaden weight in her stomach told her it was already way too late. She was in too deep.

Chill! Don’t borrow trouble. Just go to the futurity, cheer him on, and let whatever happens be okay.

Easy to say, but so damn hard to do. She wanted him so much. It was scary how much she wanted him. She’d never ever wanted a man like this. She’d finally let down her guard and now here she was, naked to the world, waiting for the smack in the face.

It might not be a smack in the face. You might get lucky like Cassie did with Ignacio.

She got out of bed filled with tremulous hope. Got dressed in the cowgirl clothes she’d grown accustomed to wearing. This morning, however, the outfit felt as alien as it had the first day she’d put it on. She had an apple for breakfast. She shrugged into a jacket, went outside, and walked over to the charred husk of the chapel. The burned-out smell of sooty destruction curled in her nose. Gone. All gone.

Honestly, there was no longer anything for her here. She’d proved she could start her own wedding planning business. If she could do it in Jubilee, she could do it anywhere. This had been a steppingstone. A learning opportunity. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be anything more than that.

If Joe didn’t want her—if he was still too much in love with Becca to embrace what they could have together—she could start over. Start again. Even though the very idea made her sick to her stomach.

For a long time, she stood there, thinking about Joe, thinking about her options. Thinking about what she wanted. Mostly, she didn’t want to get hurt.

Too late. Too late for that.

Finally, she wandered past Joe’s place, headed toward the mailbox that sat beside his at the end of the road. She’d let the mail stack up since the fire. In the box, she found the contract from Destiny. On her walk back up the road, she opened it up.

Here it was. Her ticket out.

If she wanted out. Last night she would have said wild horses couldn’t have dragged her back to Chicago, but now? Worry clutched her throat.

You’re being silly, borrowing trouble. Do something to keep your mind occupied until it’s time to leave for the futurity.

Determined to shake off the apprehension, she went back into the cabin, tossing Destiny’s contract on the kitchen table as she passed by on her way to the bathroom. She pulled her makeup kit from the drawer, took out her mascara wand, and stared at herself in the mirror. Who was she now? City girl or country woman? Cowgirl or cosmopolitan? Dutch’s daughter or Destiny’s employee or Joe’s . . .
what?

She stroked on too much mascara. She blinked and it smeared underneath her left eye. It gave her a battered look. She reached for a sheet of toilet paper to blot it away.

Darn it. Out of toilet paper.

Sighing, she padded to the hallway closet for a new roll. When she opened the door, Stuffy fell from the top shelf where she’d stowed him the day she’d cleaned the cabin from top to bottom, barely missing striking her shoulder.

The snake hit the ground hard and the chunk of the shellacked wood that he was mounted on cracked open. A white envelope fluttered to the floor.

A secret compartment.

She hadn’t known there was a secret compartment in the base of the snake. Bending at the waist, she picked up the letter. It had her name printed on it and the address of the place where she and her mother had lived when Mariah was fourteen. In the far left corner was her father’s name and address.

On the far right was an uncanceled stamp. The edges of the envelope were yellowed with age.

Forgetting all about her smeared mascara and the toilet paper, Mariah cradled the letter to her chest. Goose bumps lifted on her arms. A message from the past. Did she have the courage to open it after all these years?

She went into the small living area, plunked down on the couch. Drawing in a fortifying breath, she gently opened the letter, unfolded it, and began to read.

Dear Flaxey,

I’m sorry I came to your school today and embarrassed you. I shouldn’t have done that. I just wanted to see you real bad and didn’t stop to think that maybe you didn’t want to see me. It was selfish of me to just show up like that. I got what I deserved. I’m so sorry for how I left you and your mama. I got no excuses. No reasons that’ll make sense to you. I do love you so much. More than you can possibly know.

But I got a sickness inside of me I can’t control. It gets in my blood the way alcohol or drugs eats up some folks. Horses are my addiction. They’re a habit I can’t shake. I can’t think of anything but being a cutter. I live it, breathe it, want it with every cell in my body. I tried so hard to be a good daddy, but I failed you. I’m obsessed with horses. Most cutters are. It’s why we clump together. The only ones who understand us are other crazy cutters.

I realized I couldn’t be a husband and a father and a cutter. I made a choice. I abandoned you and your mama to save you from the burden of my sickness. I’ve regretted that choice every single day of my life, but I can’t say I would have the strength of character to make a different choice if I had a do-over. Anyway, I just wanted to see you and try to explain in person, but I know I don’t have that right. I threw it away when I threw away my family.

I’ll go to my grave sorry. I hope that someday you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me. I loved you the only way I knew how. It’s not good enough, but it’s all I’ve got. I love you, Flaxey girl, and if there’s one word of advice I could give to you, it’s never get tangled up with a cutter. We’re poison.

Be well. Have a happy life,

Dutch

She had believed Dutch hadn’t cared at all. She’d been wrong. He’d cared so much that he’d stepped out of her life. Not because he loved horses more, as she’d imagined, but because his main concern had been for her. He’d known he couldn’t give her what she needed. The horses had been his consolation prize.

Mariah’s heart ripped. “Oh, Daddy, I wish I could turn back time. I wish I could have truly known you.”

A clot of hot tears dammed Mariah’s throat. The entire letter upset her. Smothered her with guilt. Ripped her heart with regret. But the words on the page that kept dancing up and down through the mist of her tears were these:
If there’s one word of advice I could give to you, it’s never get tangled up with a cutter. We’re poison.

It might be wrong to lump Joe in with her father, but she couldn’t help thinking he was as obsessed with cutting horses as Dutch had been.

Shaking off her gloomy mood, Mariah put the letter back in the stuffed snake and then drove to Will Rogers Coliseum where the final day of the Triple Crown Futurity was being held. She arrived at the ticket counter only to discover the event was sold out, and she wouldn’t have gotten in if she hadn’t seen Cordy in the parking lot.

“Come with me,” he said, and escorted her in through a side exit. “I’m so happy you got here. Joe’s been a nervous wreck and that’s not like him at all.”

The place was packed. Everywhere she looked there were cowboy hats. The place smelled of horses, hay, leather, beer, and roasted peanuts. Cordy positioned her in reserved front-row seating. “Watch that door.” He indicated with a nod of his head. “Joe will be coming through there any minute.”

“Thanks.”

“Gotta go now,” Cordy said, and disappeared through the door.

Music played. The announcer got busy over the microphone, ticking off the names of the remaining contenders. From a white iron gate on the opposite side of the arena, cowboys let a herd of mooing cattle into the ring.

When Joe and Miracle cantered through the entrance, a cheer went up from the crowd. The announcer narrated the event, but Mariah didn’t know enough about cutting to follow the scoring. It didn’t matter, because the man on his horse in the middle of the ring riveted her.

Riveted everyone.

Joe and Miracle moved like poetry. The cattle were helpless against the pair. They moved as a perfect unit, complicated in their simplicity.

A thrill grabbed her and wouldn’t let her go. Joe was the best at what he did. Watching him took her breath. The look on his face was part supreme concentration, part utter bliss.

Her heart soared. She was in love with him and she couldn’t do anything to change it. But she loved him too much to ever put him in the position of having to choose between her and cutting. That had been her mother’s mistake with her father, trying to get Dutch to be a family man when that kind of life just wasn’t in him. Like it or not, you had to accept people for who they were.

What did the future hold for them? For her?

While Mariah fretted, Joe won the futurity. Won it on the horse trained by her father. Joe had achieved his goal. He’d honored Dutch by winning the Triple Crown Futurity.

Waves of emotion washed over her—pride, joy, sadness, fear, hope, loss, celebration. The spectators leaped up in the stands, shouting and cheering. Cowboys herded the cattle from the ring. Joe and Miracle entered the winner’s circle, received the trophy, received a check for four hundred thousand dollars, had their picture taken.

Joe’s eyes were alight as he gave a small speech, then he looked across the arena and met Mariah’s gaze. His grin widened. He talked about Dutch and announced that Mariah was in the arena. Thundering applause followed.

Then Joe sobered and asked for a moment of silence for Dutch and Clover. Cowboys and cowgirls took off their hats, held them over their hearts. Silence fell over the entire gathering, and Mariah swore she felt Dutch’s presence. Clover’s too. Tears burned her eyes. She blinked hard, fighting them back.