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Seth Johnson and Blake sat down, leaving only Luke at the altar. Becks locked her eyes on him, shutting out the rest of the world. He’d wanted to marry her such a long time ago, and she was the luckiest woman in the world today to be marrying someone she loved so much.
Each row only held four chairs on each side, which created a long aisle to the altar. Because both her family and Luke’s were from Chestnut Springs, it felt like the whole town had stayed in their Sunday clothes after their Sabbath services and simply driven out to the Texas Longhorn Ranch for this wedding.
She arrived at the spot where she had to say good-bye to her step-father, and he leaned over and kissed her cheek. Her biological father hadn’t been in her life for three and a half decades, and she had no idea where he was.
“You’re beautiful,” her step-father said, and then he faded to Mama’s side on the front row.
Luke took her hand and brought her to his side, also leaning over to press a kiss to the corner of her eye. “I’m so lucky,” he whispered so only she could hear, and she could’ve said the same thing to him.
“I love you,” she whispered back, because she did, and she wanted him to know.
“Welcome,” the pastor said on the other side of the altar. Another cousin, also named Adam, had carved it from one of the fallen trees on the ranch, and it bore intricate flowers and horses and clouds across the top. “It’s a beautiful thing to see two people so in love, and I see it so clearly in Rebecca Stewart and Lucas Miller.”
“Uh, it’s just Luke,” he muttered, and the pastor’s face turned bright red in less time than it took to breathe.
“I apologize,” he said smoothly. “In Becks and Luke, who are about to be bound in holy matrimony.”
She looked at Luke, and Luke looked at her. His hand in hers tightened, and she responded to that. Then they faced the pastor together, Becks beyond ready to start this new chapter of her life—as Rebecca Miller.
CHAPTERELEVEN
Todd Stewart whistled through his teeth as Luke bent Becks back and kissed her, the two of them now man and wife. Joy streamed through him, with a chaser of jealousy. They looked so dang happy together, and Todd wanted that for himself too.
He looked over to Blake, who wore an even wider smile than the one Todd felt stretching his face. They both wore their darkest black suits, with the bright blue bow ties Becks had ordered for everyone in the family. Matching flowers had been pinned to their lapels by their sisters, who now swarmed the altar to hug Becks and Luke.
Todd joined the fray, his mind already moving past the wedding to what the rest of his day held. They’d serve lunch to everyone, and that would take a while. Becks and Luke didn’t want a dance or a reception, as their flight to Florida left that evening.
The lodge was hosting live music that evening in their honor, and all the guests they’d invited to the wedding had been told about that. The guests here at the lodge would benefit too, and Todd did love the familial atmosphere his siblings worked hard to provide here at the Texas Longhorn Ranch.
He didn’t have much to do with the commercial side of things. He spent his days dealing with the real ranch on which they all lived and which people came to experience. He and the rest of the cowboys doing the real work behind the scenes knew that the experiences the guests had were a “cleaner” version of real ranch life, but that was okay with him.
After the luncheon, he’d retreat to the office he shared with Sierra, his second-in-command out on the ranch, in the new barn they’d built a couple of years ago. It stood only a stone’s throw from the lodge, and the closer proximity had helped both him and Blake as they worked to coordinate things between the ranch with real cattle who needed tending and the guest operations of the lodge, which usually provided activities like doing milking demonstrations and letting the guests participate.
They weren’t even a dairy operation, but they had a few dairy cows for that. Todd needed to go over the applications for a new veterinarian, as theirs had decided it was time for him to retire.
He’d miss Kenneth, and Todd had been trying to find a new vet for at least a month now. There had been some good applications, but Longhorn wanted a full-time vet. Someone who came out to the ranch every single day and worked only with them. Most had practices or traveled between several ranches.
With all the things they had going on here, Todd and Sierra had decided to keep their daddy’s idea of having someone dedicated fully to them.
So while vets applied, they didn’t really want to give up the other aspects of their business in order to be the full-time animal caretaker at only this ranch. Todd understood, or at least he tried to. He’d also been very clear in his job listing, and he didn’t understand why people applied if they didn’t really want the job.
His email had dinged at him that morning, and he had a couple of new applications to look at.
“It’s time for the cake-cutting,” Holly announced into the microphone. She wore a dazzling, sparkly dress in the same bright blue as Todd’s bow tie, and he could never look at his oldest sister and not smile. She always smiled, and the only time she ever slipped and let anyone know she wasn’t one-hundred percent happy to see them was behind the closed door of her cabin.
Right now, she lived with Sierra, and they got along great. Todd shared his house with Kyle, his next youngest brother and who organized all of their events here at the lodge. Todd enjoyed it, because the evenings were never dull with Kyle around. He had a great sense of humor, and he could play just about any instrument someone put in his hands. Todd wasn’t new to the guitar, and the two of them could sit on their front steps and play tunes for an hour, which soothed him after a long day of dealing with tiring ranch chores.
He hugged Luke and then Becks while the guests started to move down the aisle and back to the lodge. Todd went with them, striding to catch up to Kyle and Adam right now. The two of them talked about their night of singing and sleighing coming up, and Todd was content to just listen.
Inside the lodge, the whole front space had been transformed into wedding central. All of the desks that usually took up the left side had been pushed against the wall or removed. The guest dining area that spanned the right side now bore the same circular tables, but with pale yellow cloths and towering centerpieces of wheat, pine boughs, and white roses.
“Wow,” Kyle said. “This is beautiful.”
“I’ll say,” Todd said, pressing in beside him. The buffet sat along the kitchen wall, where Starla attended to it with a couple of other chefs. The head table spread in front of the windows to the right, and Todd backed up as Daddy said, “Boys, you can’t stop in the doorway.”
“Have you learned nothing?” Mama added, slipping by them too. She gave Todd, Kyle, and Adam a quick shake of her head, not really chastising them. She had been preaching at them for years to not stop in doorways, so she had a point.
Still, Todd simply wanted to enjoy the beauty of the lodge. Its raw-wood walls added charm to the country wedding, and he recognized the look on Holly’s face as she pressed in beside him. “We should be doing more weddings here,” she said.
