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She managed a smile in return. “You look like the cat who ate the canary.”
“I’m just thinking of who’s coming to this wedding,” he said. “Mike has a lot of friends. Friends from Wyoming. Friends in the military. Friends from HMC.”
“I work at HMC too,” Jane said in a deadpan. “Trust me, there’s no boyfriend material there.”
Daddy laughed, and that lightened Jane’s heart. “I’m just saying,” he said amidst the last of his chuckles. “Say yes to everyone who asks you to dance at the wedding. That’s all.”
“No one is going to ask,” Jane said. Before Daddy could protest, the front door opened, and both of her younger brothers entered the generational house.
Deacon, the youngest of Daddy’s younger boys, entered. “Morning,” he said. “Look who I found lurking on the porch.”
Tucker came inside rolling his eyes. Jane jumped to her feet to go say hello to her brother. The brother she hadn’t seen in seven months. “You’re here.” She realized as she said the words how very much she sounded like Momma.
Tucker laughed as he wrapped his strong arms around Jane. “You sure do look pretty,” he said, far more rodeo cowboy twang in his voice than necessary. Still, that was the circle Tucker ran in, and she couldn’t expect him to turn it all off when he came home.
“Hey-oh,” Hunter said as he came inside. Jane could see so many memories with him in it. He’d been fifteen when she was born, and he’d been the very best big brother in the entire world. He’d held her and read books to her. He’d helped her with her spelling words while he worked on a crossword puzzle.
He’d started two charitable foundations and run the multi-billion dollar company for seventeen years.
Jane felt like a complete failure next to Hunter. He grinned with the force of gravity and opened his big wingspan as if gathering all of his chicks to keep them safe from the stormy weather ahead.
“My brothers and my sister.” He could command a room too, but he did it in a much quieter way than Daddy did.
They all moved into Hunter, because he was the sun, and they all revolved around him. Jane wanted a man like him in her life. Someone who was so good, and so giving, and so smart. Sure, she had a type—and that was blonde-haired, blue-eyed cowboys—but she could stand to dance with a dark-haired man if she had to.
Maybe at the wedding, she thought, and that single thought, no matter how farfetched, buoyed her up enough to bring a smile to her face.
* * *
An hour later,Jane walked down the aisle with her arm tucked through Tucker’s. She carried a small bouquet of seven flowers in blue and white. Her gown flowed around her feet with every step.
Gerty and Mike had a hobby farm and dozens of acres of land about ten miles south of Jane’s family farm, and they were getting married there today. She’d come to help string streamers and strings of lights through the rafters of this old barn.
Someone had swept the floor clean, and every available surface glinted with soft lights, pretty white flowers, and accents of blue in the punch bowl, the centerpiece vases, and the bow ties all the men wore.
After she’d handed her few flowers to Mike to create one big bouquet, she couldn’t help glancing over to the men’s side of the altar, where her brothers stood. Keith Whettstein waited over there too, as he was a good friend of Mike’s and had been working on the farm since he moved to Colorado with his father.
Britt Whettstein stood on Jane’s side, but she kept smiling at her boyfriend only three rows back. Jane worked not to roll her eyes, because Britt was the nicest person ever. She wasn’t super smart, but she worked hard and she tried hard, and given her limitations, she functioned in society very, very well.
Hunter stood almost on top of Mike, barely leaving room for even a breath of space between them. She wasn’t sure if it was to keep Mike in place, but it seemed to be working if it was.
The rest of the wedding party arrived, and Jane didn’t see Cord. Mission, Matt, and Vince had all made it down the aisle and taken their places as best men. Gerty’s younger siblings had arrived, and thanks to Amy, plenty of white rose petals now littered the aisle.
The music kept droning on and on. Gerty didn’t appear in the doorway of the barn, and Jane started to fidget. She glanced over to Molly, who wore wide eyes filled with concern.
Momma sat with Daddy in the front row, and even she straightened and twisted to look behind her, as if the problem with Gerty’s arrival would be standing in the doorway.
Just when Jane was about to snap, the music changed. It pitched up in volume and speed, as the wedding march piped into the barn.
Gerty appeared first, a glowing smile on her face. She was radiant in every single way, and Jane swore she saw a halo of white light around her entire person.
Her daddy was a big, burly man, quick to laugh and tell jokes, and absolutely terrifying if he thought hew as being lied to. Not that Jane had done a lot of lying in her life. A few little white lies here and there, but nothing serious.
She sensed a presence behind her, and sure enough, the warmth from someone’s body melted into hers. She held very still, because someone had just put their hand on her waist and leaned into whisper something in her ear.
“You look ravishing,” he said. Jane would know that voice anywhere, and shivers scattered through her whole body at the nearness of Cord Behr. The fact that he was up there in front of everyone, on the wrong side of the altar, whispering in her ear, felt scandalous all on its own.
She glanced over to Daddy, but he’d stood and was facing the back of the barn, where Gerty still waited with her daddy.
