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Cord had never been to either place, as he had no reason to leave the farm for much more than gas and groceries. That didn’t take him out of the sleepy, beautiful town of Ivory Peaks though his parole no longer forced him to stay within city limits.
He wasn’t on parole anymore, and for a brief moment, he wondered if he had to tell anyone about his former misdeeds at all. Then Mike faced him, and he spread his arms and hugged the man. “Congrats,” he said as Mike chuckled and then moved on to Mission and Travis.
Cord stood out of the way—something he was very good at. He was used to being an observer, and that was the way he liked it. The last thing he wanted was any spotlight on him at all.
Dancing with Jane would put an incredibly bright light on him, and Cord swallowed as he drifted further out of the way.
“Ready?” Trav’s voice made Cord snap out of the place he’d just started to fall into. The man had saved Cord more times than he knew, and Cord nodded. God knew, and Cord knew, and he thanked the Lord every single evening and every single morning for Travis Thatcher.
“Yeah.” Cord’s voice sounded like it had been shattered. “I’m ready.”
Gerty and Mike had wanted simple and small, and that meant they’d asked their friends to help them with this wedding and all the activities included in it. The barn had been ready when he’d arrived this morning, but he, Travis, Mission, and Keith had volunteered to move the chairs from the rows and to the tables, which were all set up and waiting on the fringes.
Some of them would have to be moved inward, but for now, they slipped away from the congratulations still happening, and as Cord reached the wall of the barn to pull a table out, he turned back to see where Jane was. Standing with her mother, her arm around Elise’s waist, as they both smiled at Mike. The two of them were close—both Jane and her mother and Jane and Mike—and the last thing Cord needed was anyone looking more closely at him.
Michael Hammond had unlimited resources, and if he didn’t like something Cord did to Jane, he could literally destroy Cord. That went against everything Cord knew about Mike, but still, the threat lingered in the back of his mind.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Trav said, and Cord looked at him.
“Sorry. Just thinkin’ about something.”
“Yeah? What?” Trav picked up the other side of the table and waited.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Cord said.
Trav usually let things slide, so Cord wasn’t surprised when he didn’t push the topic. Part of him wished he would, but the four of them, along with a few guests, hurried to set up the chairs around the tables and get everything positioned correctly. The wedding guests continued to mill about, and the caterers set up a buffet at the back of the bar in record time.
Bree Hammond checked with them, and only a minute later, the luncheon began. Gerty and Mike had not assigned seats anywhere, but Jane’s table had filled with her family. Her siblings and her cousins, and she fit with all of them. She definitely had the lightest complexion and the flaxen hair while everyone else had been dealt dark genes from the pool. But she still fit.
Cord hadn’t had a family the way she did in a long, long time. He couldn’t help watching her and wondering what it would be like to be a Hammond. He’d been thinking about that for almost fifteen years, and it always made him smile.
Gray had taken him under his wing, and Cord had, in essence, become a Hammond. The thought of doing anything to upset Gray made him physically ill, and a lot of his decisions in life had stemmed from how Gray would react or what Gray would think.
He’d counseled with the man many times on things over the years, and Gray had always been kind and thoughtful in his advice.
The ringing of clinking glasses filled the air, and Cord looked up to the head table. Mike stood, and he reached his hand out to Gerty to do the same. She did, and Cord smiled at her reluctance to do so. She didn’t like the spotlight either.
He was surprised she’d worn such a traditional wedding dress, because he’d never seen the woman wear anything but jeans and tank tops. Lace covered the dress from shoulder to hem, and the top did look like a skin-tight tank top with wide straps. The skirt flared at the waist and fell in full layers to the floor, with the tips of her cowgirl boots only showing when she walked.
Right now, she stood, beaming up at Mike as he spoke into the mic. “Sometimes the Lord leads us to right where we need to be, at exactly the right time.” He lifted his glass. “To my wife!”
Several cowboys yelled, “Yeehaw!” and many more people took a drink of their champagne. Cord didn’t drink, so he didn’t reach for his water glass.
“Your turn,” Mike said, grinning at Gerty like this was a fun game. Gerty sure didn’t think so, and Cord leaned forward as if he’d need to pay extra-close attention to what she’d say.
“All of my horses have tried to tell me that Mike is trouble,” she said into the mic. “But I went and fell in love with him anyway.” She pulled the mic away as Mike tried to take it from her. “Because he’s perfect….” She faced him again, and he no longer tried to get anything from her. “For me. He’s perfect for me.” She turned to the crowd. “To my husband!”
Another round of cheering and clapping rose into the air, and as that tapered off, Bree took the mic from her new daughter-in-law. “We’ll be moving the tables to the sidelines again for the dancing. Feel free to move your chairs around, grab some more dessert from the buffet, and join us on the dance floor after the couple has their first dance.”
Cord tried not to look for Jane, but his eyes roamed the barn anyway. She looked up from her phone and latched directly onto his gaze, making his mouth turn to sawdust. Her hair had been curled and fell in gorgeous, soft waves down her back. Her bare shoulders dared him to touch them, and a buzz started inside his bloodstream he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager with his first crush.
Jane was so much more than that already, and Cord was tired of fighting his feelings for the woman.
At the same time, he immediately started looking around for Gray, and he wasn’t hard to find at the next table over, where he sat with his brothers and their wives. He wasn’t concerned with Cord or Jane at all, his attention on one of the twins as they talked about something.
“Come on,” Trav said, and Cord got to his feet to move the tables again. They pulled chairs out and set up short rows between tables, and then the lights in the barn turned off. All the sparkling lights that had been hung in the rafters leant light to the space as Mike led Gerty out onto the dance floor.
Cord smiled as he took his new wife into his arms, because there was something sweet and wholesome about Mike and Gerty. Cord knew everyone had their problems, but in that moment, with the low lights and the romantic song, it sure did seem like everything with the two of them was absolutely perfect.
