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Chapter Thirteen
Luke stood at the window and gazed out across the field beyond. It wasn’t a hay field, or corn, but more like a pasture. A pasture where animals didn’t graze. Right now, rows and rows of chairs sat in the field, and a couple of people moved around, setting up the arch in front of the altar.
Slate was getting married today, and Luke had been looking forward to and dreading the day all at the same time. Tonight, Slate wouldn’t be on the ranch. He and Jill would be gone on a honeymoon for a couple of weeks, courtesy of Nate and Ginger, who’d given them a huge trip to an all-inclusive resort in Cozumel.
When they returned, they’d both live in the cabin where Slate had been for a couple of months now. Luke told himself he’d see him all the time. They worked the same ranch. He literally lived a couple hundred yards away.
For some reason, though, Luke existed under a thundercloud that refused to drop its rain and then move on.
Someone came to stand next him, and Luke glanced over at Ted. He extended a single rose toward Luke, and said, “This goes on your lapel.”
Luke nodded and took it, turning and holding it against his lapel. Ted used the large straight pin to attach it to the fabric, and Luke marveled that his thick fingers had been able to do something so delicate.
“How are you feeling?” Ted asked, turning his attention back out the window.
“Okay,” Luke said. “I think I’m just ready for it to be over.”
“I think everyone feels like that by the time the wedding actually arrives.” Ted laughed, but it wasn’t one of his big, booming ones that filled the whole universe with joy.
Luke still grinned and chuckled, glad Ted had chased away some of the melancholy feelings inside him.
“I think they’re almost ready,” he said. “We have to go line up in a different room.”
“The smaller waiting room,” Luke joked, because the wedding wasn’t set to start for another thirty minutes. The very first guests had just started to arrive out in the field, and Luke watched the workers finish with everything and get out of the way.
“Guys,” Slate called, and Luke turned from the window. “We’re moving over to the stable house.”
Luke didn’t know what that meant, but he followed everyone else. Slate had several groomsmen in the wedding party, including his own brother, the four men he’d spent time in prison with, and Jill’s brother. His grandparents lived nearby, and Luke had gone out to Short Tail a couple of times with Slate on a couple of Sunday afternoons.
His parents and siblings and their families had come from Austin, and Jill had her two sisters and their significant others and children here too.
Other than that, family friends and then Slate’s and Jill’s friends from around Sweet Water Falls would make up the audience.
Slate had asked Luke to be in the wedding party, and he’d be escorting Hannah down the aisle ahead of Jill.
He glanced to his left when he heard his name in somewhat of a hiss. He found Hannah poking her head around the corner, and she gestured for him to go down the short hall and join her. Luke’s heart leapt at the thought of finding a private spot on this piece of beautiful land and kissing her.
He hadn’t done that yet, and he really needed to get the job done soon. He’d been moving pretty slow with Hannah, mostly because he wanted to make sure the sizzling attraction between them had more of a foundation than just the physical.
They worked together, but that didn’t provide a lot of time or opportunity for meaningful, personal conversations. It did show him her hardworking side. She was firm and kind to the cowboys and cowgirls who worked on the stable. She was detailed and organized in her accounting work for the ranch, and she loved to eat at out-of-the-way restaurants with unique and eclectic menus.
She knew the people at those restaurants and Luke hadn’t taken her to one yet where they didn’t love her to bits and pieces. Everyone had good things to say about Hannah, and Luke did too.
He glanced at the backs of the men still moving away from him, and he ducked down the hall. He rounded the corner and found Hannah with her back pressed into the brick there. “What’s going on?” he asked in a low voice. He could kiss her right now and be very happy. Just put one hand on her hip and the other along her face and hold her in place while he pressed his lips to hers.
His throat almost closed at the very thought.
“Jill wanted to see you.”
“Why?” He glanced down the hall to the only visible door.
“I told her about the wig.”
Luke leaned away from Hannah. “I thought we weren’t going to do that until after the wedding. After they got home from Mexico.”
“Her mother is wearing it,” Hannah said. “It was this huge uproar, and everyone wanted to know where she’d gotten it. Sabrina tried to play it off as a gift, but then Jill and McKenna started accusing Haven of buying it for her and trying to make this wedding about her again, and I had to say something.” Hannah pressed one palm to her forehead, obviously stressed. “I’m so dang hot. You have no idea how stressful it is in that room.”
She pushed away from the wall and started down the hall. Luke did not follow her.
