A Rich Man for Dry Creek / a Hero for Dry Creek (20 page)

Instead, Nicki put on the jeans she generally used to muck out the barn. They were clean, but they didn't look it. She topped them off with an old sweater of her father's. Her mother might not like it, but Nicki didn't care.

She didn't want to hear what her mother said about dresses and looking good, anyway. Nicki knew she was hopeless. She only had to look in the mirror to know she wasn't princess material. Her mother had been as delicate as the lily that gave her its name. But there was nothing delicate about Nicki's face. She had her father's square jaw and determined forehead. Her hair was plentiful and shiny, but it never took on the styled look that some women's hair had. She just kept it cut and tied back out of her face.

There was never any reason to fuss with her hair. The cows didn't care. Reno wouldn't notice. Even Lester wouldn't care.

Nicki decided her mother would have to accept her as she was.

Nicki felt foolish the minute Garrett opened the passenger door of the limousine for her. She felt like a rebellious Cinderella who had declined her fairy godmother's offer of new clothes but had gone to the ball anyway. The interior of the car was sleek—if it was proper to call the limousine a car. It looked more like an ocean liner to her eyes. Nicki had never seen such a long length of leather that wasn't attached to a cow. And there was a small refrigerator. And her mother.

“Maybe I should drive the pickup in to Dry Creek and just meet you there,” Nicki suggested softly as she looked up at Garrett. “I don't really know that I should ride in here dressed in jeans—”

Garrett shrugged. “You can ride up front with me if you'd like. It's not so fancy up there.”

Garrett told himself that Nicki was just like any other woman he'd taken for a drive. Any kind of breathing problem he'd had after that kiss had only been because of the freezing temperature.

“I do have a dress,” Nicki said when Garrett turned the heater on inside the limousine. The defroster slowly blew a clear space on the front window. “I should have worn it. I imagine all of the women in Las Vegas wear dresses.”

Of course they wore dresses, Nicki told herself. Sexy black dresses that pleased men more than mothers.

Garrett grunted. “I'm not from Vegas.”

“Oh. I just thought that since Lillian was from there—” Nicki turned her head and noticed the glass window that separated the driver's area from the rear of the limousine was firmly closed. At least her mother and Garrett hadn't been chatting away cozily.

“I don't know your mother. I'm just doing a favor for Chrissy.”

“Oh.” Of course there was a Chrissy in his life. Or a Suzy or a Patti. Some petite blonde with style. A man that good-looking wouldn't be alone. “I see. Well, good for you.”

“I don't know about that.”

“Well, of course it's good. And I'm sure she appreciates it.”

“She'd better. If she doesn't I'm going to tell her mother about it.”

“You're good friends with her mother, too?” Nicki smiled stiffly. The man was practically married whether he knew it or not. “That's nice.”

“Well, it's my aunt Rose. Chrissy Hamilton is my cousin.”

“Oh.”

Nicki decided she should look for something else to wear when she was in Dry Creek. Really, the only store in town was the hardware store, but the stock had changed so much since the minister's new wife, Glory, was doing the ordering that maybe, by some magical coincidence, there were dresses hanging on a rack by the farmer's overalls.

The window separating the front of the limo from the back opened and Nicki smelled a trace of her mother's lily perfume.

“She's getting married, you know. Chrissy is,” Lillian announced. “It'll make her mother proud.”

“It'll make her mother mad if Chrissy doesn't invite her,” Garrett said.

“You can hear back there what we're saying?” Nicki wondered what the point of having a window like that was if it offered no privacy.

Her mother didn't even bother to answer her. “Chrissy said there was no need for anyone to come to her wedding.”

Nicki thought about her own mother. “I expect Chrissy has her reasons for not inviting her mother.”

Garrett snorted. “Well, if she does, she'd better get them spelled out in a letter or something. And mighty quick. Aunt Rose is a force to be reckoned with when it concerns her family. I should know.”

Garrett still remembered the determined look on Aunt Rose's face when she met him at the hospital the day his father's liver finally gave out and he died. Garrett was quickly learning something about the forms that needed to be filled out when someone died.

Garrett hadn't even finished half of the forms before Aunt Rose came to the hospital and took over. She'd told him he wasn't alone in this world as long as she was around and she was going to take him home to live with her and Chrissy. Garrett had already made arrangements to stay in the house where he and his father had lived, but he was touched. Not many single mothers would take on a belligerent sixteen-year-old nephew who knew more about hospital forms than college applications.

“Oh, I'm sure Chrissy will have some pictures taken.” Lillian shrugged. “And maybe a video. Some of the chapels include a video with the service. Chrissy's mother can watch that. It'll almost be the same thing.”

“Aunt Rose won't think so. She's still hoping Chrissy will go home for Christmas and get married in the living room where she grew up.”

Nicki wondered what it would be like for someone to want to be at your wedding that bad. She supposed Reno might be upset if he wasn't invited to her wedding. Of course, he would also be relieved since he hated any public gathering. “Do you think Chrissy will do that?”

“Not likely.”

“Well, I think Christmas would be a lovely time to get married. Or even Thanksgiving,” Lillian said as she leaned closer to the partition that separated the back from the front. “Too bad she won't be up here tomorrow. Thanksgiving was always my favorite time on the ranch. All those pies we used to make.”

“We don't do Thanksgiving at the ranch anymore,” Nicki said curtly. Who was her mother trying to fool? It almost sounded as if there was some nostalgia in her voice.

“Really? For the first years I was gone I used to picture you and your father and Reno sitting down to these big Thanksgiving dinners. You know how your father used to like to have the table bulging with food and half the families in Dry Creek coming over to eat with us. There'd be the Hargroves. And the Jenkins. And, of course, Jacob and Betty Holmes—”

“We don't have company at the ranch anymore.”

“Well, you should—the Redfern Ranch is important to this community. Besides, I was sort of hoping to relive one of those Thanksgivings while I'm here,” Lillian said as she leaned back into her seat and her face was no longer in the window. “I can almost smell the turkey now.”

“Sounds like you have some good family memories,” Garrett said after a minute or two had passed.

Nicki looked up at him in surprise. How could they be good memories when they only reminded her of what she had lost? “All that ended.”

“I see.”

Clearly the man didn't see at all, Nicki thought to herself miserably. “You wouldn't know what it was like. Reno, Dad and I made peace about celebrating Christmas, but Thanksgiving was just never the same. Last year I made meat loaf.”

“Nothing wrong with that. The fanciest we ever got in my family was a can of turkey noodle soup.”

“Well, at least you had your family with you.”

Garrett grunted. The only reason his father had been with him on Thanksgiving was because the bars were closed in the morning and he was too drunk to walk anywhere else by the afternoon. He liked to start his holiday celebrations early. It was Garrett who heated up the soup.

But Garrett didn't believe in telling people about his past. What was done was done. He was doing fine in life now. Of course, he had spent more Thanksgivings in truck stop cafés than he could count, but there was more to living than eating a plate of turkey on some cold Thursday in November.

Besides, he reminded himself, he liked not having the kind of family ties that meant he had to sit himself down to a Thanksgiving table every year. He was a free man.

Meanwhile in Las Vegas

C
hrissy sat up on the edge of her king-size bed in the Baughman Hotel. Today was going to be her wedding day and it would be a good day if she could only stomp down the nausea that threatened her. Now that she had Garrett hundreds of miles north of here and her mother hundreds of miles south, Chrissy was ready to take her vows.

She'd made the appointment with the wedding chaplain for nine o'clock in the morning so that no one would be hanging around the Rose Chapel in the Baughman Casino.

She knew it was bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the ceremony, but she figured her luck couldn't get much worse. Besides, she was too tired to put on her work clothes just to give a loud wake-up knock on Jared's door. Instead, she slipped on the wedding dress Jared had bought for her.

Chrissy hadn't planned to buy a special wedding dress. She had a gray suit that would have worked fine. Besides, a wedding dress seemed a little expensive under the circumstances. They were saving their money to buy a house, and Chrissy didn't mind scrimping on a wedding if they could find a house sooner.

But Jared had showed up with this dress anyway so she slipped it over her head. She turned to look at the hotel mirror. She looked even worse in it than she feared. The dress was short, strappy and it had some kind of iridescent, glittering sequins sewn on every inch of the fabric.

If she had feathers in her hair, Chrissy would look like a showgirl in it. Which was probably why Jared had chosen the dress. Chrissy looked at the material a little more closely. She hoped he hadn't just lifted the dress off one of the costume racks at the back of the casino.

Chrissy had always dreamed of an elegant ivory wedding gown that would sweep the floor and make her look like one of those brides she'd seen on the covers of magazine racks in the drugstores in Glendale.

All of which just went to show that weddings weren't always what a girl imagined they would be. Sometimes there were more important things to consider.

Jared's room was just down the hall from Chrissy's, and she was surprised to find his door was slightly open. She hadn't expected him to be still up. He'd had his bachelor party last night with a couple of friends, and that was why he was staying in a separate room. He said he didn't want to disturb her when he came in late.

Chrissy wasn't happy about the party, but she had smiled gamely. She didn't like the two guys he hung out with, but she never said anything. When they were married, Jared would be all hers. Jared had promised they could leave Las Vegas then and buy a house in some little town somewhere. Chrissy couldn't wait for that day. She hated the crush of people in Las Vegas. She wouldn't even mind waiting tables so much if she knew some of the customers.

“Jar—” Chrissy pushed the door open and stopped. At first she thought she must have the wrong room because all she saw was the back of a woman kissing a man. But then she noticed that whoever had his arm around the woman was wearing one of Jared's favorite shirts.

Chrissy told herself there could be hundreds of shirts in Las Vegas with black spades embroidered on their cuffs. She looked down at the man's shoes.

Then she looked back up at the woman. The woman was wearing Jared's bathrobe.

Shirt. Shoes. Bathrobe.

Chrissy took a step back and stumbled over a high heel that had been left on the floor. Her soft cry made both people turn and look at her.

The woman was one of the casino chorus girls.

“Chrissy!” Jared smoothed back his hair. “You're early.”

Chrissy wondered if she should have known Jared had been involved with a woman. She believed in trusting the man she loved. Maybe she'd been too trusting. Had there been signs?

“Just let me get dressed and we'll go downstairs and get married right now.” Jared was regaining his voice.

Chrissy held her hand up. “Don't—don't bother. You might as well stay here.”

“Don't be silly. You're not going to let a little bit of fun stop us from getting married.”

“Yeah, you're all dressed and everything. That's a great dress, by the way. It looks even better on you than me,” the blonde said.

Chrissy wondered if the woman was as insensitive as she sounded. She turned to Jared. “You got the dress from her—no, don't answer. Just give me the keys to my car.”

Chrissy had brought her car with her to Vegas. It was her car even though Jared borrowed it most of the time.

“Ah, Chrissy, don't be that way.”

Chrissy took a step back as Jared walked toward her.

“Don't touch me.” Chrissy hoped the burning in her eyes didn't turn into tears. She wanted to leave with dignity. “Just give me the keys.”

Jared smiled. “Ah, don't be mad. Remember, the car's in the shop. They have the keys. It won't be ready until tomorrow.”

“Maybe they'll finish early.”

Chrissy backed out of the hotel room. She'd talk to the mechanic. She needed to leave Vegas and she needed to leave soon. But where would she go? She couldn't go to her mother's. Maybe she could connect with Garrett and Lilly. Lilly had talked about the people in Dry Creek, Montana. That's where she'd go.