The Bride Wore Denim (6 page)

“Whatever,” she said to no one.

C
HEVY PICKED HIS
way along the rocky trail without help from Harper. With only a steadying hand on the reins, she let the gelding have his head. The farther she got from her encounter with the girl, the stronger her mortification grew. The meeting had turned Harper into a bigger mess than she’d been at the funeral, and she’d been unconscionably rude.

But her father’s camera? He’d nearly had apoplectic attacks if she or her sisters had touched it. Then he’d turned around and given it to a teenager he barely knew? Harper couldn’t deny the pain of betrayal squeezing her heart. So long. So
long
she’d prayed for his acceptance. Apparently young Skylar Thorson naturally possessed the key to getting that rare commodity.

The first tear traced down her cheek. It wasn’t Skylar’s fault, but envy blazed through Harper as if she were a child again, burning through her rational thinking and heading straight for the tinder that was her grief. None of this was fair. It hadn’t been fair from that night when, at age ten, she’d refused to help feed the horses until she’d finished her painting. Without any warning or second chance, Dad had hidden her pad of heavy canvas paper and starter set of brushes in his study and locked her easel in a closet where she would not have access to it until she’d learned to straighten out her priorities.

The moment still loomed as pivotal. It had started Harper on the path of hiding her work and sneaking away to draw. It had pushed her away from the ranch as soon as she was old enough to go to college, but she had been too young to know how to handle the freedom she’d never had under her father’s thumb. She’d made terrible choices about friends and school and her life for the first years of independence. Choices so stupid that she’d been kicked out of art school. Evicted from apartments. Fired from jobs. It had taken four more years of intermittent counseling and Tristan Carmichael’s constant “believe in yourself” mentoring to turn her into the artist she’d always wanted to be. Nonetheless, she still considered herself more of a failure at life than she ever wanted her good, God-fearing family to know.

She’d made a terrible choice again. A very selfish one. She’d seen Skylar’s face at the end of the camera discussion. Clearly confused and wounded, the girl had drawn up the protective wall of suspicion and attitude that had temporarily fallen away as she’d shared her drawings.

Harper knew how fragile an artist’s ego and confidence were. The girl had to have been hungry for feedback, or she wouldn’t have trusted Harper to look at the sketches. And she was surprisingly good, with an innate understanding of shading and texture. Given some instruction her talent could become something special.

There was no excuse for Harper’s pettiness.

And yet. The thought of pretty, young Skylar with her wide, blue eyes and spikey, strawberry blonde hair having possession of that Minolta created stupid and unreasonable feelings.

“Please, please.” She raised her eyes to the cloudy heavens. “Let this be because my system is out of whack from all this emotion.” She didn’t want to be known as the jealous diva sister. The inner demons she already owned were enough to handle.

“I should go back,” she said aloud. Chevy flicked his ears back, awaiting further instruction.

She picked up her slack reins, but before she could start the turn to head back, Chevy halted with a forceful hoof plant and wheeled all by himself. She kept him from bolting, holding him steady with her legs, and coaxed him back in the direction they’d been traveling. He side-stepped and let out a powerful whinny, but he moved forward.

“What is it, boy?” she asked. “Another rider?” She stroked his neck. He was only five—new to the ranch Rico, one of the ranch hands, had told her at the barn—so given his inexperience it was good behavior for him to trust her. Still, she had to continually persuade him to move down the gently sloping hill on the scree-and-dirt path that skirted the wide base of Wolf Paw Peak.

Before they reached the back side of the mountain, a rumble of engines grinding over uneven terrain confused her. When Chevy rounded a last bend, Harper stared across the green-and-yellow expanse of valley floor spreading between Paradise and the Teton Range sixty-five miles north, and her mouth popped open in shock. Two hundred yards away, a small fleet of four white vehicles trundled toward her. Chevy snorted and danced sideways.

Mystified, and more than a little uneasy, she tried to imagine how the mini convoy had gotten onto such remote Paradise land. This was one of the prime grazing areas—although she saw no cattle today—usually accessible only by horseback. As they drew closer she recognized a familiar logo on each vehicle door. Curled blue waves under a three-peaked purple mountain, set against a golden yellow sun: the ubiquitous symbol of Mountain Pacific Oil.

The two pickup trucks, a van, and a Jeep stopped before they reached Harper. Two people emerged from each and, clearly unaware of her presence, moved to stand in one group. As a collective they turned slightly away from her, and the man at the front of the clump pointed. She could hear their voices but couldn’t make out the words.

With a squeeze of her calves, Harper moved Chevy forward again, annoyance growing out of her curiosity. A proprietary aura emanated from the group, and along with her natural prejudice against oil people, it blew away all nervousness that had taken shallow root in her gut. They didn’t notice her until she’d ridden to within fifty feet and could see all eight people, including three women, clearly. Coordinated and hyper-neat, they wore navy slacks and company polo shirts in blue and purple, with the logo embroidered on each breast pocket. When they saw her, they smiled in unison like a team of robotic cable TV techs.

“Hello there!” One of the women, brandishing a clipboard and adjusting expensive-looking aviator sunglasses, approached with a widening smile. “I’m Magdalen Pearce, senior technology analyst for Mountain Pacific Oil.” She craned her neck to look around Harper as if expecting someone to be behind her. “Are you here with Sam Crockett?”

Harper’s stomach lurched and then throbbed, as if she’d been punched. For long seconds she literally could not speak. Finally, she swallowed away the tightness in her throat.

“Is this some kind of joke? What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

Magdalen Pearce looked genuinely confused by the questions. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” she said. “We had an appointment to meet Samuel Crockett here about an hour ago. We drove in on the east road, exactly as he directed, and have been surveying the area while we waited. I know he’s a busy man; we weren’t terribly concerned that he’s been detained.”

Harper had no idea where to begin or how to tell this woman she had to be mistaken. There was no “east road.” Her father couldn’t have made an appointment with these people from beyond the grave.

Her heart pounded with awful realization. He certainly could have. He’d only been dead five days. Nobody had expected to find strong, Wyoming-steeled Sam Crockett collapsed in the barn on Thursday morning. Still, he’d have told his wife about meeting with an
oil company
. Certainly she’d looked at his calendar after he’d died. Harper wanted to rail at the intruders, but deep in her sorrow-filled, and now confused, heart she knew that wasn’t fair. Slowly she dismounted, her legs starting to stiffen from two hours in the saddle after two years out of it. She’d ridden her entire childhood but had only found time to ride once in a while on her rare visits home.

Corralling her drifting thoughts and focusing on the group of polo-shirted people, she held out her hand to the woman. The handshake was as tight and businesslike as Harper had expected.

“I’m Harper Crockett, Sam’s daughter.”

“How good of you to come,” Magdalen Pearce said.

“I’m afraid I have very bad news. My father passed away last week—unexpectedly.”

“Oh, dear heavens, I’m terribly sorry. What happened?”

The woman seemed utterly sincere. There wasn’t any reason to take offense or umbrage to her question, but Harper’s blood started a slow simmer, and she stared at the entourage trying to figure out why.

“A heart attack,” she said simply. “I’m also afraid he didn’t tell anyone about a meeting with you. Or, if he did, it was totally forgotten.”

“Certainly understandable,” Ms. Pearce said.

“I happen to be out here today, otherwise nobody would have met you. I’m sorry you made the trip for nothing.” No, she really wasn’t.

“It doesn’t need to be for nothing. Ms. Crockett.” One of the men, fiftyish and squat as a fire hydrant, spoke. “We could finish our survey and simply send the report to whoever is in charge. We can speak at a more convenient time.”

At the man’s suggestion, Magdalene Pearce eyes took on a sheen of excitement, erasing all the sympathy she’d just displayed.

Or maybe Harper was making that up. Maybe she was too numb to read emotions accurately. Anger was definitely flaring a little bit too easily today. Still, she shook her head firmly. “No. In all honesty, I can’t tell you exactly who’s in charge at the moment. I have as much authority to speak for the family as anyone, however, and I can tell you that we aren’t interested in gas and oil exploration on Paradise Ranch.”

“With all due respect,” Magdalene said. “Your father was extremely interested.”

“I doubt that. He was pretty proud of the pristine land he owned.”

“I could show you the preliminary documents he signed, allowing us to start some field testing.”

Harper breathed slowly and clutched Chevy’s reins, her knuckles straining white beneath her skin. Confusion and disbelief assailed her more than anger, but still she controlled her temper with effort.

“Please understand. I don’t want to discuss this now, and I don’t want you to conduct any kind of surveys or tests on my property until I have a chance to talk to my family. Once I have, I’ll get back to you if need be. If one of you has a card?”

Three cards appeared almost before she finished asking. She took them without so much as a glance.

“Please do call us as soon as possible,” Magdalene said. “We’re very eager to follow up on some initial findings. I think your family might be sitting on a black gold mine.”

She smiled as if she considered herself a modern-day fairy godmother and thought Harper should shower her with thanks for the chance to go to the ball.

Harper pushed back angrily at her grandmother’s voice from hours earlier, warning them about the ranch’s dire straits. The truth couldn’t stave off her astonishment over this blatant display of greed.

“You did hear me?” she asked. “We buried my father yesterday. This haste feels more than a little disrespectful. I’d like to ask you to leave now and let us deal with some other issues first. If we’re still interested, we’ll be in touch.”

She had no intention of mentioning she hadn’t lived at Paradise for eight years. As far as these people were concerned, she wanted them to believe she had every moral right to take charge of their current situation.

Magdalene Pearce opened her mouth, but she got cut off by fireplug man, who reached around her and held out
his
hand. “I’m sorry, Ms. Crockett. Of course, we’ll leave immediately. I think we’re all as shocked as you, and your family must be and are scrambling for the right words.”

She knew why
he
was on the team.

“Thank you, Mr. . . . ”

“Brian Baumgartner. Another analyst. I’ll look forward to hearing from someone in your family whenever the time is right.”

Brian Baumgartner had just saved his company’s hide. Harper didn’t see his female colleague’s lustful light of black gold fever in his kind smile. Instead he carried an air of wisdom that let her trust his promise they’d leave.

“It was lovely to meet you.” Magdalen Pearce’s material-girl fire had died down again, too, and her sincere voice returned. “Truly, our deepest condolences on your father’s passing.”

Passing? That was too soft. A church word. One she’d used herself earlier to soften the blow of reality: death. On her father’s
death.
And
dead
meant he was so permanently gone that she couldn’t go riding back to him and find out what on earth he’d been thinking. Consorting with an oil company, giving away an heirloom camera, leaving the ranch in jeopardy. Being the nicest asshole anyone had ever known.

Cole. She could run to him. He might know—

You don’t know him anymore. Why would you even think that?

“Thank you.”

She managed to choke out the required words without tears, but they ripped through her throat, leaving it aching to cry for a father who, even from the grave, had managed to betray her and turn her world into a distorted painting she didn’t recognize.

“W
HO IS THE
man we buried yesterday? Nobody I remember.”

Cole listened to Harper’s sharp words slice incongruously through a thick sadness she’d worn like false skin ever since returning from her half-day ride. Her family, truncated and skeletal now that the triplets had left for Denver, took up five puny spaces at the end of the massive dining table built thirty years earlier by Sebastian Crockett, who, he’d heard many times, fully intended for it to easily handle huge family gatherings. Sadie had left for her room right after eating or they’d have been six. The remains of funeral leftovers lay before them—a quiet supper. Until now.

“A lot changed for your father in the years you’ve been gone. He changed, too.” Bella’s words held the gentlest of reproaches.

“Apparently.”

They sat like opposing countries at the United Nations. He and Harper took up one side of the table, Joely and Mia the other, and Bella served as the linchpin at the head.

“We always supported you girls and your decisions for college, careers, and building your lives away from Wyoming,” she said. “But because of that, I think you owe your father the same respect and support. He always did what he felt was best for Paradise, and until the economy took a fall, he did a very good job of it. He kept the ranch going through a lot of adversity.”

“Three generations have been through a lot of financial hardships, Mama,” Harper said. “Somehow they managed to squeak through without selling out to any outside parties. You knew about his dealings with Mountain Pacific?”

“I only knew he thought about the possibility of selling some mineral rights. It has been the way out of financial crisis for many ranchers. I didn’t know he’d actually set up a meeting.”

“It’s just exploration,” Mia said. “If done properly, nothing will happen until we say so.”

Cole squirmed. There were things he hadn’t told Harper about his summer job, and this topic could easily blow up in his face. It didn’t surprise him that she was upset by this. For years she’d led the stubborn, zealous fight of youth to keep everything on the ranch as natural as possible. Sam had sometimes voiced frustration with his second daughter because the things she’d wanted him to do—plant organic hay, raise free-range chickens, restore mountain prairie lands—were expensive and impractical.

“You tell them, Cole,” she said. “You can’t think it’s a great idea?”

Damn.

“Harpo, I don’t know. I don’t have enough details.”

“What? After how hard your family fought to keep your ranch intact and beautiful?”

“And how well did that work out for us?” He was no longer bitter about having had to sell the Double Diamond, but if he’d learned about a source of income before they’d done it, he would have snatched at it.

“Oh, come on. Would you have allowed all that machinery, all that oil rigging on your land? You didn’t see where this was. Anything Mountain Pacific erected would be in the Wolf Paw Valley between us and the mountains. That magnificent view we’re so proud of? Picture a lovely derrick or ten between us and Grand Teton. Picture black, oily landscape and habitat, not to mention loss of grazing land if one of them blows.”

“You don’t know they’d find oil at all,” Amelia said. “It doesn’t hurt to look.”

“And if they do find a ‘black gold mine,’ as these people told me today? It’s too late then, don’t you think? We’d have sold our souls.”

“Oh, that’s not a little dramatic.” Amelia rolled her eyes.

“So put your name in the ‘for’ column, then?” Harper’s eyes shone with anger.

“I wasn’t aware we were voting.”

“We’re not voting on anything,” Bella said. “We’re discussing. And in this issue, like the others, no decision needs to be reached tonight. Personally, I think it’s a gift from the hand of God that Harper ran into these people. We are forewarned and forearmed.”

“What’s your vote, Mom?” Joely asked.

With a great sigh, Bella hugged herself and ran her hands quickly up and down her upper arms as if she were cold. For the first time since Cole had arrived home, she looked small, uncertain, and exhausted. “I don’t want this beautiful piece of land marred by ugly man-made structures like oil wells. But I also know how bad things look on the books. I don’t know yet what the right answer is.”

“The real right answer is to sell and let someone else worry about it,” Amelia said. “None of us has the time to deal with things like this. Honestly? I don’t know what there is to discuss. This all makes it clearer than ever that we can’t keep this place.”

As it had ever since Mia had first made this declaration, a boulder settled more deeply and painfully into Cole’s stomach. He couldn’t bear the thought of selling Paradise Ranch now. Not when he was this close to getting the Double Diamond back. Once he had the money secured, he could pay off his debt to the Crocketts, and
then
they could sell.

“Doesn’t heritage mean anything at all to you, Mia?” Harper asked.

“I don’t see how you can ask that, Harper. You haven’t exactly been gracing people here with your presence around here the last, oh, eight years or so. I’d say heritage means at least as much to me as it does to you.”

To her credit, Harper’s cheeks flamed with cherry-tomato spots of color. For one moment she looked like she wanted to counter, but her features relaxed in defeat. “Touché,” she said.

Cole’s heart twisted in sympathy. She’d never held her opinions lightly, but she usually knew when she’d overstepped her boundaries.

“I have an idea,” he said. “Tomorrow, let’s all take a ride out to where Harper met the oil company crew today. We’ll have a good look at the land that’s involved and then discuss it more.”

“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Joely said. “I’d like that.”

“We don’t have enough horses for all five of us right now,” Harper said. “Dad’s gelding and Rico and Neil’s horses are the only ones here. Mom, why don’t you have your horse anymore?

“We had to put him down six months ago. Since I rarely rode anymore, I never looked hard for a replacement.”

“We used to keep ten horses around here,” Joely said. “What happened?”

“There are still tasks we need horses for.” Bella gave a shrug. “Moving the cattle around close-in, the calving season, and a handful of jobs in the winter. But the trucks and four-wheelers were already indispensable when you were young. You know you can check a lot more fence in a day with a truck and a toolbox than with a few hand tools in a saddlebag.”

“But there are so many places you can’t get to by vehicle,” Harper said.

“We can survey them by helicopter or plane. If we need to get someplace remote, we can determine from the air how to best do it.”

“My dad still has his plane,” Cole said. “He takes landowners up on a for-hire basis now.”

“Still, no matter how convenient trucks and planes are, a ranch can’t survive without good horses.” Joely shared a troubled look with Harper.

“But more and more they can get by with fewer,” Bella said.

A moment of uneasy silence fell after that. Cole found himself watching Harper from the corner of his eye. He could almost see her processing all the information she was taking in.

“So . . . ” She frowned. “There used to be the one old-fashioned round-up every fall. The first herd would get brought in the last five or ten miles on horseback. Are you saying that’s not done anymore?”

“There hasn’t been time or manpower,” Bella said. “All they do on horseback now is the last push into the main cattle yard and the sorting. Last year all it took was your father, Leif, Bjorn, Neil, and Rico.”

“Not Bjorn’s kids? Not Rico’s? It used to be the best family time we had when it came to ranch tasks.” Harper stared around the room. “Why aren’t we all saddened by this? This is something we talked about all the time, around dinner tables and campfires and family outings. How we’d never let the old way be forgotten. Now you’re saying my own father allowed this to happen?”

“Sit down, Harper. What happened to my kind little artist?”

“That’s what you think of me, isn’t it? Still a little girl with her head in the clouds.” She looked around. “What have we all let happen around here by leaving and staying away?”

“Don’t be dramatic. As if we could have changed anything Dad decided to do anyway.” Mia spoke quietly.

“We certainly could have tried.” Harper’s voice rose in agitation.

“Girls. Stop it.” For the first time, Bella raised her voice. “Let me tell you what’s happened since you’ve been gone. Ranching has continued to grow with the times. There are still many things we do the old way, but there are efficiencies and new techniques that have saved our skin many times by helping us get things done faster and for less money. We needed all the help we could get the past couple of years.”

“The bottom line again. I see.” Harper was not to be mollified.

“The line that gave you all food, shelter, college, and the lives you wanted, yes.”

“Harper, you make my point. Isn’t this just another nail in the Paradise coffin?” Mia sighed theatrically.

“Kind of a bad choice of words, don’t you think?” Joely asked.

“Intentionally so.” Mia leaned back in her chair. Cole stared at her. When had she turned into this cool, hard Steve Jobs? “Our time here is dying—as surely as Dad died. I am sorry to say it, but there’s no other logical way to solve this. Look, Harper. I know you don’t think I understand, but that’s not it. I hate all this as much as you do. But have you got time to go on a week-long round up so you can have your time to live in the past? Of course you don’t. And neither do I. We
all
work. Does anyone have vacation time enough to come back here in between duties of your other job and run this place? Or fight off the
evil
oil executives for that matter? Don’t answer, it was rhetorical. Bottom line is, who here honestly has time to fix all these problems?”

“I do.”

Dead silence followed the quiet words. Cole stared across the table to Joely. Stunning, popular, Rodeo Queen Joely lifted a pale face to her siblings and mother. Her saucer-eyes looked like they belonged to a child who’d realized she’d taken a stupid dare—like maybe to walk across the Grand Canyon on a spaghetti noodle. But she lifted her chin.

“I have Mom, and Leif, and Bjorn and his family. I can do it.”

“What about Tim? Your job in LA?” Harper asked.

Cole hadn’t thought Joely could go any paler. She lowered her head and stared at her hands, which fidgeted on the table until she clasped them firmly together. When she’d stilled them, she spread them open and grasped the wedding ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. Slowly, with her mouth pinched as if the motion hurt like hell, she pulled the ring off and set it on the table.

“There is no Tim. There is no job.”

Cole hadn’t thought the silence could get any deeper either. Wrong again. He knew exactly what the others were thinking because the disbelief rocketed through him, too. This was Joely—perfect, tanned, admired, and always put-together Joellen Brigitta Crockett. Never a hair out of place, rarely anything but a smile on her face. Suddenly she looked like a ghost of that golden girl.

“Oh, Joely, what’s going on?” Harper was the first to move, her anger evaporated and her natural empathy back in place.

She threw her arms around her sister, enveloping her face and shoulders. For a moment they clung and then Joely pushed her back.

“I couldn’t bear to tell you,” Joely said. “Tim left a month ago. Classic LA story—he got tired of me and found someone he says he loves more. Simple as that.”

“Sweetheart, I’m sorry.” Bella reached her, and this time Joely stayed enveloped in the embrace.

“I’m sorry, too.” Her voice caught, diffused and muffled against Bella’s slender arms. “I had no intention of telling anyone now. Even when Grandma noticed I was keeping something in. Like Harper said, this time isn’t supposed to be about any of us. It’s about Daddy. But I’ve known for months now I can’t stay in LA. And I can’t sit here and let anyone talk about selling Paradise when I was just starting to think I could come home.”

“I wish you’d have told me,” Bella said in a quiet voice.

“I couldn’t. You would have had to tell Dad, and he . . . ”

“He what?” Bella scoffed gently. “He loved you.” Her eyes roamed the table, taking in everyone seated at its venerable sides. “Someday you’ll believe he loved you all. Joely, family pulls together when something goes wrong. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t live here, this is home. Tell us what happened, we’re here.”

“We’re all here, sis.” Mia leaned forward and rubbed Joely’s upper arm. “I’m sorry, too. Is it appropriate to call my brother-in-law a douche bag?”

Joely sat up and wiped tears from her cheeks. A small smile crept onto her lips. “You know what? Sure. He’s a class-A douche. If there are rankings for such things.”

Cole pushed from the table, stepped behind Joely, and planted a kiss on her crown. She’d been one of their Crockett-Wainwright band of kids, right along with him and her sisters.

“I’m sorry, too, Jo-Jo,” he said. “I’ll go beat him up for you if you want.”

“Would you?” She tilted her head way back and looked up at him.

“I’m on a plane first thing.”

“Thank you.”

Cole patted her shoulder. He touched Harper’s as well, although when she caught his eyes he wanted to do more than touch—he wanted to erase the mess of hard, sad emotions on her face.

Harper had always absorbed emotions like a sponge. Always taken on too many worries and championed too many causes. Now he could see her concern for every problem facing the family warring with her righteous indignation over her environmental beliefs. But what were her deep-down feelings? What was she burying inside to cause such confusion in her eyes?

He turned without explanation and made his way into the kitchen. Alcohol was rarely the right solution to desperate emotional times, but maybe this once Sam’s medicinal cure would be a balm and a needed anesthetic—and Cole had something specific in mind.

In the wall between the kitchen and the dining room was an elaborate, built-in entertainment bar that opened from either side. Cole took his time looking through the variety of good alcohols Sam had stocked and searching out the item Sam had shown him once several years before. He found it still there, a golden, barrel-shaped bottle tucked into the farthest corner of the bottom shelf. Sam had said he was saving it, but for exactly what he didn’t know.