The Bride Wore Denim (8 page)

“Nice day for a ride.”

Cole’s voice startled her slightly and she laughed, embarrassed by the constant woolgathering that was making her so scatterbrained. A psychiatrist would excuse her, considering the events of the past week. Her family wouldn’t consider it odd in any case. But she didn’t like it.

“Hi,” Harper said.

“Hi.” He grinned, his face, shaded by the brim of his tan cowboy hat, was tough and angled and boyishly impish at the same time. “You doing okay?”

“Of course.”

“Hey, it’s not that obvious an answer to me. You didn’t even say goodnight. And after all those promises . . . ”

The wink he gave, underscored by a lecherous little grin, triggered a groan of dismay.

“Oh, don’t even remind me. I’m totally humiliated, and I’m sorry. You plied me with way too much Scotch.”

He chuckled. “It was good stuff.”

“I guess it was, but honestly? A thousand bucks . . . ” She blew a fart sound and swished her hand through the air. “Makes more sense to buy a Coach bag or Prada shoes. At least you get multiple uses out of them. And they don’t make an ounce of sense to me either.”

“I’ve always seen this lack of pretense in you. Fart noises and Birkenstocks, right? Real sexy, Harpo.”

“Hey, you used to laugh plenty hard at the fart noises—at least I don’t do them with my armpits like some people I know. And do you see Birkenstocks anywhere on my person? I know how to dress properly for this place.”

“Awww, I’m just giving you a bad time. We were always good at that.”

The reminder was mildly depressing. Next thing she knew he’d be stealing her boots and hiding them like he’d also done when they were kids. She didn’t want to believe he still saw her as that short, stocky, fart-sound-making preteen from almost twenty years ago.

“Sorry,” she grumbled. “Must be my thousand-dollar hangover.”

“You don’t get hangovers. I know that about you, too.”

“So I don’t drink much anymore. I’ve become a lightweight.”

“What? Old Tris doesn’t take you out to the finer establishments of Chicago?” He waggled his brow, and she leaned sideways in her saddle to sock him on the arm, finally laughing.

“Not to the seedy establishments either. Or to the movies. Or picnics. Or anywhere.”

“Hey, then I’m one up on him. I’m taking you on a picnic.”

“No. I’m taking
you
on a picnic.” The new turn in the conversation reboosted her mood.

“I’ve missed this kind of thing, Harpo. Glad you’re still fun to tease.”

At that her residual embarrassment from the night before along with her fears that she was only as good as a childhood memory to him, dissipated like magic. They rode in companionable silence, and the longer he stayed next to her, the more comfortable she grew, absorbing his quiet confidence, reveling in his easy manner and unwavering friendship. She gave up wondering why she was so hyperaware of him this trip and let herself simply enjoy.

He rode as one with his horse, left hand loose but sure on the reins, right hand relaxed on his thigh. Fascinated by the ridges of veins on the back of his hand, which defined the word masculine in visual form, she stared at the dusting of hair behind his knuckles and let her gaze meander up his arm to the roll of his plaid shirt sleeve below his elbow. Broad chest. Defined shoulders—obvious even beneath the loose cotton of his button-down shirt. Corded neck. Full lips—

She cut herself off as tension crept back up her neck and heat into her cheeks.

Leaning forward, she stroked Bungu’s long, black mane as his head bobbed easily with his walk, and concentrated on his beauty rather than Cole’s. She willed her friend to start talking again, suddenly craving the goofball she’d resented earlier. The goofball would be preferable—safer at least—to the strong, silent, movie star–looking cowboy.

They came around the base of the mountain, and this time no rumbling trucks marred the valley vista stretching before them. Her mother and sisters fanned out into a line, and everybody halted. For a moment only wind rustling in the hills and the snorting of the horses filled the warm air. A wispy bank of clouds trailed from the Tetons in the distance, like banners from Camelot.

“I haven’t been here in ages,” her mother said. “It is truly stunning.”

“And now imagine a half-dozen oil wells,” Joely said.

Harper could have kissed her for saying the words first and saving her from the obvious everyone had expected her to state.

“The first question would be whether there isn’t somewhere else they could put them,” her mother said. “Or explore. I suppose if this is where the oil is . . . ”

“And what if it is?” Harper asked. “Can’t we decide we don’t want them here for no reason other than we don’t want them? Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with politics or thinking one belief is good and another bad. Maybe it’s our ranch, and we want it to look like this for the next generation.”

Nobody countered her.

“As I recall, there’s a great picnic spot around the next curve,” Mia said.

“I’m all for that,” Joely agreed. “I know there’s chocolate in our saddle bags.”

The entire mood lightened. Once they’d tethered the horses, their mother pulled a large, blue-and-white checked cloth from her saddle bag and shook it out on the grass beside a rocky outcropping. From the rest of the bags came a seemingly endless supply of sandwiches, fruit, carrots and celery sticks, two Thermoses of coffee and hot chocolate, and some magical plastic container filled with thick, gooey brownies.

Half an hour later, full and sated, they all sat back against boulders and sighed in contentment. “Bella, you are a true wizard—this was delicious,” Cole said.

“It was a perfect thing for me to do today. Thank you,” she replied.

“We could stay here,” Harper said. “Ignore all the things there are to decide.”

“I definitely like the sound of that,” her mother said. “But I need to head back. I promised myself to work on some thank-you notes. I’d like to have them done before you girls leave—just because I’d rather be sad with you all around.”

Joely wrapped her in a hug. “I’ll help with that, Mom.”

“I have a conference call at two,” Mia said. “Then of course I’ll help, too.”

“We all should,” Harper agreed.

“I’d like to take the long way back,” Cole said. “Finish going around Wolf Peak and up across Kwinaa Ridge and see what the view is from there. Maybe it’s a little more hidden and protected. How about if I meet you all back at the house?”

Harper’s emotions swung wildly at his request. How much nicer would it be to continue riding than to go back and face funeral thank-yous? But her mother deserved her support.

“You shouldn’t do that alone,” her mother said. “We could take the extra time.”

“Why don’t you all go?” Mia said. “I don’t have time before my call, unfortunately, but I can go back by myself—this is a perfectly easy, safe trail.”

Harper studied her elder sister. Mia had been particularly subdued today—quiet and nonargumentative. She didn’t know what that meant, but it did dispel her own defensiveness and made the afternoon and all the impending weighty discussions lurking in its shadows much less onerous.

“Harper, you go with Cole,” Joely said. “I’ll get us started on the notes. Mia can do the call, and you two will be back in a couple of hours.”

“We could all go tomorrow,” Mia replied, a hint of reservation stealing into her voice for the first time.

“No, no, we’d have to borrow horses again,” their mother said, smiling at Harper. “You two go. We’ll see you when you get home.”

They packed up the picnic with no further discussion, and before she knew it, Harper was waving her sisters and mother down the trail. When she turned back to Cole, he was staring off across the valley again.

“You want to look for a place to hide oil wells, don’t you?” she asked, trying hard to keep accusation from her voice.

She didn’t relish bringing up the subject. It seemed like enough to be here, to absorb the beauty, the ripe scents of late summer. At that moment, she wanted Joely to succeed. Joely who
hadn’t
changed her mind overnight. She wanted Mia to be wrong that selling Paradise Ranch was the smart thing to do.

“I want you to look at all the options, that’s all.”

“You think I haven’t over the years?”

“I know you’ve looked at all the reasons you hate oil. I respect that, Harpo, I do.” He nodded to the grass where they’d been sitting for lunch. “Come on, sit down. I want to ask you something.”

“Fine.”

He sounded so reasonable. She could be reasonable. She sat beside him, and he put one arm around her shoulders, pointing toward Grand Teton with the other. The little thrills of delight at his touch didn’t shock her anymore. The shoulds and shouldn’ts of being this close to him, however, gave her no peace. The shouldn’ts were screaming at her.

She stayed beside him anyway.

“Look out there,” he said. “What is it to you?”

“Stunning scenery,” she said.

“No. It’s stunning scenery to everybody. What is it to
you
? What do you want to keep it looking like that for?”

“Isn’t that a self-evident answer?”

“Not at all. You want it pretty. You could travel ten miles down the road, see the same vista without oil wells, and what would this one little piece matter?”

“Because it’s mine.”

“Ah. Is it, though? Do you plan to be here? Plan to come back here with a family? Children? Grandchildren? That’s what ‘mine’ means, you know.”

“Good gosh, Cole.” Anger rose quickly. “How am I supposed to know that? What is this, some kind of guilt trip?”

He took his arm from her shoulders and grasped her by both upper arms, turning her firmly to face him. “It’s not. Of course it’s not. There’s no right or wrong answer for you. But I know what I want, and I will fight for it.”

“Fight our family for it, you mean?”

“That’s not at all what I mean. I’d like to work with you for it. With Mia, Joely, the triplets, and your mother. If there’s a way to keep this place alive, I want to help find it. And it isn’t just for the pretty view.”

“What is this thing you want that you’ll fight for? Kids? Grandkids?”

“Absolutely. The things my parents never got to have.”

“And you’d like to give them a ruined landscape?”

“It doesn’t have to ruin it. You saw one disaster out of thousands of oil wells.”

“One disaster you can still see the effects of twelve years later if you go look.”

“Oh, and you have?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. Last winter when I was home.” He actually looked impressed. Harper glared at him. “I don’t just talk through my ass, Cole. I do my research.”

“Okay. I’ve never said you weren’t smart. You’re damn smart, Harper. And you care. I love that you care. But why hate this so much? Everyone uses oil. You flew here. You drove on asphalt made of petroleum. Finding oil here could help your family out.”

“I wish I didn’t have such a big footprint. I don’t back in Chicago. I’m vain about that.” She offered a tiny, sheepish smile. “But I don’t have an alternative. Believe me, if I were smart enough to come up with an electric airplane, I’d be the first on that project.”

“I believe you.”

“Look,” she said. “I know we can’t go back to zero oil in this world. That’s not my goal. But we’ll never have other alternatives that are affordable if places like Paradise Ranch keep feeding into the big money oil pot. That’s all.”

“So it is purely philosophical for you?”

“No!” She wanted to throttle him for his dogged attack. So what if it
was
philosophical? Everyone had a philosophy. She was now seeing his, too. One wasn’t right and the other wrong. “I do love this place. I do want it pristine. Why isn’t that enough? You should want it pristine, too, for these illusory future grandchildren of yours.”

“I want it to be, period.”

“There are other ways to save it.”

“I’ll grant you that. Today we’re exploring one way.”

They fell silent, and he put his arm around her again. Maybe they’d drawn lines in the sand, but she appreciated that he wasn’t angry. Surprisingly, her own irritation had gone, too.

“Do you want kids?” he asked.

What the heck?
Her brain had brought the topic of children up just that morning. This had to be some weird kind of psychic disturbance in The Force, she thought.

“I haven’t thought much about it,” she said. “I don’t think I do right now, the way my life is. You want a whole bunch, it sounds like.”

“Two or three to carry on the legacy.”

“Are you forgetting how well that didn’t work for Sam Crockett?” She said it lightly, but a seed of melancholy sprouted deep within her.

“Sam Crockett has six amazing daughters. They’ll figure out his legacy.”

His questions stopped. He embraced her shoulders again. She stared a long, silent while into the distance, across a view she’d memorized years and years ago. She did love it. She loved it with every fiber of her innermost being. And despite Cole’s points—valid ones, she had to admit—she would find a way to keep this untarnished for the future. Even if she came here alone when she was Grandma Sadie’s age to view it.

Cole stretched his long legs straight out and smiled. He made no move on her, and she was glad, despite the continuing thrill of being so close. She relaxed into his strong, silent western hero side and followed his lazy gaze to the horses, still staked by the bushes they were contentedly decimating. He reached up to scratch his chest and closed his eyes.

His muscles contracted and froze into a giant, steel block.

“Oh shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Harper!”

She shot to her feet at his sudden, frenzied cry, and he, too, rocketed to a stand. His hat hit the ground, his eyes rounded with genuine terror, and he flapped his arms and hunched his back like a drunken flamingo.

“What? What? Cole what’s wrong?” She jumped to his side.

“It’s in my shirt. It’s flippin’
in
my shirt. Oh, freakin’ God, it’s big as my hand.”

“What is? What are you talking about?” She didn’t know whether to laugh at his ridiculous dance or panic along with him.