Melissa Cutler - Cowboy Justice

She smoothed her fingertips along his jaw. “Of course I’ll marry you, Vaughn. Nothing else in the whole world makes me as happy as you.”

He slid the ring on her finger and admired her hand. “That’s more like it.” And then he gathered her close and kissed her. She could hear the squeals of joy from his parents, along with the clicking of a camera. She could hardly kiss Vaughn back, she was smiling so big.

For years, she’d fought what her heart was telling her to do. She’d let her mind convince her that happiness was out of her reach. And yet, she’d never stopped dreaming of a future with Vaughn, even when every other fiber of her being told her it was impossible. It turned out that her rebel heart knew what it was doing all along.

Jenna Sorentino was nothing if not self-sufficient. That trait had served her well for twenty-four years, but it was a bitch of a problem tonight. Because Matt Roenick—hard-bodied, bright-smiling Matt—was only interested in people he could save. Try as she might, she couldn’t figure out a palatable way to land herself in that position.

She sat two seats down from the head of the table at the rehearsal dinner for her older sister Amy’s wedding, watching Matt cut up Tommy’s chicken strips like he was the daddy she wanted him to be, all the while trying to dream up a problem Matt could solve for her that wouldn’t make her feel helpless.

It wasn’t that Jenna didn’t have problems. Besides the problem of Matt never giving her more than the time of day in the eight months she’d known him, she had a category 5 hurricane brewing with her two sisters. But there wasn’t another person on earth who could save her from that storm except herself. Not even the noble and dashing Matt Roenick.

That particular problem would have to wait until after Amy’s wedding, though, because she hadn’t damn near killed herself to put on the best wedding in Catcher Creek history only to ruin it with the truth.

A loud, banjo-heavy song exploded from the dance floor speakers. Jenna sipped her diet cola and tried not to wince outwardly. “It’s too early for banjo,” she called to Matt over Tommy’s head.

He met her gaze and one corner of his lips curved into a smile, revealing the very same dimple that had made her go weak in the knees the first time she’d seen it so many months ago. “Is it ever the right time for banjo?”

She swirled the ice in her glass and gave him her best faux-scholarly expression. “There’s a banjo window, but it’s very narrow. Only nine to eleven at night.”

His brows pushed together. “Not eight or seven, but nine?”

“Eight’s too early. You have to get nice and relaxed before banjo sounds good.”

He rewarded her joke with a laugh. “That makes perfect sense to me, even though I’d never heard the banjo rule before tonight.”

She shook her hair away from her cheeks and smiled, trying to tell him without words how much she loved their easy camaraderie. “Yes, well, some things are so obvious, they don’t need to be said.”

His eyes glimmered, like he loved their conversations as much as she did. “I’ll bear that in mind if I ever get the chance to take you to a bluegrass concert.”

Her smile fell. To distract herself from the urge to point out that he had the chance any old time he wanted because Smithy’s Bar had a standing event every Saturday night and all he had to do was ask, she picked a couple pieces of sawdust out of Tommy’s hair that she’d apparently missed on his first brushing-off, then ruffled his dark blond locks.

Leave it to a five-year-old to get himself coated with sawdust in the scant minutes between the time they entered the Sarsaparilla Saloon and got seated at their table on the far side of the dance floor.

“Uh-oh, buddy,” Matt said, nudging Tommy with his elbow. “I hate to break it to you, but it looks like your head’s sprouting sawdust.”

Tommy giggled. “If our floor ever got this dirty, Mama would pitch a tent.”

Matt quirked an eyebrow at Jenna. “Translation please?”

Love for her earnest little boy roused a smile from her lips once more. “I think you meant pitch a fit, and you’re exactly right. You know Mama loves clean floors, but this is a saloon, so it’s supposed to be messy. It’s part of the ambiance.”

“Am-bee-ance,” Tommy repeated, as though committing it to memory. Ever since it dawned on him that he’d be starting kindergarten in the fall, he’d been obsessed with rattling off big words, so Jenna made sure their conversations were dense with them.

It’d been her idea to hold the rehearsal dinner here. Kellan, her soon-to-be brother-in-law, had requested someplace casual, with dancing and beer. As small a town as Catcher Creek was, nothing in its blink-and-you’ll-miss-it downtown district fit the bill. Good thing Jenna was intimately familiar with just about every bar with a dance floor in New Mexico between Albuquerque and the Texas state line.

A glance at Amy made her stomach drop. Amy’s eye twitched and she was using the steak knife that’d come with her top sirloin to dice the side of steamed vegetables into tiny cubes. A sure sign her wedding nerves were getting intense.

Kellan was the only person in the world who could talk Amy off the ledge when anxiety got the best of her, but he was deep in conversation about steer prices with Vaughn, Jenna’s other soon-to-be brother-in-law. As much as Jenna wasn’t going to let her own problems get in the way of Amy’s perfect wedding, she wasn’t about to stand by while Amy ruined it either.

“How’s your meal, Ames?”

“Fine.” Her voice was strained and she’d answered without meeting Jenna’s eyes, focusing instead on slicing into a baby carrot.

Oh, crap.

Jenna pushed up from the table, smoothing the skirt of her swishy cotton dress as she stood. She met Matt’s startled gaze. “Could you keep an eye on Tommy for a bit?”

“Of course.”

“Amy, I need to talk to you outside. Could you spare a minute?”

Amy’s knife and fork froze. She blinked at her plate for a couple beats before standing. “Okay, yes. Outside would be good.”

Their movement must’ve caught Rachel’s eye because she broke from her conversation with Kellan and Vaughn and stood. “Where’re you going?”

As the oldest sister, Rachel had always been the mother figure and rock of the family that Jenna had needed growing up, supporting her through the toughest of times. As close as two sisters could be, they had an understanding of each other that ran deep and didn’t need words. However . . . from Jenna’s first recollection of her sisters, Amy and Rachel had gotten on like two tomcats locked in a barn. There wasn’t a situation the good Lord could throw at one that the other couldn’t make worse without even trying.

With Amy looking like she was going to blow a gasket at any moment, the last thing she needed was Rachel getting involved before Jenna had a chance to run damage control.

Without relinquishing her hold on Amy’s shoulders, she pressed close to Rachel. In as low a tone as she could muster, she hissed, “Bring us three shots of tequila, STAT.”

“What? You don’t drink.”

But Jenna was already hustling Amy from the table. She twisted her neck and drilled Rachel with a don’t mess with me glare. “Tequila. Now!”

The fenced-in patio out back of the saloon was bathed in a soft yellow glow from the strings of twinkle lights crisscrossing the tin roof. As they stepped out, a weathered, older man was snuffing a cigarette in an ashtray. He tipped the brim of his hat to them, then made his way back inside. The door bounced a few times before sealing shut, dulling the music to a muffled rhythm of vibrations.

Jenna spun Amy to face her. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

Amy wrapped her arms around her middle. “Nothing. What makes you think something’s wrong?”

Jenna pinched the bridge of her nose and silently recited the alphabet, a mom trick she’d learned as a way to maintain patience when under duress. And it worked near about all the time. Well, sort of. If she didn’t count the fact she’d never once made it past N.

“Spill it, Amy.”

Amy’s tongue poked against the inside of her cheek and Jenna could tell she was fighting hard to keep her composure. “Jake texted Kellan on our way here. Work emergency. That’s it. Two words. And Kellan can’t get him on the phone.”

From everything Amy had told her, Kellan made his only brother, Jake, his best man as a kind of olive-branch gesture, trying to mend their decades-old rift. And it had seemed to work, if they all ignored the fact that Jake hadn’t attended Kellan’s bachelor party, or shown up for the rehearsal at the church that afternoon. She’d figured intimate gatherings like this made him uncomfortable given the fragility of his and Kellan’s reconciliation, but it’d never occurred to her he might blow off the actual wedding.

“Jake’s a cop, and not a rural cop like we’re used to dealing with. LAPD is a different beast by far,” Jenna said. “I bet work emergencies are par for the course. There’s nothing he can do about that. Besides, he still has time. The wedding’s not until three.”

“That’s what Kellan said, but I looked up flights from L.A. to Albuquerque on my cell and the next one’s not until tomorrow at nine-thirty, L.A. time. It’s a two-hour flight, then a three-hour drive here, if everything goes perfectly. And that’s not counting time spent in the airport or at a car rental place. With the time difference, it’s impossible. But Kellan’s acting like nothing’s wrong, like he still believes Jake’ll make it work. And I don’t know what to do.”

It wasn’t like they could delay the ceremony, because every detail of the wedding and reception, from the caterer and DJ to the photographer, was hinging on a three o’clock start time, including the minister, who had a second wedding to perform later that evening. Still, a little fake optimism never hurt anything. “I bet everything will work out and he’ll make it on time.” If he hooks up with Superman or bribes his way onto a private jet.

Wide-eyed, Amy shook her hands, palms out, fingers stretched. “Don’t patronize me. I’m freaking out here!” The shrillness of her voice made Jenna’s teeth ache.

She grabbed hold of Amy’s shoulders and rubbed, praying that Rachel materialized with their shots in the next thirty seconds.

“Even if Jake doesn’t make it, everything will be fine. Vaughn is Kellan’s best friend. He’ll stand in as best man at the wedding, and he’s really good in front of crowds so he’ll be able to pull off a last-minute toast at the reception, no sweat. I’ll make sure he has a speech planned, okay? I’m not going to let anything ruin your special day, so calm down.”

The doors burst open. “Don’t tell her to calm down. Believe me, she hates it.” It was Rachel, balancing three shots in her hand. “Here, take a glass before I drop one.”

Jenna passed a shot to Amy, then took one for herself.

Amy frowned down at hers. “What are we doing with this stuff?”

Jenna clinked the lips of their glasses together. “What do you think? Shooting it.”

“I get really silly when I drink, Jen. You know that,” Amy said.

“That’s what I’m counting on.” And if one shot didn’t turn her from stressed to silly, Jenna wasn’t above buying round after round until Amy’s buzz set in.

Rachel nudged Jenna. “How long’s it been since you had a drink?”

“Well, Tommy’s five, so . . . nearly six years. Wow. But I need it tonight. We all do.”

“Isn’t this what AA calls enabling?” Rachel asked. “Am I causing you to fall off a wagon, or something?”

“I’m not an alcoholic and you know it. It’s just that I lost my appetite for the stuff when I got pregnant.”

Rachel sniffed her shot, then screwed up her face. “This tequila is making me lose my appetite. Why can’t we shoot whiskey instead?”

“Because whiskey’s not ladylike. Now hush up. You’re not weaseling out of this shot by whining. Do it for Amy.”

“You don’t have to do it, Rachel,” Amy said.

Jenna pinned Rachel with her best scolding expression. “Don’t listen to her. She’s the bride; she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. As the wedding planner, my word trumps all.”

Amy shook her head. “I don’t think that’s—”

“Fine. For Amy.” Rachel raised her glass in a toast, then tossed the tequila back.