Marry Me, Cowboy (Copper Mountain Rodeo) (13 page)

“Second condition is that you’re getting married in that dress.”

“You mean the wedding gown from the store window, Saturday night. The one that reminded me of my flower-girl dress, when I was three?”

“That’s the one. A proper wedding dress.”

“Because it’s a
wedding
.” She remembered the way he’d said those words to her a week ago, with such exaggerated patience.

“Yeah, because it’s a wedding,” he growled. “And because it reminded you of the flower-girl dress.” He added very softly, “Don’t you think your mom and dad might like that?”

Tegan felt tears pricking behind her eyes. She closed them quickly, and nodded. “I think they might.”

He could tell she didn’t want to cry. He was pretty good that way. In a much more casual tone, he added, “And plus I liked that dress a lot.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat and blinked away the tears. “I liked it, too...”

They grinned at each other.

“Where are we going to do this?” Tegan asked.

“Couple of pretty nice churches in town… Probably a few nice ones in your part of the world, too.”

“And when?”

“Don’t care. As soon as you like. Mom will want to come, even if it’s in Australia. She loves weddings.”

“I’d love your family to be there. Do you think your brother or your sisters – ?”

He put his fingertips against her lips. “Details. We’ll talk later.”

“Oh, we will?”

“For a man who doesn’t know how to talk to women,” he drawled, very low, his voice caressing her skin, “I think I’m getting pretty damned good at it.”

“For a woman who likes a man who can talk,” she whispered back, “I actually wish you’d shut up, right now, so we can go and get naked in my trailer.”

“No arguments from me on that…”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“You weren’t wrong about the country music in Tamworth,” Jamie said.

“Wh—? Oh, the Big Golden Guitar.” Tegan laughed.

They were driving past it, on the New England Highway coming in to the thriving New South Wales country town, in the early afternoon of a November day whose heat already hinted at the summer to come.

The guitar was almost forty feet high, made of fiberglass and steel, and painted a bright gold, in celebration of Australia’s annual Country Music Association Awards. The awards had begun in 1973 and past winners included musicians such as Kasey Chambers, Troy Cassar-Daly, Lee Kernaghan and Keith Urban.

There was a tourist family standing in front of the large musical instrument right now, having their picture taken. “Wanna stop?” Tegan suggested.

Jamie grinned. “Next time.”

“Pity we’re not here in January, for the Country Music Festival.”

“Next time,” he said again.

But Tegan’s stomach kicked suddenly. They were almost… no, not
home
. The house in Tamworth where Dad and Mum had moved wasn’t home. She’d never been there, so how could it be? They’d sent pictures, and it was a sweet place, older style, with white-painted brick and wide verandas, a cottage garden all around it, and tall chimneys above a sloping galvanized iron roof, but it wasn’t home.

She and Jamie were almost there, and all she could think about was that it wasn’t the farm, it wasn’t where she belonged. She pulled over to the side of the road, the strong Australian sunlight still glinting on the big guitar just behind them. “Can’t do this.”

Jamie leaned across and put his arms around her. “Sure you can.” But his voice was tender, and she knew he understood.

They’d only flown into Sydney this morning. It was five weeks since the Copper Mountain Rodeo, and their connection had deepened so much since then that she had to work to remember all the prickliness and hostility that had once sparked between them. There’d been so much to do and so much change, since then.

She’d sold Kara her half of the horse trailer and pickup, and Jamie had sold half of his to Chet. They’d competed in a couple more rodeos, earned a little money, gained a few more bruises, then brought their horses back to the MacCreadie ranch, to turn them out for the winter.

They’d stayed at the ranch a few days, because there was a wedding gown to collect from Marietta’s very pretty bridal store. The morning after the rodeo, Tegan had put a down-payment on the dress, but hadn’t wanted to cart it around with her on the rodeo circuit.

They’d decided to get married in Australia, and Jamie was flying his parents out for the December wedding next month, using some of the money Chet had given him for the trailer and pickup, to pay for the fares. Neither Melinda nor Rob had even owned a passport before, but Jamie’s older sister Rose was helping them with the practicalities, and she’d promised to come home to the ranch to help RJ with the work during the ten days Rob and Melinda would be away.

Tegan was looking forward to seeing them. She’d warmed to Jamie’s parents a lot during her recent stay at the ranch, and Jamie’s dad tickled her ego by being quite impressed with her skill set as a farm-bred girl.

She’d been thinking about the farm a lot.

“We should have stayed a few days in Sydney,” she whispered now, against Jamie’s warm brown neck.

“Yeah? To get over the jet-lag? To see your brother?”

“You know not for those reasons.”

“Oh, you mean so you could put off biting the bullet on seeing your parents for as long as possible.”

“Yeah, that.”

“For a barrel-racer, you’re not that brave.”

“If this is designed to turn me stubborn and make me want to prove something, Jamie, it’s not working.”

“Damn, I thought I understood you through and through by now.”

“You’re not as good as you think. It’s probably going to take you at least another three days for that.”

“So what do you want to do, cowgirl?”

She sighed. “My parents’ new place is about four minutes from here.”

He kissed her, slow and sweet, then said gently, as if he could see into her messy upside-down soul, “Yeah, and how far is your farm?”

Oh, shoot, he really did understand!

“About an hour.”

“It’s not even three o’clock in the afternoon yet. You told your parents we’d be there before six. Do you want to?”

Deliberately, she misunderstood. “Be there before six?”

“Go see your farm.”

“It’s not my farm.”

“That’s not a reason to stay away. If this was Montana, and your family were ranchers from way back, and your place had been sold, the new owners would bring you inside and make you coffee if you came for a visit.”

“They’d do it here, too. Except it would be tea. Or beer.”

“Move over.”

“What?”

“Or go around the front of the car, I don’t mind.”

“You’re driving?”

“Just let me know if I accidentally go on the wrong side of the road, okay? And tell me where to make the turns.”

Home
looked exactly the same.

The wrought iron sign with the property’s name, Braeside, was still hanging beside the main gate, flanked on either side by a line of whitewashed posts. Tegan hopped out of the rental car and opened it. Dad had never wanted a livestock grid, as they were called in Australia, fronting onto the road, and she must have opened this gate about a thousand times.

A line of healthy young eucalyptus trees ran beside the dirt road that led to the house. Dad had planted those about five years ago, and they’d grown massively after the end of the drought. Now, their spring growth was still pinkish-red, but would soon settle in to the usual dusty green.

“Just so you know,” Jamie said, “I won’t notice if you’re crying a lot, because I’m really having to concentrate on the driving.”

“I’m not going to cry.”

“Now I’m disappointed.”

“Why would you possibly be disappointed?”

“Like making you feel better afterward…”

Oh.

She grinned, thinking that only Jamie MacCreadie could have her smiling as she came in sight of the house, instead of fighting to the death with the lump in her throat.

The old farmstead looked quite a lot like the place Mum and Dad had bought in town, and this hadn’t really struck her before, not until now, as she saw the old brick chimneys peeking above the willowy pepper trees that surrounded the house, glimpsed the galvanized iron roof glinting in the sun, then came into full view of the wide front veranda that offered the necessary cool shade for most of the year.

“If anyone is home, they don’t know we’re coming,” she muttered.

“Well, this place is isolated enough to make our ranch feel like it’s on Main Street…”

“Wild exaggeration, MacCreadie.”

“…so they probably haven’t seen another human being since they moved in, and will fall on your neck and weep.”

“Yeah. They’ll do that.”

Someone had heard the car.

Someone was saying her
name?

“Tegan? Tegan Ash?”

A figure emerged from the big, half-walled shed that Tegan had optimistically called “the stables” as a child. Clad in jeans and a grubby polo shirt, it was a young woman… her own age… and as they moved toward each other, recognition came. “
Natalie?
” Natalie from pony club?

“It
is
you?” Nat said on a shriek. “What are you doing here? Your Dad said you’re permanently in America.”

They were both laughing, and in another few seconds they’d reached each other and were hugging, too, while Jamie looked on with a bemused grin.

“It’s complicated,” Tegan said. “This is Jamie.”

It got even more complicated as she made introductions, and Nat commented on Jamie’s accent, and Tegan tried to tell her they were planning a wedding soon, without receiving squeals in reply.

She failed at that. There were definitely squeals.

And then there was a confusing explanation to Jamie about the two of them being at pony club state camp together, eight years ago, and Natalie coming to stay for a few days with her horse, and meeting up on the ag show circuit a few times after that, and then have to explain what “ag show” meant.

“Oh, you mean like a county fair?” Jamie said.

“But you have to tell me what you’re doing here,” she said to Nat.

“Just helping Dad for a few days, while Mum’s having some surgery on her foot. Now you have to tell me what
you’re
doing here.”

“No, but…” She was confused for a moment, then she understood. “What, you mean it was your parents who bought our place?”

“What, you didn’t know?”

More squeals, and this time Tegan couldn’t pretend to anyone, least of all herself, that these weren’t tears. To discover that her farm had gone to the family of a friend…

“Tea? Coffee? Something cold?” Natalie said a little later.

“I could murder a cup of tea,” Tegan confessed.

“She’s violent,” Jamie commented.

“She always has been,” Natalie agreed. “Beer for you, Jamie?”

“Better go with the tea. My eyes are starting to feel like they’ve got sand in them.”

“Well, they probably have. It’s pretty hot and dusty today…”

“It’s beautiful,” Tegan said, because even a summer dust storm would have seemed beautiful to her right now. “I can’t believe your parents live here.”

“Well, Dad always wanted to be a real farmer, instead of a real estate agent with a hobby farm. He did the whole mid-life crisis thing and got an ag degree.”

“Mine did the opposite, moved into town.”

Nat shrugged and grinned. “Each to their own. And in other news…” She made a suggestive face. “Sounds like you’re getting a ranch…
and
a cowboy.”

“Did that help?” Jamie asked forty minutes later, as they drove away again.

“Helped a lot.” More than Tegan could say. “For some reason I always pictured horrible people buying it. People who’d bulldoze the house, or cut down the pepper trees.”

“Did you never ask your mom or dad about who’d bought it?”

She stayed silent, then told him, “Okay, you made your point. I should have talked to them about it more, instead of closing up in anger.”

“I didn’t say a word.”

“You are so annoying that you can even make your points in total silence.”