grinned. “Yes.”
“Watch out,” he warned. “That’s Aurora Jones. She can emasculate you with one look. The woman makes my life miserable.”
“You’re, uh, involved?”
“No! There isn’t a man in town who would take her on.” He looked around the room, half expecting Aurora would pop out from behind a flower-covered post and badger him about her building permit again. “We have a professional relationship.”
“I thought she was nice.” Winter glared at him as if he’d just said Cinderella was an evil witch who stepped on mice and punched princes.
“I suppose she can be,” he offered. “When she wants to.”
Les’s grandfather leaned forward. “Did you see the grizzly bear inside the Dahl?”
Winter nodded. “It was a grizzly bear?”
The old man nodded. “Owen MacGregor’s grandfather shot that bear and had it mounted for the Dahl. There are some people around here who think a grizzly would be easier to get along with than Aurora Jones.”
“I beg your pardon,” Winter said. “But I must disagree.”
“So does my wife,” the old man declared. “She says she’s clever with a needle.”
“What does that mean, ‘clever with a needle’?”
“Quilting,” he explained. “The women around here spend hours cutting up fabric and sewing it back together.”
“I think we’ll go find my brother now,” Jake said, urging the child toward the door.
“Watch out. Aurora’s probably gone back to the kitchen with the rest of them.”
“The kitchen?” Mike Peterson, standing nearby, chuckled. “I hope she didn’t cook anything.”
“She didn’t,” Les assured him. “She donated the champagne instead.”
“Well, good,” Jerry muttered. “We won’t need the Red Cross tomorrow.”
* * *
ALL HE’D WANTED to do was find his brother. That’s all. He had Sam’s phone number. He had his address. Who would have thought an entire town would be closed for business on an April Sunday afternoon?
Now he was at a stranger’s wedding, on a ranch, in the middle of nowhere. He’d met the mayor and some of the locals and seen for himself the historic MacGregor Ranch. But he wanted to see Sam. Ten years was a long time. Ten years was pretty stupid.
“Brigadoon, that’s what this is,” his daughter said, following him out of the barn and into the sunshine. “Have you ever seen that movie?”
“No.” He started along a gravel path toward the main house, easily sixty yards away. A large addition jutted out from the back of the house, where a door was propped open.
“That’s where we are,” she said, hurrying to keep up. “In a land that time forgot.”
“You’re mixing up your movies. I saw The Land That Time Forgot.” Women kept disappearing into that opened door, which meant that’s where the food was.
“No, Brigadoon is when two people end up in a town where it’s two or three hundred years—well, a long time—ago, only it’s not. It’s modern day, but they’re not, you know, modern.” She looked back at the barn. “Do you think they’ll square-dance?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve never heard of square dancing?”
“I’ve heard of square dancing,” he said, taking a deep breath as they approached the open door. Two laughing older women carrying casseroles stepped out. Jake said a silent prayer for patience. He was nervous, he realized. And that realization sent another stab of nerves into his belly. Guilt, fear and excitement warred for space in his chest. Jake didn’t often feel nervous, and he sure as heck didn’t like the feeling.
His life had changed beyond recognition recently, and he wasn’t sure he liked it all that much.
His guilt flared up again. He should have known Merry was up to something when she’d insisted on an annulment, a quick one. She was off to Europe, she wouldn’t meet with him and she hired a lawyer to handle the situation so Jake wouldn’t have to bother.
He’d been on tour, having gotten a job playing rhythm guitar in a band opening for Faith and Tim. His big break. He’d felt nothing for Merry but relief when she was gone.
“Tomorrow,” his suddenly talkative daughter continued, “this place could be enveloped in a mysterious mist and we’ll all disappear. Maybe we should escape while we can.”
Jake thought he might prefer to talk about Downton Abbey. “Do you really think Lady Mary will marry again?”
Winter giggled. That was a first. Jake stopped walking in order to see it for himself. The child looked younger when she smiled. “You look so funny,” she said. “And you don’t know who Lady Mary is!”
“Oh, yes, I do,” he grumbled, just to keep her smiling. “You talked about her all the way from Seattle to Spokane. She’s the oldest sister and she was supposed to inherit Downton Abbey but— What?”
Winter pointed to the door. “There she is!”
“Who?”
“The lady from the bar. See?”
Oh, he saw, all right. She would be hard to miss, Jake thought. Once again he realized that she was easily one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, with the kind of beauty that should be on magazine covers, except she wasn’t a bone-thin model. The dress hugged her curvaceous body in all the right places, yet floated around her legs to give her room to dance. In his experience playing in about five thousand bars, the women wearing floaty skirts always intended to dance.
The yellow boots were sexy as all get out, too.
And then there was the hair, platinum waves that fell well past her shoulders. She’d pinned back the sides, exposing a face that would be considered angelic, except that Mayor Jerry had warned him that she was anything but.
And he’d experienced her brusque manner himself, though she’d been kind to Winter and protective of her friends’ privacy.
An interesting woman.
Not his type.
The interesting woman who was not his type saw Winter and smiled, then looked at Jake. Her smile collapsed as they approached.
“You found it,” she said, not sounding the least bit happy to see them.
“We did. I was told Sam might be over here.” He gestured toward the door.
“He’s inside.” She hesitated. “Be careful.”
“Of
