hands from the Dead Horse looking as if they were as thirsty as he was. Young Calhoun looked pale, probably hungover, if the rumors were right about him being dumped before getting married himself and drowning his sorrows in Jack Daniels ever since.
The kid spotted him, which made Jess wish he’d hurried to the beer tent a little faster.
“Sheridan!”
“Calhoun.” Jess braced himself for an onslaught of questions, but the group of men from the Dead Horse seemed uncharacteristically silent. “Nice wedding,” was all he could think of to say. Inwardly he wondered if Jake would be able to keep his ranch after the divorce or would his wife carry a bag of money back to wherever it was in New England she came from.
“What a shindig!” The young man wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve. “I’m glad that’s over. Jake made us wear these neckties.”
“And iron our shirts,” Old Shorty griped. “But Miz Elizabeth sure looked pretty, didn’t she?”
“Yeah. Most brides do.”
Dusty Jones, the cowhand closer to his own age than the others, gave him a sharp look. And then he smiled, as if he knew darn well what other things Jess had been thinking.
“She’s a nice lady. And they’ll do just fine,” the man declared. “Jake’s a happy man today.”
Bobby sighed. “I should’ve been a married man last week. Amy Lou and I were gonna get married on the Fourth of July.”
Shorty rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, your heart’s been broken a few hundred times before this one, so you’ll get over it.”
“I saw the Wynette twins heading toward the beer tent,” Dusty said. “You might drown your sorrows in that direction.”
Calhoun brightened, his broken heart obviously forgotten with the news that the blond barrel racers were starting to drink. Billy Martin, his ever-present cohort, looked more cheerful, too. “Well, I guess we’d all better get us a cold beer.”
Shorty shook his head. “We’re supposed to go into the line,” he told them. “Shake Jake’s hand and kiss the bride and all that.”
“The receiving line,” Jess felt compelled to point out, “starts over there by the bar.”
He would have laughed at the expression of relief on the men’s faces, but he didn’t think anything was funny today. In a few short hours he was leaving Beauville, and he didn’t care if he never returned. “Where’s Roy?”
“He elected to stay at the ranch,” Bobby said. “He’s not much for crowds.”
“I’d better go get that dog,” Shorty said. “I promised Miz Elizabeth I’d keep him out of the sun.”
“And away from the ladies,” Bobby added. “The little critter likes to pee on just about anything.”
“Better keep Billy away from the ladies too, with his luck,” Shorty joked, earning an elbow in the ribs from Marty.
“He’s right. I have the worst damn luck with women,” the young cowboy grumbled, but his gaze was on the beer tent. The receiving line was moving right along.
“I think I win that prize,” Jess said, tipping his hat lower on his forehead. The four men stared at him, then looked at the ground, the beer tent, the sky and the two matronly ladies who walked past them.
“Well,” Shorty drawled, after swallowing hard, “not every man gets as lucky as Jake.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Bobby offered, and broke into his usual grin. Jess had to hand it to him. The boy was sure good-natured, like his father and grandfather, if the stories were right.
“And so will I,” Jess agreed, starting toward the line of people waiting to congratulate the newly married couple. A beer was sounding better by the minute in this heat. He wasn’t going to stay for the food or the dancing; he wasn’t going to give the town biddies a chance to look at him and gossip about his marriage and all the things that Susan had done behind his back.
Jess and the boys from the Dead Horse got in line behind a tall brunette with legs up to her chin and a plump redhead with a chest that could make a man weep for mercy. After the obligatory congratulations to the bride and groom, Jess stepped aside and left the flirting to Calhoun and Marty, two young men who had yet to discover that women were trouble and should be avoided at all costs.
THE BRIDE WORE GREEN. A cool, minty silver shade of the palest green that showed off her golden tan and chestnut hair. Lorna Walters would bet a million dollars the woman’s eyes were a similar mossy shade. It would be stunning, she thought, wishing she was closer to see what was going on, but she’d signed on to serve barbecue ribs and she didn’t think the bride would be beckoning her over any time soon.
The bride was carrying a dog. Or at least, Lorna thought it was a dog. It was hairy and wore a tuxedo, so it could have been a monkey. But she’d heard Martha McIntosh, the town clerk, whisper to a younger redheaded woman that the bride thought her little dog should be at the wedding, at least for a while. A dog in a tuxedo would certainly keep the towns-people talking for a while. That and the green bridal gown that didn’t look like a bridal gown. The new Mrs. Jake Johnson must be an original thinker.
Beauville wasn’t used to original thinkers, Lorna didn’t suppose.
Lorna basted ribs with Texas Tom’s Secret Barbecue Sauce and thought about weddings and men and one man in particular. He was here. She’d spotted him standing off to one side, staring at the bride and groom as if he’d never seen anything more horrifying than a man and a woman getting married.
She guessed she couldn’t blame him. Everyone in town had known what Sue was doing behind her husband’s back—except her husband. Even Lorna had heard about it and she’d been living in Dallas at the time.
That’s when she’d been employed, with a roof over her head and enough money to pay for gasoline and food and a closet full of clothes and shoes. She still had the car, the clothes and an impressive collection of shoes, but the job? Basting ribs and wearing a spattered canvas apron over her waitress uniform certainly proved what her mother had always warned, “Pride goeth before a fall, Lorna, so you’d better not get too big for your britches.”
Well, her britches would be spattered with barbecue sauce too if she wasn’t careful.
“Lorna!” Texas Tom waved his spatula at her. “Quit daydreaming and turn that batch over.”
“Okay,” she hollered back, and obligingly picked up the tongs. What was a little smoke? The crunchy edges only made the ribs taste better, Lorna knew, but she did as she was told before glancing toward the crowd across the grass at the beer tent. They’d be looking for platters of ribs soon, and Lorna hoped she’d be the one carrying the food next door to the Grange. Texas Tom had set up his barbecue grills in the park, as close to the Grange as he could get without interfering with the crowd of wedding guests. The smoke puffed away from the people and the ovens were placed so that inquisitive onlookers could look at the sizzling beef but not get close enough to burn themselves.
Jess Sheridan was somewhere in the crowd. If she could see through the smoke she might spot him. If she was lucky he might even take a rib or two from her tray. He would say, “I could never resist
