Fortune's June Bride (Mills & Boon Cherish) (The Fortunes of Texas: Cowboy Country, Book 6) (4 page)

Cammie giggled, looking naively thrilled by Frank’s notice.

Aurora wanted to warn the girl—whose face looked like she still belonged in grade school despite her eye-popping bosom—not to get too excited, since she’d already had plenty of time to witness his alley-cat tendencies. But she said nothing. When she’d been as young as Cammie, she hadn’t been interested in hearing what anyone had to say about the object of
her
affection, either.

From the corner of her eye, she could see Galen and Serena still conversing, so she made her way over to the buckboard and fit her microphone into place where it was mostly hidden in her hair. She wasn’t donning the veil until she absolutely had to.

She patted her hand over the black horse already in harness. “Hey, pal. Ready for another show?” The horse, imaginatively named Blackie, jerked his head a few times before shaking his mane and turning his attention back to the few weeds sprouting up in the dirt underfoot. “I know. You’ve got a tough job,” she murmured. “Running down Main Street a few times a day.” The rest of the time, the show horses for Cowboy Country spent their days in pampered comfort in air-conditioned barns located behind the lushly landscaped public picnic grounds.

She gave him a final pat before hiking her wedding dress above her knees to work her toe onto the edge of the front wheel so she could pull herself awkwardly up onto the high wooden seat. She didn’t mind portraying a nineteenth-century Western bride, but she sure was glad she hadn’t been one for real.

But then again, she wasn’t exactly a twenty-first-century bride, either.

She propped the thin sole of her old-fashioned boot on the edge of the wood footrest at the front of the wagon, pulled her heavy skirt above her knees, then lifted the curls of her hairpiece off her damp neck. It was early June in Texas, and the sun was high and hot overhead. And buckboards didn’t come equipped with air-conditioning any more than they came with upholstered, padded seats and running boards to make climbing in easier.

Eventually, she saw her cast mates start assembling and Galen finally tore himself away from Serena the chatterbox to walk with Sal the Sheriff toward their own gate.

“You’re getting grumpy in your old age, Aurora,” she muttered under her breath, and sat up straighter, letting her dress fall back down where it belonged while she fit the brain-squeezing band of her veil around her head. The springs beneath the wood seat squeaked loudly as Frank climbed up beside her and fixed his mic into place.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Just hot.” She looked over her shoulder. Serena had returned to the rest of her dance line and the women were all standing around, adjusting the straps of their vibrant dresses and tugging at the seams running down the back of their fishnet stockings.

She faced forward again. “You should leave Cammie alone,” she told Frank. “She looks too young for you.”

His shoulder leaned against hers. “Then stop saying no to me every time I ask.”

She shifted as far to the right as she could without falling off the seat altogether. “I don’t date people I work with.” The statement was almost laughable, since she didn’t date, period.

Over the loudspeaker, they heard their cue, which meant whatever Frank might have said in response had to go unsaid since their microphones had gone live.

She swallowed, tilting her head back and closing her eyes as she willed away the surge of stage fright that made her feel nauseated before every single performance.

Frank took up the reins, lightly tapping them against the wood as he clucked softly to Blackie. The horse immediately lifted his head and shook his mane again as he started forward toward their gate.

And the next show began.

* * *

“And here, straight from his Academy Award–worthy stretch playing the ooh-la-la hero, Rusty, is our very own Galen—”

Galen shoved Liam’s shoulder hard enough to push his brother—a year younger and four inches taller—right off the arm of the couch where he was propped. “Give me a break,” he growled.

Liam laughed silently and moved around to sit properly next to his new wife, Julia, on the couch in their mama’s front parlor.

It was Sunday afternoon, and Jeanne Marie Fortune Jones had called all her children home for a proper family meal. As if they didn’t have one damn near every weekend to begin with. If
Wild West Wedding
didn’t take a reprieve on Sunday afternoons so that the
Sunday Go to Meeting House
choir could use its stage, Galen would’ve missed out entirely on the only home-cooked meal he’d had in days.

Julia was smiling at Galen. “I still can’t believe you’ve been playing a part at all at Cowboy Country.”

“It’s temporary.” He pushed Christopher. “Get outta my spot, man.”

At twenty-seven, Chris was the baby of the boys. But his days of letting Galen order him around were apparently over, judging by the dry look Galen got in return. Chris, like Liam, Jude and their little sister Stacey, had gotten hitched just that Valentine’s Day in the same big wedding. And marriage to the gorgeous Kinsley had definitely helped settle him, same as finding his footing in business with the Fortune Foundation. “Pretty sure your name’s not stitched in the upholstery now any more than it ever was.” To prove that he was staying put, Christopher propped his boot heels on the coffee table in front of his chair. “Get your own chair, brother.”

Typically, when the whole family was around, seating was at a premium. Particularly now that his siblings had started adding spouses—and in the case of his brother Toby and his wife of a year, Angie, the three foster kids they’d adopted. Which meant every seat cushion in the parlor was wholly occupied by the backside of a Fortune Jones. Even the floor was taken up by Toby’s two youngest, Justin and Kylie, where they were working a big old puzzle.

“I don’t know how temporary,” Julia was saying on a laugh. “Haven’t you been playing Rusty all last week?”

Galen almost tugged at his collar, but managed to restrain himself. “’Bout that. Where’s Stace?”

“Piper’s got a summer cold,” Angie said, speaking of Stacey’s toddler. “She didn’t want to expose anyone.”

“Thought you told ’em you were only going to play Rusty for that one day.” That came from Jude, entering the room with more brains than Galen had, since he was carrying a chair from the dining room table with him. He set it in the corner and promptly pulled his petite wife, Gabriella, down on his knee. “That’s what you said last time I talked to you. What was it?” He and his bride shared a look that spoke of intimacies Galen didn’t even want to contemplate. “Last Wednesday?”

“They were in a pinch,” he muttered grumpily. “The original guy, Joey somebody-or-other, broke his leg. He’s out for the next six weeks, at least.” And Galen still couldn’t explain his reasons for giving in when Diane in the casting department still hadn’t produced a permanent replacement for the guy. It damn sure hadn’t been because Diane was outright propositioning him.

But attributing it to keeping Aurora’s whole-body smile going wasn’t something he wanted to admit to, either.

Not to himself and definitely not to his pack of siblings and siblings-in-law.

He tried changing the subject again. “What about Delaney?”

“In Red Rock with the new fiancé.” That came from Christopher. “Cisco’s still getting some training with the Fortune Foundation there. We sent Rachel, also. Matteo flew ’em over.” Matteo was Cisco’s brother and a pilot at the Redmond Flight School and Charter Service. And Rachel Robinson was Matteo’s fiancée and an intern with Christopher.

“You’re going to be playacting the besotted groom for the next six weeks?” Jude wasn’t swayed by their baby sister’s whereabouts and was looking at Galen as if he’d announced he’d started building castles on the moon.

“Hell no,” Galen assured emphatically. “Cowboy Country’s got a whole department of people hiring folks. They’ll get a replacement in a few days, I’m sure.” And he was anxious to get off the subject. “I’m getting a beer.”

“You are
not
,” Jeanne Marie said, sailing into the room. She was taller than average and wearing her usual cowboy boots, which added a good inch and a half, bringing her silver head to merely a few inches below Galen’s. “We’re just about ready to sit down and eat and I’m not having beer at my Sunday dinner table.” She propped her hands on the hips of blue jeans that were mostly hidden behind her old-fashioned apron. “Christopher, get your boots off the furniture. Just because I’m pleased as punch you’ve moved back home to Horseback Hollow doesn’t mean you’re getting away with that nonsense.”

Chris grinned and dutifully put his feet down on the floor again. “Yes, ma’am.”

Jeanne Marie turned her eyes back on Galen. “Where’s your father?”

“Out back working on the truck.”

“As usual.” But the amusement in her eyes belied any annoyance her tart words carried. “Go and get him, would you please?”

Glad for an excuse to escape a room that was uncomfortably brimming over from matrimonial bliss, his “Yes, ma’am” was likely a mite enthusiastic.

Plus, he was able to grab a beer along the way, though he winced like a guilty teenager when he twisted off the bottle cap and the sound seemed to echo around the kitchen.

His mom didn’t come after him with a wooden spoon, though, so he hustled out the back door and across the green expanse of lawn that was his mom’s pride and joy every summer, over to his pop, who was leaning over the opened hood of his ancient pickup truck. Galen took up a spot on the other side. “What’s the problem now?”

Deke Jones pulled off his sweat-stained ball cap, rubbed his fingers through his thick iron-gray hair and replaced the cap once again. “Running like a top for once,” he drawled and lifted the beer bottle hidden in the depths of the engine. “Just didn’t feel much like cleaning fresh green beans with your mama in that hot kitchen.”

Galen chuckled. He and his father had done two things together while Galen had been growing up. Work on this same truck. And work the cattle. Now he was an adult, neither thing had really changed. “It is hot. Not even the middle of summer yet.” He turned around and closed his eyes to the sunlight. But that only made him think about seeing Aurora do pretty much the same thing every time she climbed up in the buckboard, ready for another show to begin.

She’d tilt her head back, eyes closed, for a good minute or two right before she, Frank and the buckboard blasted beyond the gate while the
Wild West Wedding
theme song roared over the loudspeakers.

“How many years you and Ma been married now?”

His dad gave him a strange look. “Forty-one years.”

“It’s a long time.”

“You’d think.” Deke took another pull on his beer, glancing over his shoulder to the house some distance behind them. A bed of white and yellow flowers lined the whole back side of the house. “The longer we go, the shorter the time seems to be. Like there’s not enough years left to spend together.” Then he made a face at his beer. “Listen to me. Must be still a hangover from the
big
wedding.” He eyed Galen. “You got girl trouble or something?”

Galen snorted softly. “You think I’d come to you if I did?”

Deke grinned slightly. As a father, he’d been a pretty silent authority figure. A hardworking rancher who’d passed on his work ethic and much of his stoic personality to Galen. Sometimes, Galen was grateful for that.

Other times, he sometimes wished he had the gift of gab like Jude, or the slick smarts like Christopher.

“Not exactly an answer, son,” Deke drawled.

“No, I don’t have girl trouble,” he assured, swiping mentally at the image of Aurora in a white dress and cowboy boots, dancing in some damn daisy field. “Ma wants you in for supper.”

“I know.” Deke swirled the base of his bottle in the air a few times. “Crowded as heck in the house these days.”

“That a complaint?”

“Nope. Just stating a fact.” His father squinted slightly and looked back at the house again. “When your mama and I got hitched, it took a while before you came along. Then,
whoosh
. The floodgates opened and next thing I knew, we had seven of you.” The corner of his lips lifted. “Now it’s like that all over again, what with all of you getting married.” He gave Galen a look. “’Cept you, of course. Now that Delaney’s planning on getting hitched to that young Mendoza, you’re the last holdout.”

“Never met anyone who put me in the mind to marry.”

Deke chuckled. “Now I hear you’re doing it a bunch a times a day out at Cowboy Country.”

Galen tugged his ear, hating that he felt a little foolish about it in front of his dad. “Playing Rusty pays even more than the ‘authenticity consultant’ business.”

“You’re still doing that, though, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “For now. More money I sock away in the bank, the more I can think about buying that bull of Quinn Drummond’s that he knows I want.” Another bull would mean covering more cows to produce calves. More calves, more money. Better to focus on the financial aspect than on making Aurora happy.

“Seems like you must be spending a lot of your day at Cowboy Country, then. How you managing to spare all the time?”

Badly, Galen thought. His sink was full of dirty dishes, his laundry hadn’t been done in a solid week, and his cupboard was bare. The only thing he hadn’t neglected entirely was his small cow-calf operation. He couldn’t afford to neglect them, or he’d end up coming back home to live with his folks, his tail tucked between his legs. No number of prizewinning bulls would help then, and becoming a failure at thirty-four wasn’t one of his aspirations in life.

“I’m managing,” he said shortly. Then honesty got the better of him. “Only because we’ve got a few more weeks before I’ve gotta start working ’em and sorting. Just glad that Ma doesn’t drop by my place too often these days. She’d have a conniption fit and fall right in it over the mess it’s in.”

Deke let out a bark of rare laughter. “’Spect she would, son. I expect she would.” He jerked his chin. “Finish that up so we can go in and eat.”

Galen took another pull on his beer, and set the still half-full bottle on the green, green grass beside his father’s. Just as he straightened, the back screen door of the house slapped open and Jeanne Marie hung out. “Deke Jones, you get your hind end in here right now, or this roast is going to be shoe leather! Should’ve known better than to send Galen after you. Two peas in a pod, you are.”