The Bride Wore Denim (30 page)

“No, you said all is forgiven.”

“I said there was nothing to forgive.” She cocked her head and smiled. “We both had stressful mornings at the same time.”

“I was a bit rude,” Harper said.

“I prefer forthright.” Cecelia laughed. “With the exception of your talent, of which I have none, you remind me of myself. I’m vain enough to like that. Plus, I got my way and you came back anyway. How could I be angry?”

“Don’t tell me I can’t bribe somebody with the best of them. And that’s really why I’m here. I have another . . . forthright . . . proposal.”

“Oh?”

Harper reached into the pocket of the shimmery black oversweater she’d worn and pulled out a set of four pictures. “This is Double Diamond Ranch. It’s a part of my family’s fifty-thousand acre Paradise Ranch, and it’s the place where I’d like to set up a community arts guild, an education facility for arts training, and a studio. Our little town and the surrounding counties are facing the possibility of having all school arts programs cut. I want to make sure there’s something to take their place. And you can help.”

Half an hour later Cecelia sat back in her chair and released a gently whistling breath.

“And that’s it?” she asked.

“
It
is a lot. Goodness I’m asking for the moon.”

“It’s a rough proposal. It would take some more in-depth planning.”

“I have no doubt of that. I suspect lawyers and business planners will need to be involved.”

“I’m sure they have those people in Wyoming. Perfectly fine lawyers willing to work with mine.”

“Oh, Cecelia, really? You’d consider this? Letting us move my base of operation for you to Wyoming and using my stipend to fund the center?”

“Don’t you know by now that I’m not in this for the money, I’m in it for the pure vanity?”

“Not even a little true,” Harper said.

Cecelia shook her head as if seeing a wonder for the first time. “Helping fund an arts guild. In Wyoming. Named after me? I couldn’t get any more egotistical.”

“Art classes. Guest artists. Retreats. Event hosting. It wouldn’t be about ego.”

“Well I’m in, at least as far as checking out the ranch and talking to planners.”

Harper had hoped she’d have the tact to talk Cecelia into this plan. She hadn’t foreseen such enthusiasm, even from art-obsessed Cecelia Markham.

“You are much too good to be true.”

“One stipulation. Your stipend doesn’t get touched. Let’s keep the guild separate and see what we can come up with for financing. When do you want to leave? Wednesday you said?”

Her final generous offer was almost one kindness too many to absorb at the end of such a long, emotional day. Harper covered her face with her hands and started to weep for joy.

T
HREE DAYS LATER
, she stepped off a commuter plane for the fourth time in five days. She raised her chin toward the sky and drew in healthy lungfuls of sweet Wyoming air. Her air. The air she wanted to breathe forever. She’d been catching the fever for weeks, and it had finally caught hold. She was terminal. She’d be here, as Cole said, until they buried her. He’d been right and so had Skylar—Harper belonged here, in jeans and boots. Her skirts and bohemian dress code had been a disguise for a woman who didn’t believe in herself and had tried to create a persona.

Her head still spun with all the people who had brought the true Harper back to life. Skylar with her endless spout of idealistic-kid wisdom: grown-ups are sometimes too stupid to live; there are a hundred things you could do with this ranch; the bossy bat’s been telling you what kind of artist to be.

Betty Hodges with her predictions of doom—that it might be the last time for the art competition.

And Cole with his unintentional reminder that she’d never stopped whining about the oil drilling she really didn’t want long enough to do something about it.

No longer. If this was going to be home, it was going to be home on her terms. And she had Skylar to thank for reminding her with that verbal sledgehammer to the head that she had the brains and the right to name those terms.

She’d named them all right. People were scurrying all over to meet them.

The last step of her hurricane-strength plan was all that remained. It hinged on the prayer that all of Cole Wainwright’s romantic compliments and declarations of love had come honestly from his heart and weren’t just pretty cowboy poetry. Because he was the biggest reason of all she was coming home to stay.

His spate of texts made her fairly confident.

Harpo—Please. Call me or you know I’ll hound you.

Harpo—Remember, I’ve been known to show up without warning.

Harpo—Three time’s the charm. Please talk to me.

She’d texted back one mean, misleading message. “Don’t come. I won’t be here.”

It was cruel to make a cowboy beg—but it was also cuter than heck.

“My word, this is beautiful.” Cecelia stepped out of the plane behind her.

“I promise you haven’t seen anything yet.”

They walked through the door at Rosecroft forty minutes later. Without greeting or preamble, Mia grabbed her into a bear hug, letting her go only to pass her to Grace who was the last triplet to take her turn at home. Finally, Grandma Sadie got in the last huge squeeze.

“Thank heavens you’re back,” Mia said. “We’ve had to manufacture disasters for Cole to stay and handle around here. He was bound and determined to haul his jumpy ass off to find you.”

“I know. He’s texted countless times. But he doesn’t know I’m here?”

“I don’t think so. And there’s other news. Mom is coming home day after tomorrow. Skylar came home yesterday, although she has no voice and looks terrible.”

“She’ll be fine.” Harper’s heart swelled at the thought of the teen. “I have absolutely no doubt.”

“And the reps from Wyoming Wind will be here with their report in two hours.”

“Are we crazy?” Harper asked.

“Certifiable,” Grace said. “But since it includes every one of us Crockett women, if we end up being committed, we’ll have a very happy rubber room at the asylum.”

Harper laughed. With a deep breath she took in her sisters, standing united for the first time in their lives. “Before we spring this on poor Mr. Wainwright, I need to tell you all how much I love you. I can’t thank you enough.”

“We’ve never had a plan to rally behind,” Grace said. “This includes us all and gives Paradise Ranch the potential to be reborn. We’ve been waiting for this and didn’t know it.”

“Then let’s get underway. I want to start by introducing my wonderful friend Cecelia Markham.”

S
HE THOUGHT SHE’D
prepared herself for seeing Cole again. It had only been three days, for crying out loud. But when he stood in the doorway, his cheeks slapped red from the wind and his hair sexily mussed from his hat, Harper’s pulse started a conga beat that led the rest of her vital parts off on a wild line dance, as if she hadn’t seen in him a year.

He stepped slowly into the room, rolling the brim of his Stetson with his long deft fingers. She swallowed, remembering exactly how deft they could be.

“Harpo?” His uncertain surprise gave away nothing about what he felt after their strained, strange parting three days earlier. “What are you doing here?”

Nervousness added its beat to the crazy rhythm of her heart. “Turns out I live here. And I came to find you.”

“Funny thing,” he said, still without expression. “I’ve been looking for
you
for three days.”

“I know.” She took one step toward him. “I’m sorry, Cole. I’ve been working on something, and I really wanted to surprise you. Forgive me?”

“I don’t know.” He let a lazy smile slip onto his lips. “Maybe. But since you ignored almost all my messages. I get to talk first. Then I’ll decide.”

“In front of everybody?”

“You brought them to the party.”

She looked around and caught winks and thumbs-up from every woman who flanked her. “Fair enough.”

“I thought hard about what you said—nobody should have to give up everything in a relationship, but I did ask you to do exactly that. I’ve been so focused on “my” ranch that I forgot to think about what it is that makes someplace home. Home is where the love is. Here’s my idea. What if I give up the Double Diamond, and you give up half the year in Chicago?

“Cole . . . Give up your land? You can’t.”

Her plan had him buying back the Double Diamond for a pittance and leasing the house and its immediate yard to Cecelia for the arts guild.

“Yes, I can. I want to take my savings—which, as you know, is nearly enough for the down payment—and invest it here in Paradise. Jump start it. Get it going full strength again so it can be run by you girls and the Thorsons even when we’re gone. I’ll summer in Chicago with you. You winter with me here.”

“But your legacy—this will destroy it. At least for a while. What about your dad?”

“Turns out, he wanted the old dream because I did. He thought he’d disappointed me. I don’t need the Double Diamond name. It’s just a name. I’ll build a new legacy.”

She was blown away. All the time she thought she’d been solving the problem—he’d been planning his own changes.

“So? What do you say?” he asked. “Can we start there?”

“Nah,” she said, biting her lip at the utter shock in his eyes. “I say let’s stay here year ’round?”

“Damn, Harper. I can’t keep up.” He smiled, still confused.

“I’m coming back to Paradise Ranch, and I have a plan, too. But what I still need before it will work is a full partner. Someone who can be here every day with me to, you know, see to the care of the place. If you’re interested, you’d be the only candidate I’d interview for the position.”

Suspicion burned in his eyes.

“There are five women surrounding me like the warriors of Amazon. What’s the catch?”

“The catch is, that my full partner, aka you, hears what my new business model is, and is okay with it. If he’s not, I’ll discuss other options because my heart is set on him being part of this.”

Cole shook his head, cast a glance at each watching woman and then grabbed Harper into a feet-off-the-floor hug and a twirl.

“I accept.”

“You don’t know the idea yet.”

“Raise pink pandas and sell ’em. I’m all in if you’re the boss lady.”

“Not the boss. Just the opinionated partner. I want to turn Paradise green. My one and only executive decision will be no oil. It’s not a political statement, it’s our philosophical one. It was Skylar who said we should focus on what’s already here. I want to make this a unique old-fashioned, modern ranch. I have other ideas, too, but they can be discussed later. As can the finances. Your offer is generous, Cole. Maybe too generous.”

“Nope. That’s part of the package or I’ll mutiny.”

She laughed. “Okay. You won’t be upset if I tell you I’ve all but made a unilateral decision to have the wind power people come in, oh, say, this afternoon?”

He shook his head in resignation and laughed again. “I don’t care about the oil,” he said. “I just wanted you to grab some mane on whatever horse you chose and ride like hell to save this place. Oil, wind, solar, hell, five thousand trained monkeys blowing on pinwheels. I want to be with you. Having the ranch is a dream bonus.”

“Pinwheels?” Her smile stretched wide. “I vote for them!”

He kissed her silly, right in front of her Amazon posse, and suddenly the room was filled with cheers. She pulled away.

“Now. I have someone I want you to meet.”

D
ARKNESS HAD FALLEN
like a heavy velvet blanket over Paradise. The stars above the Henhouse Hilton put Chicago’s neon show to shame. Cole leaned against the side of the chicken coop, and pulled Harper to him torso to torso.

“Heck, we should shove all these chickens into a normal pen and live here. Your daddy was nuts.”

“Yeah. I think that’s where I got it.”

He laughed and sighed, looking up into the stars.

“So this is how you think it’s going to work: We turn the Double Di into an arts guild with Joely as a live-in caretaker for people who pay to use it as retreat center. You set up regular art classes for the community, and people pay to attend. A volunteer board also lines up visiting artists, and people pay to learn from them. Cecelia will start an endowment to fund the infrastructure. We rake in the dough.”

“You added that last part. We work to make a profit. Over time.”

“Yeah, yeah. In addition, we build a small wind turbine farm on the far outskirts of the property—fifty miles from the house, in sight of only the freeway and the cattle.”

“And we become some of the first in this area to hook into the new power grid. We get paid for adding to that grid, and we get free electricity. Oh,” she added, “we also buy a small flock of sheep.”

“What? That wasn’t in the original business plan.”

She rubbed his chest, running her palms across the broad planes of his pecs, and he shivered deeply when she squeezed his shoulder and skimmed up his neck with her fingers, exploring what felt like every sinew and every inch of skin.

“I know,” she said. “I only recently talked about it with the local border collie owner. She needs maybe ten. Sheep not border collies. For Asta to herd and for herself to paint. An experiment. And the yarn shop’s co-op of knitters and spinners will buy the wool.”

“I see. You really figured all this out in two days?”

“No. In two months and then two minutes. When Skylar said grown-ups sometimes acted too stupid to live, she was right, and in that instant I knew I didn’t want to be that grown-up in her eyes. But especially not in yours. I spent all this time fighting you every step of the way but never coming up with alternative solutions. When I realized I was waiting for someone else to contact the wind energy company, and I needed to find my own answers, the rest of what I needed to do kind of fell into place.”

He adopted a rigid stance and locked his gaze on her, making it as stern as he could fake it. “I am amazed, and I didn’t think you could amaze me any more than you already had, but I have one stipulation before I sign onto this craziness. I didn’t want to say anything in front of the others. This is a private request.”