The Sheriff Catches a Bride (2 page)

“Really?” Jamie said. “Because you look like you’ve seen your hus—”

Ethan whacked him on the arm.

Rose blushed furiously, peeled the ring off and thrust it back into the tray. Understanding dawned on Cab and he felt heat creep up his own neck at the trick his friends had played. They’d gotten him to choose a ring. They’d put that ring on Rose’s finger.

They’d waited for her reaction.

Everyone knew about Rose’s hunches—the ones she got when a couple chose their engagement ring. Somehow she could predict their future—if their marriage would be successful or not. If they were meant to be together. She’d given her approval to Ethan, Jamie and Rob when they’d bought their rings during the past few months, and since all of them remained happily married they believed her hunches were real.

So what did they think they were proving now?

He wanted to let go of Rose’s arm. Wanted to apologize for his friends and get the hell out of there, but he couldn’t seem to turn away.

“I didn’t feel anything,” she said angrily, breaking the uncomfortable silence. She yanked her arm away from Cab’s grip and set the tray of rings back in the case with shaking hands.

“You looked like you felt something,” Rob said with a grin. Rob made a business of teasing women, and he and Rose had been friends for some time. Usually Rose gave back as good as she got, but this time she didn’t come up with a stinging reply.

She glanced at Cab again instead, and Cab’s stomach tightened when he met her gaze. He saw something there—awareness, interest—fear?—that sent a shiver of recognition up his own spine.

Rob was right; she’d felt something when he put the ring on her finger. The ring Cab had picked out. The ring he wished he could give her.

Were he and Rose meant for each other? Did she feel the same kind of interest in him he felt in her?

Rose turned away abruptly, grabbed her engagement ring off the counter and shoved the thin circle back onto her finger. Cab’s stomach sank.

Of course she didn’t feel anything for him. She had made her choice and it wasn’t him.

“Let’s go,” he said gruffly. “See you around, Rose.” He knew he should say something else—apologize for Rob’s behavior at the very least—but he couldn’t form the words. He turned on his heel and headed for the front door, hoping against hope the rest of them would follow his lead for once.

They did and a moment later they spilled out onto the sidewalk. Cab waited until Rob took his keys out and headed for his truck before he grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and slammed him face down on its hood.

“What the hell?” Rob bellowed. “Hey, let go! You can’t arrest me for playing a joke.” He struggled, but Cab had already pocketed his keys and slapped a handcuff around his right wrist. In a few spare motions he locked the other cuff on his left.

“I’m not arresting you. I’m going to throw you into the creek and watch you drown.” He opened the door to the extended cab and gave Rob a shove. “Climb in.” Rob did so, cursing, and Jamie got in beside him, chuckling. If Cab had another set of handcuffs he wouldn’t be laughing long. Ethan got into the front passenger seat while Cab made his way around to the driver’s side.

“You better not throw me in the creek,” Rob said as Cab climbed in.

Cab shut the door and turned on all of them. “What the hell was that in there?” he demanded. “What would make you do that to Rose?”

The others exchanged a look. “We got to talking,” Ethan said. “That’s all. Who you’d likely match up with. Rob said Rose was gone on you. Jamie said no way because she’s engaged to Jason. Rob said there was one way to tell for sure. So…” He shrugged his shoulders.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Cab looked from one to the other. “First of all, I’ll marry who I marry, with no help from any of you. Second of all—” He broke off, exasperated. “Even if I wanted to marry Rose, she’s taken. It’s a done deal. You shouldn’t have done that to her.”

A long silence greeted this speech, broken at last by Rob. “Engagements can be broken, you know. Jason’s been away a long time. Seems to me if he was going to marry her, he’d have done it by now.”

“Yeah, well, until his ring is off her finger, I won’t go near her,” Cab said. He started the truck and pointed it toward the diner. He still planned to have his lunch. Rob could sit back there and starve for all he cared.

When Rose pulled
into the parking area in front of the Big House on the Cruz ranch, she shut off her truck’s engine, but didn’t climb out. It was seven in the evening and, being November, nearly dark already. With her engine off, the cold outside air quickly brought the temperature in the cab down. Still, she kept her seat, not ready to go inside and face all of her friends. The incident in the jewelry store this morning had replayed in her mind all day. How could she react so strongly to Cab’s ring when she was engaged to Jason?

Because your heart has moved on even if you haven’t.
The voice in her head sounded like Grandma Allison, a plainspoken woman who had died over a decade ago. She would tell Rose it was high time to make up her mind about her engagement.

The truth was her relationship with Jason had been going downhill for months. Years, even. She’d begun to suspect the only reason it had lasted this long was because they weren’t living in the same state. If they were, Jason’s attempts to organize and control her life would have driven her crazy. Back in high school she’d thought it romantic when he’d boss her around in that slow drawl of his. Sexy, even. Now it just pissed her off, not the least because everyone else in her life seemed to think they could boss her around, too.

Immediately she felt contrite at the uncharitable thoughts she’d aimed at her fiancé. She’d promised herself only last week she’d give this relationship one last real shot before giving up. It didn’t make sense to overthrow a six-year engagement on a whim. Even if that whim had lasted for months. Maybe she could change the way they interacted if she tried hard enough. She needed to be more direct about what she wanted. She needed to speak up. Jason would finally listen to her and stop trying to do everything his way. He loved her, after all. He always had.

She pulled out her phone and checked for messages. None. He hadn’t called or texted her in days, and she hadn’t reached out to him, either. He’d barely crossed her mind this week until Rob yanked his ring off her finger and replaced it with Cab’s. Refusing to think too deeply about what that meant, she called him, waiting as the phone rang and rang.

Finally Jason answered. “Yeah?”

Rose frowned. Hadn’t he seen her name on the screen? Why was he being so abrupt? “It’s me.”

“What is it, Rose?” He sounded impatient. He was somewhere noisy. At a restaurant, maybe?

“I just wanted to say hi,” she said brightly. “I wondered what you were doing.”

A pause. “Nothing.”

He wasn’t going to make this easy, was he? This is how their conversations went these days—stilted, with long gaps and awkward questions that betrayed how little they knew about the day-to-day circumstances of each other’s lives. Well, she was trying to bridge those gaps, wasn’t she? Her last-ditch effort to save their sinking ship of an engagement. She tried again. “Where are you?”

“Jeez, Rose, what are you, my father?”

Stung, Rose snapped. “No, I’m the one who has to deal with your father. You’re five hundred miles away, remember?”

“I didn’t tell you to move in with my old man. In fact, I told you to keep living with your parents so we could save more money,” Jason snapped back.

Rose shut her eyes. There it was, that harping, bossy tone he always directed at her. Jason knew she hated the idea of living at home. She felt like a child under her parents’ roof. When Emory offered her the carriage house three years ago, she jumped at it. The rent was nominal and the place was all her own. At least, that’s what she thought in the beginning. Now she knew better. Still, how many times had she and Jason had this particular fight? They could say the lines in their sleep. Jason was right; moving onto his father’s property had been a mistake. Emory Thayer was overbearing to say the least. Jason had warned her, but she hadn’t truly understood until she moved in.

“Look, I’m not trying to check up on you,” she began, ignoring the rest of what he’d said.

“Sure sounds like it. Have you found a new job yet?”

“There are no jobs,” Rose said. How many times had they had this conversation, too? “And I don’t want another job until I go to school. I’ve told you that.”

“How the hell are we supposed to save up for a house if you’re going to spend all our money?” Jason said. “Art school is stupid. You spend thousands of dollars to learn a skill that makes you no money back. It’s a bad investment.”

“Stupid?” Rose echoed, her voice rising. Jason had always been against her going to art school but he’d never used such strong words before.

“Art is a hobby, Rose. A hobby. Only idiots pay that kind of money for their hobbies.”

Was he for real? She remembered the days back in high school when Jason drove in the demolition derby. How much money had he blown on that particular hobby?

“I’m a good artist. I can make money…”

“No, you can’t.” Jason’s temper flared, too. “It’s time to get real. No artist can make that kind of money. It’s a one in a million shot, and the chance that it would happen to you is nonexistent. Art school is for little rich kids who don’t need to make a living. You need to make a living. What about that nursing course I told you about? A friend of mine here has a wife who’s a nurse and she’s making a killing! You could go to night school. But first you need to get your ass out of my dad’s store and find another job. I gotta go.”

He clicked off the phone and left her staring out the windshield of her truck in shock. Was that how he really felt? That she had no chance as an artist? And nursing—that was his idea of an alternative? The thought made her shiver in disgust. Thank God other people liked nursing, but it wasn’t for her. She was terrified of illness and death and all the things nurses had to take in stride. She was far too private a person to be comfortable with the intimate tasks nurses faced every day. Whatever she did for a living had to be artistic in some sense of the word. That’s why she stuck to the jewelry store even if it meant working with Emory. The rings were beautiful and the variety of jewelry infinite. While Emory didn’t let her pick the merchandise, he did let her peruse the catalogs and dream over all the designs. She’d tried jewelry making herself, but unfortunately it wasn’t her thing, either. She preferred acrylics. Still, selling rings was better than nothing.

Why should Jason get to pursue his dream but demand that she give hers up? And if he was so set on saving money, why didn’t he save more of it himself? He had to be earning a ton of money at his oil patch job, but he claimed living expenses ate up most of his wages. After all these years he still didn’t have enough money for them to marry and put a down payment on a house. She was beginning to think he never would.

Which was probably just as well. Because if she was honest, she didn’t want to marry him anymore. In the cold, dark stillness of the truck cab, she finally faced the truth. She had promised herself one last try at working things out, but she was out of patience. She didn’t want to try anymore. What was the use of it? Jason wasn’t going to change. As she stared out at the hulking shapes of the barns against the night sky, she made up her mind. She was done with Jason. Done with Emory. Done with all of it. She would break off the engagement, find a new place to live and get a new job. That wasn’t going to be easy, though. The minute she phoned Jason and told him the news, he’d be on the phone to Emory, and Emory would be on the phone with her folks. She couldn’t stay in the carriage house or work for Emory anymore once she broke things off with Jason. And she wouldn’t want to be anywhere near her parents, either. They were going to flip their lids.

First, she needed a place to call her own and a job. Then she could spill the beans to Jason. Luckily, Jason wouldn’t call her back for at least another week, so she had plenty of time to make a plan. She considered going home and getting started on it right away, but decided against that course of action. She’d already had a long day and she needed company to cheer her up. Home alone, she’d have to fully face the mess she’d made of her life so far, and more than likely Emory would drop in and want to stay an hour. At least here she’d be with her friends.

Taking a deep breath, she looked at the band of silver on her ring finger. In one week she’d take it off for good. She expected a stab of pain, or tears to sting her eyes, but instead she felt a lift of anticipation in her heart and then a squeeze of shame. How could she be happy she was breaking off a six-year engagement? What kind of a woman was she?

A realist, she decided as she climbed out of the truck. She and Jason weren’t meant to be together. It was time to move on.

Inside the Cruz Big House some minutes later, she perched on the arm of one of the sofas in the living room. Every Thursday her friends gathered at Ethan and Autumn’s house for an informal get-together. Usually they played poker, but this week the Cruzes had bought a pool table and they were breaking it in with a tournament. Autumn, nearly six months pregnant, told Rose she was slated to play Autumn’s sister-in-law Claire in a while, but right now Ethan and Jamie were up. The rest of the people present stood around, or sat on stools pulled from the kitchen counter to watch. Autumn circulated with appetizers and everyone knew there was beer in the refrigerator.

Rose had always been jealous of Autumn’s elfin features and long, lustrous hair. Someone had once described her as ethereal, and the word suited. Originally from New York City, Autumn fit into Chance Creek like she’d been born here. Rose, who had been born here, couldn’t remember what the town was like before she came. She’d been the one to transform the Cruz ranch into a guest ranch business. Soon afterward, Jamie and Claire built their home on another part of the spread. Jamie helped with trail rides, but he also was starting a horse breeding business. Claire helped when she could but she was much in demand as an interior decorator. Ethan and Jamie had grown up together, along with Rob Matheson, whose family owned the next ranch over. Rob was here tonight as well. A tall, blond, handsome cowboy, he owned a property that straddled the two ranches. He and his wife, Morgan, had just started a winery on part of that land. Like Autumn and Claire, Morgan was pregnant, although she was only in her first trimester. Rob also intended to work with Ethan on the guest ranch and Jamie with the horse breeding. The three friends had found a way to interweave their lives, and Rose, frankly, was jealous of the way it all seemed to work so well.