Page 59 of Ride a Cowboy

Leave it to Macie to find the right words. She’d hit the nail right on the head. With her, he felt invincible, powerful, ready to take on the world.

“You ready to go marry those girlfriends of yours?” he asked.

Macie glanced at her watch, then the open bathroom door. “You know we still have about half an hour, maybe more.”

“You feel okay?”

“Comes and goes in waves. It just went.”

Hank kicked the door closed with his foot, then reached out to throw the lock. “What’s my time limit?”

She giggled. “Ten minutes. It’ll take me twenty to put myself back to rights and stop blushing before I have to get up in front of my family.”

“Ten minutes. Got it. Turn around, bend over that sink and pull that dress up. I’ll do my best not to mess up that pretty hair and makeup too much.”

Forty minutes later, Macie stood up in front of the people gathered and knew she hadn’t made much headway on controlling her blush. Or her breathing.

With any luck, everyone would mistake her slowly fading arousal for nervousness. Adele had already perpetuated that idea by telling everyone and their uncle she’d thrown up earlier.

Macie brushed it off by lying about overindulging in wine last night. In truth, she hadn’t had a drink since her suspicions about being pregnant were confirmed.

Only Tyson seemed to question the reason for the sickness. Which made sense, considering he was a doctor. She caught his eye and her dear cousin gave her a quick wink—either of support or as a gotcha. She had no idea which, but she was certain he’d pull her aside before the night was over and let her know.

When Harley, Tyson’s girlfriend, began playing and singing the wedding song, Macie relaxed.

She’d been a nervous wreck about this for months, but now that the day was here, every anxiety disappeared and all she felt was happiness for her friends. The same joy they’d felt for her just two weeks earlier.

Harley sang “Sailboats,” a Brooke Fraser number that was absolutely perfect for the moment. Her crisp, clear voice carried beautifully, accompanied by the gentle lapping of the lake as a soft breeze blew.

Though she was a terrible singer, Macie loved music and was always affected by it deeply. Amanda and Brandi couldn’t have chosen a better song to walk down the aisle to.

The brides had had a rough go of it; after all, theirs wasn’t a conventional relationship. For every person who embraced their love, there were three others who felt compelled to tell them why it was wrong.

Surrounded by so many people, Macie could see how touched the brides were by the obvious outpouring of support as they walked toward her. Amanda’s face shone with pure love—an emotion Macie had only just recently come to understand herself.

She had been surprised when her friends asked her to serve as officiant nearly a year earlier. Part of her thought perhaps they were joking. But when they didn’t crack a smile, when they began to list sincere reasons why they wanted her to do it, she knew the request was real. And because she loved them, because she admired their courage when it came to standing up to the naysayers and saying, “this is what I want, what I deserve,” Macie knew she wanted to be the one standing there with them.

The music ended as Amanda and Brandi took their places in front of her and she took a deep breath. Writing the ceremony had been harder than she would have thought, and she actually hadn’t finished putting the whole thing all together until she’d returned from her own wedding.

That was when she realized what her problem had been at the beginning. At the time, she’d been single. What did she know about love? What made her qualified to speak about forever?

Then Hank had asked her out and over the course of the last few months, the words she’d been struggling to find fell out. The rest of the ceremony came to her clearly the day after her own wedding in Vegas.

She glanced out at the crowd and found Hank staring at her. He gave her the thumbs-up and she smiled.

“Today is a celebration of love, friendship, commitment and family—those we were born into as well as those we’ve created on our own.”

She looked out at the people assembled, quite a few of them members of her own family. She saw all the couples she’d watched fall in love and watched struggle to hold on, to overcome all those things that conspire to keep lovers apart.

“All of us here have our own love stories.”

She saw Evan and Annie and recalled how hard they had tried to get pregnant, how it had almost destroyed their marriage. Then she caught a glimpse of Sydney and Chas holding hands in the third row, newlyweds themselves. The two of them had fought to stay together as Chas suffered PTSD upon returning from the Middle East. They sat next to Logan and Lacy, who were whispering and quietly chuckling at some private joke meant just for them.

“There’s a quote that says, ‘I saw that you were perfect, and so I loved you. Then I saw that you were not perfect, and I loved you even more.’”

Macie smiled when Tyson grinned at her. He was sitting with Harley—who’d taken her seat next to him—and Caleb, while her cousin, Jeannette, sat with her lovers Luc and Diego.

Tyson and Jeannette had faced down the folks in town who said three people couldn’t love each other. They’d heard “it’s not natural” far too many times and yet they hadn’t given up, hadn’t turned their backs on love and happiness.

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