Page 13 of A Nice Day for a Cowboy Wedding

“Meet me there at eight tonight.”

“I thought you weren’t asking me out on a date,” he returned.

She grinned at him, a dimple winking in her cheek. Why he wanted to grin back was beyond him. Probably just because she was pretty. Who didn’t want to smile at a pretty woman?

“I’m not.” Again her eyes took a little tour of his body, and he damn well had to fight the urge to fidget.

Seriously. Whowasthis woman?

“Bring your dancing shoes, though.”

“Mywhat?”

But she’d turned away at that, waving over her shoulder as she walked back to her car. Shane scowled after her.

He was not going to meet her or go dancing or whatever-on-earth crazy scheme she was up to. He was going to stay home like he always did, have dinner with his family, and then go over ranch paperwork while Grandma polished her sword collection.

Definitely not going to Benson. Definitely not meeting the wedding planner.

Probably not anyway.

Chapter Four

It was difficult picking out what to wear when you weren’t going out on a date, but you also wouldn’t mind a guy looking at you twice, but you were also employed by his mother and trying to convince him her wedding was legit.

Life was full of complications.

In the end, Cora had decided to wear the same cute floral dress she’d been wearing all day, but exchanged her flats for cowboy boots she was ninety-nine percent sure no cowboy would ever be caught dead in.

She wondered absently if Shane knew how to square dance. He didn’t seem like the type, but when Deb had mentioned that she and Ben belonged to a local square dancing club, Cora had been surprised. Deb didn’t seem like the type either, but Deb’s face had just lit up when she’d talked about it.

So, Cora had devised her plan right then and there. She needed to prove to the Tyler children that Ben was worthy of their mother. She would start with Shane because he was the oldest and so clearly the de facto leader.

It had nothing to do with the fact that he was hot. Especially with the boots and the cowboy hat and that stoic politeness he always employed.

Okay, it had something to do with that. What could she say? She liked men. A lot. It was her great downfall that she liked going on dates, flirting, and all that dazzling anticipation. And sex. Oh, she really liked sex.

She’d sworn it off in her grand effort to get her life together, to focus on her career and on being a mom. Much as she liked them, men were far too much trouble. One preteen was all the trouble she could handle.

But surely that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy a little harmless flirting here and there.

Micah was going to hang out at Will and Tori’s under the guise of walking their German shepherd, Sarge, and doing a few other jobs around their place to earn some extra money, and then they were going to ply him with pizza and ice cream till she got back.

She thought absently of how nice it would be to have a dog of their own, except she couldn’t afford the time or the money or the investment in another living creature. Maybe when Micah was a little older and could really be counted on to be responsible.

She shook her head and grabbed her purse. Tonight, she had to focus on work. Tomorrow would be about regrouping and trying to get through to Micah, since Dr. Grove always suggested giving him some space between a session and then trying to talk with him about the takeaways.

She stepped outside into the slowly falling evening. The houses around them had started to fill up after its being a nearly empty street when she’d originally moved here with Lilly. Brandon’s starting a chamber of commerce dedicated to drawing business owners and customers to Gracely proper was starting to have an effect.

There was a pizza parlor now, and the man who ran it lived across the street. A young couple who were teachers in Benson had bought a house a few doors down to live in the more “quaint and picturesque” Gracely. It was things like that that would bring Gracely back from the brink of a ghost town.

Cora had to believe it was possible. Her brother-in-law believed it was possible because he’d grown up here and had seen the town at its best, and because he felt responsible for its worst. But Cora had to believe because she’d once lived her life like little more than a ghost town herself, and she wanted to believe she could rebuild and be whole and vibrant.

And that was what spurred her on. Even though trying to convince the Tyler siblings to support their mother’s wedding wasn’t her job, it felt like something shehadto do. It felt like being someone she wanted to be.

She drove through town, then over ranch land-adjacent highway to the much larger town of Benson. She turned into the VFW Hall parking lot and immediately saw Shane. He leaned against the bed of a gleaming red truck, cowboy hat pulled low as it always seemed to be, while the sun set behind him in a riot of colors painting the mountains like watercolors.

There were no empty parking spots next to him, so she pulled past and then into the first empty one. She wasn’t surprised Shane was here. He didn’t strike her as the kind of man who could resist showing up, especially in an attempt to prove a point. She was a little surprised he’d beaten her here.

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