Cara Colter - Weddings Do Come True

They weren’t frightened anymore. Maybe they never had been. Maybe that had just been his own fear reflected in their eyes. Imagine a man who had spent most of his youth and much of his adult life on top of two thousand pounds of writhing, raging bull getting an attack of nerves when confronted with two small scraps of humanity who couldn’t weigh more than eighty pounds combined. It was humiliating.

His sister, Nancy, and her husband, Andrew, were medical missionaries in a country called Rotanbonga. He still couldn’t pronounce it correctly. The twins had been born there, and he’d been quite satisfied to monitor their progress from a distance. His chief duty as uncle had been to remember to get their Christmas parcel in the mail by the end of September. Every year he sent a teddy bear and a doll, thanking God for the Sears catalogue, so that he didn’t have to shop for these highly embarrassing items in person.

But a few weeks ago he’d gotten an extremely panicky call from his usually unflappable sister. The connection was terrible, but he understood her to say that an epidemic, the name of which he could not pronounce, was sweeping the towns of their adopted homeland. It wasn’t safe for the kids to stay, but Nancy and Andrew felt they couldn’t possibly leave when so many lives now relied on their medical expertise.

What was an uncle supposed to say in those circumstances? I’ve got a ranch to run?

Of course, at the time when he’d said yes, he’d had no idea two five-year-olds were going to keep him from running his ranch. Keep him so busy and exhausted, he fell into bed at night feeling as if he’d wrestled, branded and inoculated several thousand head of cattle singlehandedly.

“Come on, Gumpy,” he implored the dark road.

He hoped the old truck hadn’t given out somewhere along the way. Gumpy always kept a roll of electrical tape and spare parts on hand and could bring about major miracles on that old heap of junk, but still, it wouldn’t make a good first impression on Mrs. Bishop.

She might not be happy standing in the dark on the side of the road in the biting November cold watching Gumpy cheerfully gluing his pride and joy back together.

And he wanted nothing more than for Mrs. Bishop to be happy.

Mrs. Betty-Anne Bishop was his neighbor’s cousin. Her name had come to him after he’d put out some panicky feelers to friends and neighbors.

That was three days after the twins had arrived. The laundry seemed to be multiplying on its own on the laundry room floor, the cattle needed to be dewormed, and Danny and Doreen had not yet revealed to him if they understood English.

He’d interviewed Mrs. Bishop by telephone. She was fifty-seven and had raised four children of her own.

None of whom were in jail.

Which was good enough for him.

It hadn’t fazed him that she lived in Ottawa, fifteen hundred miles away, either. He’d paid the short-notice, no-discount airfare to Calgary without blinking.

“It’s mine!” Doreen screamed.

“Isn’t!” Danny yelled back.

Ethan sighed and closed his eyes.

Now they were fighting. In some ways he’d liked it better before they decided to let him know they spoke English.

He leaned back from the sink again and looked down the hall to his bedroom. They were still smack-dab in the middle of his bed, engaged in a furious tug-of-war over his cowboy hat. Didn’t they know a man’s hat was sacred?

“Hey!” he hollered.

Doreen started, and dropped her hold on the hat. She fell on her plump bottom and looked accusingly down the hall at him. Even from here he could see her large blue eyes filling up with tears.

Wringing out the dishcloth with a little more vigor than was absolutely necessary, he said a word that would have given his sister a heart attack, and headed down the hall.

A few minutes later, Doreen tucked under one arm and Danny under the other, Ethan settled on the couch. They snuggled into him, and the opening credits of Toy Story came on.

“How many times have we watched this, Unca?” Doreen asked him happily.

“Twenty-seven,” he informed her grimly.

She sighed blissfully. Danny sang the opening song robustly. Ethan felt his eyelids growing heavier and heavier.

It seemed like only minutes later he jerked awake. But the TV was now playing plain blue, and Danny and Doreen were fast asleep, their heads on his chest, Danny snoring softly and Doreen drooling a little pool of saliva all over the front of his shirt.

If it hadn’t been for the drool, he might have thought he was dreaming.

Because there was an angel in the room with them.

She was absolutely beautiful. Her hair was thick and long, as golden as liquid honey, half piled on top of her head, and half falling around her face and shoulders. She had beautiful dark brown eyes, high cheekbones, a shapely nose, a mouth from which the lipstick had long ago worn off, but that still looked luscious.

Lipstick? Since when did angels wear lipstick?

He blinked, and gave his head a shake.

Since when did angels wear little pink silk suits, the color of cotton candy? The skirt showed Ethan enough long, shapely leg to make his mouth go dry.

“Honey, we’re home,” Gumpy said with a familiar cackle.

Ethan snapped his gaze to him. Gumpy, his wispy white hair framing his wrinkled copper-colored face, looked inordinately pleased with himself.

Ethan lifted the children’s heads off his chest and slipped out from under them. Stepping over the coffee table, he ignored Gumpy, and stared down at the beautiful intruder.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, his voice rougher than it needed to be in defense against those legs.

Lacey McCade stared up at the cowboy with awe. He was at least three inches taller than her own five feet nine inches. There was pure power in the strong lines of his face, in the high cut of his cheekbones, in the faint cleft of his chin, the straight line of his nose. His hair was thick and black as night and cut very short. His lips were full and faintly parted, and his eyelashes were long and sooty. His skin glowed with faint copper tones, and she knew he must be at least partly Native American.

His build was lean and hard. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up, and she could see the sinewy muscle of his lower arms, the strength in his large wrists. He flexed a hand impatiently, and her eyes were drawn momentarily to a thick scar that snaked around the base of his thumb.

He was wearing a denim shirt, and his shoulders and chest were broad beneath it.

Two ax handles wide, Lacey remembered her secretary saying once, giggling at a carpenter’s shoulders, as they passed a construction site on their way to an office luncheon.

Lacey remembered thinking at the time, Who in Los Angeles would know the first thing about ax handles? But she was a long way from Los Angeles now, and looking at those enormously broad shoulders, it fit.

His legs were very long, encased in old denim that looked as soft as felt, and clung to the large muscles of his thighs.

His eyes were astonishing, even in anger. They were gray and clear as cold mountain water. Not that anybody in Los Angeles would know anything about that, either.

“Hi,” she said nervously.

“Who the hell are you?” he repeated.

He had every right to be angry. Lacey shot a look at her rescuer, Gumpy. Or was she rescuing him? It had all seemed so simple at the airport.

She had just gotten off the phone to Keith who had not taken the news she was canceling the wedding very well. In fact, he had said he would get on the next flight and they would “talk.”

She hadn’t been in the mood for talking, and had decided to hide out in a hotel room. But after thirty-two phone calls, it was apparent to her that every hotel room in the whole city of Calgary was being used for an international convention of plumbers. Who would have known plumbers had conventions?

And then this wonderful old man had been standing in front of her, in faded jeans and a denim jacket. He was Native American, his skin warm and wrinkled copper, his eyes black as coal, his hair long and free and wispy as white smoke.

She had liked his eyes, because despite the nervous twisting of his hat in his hands, his eyes had been utterly calm, peaceful. In his eyes had been a deep knowing.

About everything. The secrets of life and the universe. Her secrets.

“Are you the nanny?” he’d asked shyly, revealing a gap where his two front teeth should have been.

She’d contemplated that for a moment. What she was, was a lawyer, one who had never had an impulsive moment before today. Today when, instead of driving to her law firm’s office in downtown Los Angeles after a particularly brutal session with a difficult client, she had taken the off-ramp to the airport, surveyed the flights out and chosen Calgary.

For no reason at all, really.

Unless you counted the fact that once, as a little girl, she had wanted very badly to go there for their world-famous rodeo, the Calgary Stampede.

And then some complete stranger with lovable eyes had asked her if she was a nanny, and some deep warmth had spread within her. Of course, she would have said no if he hadn’t spoken again.

“If you’re not the nanny, I guess I’m in a heap of trouble,” the old man had said sadly.

But his eyes had said no such thing. They twinkled at her as if they were about to share a wonderful joke. They invited her to say yes to the adventure. He knew she was not a nanny.

It felt as though Lacey was in a “heap of trouble” herself. Still, her utterly responsible voice ordered her indignantly not to do anything crazy. Anything else crazy. She shushed it.

The truth was she wanted, for once in her very ordinary life, to be crazy. She wanted to be impetuous and spontaneous. She wanted life to at least have the possibility of something wonderful and unpredictable happening.

And after she’d had that, her small taste of life on the wild side, a breath or two of pure freedom, she would probably be perfectly content to go home and marry Keith. Perfectly.

“I am a nanny,” she told her unlikely angel, holding out her hand to him.

He took it, and any doubt she had was gone instantly. His grip was strong and warm and reassuring. “I lost the paper with your name on it, miss.”

She hesitated, knowing when she said her name he was going to realize his error. And the adventure would be over just like that. She’d get on the next plane and go home.

She had been aware of holding her breath as she said, “Lacey. My name’s Lacey McCade.”

But his smile had nearly swallowed his face. “Nelson,” he’d told her, “Nelson Go-Up-the-Mountain.” When she told him she had never heard such a beautiful name, he had ducked his head with endearing shyness. “Shucks, just call me Gumpy.”

Lacey had never heard anyone say “Shucks” before. She wanted to ask him all about the children, but remembered she was likely supposed to know.

“Your luggage?” he’d asked her.

“Lost.” She felt guilty lying to him, but really that one word could mean just about anything. And it suddenly occurred to her that the turnoff to the airport earlier had been very much about things lost. Some part of herself was lost.

“We’ll find it,” he’d said reassuringly.

And looking at him, she’d believed it. And knew he was not talking about luggage any more than she was.

Now, facing the man in front of her, her choice seemed silly rather than adventurous.

Even sleeping, with those two adorable children nestled trustingly into him, there had been nothing vulnerable about this man. He had looked rugged and 100 percent pure male.