Fortune's June Bride

He spread his hands wryly. “And here I thought the last two and a half decades might’ve made some difference.”

She laughed. “What can I say? A girl never forgets her first kiss. You’ll always be nine years old in my eyes.” Her humorous gaze looked past him and Galen realized Aurora had come up behind him. “You’re the new Lila,” she greeted, sticking out her hand. “I’ve been hearing what a great job you’ve been doing.”

Aurora warily took the other woman’s hand, returning the greeting. “Aurora McElroy,” she offered, watching Galen from the corner of her eye.

He was watching the other woman with nothing but pleasure on his face.

“And you,” she hurriedly focused elsewhere, “are obviously in the saloon show.”

“Serena,” the other woman offered, moving her hip up and down. “This is how the West was won,” she added, smiling mischievously. She glanced back at Galen. “Galen and I were quite the item once upon a time.”

“Yeah. Fourth-grade time,” he drawled. His hand slipped up Aurora’s spine in a seemingly absentminded way. “Serena used to live in Horseback Hollow,” he provided. “They moved away a long time ago.”

“Don’t remind me just how long.” Serena ran her hands down her hourglass sides. “Getting harder every year to fit into these costumes.”

“You look spectacular,” Aurora said truthfully. The woman had enviable curves to spare.

“Well, after two kids, I guess I can be glad I am even competing with the likes of them.” She tossed her feathered headdress in the direction of the other saloon girls. “They’re still so young they’re wet behind the ears.” She focused again on Aurora. “You’re from right here in Horseback Hollow, aren’t you?”

Aurora nodded. She was finding it hard to think of much of anything other than the feel of Galen’s hand still resting lightly against the small of her back. “Born and raised,” she managed. “Did you move back here just to work at Cowboy Country?”

“Transferred here from the Coaster World in St. Louis,” Serena said. “I was with the dance corps there for years. But after my divorce last year, I figured it’d be easier raising my two boys in small-town USA.” She looked back at Galen again. “We should get together. Catch up on old times.”

Aurora could feel her jaw tightening, which was beyond ridiculous. It was none of her business who or what Galen went out with. But she also didn’t want to stand there, with his hand on her back, while he made the plans. It was too eerily reminiscent of her brief college career when she’d been with Anthony.

So she pulled out the locket watch that had once belonged to her maternal grandmother and glanced blindly at the time before snapping the locket shut. “I’ll leave you two to catch up,” she said brightly, edging away from them. “I need to, ah, grab Frank for a minute before the show starts. Nice meeting you, Serena.”

She barely stayed long enough to hear Serena’s “you, too” before she hurried over toward Frank Richter where he was holding court among the other saloon girls. She wanted to talk to him about as much as she wanted a spike puncturing a hole in her head, but his was the only name that had come to her mind, so she was stuck.

She stopped next to him. “We should get moving.”

He sent her a careless smile. “We’ve got a few minutes yet. And Cammie here was telling me all about herself.”

Cammie giggled, looking naively thrilled by Frank’s notice.

Aurora wanted to warn the girl—whose face looked like she still belonged in grade school despite her eye-popping bosom—not to get too excited, since she’d already had plenty of time to witness his alley-cat tendencies. But she said nothing. When she’d been as young as Cammie, she hadn’t been interested in hearing what anyone had to say about the object of her affection, either.

From the corner of her eye, she could see Galen and Serena still conversing, so she made her way over to the buckboard and fit her microphone into place where it was mostly hidden in her hair. She wasn’t donning the veil until she absolutely had to.

She patted her hand over the black horse already in harness. “Hey, pal. Ready for another show?” The horse, imaginatively named Blackie, jerked his head a few times before shaking his mane and turning his attention back to the few weeds sprouting up in the dirt underfoot. “I know. You’ve got a tough job,” she murmured. “Running down Main Street a few times a day.” The rest of the time, the show horses for Cowboy Country spent their days in pampered comfort in air-conditioned barns located behind the lushly landscaped public picnic grounds.

She gave him a final pat before hiking her wedding dress above her knees to work her toe onto the edge of the front wheel so she could pull herself awkwardly up onto the high wooden seat. She didn’t mind portraying a nineteenth-century Western bride, but she sure was glad she hadn’t been one for real.

But then again, she wasn’t exactly a twenty-first-century bride, either.

She propped the thin sole of her old-fashioned boot on the edge of the wood footrest at the front of the wagon, pulled her heavy skirt above her knees, then lifted the curls of her hairpiece off her damp neck. It was early June in Texas, and the sun was high and hot overhead. And buckboards didn’t come equipped with air-conditioning any more than they came with upholstered, padded seats and running boards to make climbing in easier.

Eventually, she saw her cast mates start assembling and Galen finally tore himself away from Serena the chatterbox to walk with Sal the Sheriff toward their own gate.

“You’re getting grumpy in your old age, Aurora,” she muttered under her breath, and sat up straighter, letting her dress fall back down where it belonged while she fit the brain-squeezing band of her veil around her head. The springs beneath the wood seat squeaked loudly as Frank climbed up beside her and fixed his mic into place.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Just hot.” She looked over her shoulder. Serena had returned to the rest of her dance line and the women were all standing around, adjusting the straps of their vibrant dresses and tugging at the seams running down the back of their fishnet stockings.

She faced forward again. “You should leave Cammie alone,” she told Frank. “She looks too young for you.”

His shoulder leaned against hers. “Then stop saying no to me every time I ask.”

She shifted as far to the right as she could without falling off the seat altogether. “I don’t date people I work with.” The statement was almost laughable, since she didn’t date, period.

Over the loudspeaker, they heard their cue, which meant whatever Frank might have said in response had to go unsaid since their microphones had gone live.

She swallowed, tilting her head back and closing her eyes as she willed away the surge of stage fright that made her feel nauseated before every single performance.

Frank took up the reins, lightly tapping them against the wood as he clucked softly to Blackie. The horse immediately lifted his head and shook his mane again as he started forward toward their gate.

And the next show began.

* * *

“And here, straight from his Academy Award–worthy stretch playing the ooh-la-la hero, Rusty, is our very own Galen—”

Galen shoved Liam’s shoulder hard enough to push his brother—a year younger and four inches taller—right off the arm of the couch where he was propped. “Give me a break,” he growled.

Liam laughed silently and moved around to sit properly next to his new wife, Julia, on the couch in their mama’s front parlor.

It was Sunday afternoon, and Jeanne Marie Fortune Jones had called all her children home for a proper family meal. As if they didn’t have one damn near every weekend to begin with. If Wild West Wedding didn’t take a reprieve on Sunday afternoons so that the Sunday Go to Meeting House choir could use its stage, Galen would’ve missed out entirely on the only home-cooked meal he’d had in days.

Julia was smiling at Galen. “I still can’t believe you’ve been playing a part at all at Cowboy Country.”

“It’s temporary.” He pushed Christopher. “Get outta my spot, man.”

At twenty-seven, Chris was the baby of the boys. But his days of letting Galen order him around were apparently over, judging by the dry look Galen got in return. Chris, like Liam, Jude and their little sister Stacey, had gotten hitched just that Valentine’s Day in the same big wedding. And marriage to the gorgeous Kinsley had definitely helped settle him, same as finding his footing in business with the Fortune Foundation. “Pretty sure your name’s not stitched in the upholstery now any more than it ever was.” To prove that he was staying put, Christopher propped his boot heels on the coffee table in front of his chair. “Get your own chair, brother.”

Typically, when the whole family was around, seating was at a premium. Particularly now that his siblings had started adding spouses—and in the case of his brother Toby and his wife of a year, Angie, the three foster kids they’d adopted. Which meant every seat cushion in the parlor was wholly occupied by the backside of a Fortune Jones. Even the floor was taken up by Toby’s two youngest, Justin and Kylie, where they were working a big old puzzle.

“I don’t know how temporary,” Julia was saying on a laugh. “Haven’t you been playing Rusty all last week?”

Galen almost tugged at his collar, but managed to restrain himself. “’Bout that. Where’s Stace?”

“Piper’s got a summer cold,” Angie said, speaking of Stacey’s toddler. “She didn’t want to expose anyone.”

“Thought you told ’em you were only going to play Rusty for that one day.” That came from Jude, entering the room with more brains than Galen had, since he was carrying a chair from the dining room table with him. He set it in the corner and promptly pulled his petite wife, Gabriella, down on his knee. “That’s what you said last time I talked to you. What was it?” He and his bride shared a look that spoke of intimacies Galen didn’t even want to contemplate. “Last Wednesday?”

“They were in a pinch,” he muttered grumpily. “The original guy, Joey somebody-or-other, broke his leg. He’s out for the next six weeks, at least.” And Galen still couldn’t explain his reasons for giving in when Diane in the casting department still hadn’t produced a permanent replacement for the guy. It damn sure hadn’t been because Diane was outright propositioning him.

But attributing it to keeping Aurora’s whole-body smile going wasn’t something he wanted to admit to, either.