McKettrick: An Outlaw's Christmas Part 18

Brylee, beaming behind the thin fabric of her veil, nodded in response to something her brother whispered to her and they stepped forward.

"Hold it," Hutch heard himself say loudly enough to be heard over the thundering joy of the organ. He held up both hands, like a referee about to call a foul in some fast-paced game. "Stop."

Everything halted-with a sickening lurch.

The music died.

The bride and her brother seemed frozen in mid-stride.

Hutch would have sworn the universe itself had stopped expanding.

"This is all wrong," he went on miserably, but with his back straight and his head up. It wasn't as if he hadn't broached the subject with Brylee before-he'd been trying to get out of this fix for weeks. Just the night before, in fact, he'd sat Brylee down in a vinyl upholstered booth at the Silver Lanes snack bar and told her straight out that he had serious misgivings about getting married and needed some breathing s.p.a.ce.

Brylee had cried, her mascara smudging, her nose reddening at the tip.

"You don't mean it," she'd said, which was her standard response to any attempt he made to put on the brakes before they both plummeted over a matrimonial cliff. "You're just nervous, that's all. It's entirely normal. But once the wedding is over and we're on our honeymoon-"

Hutch couldn't stand it when a woman cried, especially when he was the cause of her tears. Like every other time, he'd backed down, tried to convince himself that Brylee was right-he just had cold feet, that was all.

Now, though, "push" had run smack up against "shove."

It was now or never.

He faced Brylee squarely.

The universe unfroze itself, like some big machine with rusted gears, and all h.e.l.l broke loose.

Brylee threw down her bouquet, stomped on it once, whirled on one heel and rushed out of the church. Walker flung a beleaguered and not entirely friendly look in Hutch's direction, then turned to go after his sister.

The guests, already on their feet in honor of the bride, all started talking at once, abuzz with shock and speculation.

Things like this might happen in books or movies, but they didn't happen in Parable, Montana.

Until now, Hutch reflected dismally.

He started to follow Brylee out of the church, not an easy proposition with folks crowding the aisle. He didn't have the first clue what he could say to her, but he figured he had to say something.

Before he'd taken two strides, though, Slade and Boone closed in on him from either side, each taking a firm grip on one of his arms.

"Let her go," Boone said quietly.

"There's nothing you can do," Slade confirmed.

With that, they hustled him quickly out of the main chapel and into the small side room where the choir robes, hymnals and Communion gear were stored.

Hutch wondered if a lynch mob was forming back there in the sanctuary.

"You picked a fine time to change your mind about getting married," Boone remarked, but his tone was light and his eyes twinkled with something that looked a lot like relief.

Hutch unfastened his fancy tie and shoved it into one coat pocket. Then he opened his collar halfway to his breastbone and sucked in a breath. "I tried to tell her," he muttered. He knew it sounded lame, but the truth was the truth.

Although he and Slade shared a father, they had been at b.l.o.o.d.y-knuckled odds most of their lives. They'd made some progress toward getting along since the old man's death and the upheaval that followed, but neither of them related to the other as a buddy, let alone a brother.

"Come on out to our place," Slade said, surprising him. "You'd best lay low for a few hours. Give Brylee-and Walker-a little time to cool off."

Hutch stiffened slightly, though he found the invitation oddly welcome. Home, being Whisper Creek Ranch, was a lonely outpost these days-which was probably why he'd talked himself into proposing to Brylee in the first place.

"I have to talk to Brylee," he repeated.

"There'll be time for that later on," Slade reasoned.

"Slade's right," Boone agreed. Boone, being violently allergic to marriage himself, probably thought Hutch had just dodged a figurative bullet.

Or maybe he was remembering that Brylee was a crack shot with a pistol, a rifle, or a Civil War cannon.

Given what had just happened, she was probably leaning toward the cannon right about now.

Hutch sighed. "All right," he said to Slade. "I'll kick back at your place for a while-but I've got to stop off at home first, so I can change out of this monkey suit."

"Fine," Slade agreed. "I'll round up the women and meet you at the Windfall in an hour or two."

By "the women," Slade meant his lovely wife, Joslyn, his teenage stepdaughter, Shea, and Opal Dennison, the force-of-nature who kept house for the Barlow outfit. Slade's mother, Callie, had had the good grace to skip the ceremony-old scandals die hard in a town the size of Parable and recollections of her long-ago affair with Carmody Senior, from which Slade had famously resulted, were as sharp as ever.

Today's escapade would put all that in the shade, of course. Tongues were wagging and jaws were flapping for sure-by now, various up-to-the-minute accounts were probably popping up on all the major social media sites. Before Slade and Boone had dragged Hutch out of the sanctuary, he'd seen several people whip out their cell phones and start texting. A few pictures had been taken, too, with those same ubiquitous devices.

The thought of all that amateur reporting made Hutch close his eyes for a moment. "s.h.i.+t," he murmured.

"Knee-deep and rising," Slade confirmed, sounding resigned.

KENDRA SAT AT the antique table in her best friend Joslyn's kitchen, with Callie Barlow in the chair directly across from hers. The ranch house was unusually quiet, with its usual occupants gone to town.

A glance over one shoulder a.s.sured Kendra that her recently adopted four-year-old daughter, Madison, was still napping on a padded window seat, her stuffed purple kangaroo, Rupert, clenched in her arms. The little girl's gleaming hair, the color of a newly minted penny, lay in tousled curls around her cherubic face and Kendra felt the usual pang of hopeless devotion just looking at her.

This long-sought, hard-won, much-wanted child.

This miracle.

Not that every woman would have seen the situation from the same perspective as Kendra did-Madison was, after all, living proof that Jeffrey had been unfaithful, a constant reminder that it was dangerous to love, treacherous to trust, foolish to believe in another person too much. But none of that had mattered to Kendra in the end-she'd essentially been abandoned herself as a small child, left to grow up with a disinterested grandmother, and that gave her a special affinity for Madison. Besides, Jeffrey, having returned to his native England after summarily ending their marriage, had been dying.

Some men might have turned to family for help in such a situation-Jeffrey Chamberlain came from a very wealthy and influential one-but in this case, that wasn't possible. Jeffrey's aging parents were landed gentry with a string of t.i.tles, several sprawling estates and a fortune that dated back to the heyday of the East India Company, and were no more inclined toward child-rearing than they had been when their own two sons were small. They'd left Jeffrey and his brother in the care of nannies and housekeepers from infancy, and s.h.i.+pped them off to boarding school as soon as they turned six.

Understandably, Jeffrey hadn't wanted that kind of cold and isolated childhood for his daughter.

So he'd sent word to Kendra that he had to see her, in person. He had something important to tell her.

She'd made that first of several trips to the U.K., keeping protracted vigils at her ex-husband's hospital bedside while he drifted in and out of consciousness.

Eventually, he'd managed to get his message across: he told her about Madison, living somewhere in the U.S., and begged Kendra to find his daughter, adopt her and bring her up in love and safety. She was, he told her, the only person on earth he could or would trust with the child.

Kendra wanted nothing so much as a child and, during their brief marriage, Jeffrey had denied her repeated requests to start a family. It was a bitter pill to swallow, learning that he'd refused her a baby and then fathered one with someone else, someone he'd met on a business trip.

She'd done what Jeffrey asked, not so much for his sake-though she'd loved him once, or believed she did-as for Madison's. And her own.

The search hadn't been an easy one, even with the funds Jeffrey had set aside for the purpose, involving a great deal of web-surfing, phone calls and emails, travel and so many highs and lows that she nearly gave up several times.

Then it happened. She found Madison.

Kendra hadn't known what she'd feel upon actually meeting her former husband's child, but any doubts she might have had had been dispelled the moment-the moment-she'd met this cautious, winsome little girl.

The first encounter had taken place in a social worker's dingy office, in a dusty desert town in California, and for Kendra, it was love at first sight.

The forever kind of love.

Months of legal ha.s.sles had followed, but now, at long last, Kendra and Madison were officially mother and daughter, in the eyes of G.o.d and government, and Kendra knew she couldn't have loved her baby girl any more if she'd carried her in her own body for nine months.

Callie brought Kendra back to the present moment by reaching for the teapot in the center of the table and refilling Kendra's cup, then her own.

"Do you think it's over yet?" Kendra asked, instantly regretting the question but unable to hold back still another. "The wedding, I mean?"

Callie's smile was gentle as she glanced at the clock on the stove top and met Kendra's gaze again. "Probably," she said quietly. Then, without another word, she reached out to give Kendra's hand a light squeeze.

Madison, meanwhile, stirred on the window seat. "Mommy?"

Kendra turned again. "I'm here, honey," she said.

Although Madison was adjusting rapidly, in the resilient way of young children, she still had bad dreams sometimes and she tended to panic if she lost sight of Kendra for more than a moment.

"Are you hungry, sweetie?" Callie asked the little girl. Slade's mom would make a wonderful grandmother; she had a way with children, easy and forthright.

Madison shook her head as she moved toward Kendra and then scrambled up onto her lap.

"It's been a while since lunch," Kendra suggested, kissing the top of Madison's head and holding her close. "Maybe you'd like a gla.s.s of milk and one of Opal's oatmeal raisin cookies?"

Again, Madison shook her head, snuggling closer still. "No, thank you," she said clearly, sounding, as she often did, more like a small adult than a four-year-old.

They'd arrived by car the night before and spent the night in the Barlows' guest room, at Joslyn's insistence.

The old house, the very heart of Windfall Ranch, was undergoing considerable renovation, which only added to the exuberant chaos of the place-and Madison was wary of everyone but Opal, the family housekeeper.

Just then, Slade and Joslyn's dog, Jasper, heretofore snoozing on his bed in front of the newly installed kitchen fireplace, sat bolt upright and gave a questioning little whine. His floppy ears were pitched slightly forward, though he seemed to be listening with his entire body. Joslyn's cat, Lucy-Maude, remained singularly unconcerned.

Madison looked at the animal with shy interest, still unsure whether to make friends with him or keep her distance.

"Well," Callie remarked, getting to her feet and heading for the nearest window, the one over the steel sink, and peering out as the sound of a car's engine reached them, "they're back early. They must have decided to skip the reception."

Jasper barked happily and hurried to the door. Joslyn had long since dubbed him the one-dog welcoming committee and at the moment he was spilling over with a wild desire to greet whoever happened to show up.

With a little chuckle, Callie opened the back door so Jasper could shoot through it like a fur-covered bullet, positively beside himself with joy. There was a little frown nestled between the older woman's eyebrows, though, as she looked toward Kendra again. "This is odd," she reiterated. "I hope Joslyn is feeling all right."

Shea, Slade's lovely dark-haired stepdaughter, just turned seventeen, burst into the house first, her violet eyes huge with excitement. "You're not going to believe this, Grands," she told Callie breathlessly. "The music was playing. The bridesmaids were all lined up and the preacher had his book open, ready to start. And what do you suppose happened?"

Kendra's heart fluttered in her chest, but she didn't speak.

A number of drastic scenarios flashed through her mind-a wedding guest toppling over from a heart attack, then a cattle truck cras.h.i.+ng through a wall, followed by lightning boring its way right through the roof of the church and striking the bridegroom dead where he stood.

She shook the images off. Waited with her breath snagged painfully in the back of her throat.

"What?" Callie prodded good-naturedly, studying her step-granddaughter. She and Shea were close-the girl worked part-time at Callie's Curly Burly Hair Salon in town, and during the school year, Shea went to Callie's place after the last bell rang, spending hours tweaking the website she'd built for the shop.

"Hutch called the whole thing off," Shea blurted. "He stopped the wedding!"

"Oh, my," Callie said. The door was still open, and Kendra heard Joslyn's voice, then Opal's, as they came toward the house. Slade must have been with them, but he was keeping quiet, as usual.

Kendra realized she was squeezing Madison too tightly and relaxed her arms a little. Her mouth had dropped open at some point and she closed it, hoping no one had noticed. Just then, she couldn't have uttered a word if the place caught fire.

Opal, tall and dressed to the nines in one of her home-sewn and brightly patterned jersey dresses, crossed the threshold next, shaking her head as she unpinned her old-fas.h.i.+oned hat, with its tiny stuffed bird and inch-wide veiling.

Slade and Joslyn came in behind her, Joslyn's huge belly preceding her "by half an hour," as her adoring husband liked to say.

By then, the bomb dropped, Shea had s.h.i.+fted her focus to Madison. She'd been trying to win the little girl over from the beginning, and her smile dazzled, like sunlight on still waters. "Hey, kiddo," she said. "Since we missed out on the wedding cake, I'm up for a major cookie binge. Want to join me?"

Somewhat to Kendra's surprise, Madison slid down off her lap, Rupert the kangaroo dangling from one small hand, and approached the older girl, albeit slowly. "Okay," she said, her voice tentative.

Joslyn, meanwhile, lumbered over to the table, pulled back a chair and sank into it. She looked incandescent in her summery maternity dress, a blue confection with white polka dots, and she fanned her flushed face with her thin white clutch for a few moments before plunking it down on the tabletop.

"Do you need to lie down?" Callie asked her daughter-

in-law worriedly, one hand resting on Joslyn's shoulder.

Madison and Shea, meanwhile, were plundering the cookie jar.

"No," Joslyn told her. "I'm fine. Really."

Opal tied on an ap.r.o.n and instructed firmly, "Now don't you girls stuff yourselves on those cookies with me fixing to put a meal on the table in a little while."

A swift tenderness came over Kendra as she took it all in-including Opal's bl.u.s.ter. As Kendra was growing up, the woman had been like a mother to her, if not a patron saint.

Slade, his blue gaze resting softly on Joslyn, hung up his hat and bent to ruffle the dog's ears.