Wrangled by the Alien Rancher (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides #2)

1. Fallon

1

FALLON

“ D on’t show up to your wedding without a shirt,” was what the warden had sternly told me. And so, I would not. As I wanted to make the best first impression possible upon my human bride Darcy, I recruited Cherry for assistance, much to her husband Silar’s displeasure.

“You impose too much upon my wife,” my fellow Zabrian male growled at me from his brooding place in the corner of the kitchen as Cherry and I sat at the table he’d recently constructed.

“It’s not an imposition,” Cherry said, tossing me a pretty smile.

Empire, if my bride Darcy is only half so sweet as Silar’s woman…

I could not wait to meet her. And I’d be wearing a traditional human male wedding outfit when I did it. Or as close to it as I could get.

“See? She says it is no imposition,” I said lightly to Silar. Slowly, a white glow came into the other male’s eyes. I could only imagine what he was fantasizing about doing to me, taking up this small slice of his beautiful wife’s attention as I currently was. He’d already almost strangled me over her once.

The quiet male was absolutely besotted with his human wife. Entirely owned by her. If I were not about to so enthusiastically fling myself into the exact same situation, I would have teased him for it.

“It is an imposition to me ,” Silar grunted, crossing his arms over his thick, bare chest and glowering.

“You don’t have to stay,” Cherry said quickly, turning in her chair to look back at him. “If you have stuff you need to be doing right now. We don’t need supervision.”

Silar’s hot white gaze slid to her and grew brighter, an impassioned crackle of light.

“You don’t,” he agreed in a low voice. He jerked the tip of his tail at me. “He does.”

“You know, in all the time I have known him, I have not heard Silar say so many words together as I have since your arrival,” I told Cherry, ignoring the malice in the white gaze that was once more directed at me. “I believe you are having a good influence on him, even if most of the words I am hearing out of his mouth are some sort of criticism of me.”

Cherry shook her head side to side and then moved her eyes up towards the ceiling in an odd gesture I did not understand. I made a note to look it up in the human manual I’d been given in preparation for my marriage when I returned home.

“Simmer down over there, Silar,” Cherry said.

“Simmer… What?”

“It just means, like, chill out.”

Silar’s brow puckered beneath the brim of his hat. He looked even more mystified than before.

“Chilling something is very nearly the opposite of simmering,” he said slowly. It was obvious to me that he did not want to make his wife feel silly or ignorant by questioning her, but his blunt nature could not help but point out the confusing contradiction in what she’d just said.

“They’re human phrases. I just mean, calm down and be nice ,” Cherry said on a slight sigh.

Silar gave an unintelligible rumble in reply. It probably would have been easier for him to attempt to make his blood simmer like hot water than to be nice to anyone besides his tiny wife. But I decided, self-preservation at the forefront of my mind, to keep that astute observation to myself. I could not afford to get murdered by Silar before my own wedding.

Cherry gave Silar a stern look, but the expression soon melted into a smile as she gazed upon him. The affection she felt for my great grunting, brooding neighbour was clear to see. Something tightened in my gut, strong and twisting like a tail, as I imagined my own wife feeling something similar for me. Looking upon me with that same softness.

Eventually, Cherry turned her white, blue, and black eyes back to me.

“Show me what you’ve got so far.”

I quickly pulled material from my satchel, some of it black, some of it white. Or, as white as I could keep any fabric in the dust of this world, anyway. I placed it all down upon the table.

“Alright. Good,” Cherry said, moving her head again, but up and down this time. “You can definitely make a wedding suit in an Old-Earth style with this.” Her thoughtful gaze moved to mine, and she grimaced. “I’m warning you, though. I can help you with the design, but not the sewing.”

“That is no problem,” I said with a dismissive flick of my tail across the wood planks of the floor. “I can sew.”

“You can?” Cherry looked surprised by this. And, if I was not mistaken, perhaps even a little impressed.

From somewhere in Silar’s gloomy, forgotten corner came the sound of knuckles cracking.

“I can sew, too.”

“Oh, I know you can,” Cherry said, turning without fear towards the foreboding shape of the imposing figure behind her. “I’ve seen you patch things up, and you made me that new hat. But I didn’t know you could cut and sew entire outfits!”

Silar’s voice went taut with tenderness as he replied.

“I can. I’d make you anything you want, Cherry. You need only tell me.”

“This is good information,” she said, remaining practical and business-like while Silar appeared to be on the heartsick brink of collapsing under the weight of his love for her. “There are a few things I could use before I get my supplies when the other girls come.”

Cherry swivelled back to me, impervious to the hungry white throb of her husband’s gaze on the back of her brown-haired head.

“You can definitely make a certain style of human formalwear with this,” she told me, gesturing slender, clawless fingers at the table. “It’s what I’m most familiar with, anyway. It’s called a suit. Pants, shirt, and a jacket. With what you’ve got here, you’d likely be looking at a black suit with a white dress shirt underneath.”

“Will these pants be appropriate?” I asked, standing to display the dark, creased leather of my trousers. I did not think I had enough black fabric to make both a jacket and new bottoms, and there would not be time to order more.

“Um. Sure! Those will be fine,” Cherry replied after a slight hesitation. “Very, er, cowboy chic.”

I didn’t know what that meant but it certainly sounded good! With an eager grin, I sat back down.

We spent the next little while conversing about design. Human dress shirts required a rather dizzying number of buttons and corresponding holes, and the jacket was just as mystifying with its alien appendages called lapels. And then there was something called a tie, which apparently came in multiple styles and shapes. But despite the confusing fripperies of the outfit, by the time the sun was beginning to sink towards the horizon, I had the general shape of the garments marked upon the fabric.

“Take it home to cut and sew it all,” Silar said, apparently noticing that I’d happily settled into my place and would have stayed there well into the night finishing the project if I’d been allowed. It was easy to fall into cheery conversation with Cherry. She was Silar’s opposite in so many ways. Smiley and open. Though her husband likely would have had my head for even thinking it, I’d begun to think of Cherry as a friend. I was immensely grateful for her and her company.

This happiness was a tiny, tantalizing taste of what I hoped to experience with Darcy. Conversation and companionship wrapped up in a pretty human package.

And maybe even…

I jolted to my feet, vigorously snapping my tail ’round its hook as I remembered the images of human mating included near the end of the manual I’d received. Those pages had already become creased and worn with how often I’d found myself turning to them, gripping their edges with tense and trembling hands, white-eyed and hard-cocked. It was rather impressive, I thought to myself, that I had not yet ripped any of them. Or soiled them…

“Thank you for your assistance,” I said to Cherry, gathering all my fabric up. I was getting ahead of myself. I hadn’t even met Darcy yet, let alone married her.

But it wouldn’t be long now.

There was less than one human week until Darcy and Oaken’s bride, Magnolia, arrived. Only three days.

Three days of working. Sewing. Dreaming.

“You’re welcome,” Cherry called as Silar ushered me out the front door and then closed it behind me.

The setting sun had turned the sky a luscious sort of pink.

Cherry had said that Darcy’s hair was pink.

I stared dazedly – and perhaps even rather stupidly – at the sky, contemplating the fact that pink really did seem to be the best sort of colour. I was brought out of my reverie when my hound Sora bounded up to me. Her happy barks and the near-frantic snapping of her tail accompanied me as I strode over to where I’d left my mount, a great black shuldu named Kolt.

“Time to head home, Sora,” I said, settling into my saddle and taking up the reins.

I had work to do. A suit to sew.

And a whole new life to prepare for.