Chapter 6
The wedding was not romantic. I didn’t expect it to be. I did expect he might take my hand.
C arson was at Perry’s place bright and early on Sunday morning with a horse trailer. Because horse trailers weren’t only good for moving horses.
She was bringing her personal items to the cabin, but bigger things like furniture were going to the storage unit.
Flynn and Austin had come along to help load everything in, and when he was winded less than halfway through, he was grateful for their help.
He hadn’t appreciated the sheer amount of old wooden furniture in the Victorian.
But then, it was easy to forget how big the place was, because Perry really did only occupy three rooms. When he had done his walk-through, he could see why.
There was a lot of water damage, and the house was rough around the edges.
But it had a lot of promise. The place was gorgeous. Exactly the kind of project he was looking forward to sinking himself into.
“I’m going to be a little bit scarce over the next couple of months,” he said as he and Austin lifted a giant hutch up onto a dolly, and then began to guide it through the house.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Why is that?”
“I’m going to be working on fixing up Perry’s house.”
“You seem to be doing an awful lot for her,” Austin said, looking past Carson, which Carson assumed was him keeping watch for Perry so she didn’t overhear him saying something like that.
“Well. She deserves an awful lot.”
“I’m not implying that she doesn’t.”
With great care, they got the hutch down the steps and began to take it toward the trailer. “I had a conversation with Flynn and … the truth is, while I enjoy working the ranch with you, I don’t actually think I want to be a full-time rancher.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really. I want to do woodworking. Specialized construction stuff. Restoration.”
“How long have you been thinking on that?”
“Not that long, really. But the minute that I thought of it, I couldn’t let it go.”
Austin frowned. “And a conversation with Flynn put you on this path?”
“Actually, it started as a conversation about sex.”
He heard a small noise, and turned to see Perry standing there, at the back of the truck. “I’m just recapping the conversation we already had,” he said. He didn’t know why he felt weird or uncomfortable that she had heard some of his explanation.
“Right,” she said. “Restoration.”
“Yeah.”
She did not say anything about sex.
He felt a strange sort of discomfort settle over his skin.
The breeze rippled, and the leaves of the trees parted, allowing a shaft of light to fall across Perry’s face. To illuminate her curly blond hair and cast a golden glow onto her skin before she disappeared back into the house.
She was beautiful, was Perry.
He had made a decision about Perry really early on.
Her beauty had to stay out of reach. Because the men in his family had a tendency to break the things they took in hand.
Perry’s dad had already broken her enough, and Carson could never forget her reaction to seeing a look of attraction on his face. Well, he’d never know for sure what she’d seen, but he could tell it had frightened her enough to slip away from him.
That wasn’t who he was supposed to be to her.
So he’d decided that Perry was too far above him to touch.
Once made, the decision had been surprisingly easy to keep. Something he didn’t have to think about overly much.
He was grateful for that. Because he needed Perry in a very specific way, and he always had.
He had never wanted to ruin what they had by ruining her. But sometimes he would look at her and he would forget. Right along with forgetting how to breathe. Forgetting how to speak.
This was one of those moments.
He chose to let it pass.
He never let it go further than this. He never let it get deeper than appreciating how pretty she was—that he could excuse as just being observant.
Responsibility was something else he had learned early on. A man had to take control of his thoughts, because his actions followed. It was weak men who wouldn’t be held accountable for what they thought, and therefore what they did.
“Anyway,” he said, looking away from Perry and toward his brother. And sanity. “Yeah, I’m going to be focusing on this restoration. If it goes well … who knows? There’s the Wilder house.”
“That place is probably a wreck,” said Austin.
“I know. It probably is. But it would be great if it could be in walk-through shape for the community.”
Austin rubbed his chin. “My wife would love that.”
“I know. Hell, so would your readers, Austin.”
Austin looked deeply uncomfortable at that comment. He didn’t know quite what to do with being the New York Times bestselling author of a hit book that was now going to be a TV series. Flynn, Cassidy, and Carson loved to harass him about it.
“It’s a great idea,” said Perry. “It would be a huge draw for Rustler Mountain.”
“And a chance to put more Wilder history front and center.”
“Something to take away from Butch Hancock’s Wild West Show.”
Austin grimaced. “Come on now. Something that amounts to basically a museum is never going to compete with a show like theirs. What they do is pure entertainment, and that’s why it’s appealing.”
“Sure. But we can get the schoolchildren and the old people,” Carson said.
“Listen, it’s a very good idea.”
“I know it,” he said. “And makes the most of my specific talents, which you have to admit are not really fixing fences.”
“Is anyone gifted at fixing fences, or do we just have to do it?”
“I’m not stepping out on you altogether. Just let me see how this goes.”
“Dammit. I like seeing you invested in something too much to say no.”
“Excellent,” said Carson.
They finished loading everything into the horse trailer, and Austin looked at all the furniture stacked inside. “Are you going to be able to get this into the storage unit without help?”
“Yeah, I should be able to. There aren’t going to be stairs like there were here. And I should be able to pull right up to the entrance.”
“All right. As long as you’re set. Millie has a doctor’s appointment in a couple of hours.” Austin cleared his throat. “We should be finding out whether we’re having a boy or a girl.”
“That’s amazing,” said Carson.
It was still strange, watching his brother about to become a father when Carson had been certain that he would be one by now.
When things had been going well, he and Alyssa had really wanted to start a family.
For all that he had issues with his own father, Carson had wanted children.
It was part of wanting to be a better man.
Maybe you should have a baby with Perry …
Flynn’s words echoed in his head.
He pushed them aside.
He had been a different person then. When he’d married Alyssa, he’d believed that the world was still fixable in a way he didn’t think it was now. That he was fixable in a way he didn’t think he was.
Yes, he’d had a good set of dreams Once Upon a Time.
Part of him still yearned for them.
But he knew better.
“Text me as soon as you know,” he said.
“Will do.”
He watched as Austin and Flynn pulled away, heading back toward the ranch.
Perry came out of the house, dressed in faded blue jeans and a yellow button-up shirt tucked in. She looked cheerful and put together; he probably looked like a mess after lifting all that furniture.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“Yep. Ready to take the grueling drive down the mountain.”
“Thank you again,” she said.
He waved his hand and got into his truck. “See you down there.”
He did the tricky maneuver of pulling the truck and trailer out onto the narrow street and then began the drive down to the closest large town around. He wasn’t going to call it a city.
The winding two-lane road took them past Applegate Lake, and on impulse, he pulled the truck and trailer off the road when he reached the viewpoint that looked out over the deep blue water.
It was warm, but the mountain in the distance was still covered in snow.
Perry pulled in behind him and got out of the car.
“I always think this place is so beautiful,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “It doesn’t matter that we drive past it so often.”
“What I like best about this road is that not much has changed on it in the last thirty years. Some new houses. No major developments. This viewpoint is the same, and so is the boat ramp down there.”
“Yeah. My dad always used to talk about the town that’s underwater now. The town of Copper.”
“Yeah. My dad too. But the dam was put in before we were born, so … I guess that would’ve been the last major change.”
“It would be so different to have another town out here. Instead of having to drive so far to the next community.”
“Well. It still wouldn’t have had any major stores or restaurants.”
“True.”
“We can go crazy tonight. We can go to Applebee’s. Get real fancy.”
She laughed. “Actually, that sounds like fun.”
She walked in front of him to the picnic table and the guardrail that kept people from tumbling down the cliffside into the water. Then she pulled up her phone and took a few photos.
“Right. Ready?” she asked.
“Ready,” he said.
Yeah. He was ready. Ready to send Perry off into her new life.
And he had …
“What if we skip Applebee’s? What if we download those dating apps and see where the night takes us.”
Perry looked up at him, her eyes round, and he had a weird feeling that he’d said the wrong thing.
“Sure,” she said. “That sounds like a great idea.”
She said it with an edge that made him feel she didn’t actually think that. But hadn’t they agreed they should begin dating?
Well. She’d agreed. And she wasn’t his wife, so he didn’t have to look at the subtext beneath her words.
“Great. As soon as we get down where there’s cell service, I’m downloading one of those apps.”
“Same,” she said.
Then she got into her car and sped off before he was able to climb back into his truck.