Chapter 1
ONE
RHETT
Sela, who’s both Willa Knox’s wedding planner and one of her oldest friends, paces the barn with a roll of blue tape.
She marks every knot in the reclaimed wood as if she’s collecting evidence against it.
I lean into the forty-foot strand of lights I just untangled and call up, “It’s a barn, Sela.
Rough edges are kind of the point.” She gives me that tight-lipped O I remember from our dorm days.
“It’s a wedding, Mr. Calder. The point is magic.
” She peels a piece of tape from her sleeve and sticks it at eye level, right next to the cowboy-shaped dent Beau Gamble, my best friend, made last summer when we all squeezed into his old truck for that failed road trip to Moab.
Beau stands across from me, face taut as he coaxes his own extension cord free of knots.
He chokes back a laugh because even after all these years, Sela’s glare could cut steel.
Our boots scrape across the painted barn floor while hammers click and laughter rolls out the open doors into the September air.
Beau catches my eye, deadpan: “Think we’ll pass inspection?
” “If not, I’ll eat one of those little gold candles Sela insists on stacking,” I promise.
Sela calls down from her spot on the step ladder, waving her arm to get our attention.
“Flame-retardant centerpieces next, boys.” She stretches her arms overhead in a ballet pose, but instead of a tutu, she’s wearing cutoffs and cowboy boots.
I can’t tell if she wants sympathy or is just putting on a show.
Willa sweeps in, phone pressed to her ear, her familiar brown bun bobbing as her boots thunk across the floor. She ends the call with a flourish and asks, “How’s it look?”
I grin. “Barn’s never been gussied up so hard. Might not recognize her tomorrow.”
She exhales, voice softening. “Just need this to go right. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should feel romantic. A girl only marries once.”
I snort. “Tell that to my mama.”
Beau coils his cord and teases, “You could get married in a cattle chute and still be the thing everyone remembers.”
Willa shoots Beau that half-annoyed, half-fond look we all know from 8 a.m. lectures. “I want you to say that in the vows.”
“Deal,” Beau says, though his ears go pink.
I don’t know many careers tougher than memorializing people’s happiest days and cleaning up afterward.
But building moments with these two—my closest family—feels worth every splinter.
Dust motes drift in golden shafts from the high windows.
The barn smells like hay, lemon cleaner, and sweet musk of horses.
We haul up the last of the lights. I climb the rickety scaffold, drape the strand over the rafters, and staple it in place.
From up here, the valley stretches out in cheatgrass and rabbitbrush to those blue-hazed mountains. I breathe it in.
Beau yells from below, “Head out of the clouds, Calder. Or I’m cutting you down.”
“Try me,” I call back—and a stubborn staple bounces off the beam and zings past his ear.
“Jesus,” he mutters. “Friendly fire.”
Sela edges up another rung. “No slack. They’re drapey, not droopy.”
I want to tell her Drapey and Droopy are practically cousins, but I’ve learned that arguing just means more work for me. I pull the cord tighter and hammer it in hard enough to make it rattle.
At noon, the barn doors roll back. Red boots—stars stitched on the toes—stride in. She sweeps the barn with her gaze, lifts her sunglasses, and sets a box of muffins on the bench. “Hi,” she greets, warm as the spring day we survived finals together. “I’m Hannah. Is Willa here?”
Willa’s face lights up. “Hannah! Thanks for coming out. Those are for Sela.”
Sela peeks over her ladder: “Gluten-free ones in the pink papers?”
Hannah checks the label. “Honestly? I grabbed the happiest looking.” She winks at Sela, who sniffs a lemon muffin and turns back to her tape-marking.
Willa steps in to introduce everyone, though it’s really more like reacquainting us. “Hannah Scott, matchmaker extraordinaire. College cohort and now joining us for the wedding weekend.”
“You must be Rhett,” she says to me, holding out a hand. “Willa says you’re helping her out.”
“Mostly chasing down bolts that roll away.” I shake her hand and feel a tingle climb up my arm.
Without another word, Hannah cracks open a notebook and starts scribbling a checklist: lights, floor sweep, PA checks, fabric drapes. She finishes, looks up, and glances at my scuffed boots before asking, “Does anyone here know a soldering iron?”
“I’ll learn,” I say.
She stays calm in the middle of the chaos, never flinching when Beau barrels in with chairs and always moving so he can slide past her, steadying herself against a table as he goes.
Over the next hour, she fits right in: she carries boxes from Willa’s Subaru, sorts ribbons into piles, and interrupts Sela’s micromanaging with a quiet word.
She asks direct but gentle questions, like whether sagebrush pollen peaks in September, where to find the best roadside tacos, and what Beau was like in high school.
She never asks about me. Still, I notice her watching my silhouette in the window now and then, not in a flirty way, just curious.
When I set up the ladder for the next string of lights, she quietly puts her hand on the side to steady it.
“You and Beau go way back?” she says, bracing the leg.
“Long enough to know his secrets. Too long to spill them.”
She laughs, low and real. “Denver’s small enough for secrets, too.” “From Denver, then?”
“Grew up there. Lakewood. Then, I went to Chicago for college.”
“What do you think of our little town?”
She rolls her shoulders. “It’s scenic and the new air’s growing on me.”
As we joke about muffin quotas and dangerous carbs, Sela and Willa finish up the last details. By late afternoon, Willa steps back and declares the barn “officially magical.”
Sela snaps reference photos like a grad thesis.
After inspecting our work, Hannah returns to the bench where I’m leaning. “Need anything before I hit that taco run?”
“Nah,” I say. “You’ve already saved the day.”
She tilts her head: “You say that to every gal who brings you food?”
“Only the ones who do it twice.”
She grins, pushes back toward the door. “I’ll remember.”
In a flash of sunlight and red-starred boots, she’s gone, her laughter echoing in the dust.
Beau sidles up. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
He glances at the open door. “Nothing. Just… she’s a city girl.” “So’s Willa,” I point out.
He shrugs, looking at his boots. “Yeah. But she planted roots before we met.”
”She said the air was growing on her. Maybe other things will too.”