Chapter Four
The wedding on Friday at Mountain Mama’s wasn’t on Finn’s radar at all until Dallas laughed at Finn’s confusion about why he should go that morning in the General Store, where Finn and Raleigh liked to go in the mornings to spend time with whatever members of their newly introduced family were around.
“You’re going,” Dallas told him, with great confidence. “We’re all going.”
“Dr. Ramona is my landlord,” Finn said, not understanding Dallas’s confidence at all. “A good landlord, and I’ve met Knox a few times too, but that’s as far as that goes. Besides, I wasn’t invited.”
“It’s not that kind of wedding.” Dallas was working his shift in the historic family store while Cat worked in the clinic and Tennessee handled breakfast in the diner next door.
He grinned from behind the store’s counter.
“This isn’t a fancy invite to a banquet kind of thing.
This is a whole town wedding. Some folks around here like to have those. ”
“What do you mean by the whole town?” Raleigh asked, looking as lazy as always, which Finn sometimes thought only a few people knew was an act. “That sounds unmanageable.”
“Knox is a Carey,” Dallas said. His grin widened. “Given the Lisle family’s historic dislike of the Carey family, based entirely on their behavior since the 1800s, I would normally say that Knox is just doing it for attention.”
“Didn’t the Lisle family steal this place from the Careys in a card game?” Finn asked. Mildly enough, having been lectured on this topic extensively in the months since he’d come here. Extensively, often, and with ever-increasing levels of outrage.
“Sure sounds like the Lisle family to me,” Raleigh pointed out, his lazy tone not quite hiding the fact that he was deliberately poking at Dallas. Or anyway, Finn could tell that was exactly what he was doing. “Not exactly renowned for honesty or honor or any of that shit.”
Dallas ignored them, aside from a roll of his eyes.
“But given that we’re in-laws now thanks to Cat, it doesn’t hurt me too much to say that probably Knox is doing it this way because everyone in this town figured he’d get the hell out of here as soon as possible.
I’m guessing he wants to make sure they all know he’s staying put now.
A big, come-one, come-all wedding is a surefire way to do that. ”
“Amazing,” Raleigh drawled. He was now draped over the shelf, as if it was holding him up and without it he might slide into a puddle on the floor.
Sometimes Finn was truly astonished that no one else seemed to notice his brother was, in fact, made entirely of muscle.
And could certainly hold himself up if he liked.
“Y’all actually send messages through wedding ceremonies. This is a town that keeps on giving.”
And that was how Finn found himself in the middle of a happy wedding party on a pretty June afternoon.
His mother couldn’t stop talking about everything that was in bloom, and how beautiful it was in this little valley, and Finn had to say he agreed.
There were wildflowers all over the hills now, bright patches of yellow.
It was hard to believe it had snowed some the weekend before, and here it was blooming in all directions, as if it had been summer all along.
Soon, according to the locals, the lupines would come in and then it would be truly spectacular here beneath some of Montana’s best big skies. Not that anyone in Cowboy Point was biased. And anyway, there was no denying that this was a pretty place, no matter the season.
Though Finn found he had to redefine what pretty was when he turned around and saw Kitty Bennett in a dress with her hair down, moving between the tables out on the patio of Mountain Mama.
It was like the whole world stood still.
And suddenly, he couldn’t remember a single reason why he was making her wait on his answer.
He’d been telling himself that what he was waiting for was for Kitty to come to her senses. For her to realize the magnitude of what she was asking, and take it back.
At which point he figured he’d probably ask if he could take her out to dinner instead. Because he’d gotten used to having Kitty on his mind around the clock now. He didn’t see that changing. No matter what happened with her wedding plans.
Ramona and Knox’s wedding ceremony started, with music from the local musicians and flower children walking down the aisle that had been made to lead out onto the patio from inside.
Finn had never spent a whole lot of time thinking too much about weddings.
Especially when he knew that he was descended from a man who’d put so little stock in his.
But there was something about this place that got to him. Maybe it was the happiness in the air, like it was catching. The whole Carey family was here, with a couple someone said were Ramona’s parents from back east, and they were all grinning wide, crying, or both.
Or maybe it was the auburn-haired woman he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of as she moved through the crowd to handle the little last minute details and even smiled, making everything feel like magic.
Because it was possible, Finn thought, that Kitty herself was magic.
He’d accepted that some while ago, long before the woman had propositioned him on the street one fine morning.
When he realized he was watching Kitty instead of the bride as she walked toward the altar made of flowers, he ordered himself to get it together.
The Montana weather had pulled itself together for this wedding.
It was a bright afternoon, and Dallas had been right, Finn recognized more folks than he didn’t.
He couldn’t necessarily put a name to every face, but he saw familiar faces everywhere he turned.
Almost like this was home. Like he belonged here—but something in him shied away from that. Look what had happened the last time he’d let himself imagine he had a home. He’d had twenty-four hours to leave it all behind, that was what.
Finn forced himself to pay attention to the ceremony that had his mother—who should have lost her romantic notions decades back—dabbing at her eyes.
Knox was dressed in cowboy finery, crisp Wranglers and a cowboy hat, as befit a Montana groom. His bride was beautiful, the way all brides were, but Dr. Ramona Taylor looked particularly perfect with her blonde hair down and cowboy boots on her feet beneath her white dress.
Ramona and Knox held hands and couldn’t stop grinning at each other while the oldest Carey brother, Harlan, stood between them and acted the part of officiant.
His wife, Kendall, was standing off to the side with her toddler on one hip, wearing a dress that made it plain that they were expecting baby number two.
Also off to the side, old Zeke Carey held the baby Knox and Ramona had adopted while the rest of the Carey grandchildren did their best to stand still.
This meant a lot of fidgeting. Though even the new twins that Rosie and Ryder Carey had brought into the world last Christmas kept it together, so that had to be some kind of good omen.
It was a quick, sweet, meaningful ceremony, and the bride and groom kissed.
The whole town, all gathered on the patio, clustered inside the restaurant, and spilling out onto the road, cheered. The musicians who’d been playing soft little melodies before the ceremony kicked it into gear and made it clear they were a band. The party began.
Finn wandered around, sometimes with his siblings and sometimes on his own, introducing or reintroducing himself to his neighbors and getting to know this community even better.
He found himself thinking about Kitty’s dismissive comments about ranching, particularly when he found himself talking to the actual ranchers who worked the land on this far side of Copper Mountain.
There wasn’t much he liked talking about more, given that ranching had been his life for so many years.
He stood for a long while in a semicircle with horse rancher Colton Dean, cattle ranchers Harlan and Boone Carey, alpaca ranchers Jay Martin and his son Benedick, and a man named Killian Kendrick who ranched cattle farther out in the hills and was as close to an actual Wild West outlaw as any man Finn had ever met before.
They stood around trading stories, bemoaning rising costs in all areas, and generally sharing their thoughts on the work they did that had to be a labor of love, always.
Because the land always did as it pleased, in the end.
And even though he got more than one offer to come check out the land in question, maybe see if they could put their heads together on a project or two, something was different inside of Finn these days.
He supposed it could be as simple and as complicated as that betrayal that he imagined he’d be nursing a while yet.
He’d never expected to leave Colorado. He’d never wanted to. He’d mourned Jimmy Grant, and likely always would, but there was no recapturing what he thought he’d had there.
Then again, maybe he’d needed to leave to realize that though he loved the work he’d done down on the Bar G, it was something he’d fallen into, not something he’d chosen.
Maybe he wasn’t so much a rancher, he thought then, as a man who’d worked a ranch.
A key difference. Maybe he needed to view this time in Cowboy Point not just as an opportunity to get to know his family, but to really ask himself—for the first time since he was eighteen—what it was he really wanted.
And then, like it was choreographed or maybe just fate, he turned his head and saw Kitty standing there near one of the food tables that she’d clearly just restocked.
Finn had felt her eyes on him all throughout the afternoon. Right now, she was frowning intently in the direction of another food table, that one laden with her signature pizzas on a variety of different cake stands.