Kara Lennox - The Forgotten Cowboy

“He’s here, you know,” Nana said quietly.

Willow didn’t have to clarify to whom Nana was referring. Her blood pressure ratcheted up a knot. “He is? Where is he? What’s he wearing? Wait, let me guess. A gray suit?”

“Why, yes. How did you know that?”

Willow smiled despite herself. “Statistical analysis. Nana, how will I know him so I can avoid him?”

“Don’t worry. I think he’s avoiding you. He didn’t sign the guest book, after all. But just in case, he’s wearing a red carnation in his lapel.”

“All right. That should be easy enough to spot. Um, Nana, is he here with anyone?”

“You mean, a date?”

Willow nodded, shame washing through her that she even cared. She shouldn’t.

“I didn’t notice any particular girls with him.”

“I wish he’d just get married,” Willow mumbled. Then maybe she could really forget him and move on.

“He still pines after you, you know.”

Willow thrust out her jaw. “Let him pine.” As if he really would. He probably had a line of women following him around.

“To err is human,” Nana said. “To forgive, divine.”

Willow had no snappy comeback for that one. “I know I should forgive him,” she said softly. “It’s wrong to carry a grudge. Sometimes I pray that I’ll find the grace to walk up to him and say, ‘Cal, I forgive you.’ But I can hardly imagine it, let alone do it.”

Nana clucked again. “Keep trying. You can’t hate a man forever simply because he loved you too much.”

Willow snorted. “He didn’t love me. He was horny and he ruined my life.”

“You know he loved you,” Nana scolded. “Still does.”

NANA’S WORDS echoed in Willow’s head as she watched her friend Mick exchange vows with Tonya Green. Willow and Mick had been friends since high school. They’d even dated for a few months, B.C. Before Cal. But pretty soon they’d both realized they weren’t happy as boyfriend and girlfriend, and they’d gone back to being platonic pals. She’d hung out with him a lot when Cal went away to college, after her freshman year.

Cal had been jealous, she recalled, though there was no reason for him to be.

Mick had struggled in recent years, trying to find himself. He’d dated literally dozens of girls while he sporadically took classes at the junior college. Then he’d gotten Tonya pregnant and, after a brief freak-out, he’d abruptly grown up.

Willow had been riding in Mick’s car the day of the tornado. He’d been hashing things out with her, using her as a sounding board as he tried to come to terms with the big changes in his life. Then the storm had sent his car crashing off a bridge and into the swollen Coombes Creek.

Unlike Willow, Mick hadn’t suffered any serious injuries, but the accident had forced him to set new priorities. Now he was looking forward to his new family life. She couldn’t recall ever seeing him so happy.

As she moved through the reception line a little later, Nana walked behind her and whispered names into her ear.

“You know that one’s Tonya, right?” Nana said.

“The frilly white dress and veil tipped me off.” She gave Tonya a hug, then Mick.

“I finally know what you’ve been talking about all these years,” Mick said.

“What?”

“You said I would know when I found my passion, that there wouldn’t be any doubt. You were right. I’m where I’m supposed to be now.”

Willow squeezed Mick’s hand. “How’s Amanda taking it?” Amanda was Mick’s older sister, who’d been taking care of him since their mother died years ago. She’d been frustrated with his lack of direction, and downright distraught when she’d found out about Tonya’s pregnancy.

“Amanda is delirious she’s getting rid of me.”

“Hey, I heard that,” said the platinum blonde in a pale blue bridesmaid’s dress, standing next to Mick. Identifying her was easy—no one else had hair that color. Amanda smiled and addressed Willow. “I’m going to miss him, strange as that may sound. Willow, you look great.”

“I’ll second that.” A dark-haired man with a chiseled face stood next to Amanda, a possessive arm around her waist. He could be none other than Dr. Hudson Stack, one of the rescue workers who had pulled Willow from the submerged car. “A whole lot better than when I helped load you into the ambulance. You must have remarkable recuperative powers.”

“I had good doctors,” Willow said humbly. “Thank you again, Dr. Stack, for what you did.”

“Call me Hudson, please. And this must be the lovely Clea Marsden.”

Willow could certainly see what Amanda saw in Dr. Stack. Handsome, brave and charming. On vacation from his demanding job in Boston, he’d rented the lake house next door to Amanda. He’d fallen so hard for his neighbor that he’d returned to Boston just long enough to tender his resignation and put his house on the market.

The rest of the wedding reception passed in a blur. Willow sat at a table in the gussied-up VFW hall, her cheat sheets hidden under her purse and her grandmother there for backup, and she continued to put on a good show. She had a few panicked moments when “strangers” approached and she couldn’t place them, but she was always able to gloss over the fact that their names weren’t on the tip of her tongue.

When she wasn’t busy studying clothes and jewelry and hair color, she kept tabs on a certain man in a gray suit with a red carnation in his lapel. She couldn’t help noticing that he was dancing up a storm. A regular social butterfly. But he seemed to be avoiding her corner of the room, and that was all she cared about.

SHERRY HARDISON could cut a mean jitterbug, Cal Chandler thought as he twirled her across one of his hips, then the other, her gauzy skirt flying so high she almost showed her panties. Sherry was his boss’s new wife, a fun-loving party girl with a mop of blond curls and a dazzling smile. A nurse from Dallas, she’d come to Cottonwood last fall to take care of Jonathan when he’d broken his leg. She’d had a hard time fitting in at first, but soon everyone was able to see beyond her fancy clothes and her fast sports car to the truly kind, gentle person she was. She and Jon had married at Christmas, as soon as he could walk down the aisle under his own power, and all the ranch employees were crazy about her. She brought them lemonade on hot days and remembered their birthdays and their kids’ birthdays.

And, boy, could she dance. Cal had learned to dance in college, when he and all his dateless buddies hung out at the C&W bars and took swing lessons from curvaceous instructors wearing tight denim just so they could hold a pretty girl in their arms. He seldom got to show off his skills with a partner this good.

But as fun and nice and pretty as Sherry was, there was someone else he would rather be dancing with.

“Why don’t you just ask her, instead of staring at her like a scolded puppy?” Sherry asked.

Cal groaned. “Is it that obvious?”

“Like an elephant having an allergy fit.”

“I can’t ask her. She would freeze me solid with one look.”

“You two have a history, I take it?”

Since Sherry was relatively new in town, she wouldn’t know all the ancient history. “We dated for almost four years, when she was still in high school.”

“Your first love.”

His only.

“What went wrong?” Sherry asked in her forthright way. Not nosy, just concerned. She was always trying to help people.

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you. It’s too embarrassing. But just ask around. Almost everybody knows about it.”

“Now I’m intrigued.”

Shoot, she was going to find out anyway. “Her parents caught us in, shall we say, a compromising position?”