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  Jenny licked her lower lip. It was dry, so dry, like her mouth and throat. Her heart continued to pound. Her head swam. She was feeling faint, but she couldn’t admit it. Jenny Wright was nothing if not professional, having spent far too many years as an executive assistant, working with prickly management, solving difficult problems, putting out real or perceived fires, to fall apart at the drop of a hat. “I’m fine.”

  He waited a moment before asking, “Do you live here on Bramble Lane?”

  “No.”

  “Going some place on Bramble?”

  Her throat ached. “No.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “I don’t have one. Not here. My car is in Chicago.” She averted her face, hating how her eyes pickled and burned. She couldn’t cry. She must not cry. Charles despised tears, and he’d taught her that she wasn’t allowed to cry. He viewed tears as a weakness, and manipulative, and his executive team needed to exude strength and confidence at all times, because Charles Monmouth succeeded where others failed.

  She glanced down as rust and crackling brown leaves danced before her and swirled into the street. “The other Windy City,” she added, huskily. “It’s home. Now.”

  “A big city girl… but you once lived here?”

  “Born at Marietta Regional Hospital. Graduated from Marietta High. So yes, Montana born and raised.”

  “So where are you staying now?” Colton asked. “With your family?”

  She nodded. “I’ve been at my parents. But tonight I was supposed to be at The Graff Hotel. That’s where my things are now.”

  “Let me take you to the Graff then.”

  She pictured the old Graff Hotel, Marietta’s first hotel, a hotel that had burned down in 1912 and was then rebuilt and reopened with great fanfare in 1914. For three quarters of a century, the hotel had been the spot for weddings, graduations, reunions, and special events until it fell into disrepair. The hotel was closed in the mid seventies, and officially condemned in 1982 and for twenty years it sat, boarded up, a hulking giant, waiting for demolition. But instead of a wrecking ball, one of the Sheenan brothers who’d left Marietta, bought the former landmark and poured millions into renovating the property. The Graff Hotel had only reopened this summer, in time for the tourist season, and Jenny had been so excited to have her reception in the hotel’s stunning ballroom.

  But now there was no reception. No beautiful dinner banquet. No dancing. No round tables of eight, each with a beautiful fresh floral arrangement costing sixty-five dollars each.

  Her heart fell, taking her stomach with it.

  All that money. Wasted. All her savings. Gone.

  My God.

  Such waste. Sickening. Horrifying.

  Charles had no idea that she’d paid for the wedding herself. He had no idea that she’d used all of her savings, and filled up every credit card she had, to make today possible, including taking out a new line of credit just to cover her dress.

  Charles thought her parents had paid for everything. It’s what the bride’s family was supposed to do. And she wanted him to think well of her family. She’d wanted him to approve of them. But of course her family didn’t have the means to give her the gorgeous wedding Charles Monmouth would expect, and so she paid for it herself. And would be paying for it, for a very long time in the future.

  “Can’t go there,” she murmured. Charles and his family were staying at the Graff, along with sixty of their dearest friends. The Monmouths had chartered two jets to fly everyone in from Chicago, landing at Bozeman, and then shuttling all to Marietta in a caravan of limousines and town cars.

  She shuddered at the idea of bumping into Charles, or one of his family now. It would be excruciating to see them, or have to make small talk. What would she say? How could she explain? She didn’t understand herself.

  No, she’d collect her things from the Graff later. Better to wait until after the Monmouths had decamped from Marietta, and she was fairly certain they’d be flying out soon, today. There was no way they’d linger in town now, not after everything that had happened. “It’s probably best to go to my parents’ house,” she said. “I can figure everything out once I’m there.”

  “Good idea,” he agreed, leaning across to open the door from the inside. “Climb in.”

  The door squeaked in protest as it opened.

  Her gaze dropped to his battered, rusting truck that was somewhere between pumpkin and tomato. “You’re sure it runs?” she asked, teasing him, because she knew this was his dad’s truck. Tricia said Colton was committed to keeping it running in memory of their father.

  He grinned, and patted the scratched metal dash. “Like a champ.”

  She smiled. She liked his sense of humor. “And that from local hero Colt Thorpe means something.”

  He looked startled. “You know who I am?”

  “Everyone in Marietta does. You’re Colton Thorpe, national bull riding champ and Marietta’s very own hero.”

  Colton exhaled hard and made a face. “Darlin’, not a hero. Not even close,” he protested, before giving the leather bench seat a light pat. “But hop in, and I will get you safely home. I may not be a hero, I can at least pretend to be a gentleman.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Colton watched her settle her shimmering skirts on his torn and cracked leather bench seat. She looked like a goddess in his father’s 1941 GMC pickup. His dad had loved this truck and so whenever Colton came home, he made a point of driving it to keep it running, and Colton couldn’t help thinking his dad must be smiling now. His dad always did believe a gorgeous girl looked even better in a great pickup truck.

  “Where to?” he asked her.

  “North Marietta.”

  He lifted a brow. “North?”

  She reached up and tugged off the veil and tiara pinned to the top of her golden hair. Wispy tendrils fell from the elaborate chignon to frame her face. And what a face it was. She was so beautiful she made him hurt.

  “Chance Avenue,” she said, settling the tiara and veil in her lap. “It’s over between Second and—”

  “I know where it is,” he interrupted. “I grew up on Chance, too.”

  “I know.” Her voice was soft, subdued. Her long black lashes lifted, and for a split second her gaze met his before falling. She smoothed her full skirts, pressing them down over her knees. “We were neighbors.”

  He frowned. “We were?”

  “Your sister Tricia and I were in the same grade, and friends.”

  “I don’t remember you.”

  She looked at him again, expression wry. “I was a skinny little blonde kid, and four years behind you in school. I think I was in eighth grade when you were a senior in high school so I don’t expect you to remember me. It’s not as if you paid Tricia’s girlfriends any attention.” Her lips curved, and a dimple flashed at the corner of her mouth. “You were too busy seducing all the big girls in town.”

  He stared at a delicate gold wisp clinging to her high cheekbone, drawing attention to her full lips. He loved her lips and the way they curved up, equally smitten with the dimple flashing sweetly, mischievously, at the corner of her mouth. “I wasn’t,” he said.

  “You were. You most absolutely were,” she answered firmly, the dimple deepening as she fought a smile. “You had a terrible reputation, Colton—”

  “All right. I did.” He shifted uncomfortably, uncomfortable because he wanted to touch this beautiful girl, wanted to kiss her full soft mouth and put his tongue where that dimple flashed and everything in him felt unsettled and fierce and yet damn protective, too.

  Some asshole had hurt her today.

  Some asshole abandoned her when he should be promising to love and protect her.

  But what did he know? Lisa claimed he was an asshole, too. It’d been two years since they divorced and yet it was still damn confusing. Not the divorce part. He knew why they were divorced---his beautiful ex-wife loved money, needed money, far more than she loved and needed him—but the
fact that he’d fallen in love with her in the first place still blew his mind.

  How could he have not seen who she was?

  Unfortunately, he knew the answer to that one, too.

  He’d fallen for Lisa’s beautiful face, hot body, and sexy, husky laugh, not realizing that the seductive smile and rockin’ bod didn’t mean she had a warm, loving heart.

  No, her rockin’ bod and beautiful face weren’t even his all that long. Lisa filed for divorce just before their fifth wedding anniversary. She remarried the moment the divorce came through to a Tulsa gentleman thirty years her senior and one hundred times richer.

  The only good thing to come out of the marriage was the fact that they never had kids.

  It would have killed Colton to have a baby and then put that child through an ugly divorce.

  Eager to close the door on the past, Colton held out his hand to the princess perched on the bench seat next to him. “I’m Colton Thorpe,” he said gruffly. “And you are...?”

  “Jenny Wright,” she answered, blushing as she put her hand in his.

  His strong fingers closed around her palm. The moment her palm pressed to his, skin to skin, he felt a quiver in her, like a current of pure unadulterated energy.

  Just as quickly desire surged through him, hot hungry heat filling his veins and blood pooling behind the zipper of his jeans. It was all he could do not to fidget. This beautiful girl was friends with his sister? “Jenny Wright,” he repeated, releasing her hand.

  She nodded, tucking her fingers into her full tulle skirt.

  “And you grew up on Chance Avenue,” he said, putting his hand on the stick shift.

  “Yes. Same block as you, same side. Fifth house down.”

  It had been too many years. He couldn’t picture her house. “Which one?”

  She swallowed hard. “The blue one.”

  The blue one.

  That’s all he needed to know, because he knew her house right away. There had only been one blue house on the street, and the little blue house, her house, looked as if it would topple from the foundations any minute.

  His family had struggled. They’d gone without trips, dinners out, and new cars. But compared to the Wrights, the Thorpes had lived like kings.

  Jenny saw his shock before he could hide it, his black lashes swiftly lowering to conceal his surprise.

  He shifted into drive and pulled away the curb. Jenny’s hands knotted, fingers clenching around the handle of her bouquet.

  Even among poor people there were standards. Jenny’s family had been the poorest on the block.

  Poverty scared people. People acted like it was contagious, and no one wanted to catch being poor.

  But Jenny had helped distance herself from her humble past by pretending to be someone other than Jenny Wright. She’d learned to wear the right clothes, apply the right makeup, to present herself as if she mattered. Because she did matter.

  “I appreciate the ride,” she said, watching the scenery as he traveled west down Bramble. The big houses grew more modest, transitioning from two story homes to cozy craftsman and turn of the century bungalows.

  “My pleasure,” he answered.

  Something had changed between them, she thought. He’d grown quiet. He was thinking, and that worried her. But then, right now, everything worried her.

  “It would have been a long walk home,” she added, trying to fill the silence, even as she struggled to ignore his energy.

  There was a lot of energy crackling around him, but then there always had been.

  Even as a teenager Colton was larger than life. And now as a man, Colton wasn’t just a big personality, but a dominant man. At six-two, he was solid, with broad shoulders and a thick chest, with carved biceps and long muscular legs wrapped in soft faded denim.

  She drew a quick, nervous breath and fidgeted with her flowers, senses stirred, imagination overwrought.

  She’d pined for him when she was younger, and she’d been just a little girl. It hadn’t been sexual. Her crush was far more innocent than that. But she’d been drawn to him, intrigued by him, wanting to be part of his circle and world.

  She could still see herself in sixth grade, playing at Tricia’s house, lying on Tricia’s floor, pretending to sketch houses and clothes and other pretty things, but from the corner of her eye she’d watch Colton come and go from his room in various stages of dress and undress—and it was all she could do not to stare.

  It was all she could do to remember to keep breathing.

  It was all she could do to remember to keep breathing now.

  Because every breath made her nose and senses tingle. He smelled so good. His cologne or aftershave or whatever it was he wore made her pulse jump and her insides weak. The scent was nice. He smelled rich, warm and seductively spicy. Like a man.

  Like a man should.

  Charles also wore a scent but it didn’t suit him. It was too strong for him, and bold, and a mix of citrus and floral like something you’d smell on a magazine advertisement.

  Just thinking of Charles made her go cold.

  How could Charles do this to her today?

  She didn’t understand. Or maybe she did and was just in denial.

  Jenny Wright might look like a princess in an expensive designer wedding gown, but underneath the gown she was still white trash.

  Her eyes pickled. Her stomach burned.

  She lifted her bouquet to her nose, inhaling the freesias tucked into the orange roses and rust dahlias, trying to hide her hurt. The flowers were sweet, and she inhaled again, needing something good, because she felt bad. Really, really bad. She’d failed her family. Failed herself.

  The shock hadn’t worn off, but shame was creeping in, as well as reality. There were so many things that needed to be done. Someone would have to call The Graff Hotel’s catering department. Someone would have to let the staff know there would be no reception. She wondered who had done it. Charles’s mom? One of Jenny’s sisters? Charles himself?

  Jenny squeezed her eyes closed, trying not to think of her lovely five-tiered wedding cake, and all the bottles of champagne that Charles’s family had flown in with them...

  Her insides lurched, and her heart just kept falling. Free-falling, a terrible plummeting sensation that made her want to curl up in a ball and hide.

  “Pigtails.” Colton said suddenly, breaking the silence. “White-blond pigtails. In French braids.”

  She looked up, saw his frown of concentration.

  “Was that you?” he demanded.

  She nodded.

  The edge of his lips lifted. “And you were skinny. Your knees and shoulders were huge.”

  He glanced at her for confirmation.

  She nodded again.

  “I called you Bones,” he added after a moment. “And if memory serves, I think I made you cry. More than once.”

  “You did,” she agreed.

  He shot her an apologetic glance. “I felt bad when you cried. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine. I was really skinny back then.”

  “You’re not bony anymore.”

  She laughed at his deadpan tone. She liked the way he delivered a line. It was dry and clever. He was clever. And the fact that he had a sense of humor was a relief. Charles didn’t laugh. Charles took himself very seriously. “I filled out late in high school. The Wright girls are all late bloomers.”

  “There are more of you?”

  “I have two younger sisters. They still live here in Marietta.”

  “They didn’t want to move?”

  “It costs money to move.”

  Silence fell. She’d obviously killed the conversation with that zinger.

  Good job, Jen.

  She lifted her flowers again, burying her nose in the bouquet to hide the sheen of tears.

  She would not cry. She wouldn’t. Not here, not now. Come on, Jen. Pull it together.

  And then suddenly before she knew it, they were bumping across the tracks and then continui
ng through a neighborhood of small blocks of small, plain houses. These streets weren’t lined with trees. The houses didn’t have pretty painted fences or wrought iron. Most fences were chain link and a pretty flower garden was an oddity, not the norm. But then, Montana winters were long and snow often lingered until late May or early June, so there was little point pouring one’s energy into a garden that would just get buried again come October.

  It wouldn’t be long now until they reached her house.

  Her stomach rose and fell. Her hands shook.

  What would she say to her parents? How was she to explain this? She’d worked for Charles’s company for over five years and had been his girlfriend for the past three.

  And then they arrived. Colton braked in front of the Wrights’ low, squat blue house with its sagging front porch and a composite roof that looked almost like a patchwork quilt with its pieces of pink-gray asphalt against the faded brown and slate.

  She turned away from the house, and gathered her skirt, and flowers, and managed a smile. “Thank you so very much for the ride. I really appreciate it.”

  He opened his door, and came around to the passenger side, and open her door for her. “My pleasure,” he said.

  She slid out, careful not to tear the delicate tulle on the cracked leather bench seat. On the sidewalk she let her full skirts drop. “It was nice to see you again, Colton, and you’ll have to give Tricia my love. And um…you can— ”she broke off, frowned, struggled to find the words, “—tell her,” she said, “what happened, if you want.” She saw his expression and added quickly, “Tricia was there today. At the church. She was one of my guests. I’m sure she’ll be curious.”

  He made a rough sound in the back of his throat. “I’m not going to tell her anything. And it’s okay if she’s curious. Let people be curious. You don’t owe them an explanation.”

  “I do—” she broke off, frowned. “Don’t I?”

  “They already know the wedding didn’t happen. What more do they need to know?”

  Everything, she thought, painfully familiar with how small towns thrived on gossip. It’s one of the reasons she’d left Marietta after completing two years of community college in Bozeman. She didn’t want people talking about her, and they couldn’t talk about her if they didn’t know who she was, which is why Chicago had appealed. It was a big city, far from Marietta, and even though the Chicago temp agency warned Jenny that it was unlikely that she’d find a desirable job in corporate America due to her lack of skills, Jenny proved the agency wrong. She’d shown them that anyone could do anything if you worked hard enough.