“I just keep thinking that a quickie wedding isn’t fair to you. Leo ruined your December wedding and now—”
“Now I’m your wife.” She stood up on tiptoe and kissed him lightly. “And I wouldn’t be here now if I’d married him, so we should be glad Leo dumped me. Otherwise you would have married some other desperate woman and she might not be as wonderful as me.”
For a moment Joe’s expression was blank and then he laughed, bringing Sophie close. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. “You’re right; I got lucky.”
“Sooo lucky,” she teased.
He kissed her forehead and then stepped back. “Should we go celebrate somewhere? Go to the Graff and order champagne with our lunch?”
“Don’t you have work waiting? Especially with your grandfather hurt?”
“Granddad is fine. And it’s our wedding day. We have to do something to celebrate, don’t you think?”
“I do.”
The Graff’s formal dining room had just a few guests seated when they arrived, and they were given their pick of tables. Sophie wanted to sit near one of the arched windows with a view of the garden gazebo. Joe ordered a bottle of Dom Perignon when the waiter approached their table.
With their champagne flutes filled, Joe lifted a glass. “To my new wife, Sophie Wyatt.”
She blushed and clinked rims with his flute. “May we have many, many happy years,” she added.
They toasted again and drank again. And after they ordered their meal, Sophie sat back in her chair. “We did it,” she said, smiling, before biting into her bottom lip to keep it from quivering. She felt keyed up, overly excited, and she knew it was nerves, but also something else. Maybe hope? A hint of happiness?
“Yes, we did.”
She twirled her delicate glass on the tablecloth. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s a little crazy,” he admitted.
“I do, too. But maybe it’s good to be a little crazy. At least we’re proactive; we’re going after life, not waiting for it to find us.”
“By all accounts, my parents were a little crazy. Mom met Dad while he was competing on the rodeo circuit, and they fell for each other right away. They were practically kids when they married, Dad was just twenty-three, and Mom was nineteen. Rumor has it they married quickly in Vegas when they realized she was pregnant. I don’t think her parents would have thrown her out. My mom’s parents weren’t religious, or particularly strict, but Wyatts don’t walk away from their responsibilities, and if Mom was pregnant, Dad was going to do right by her—and their baby.”
“Which was you,” Sophie said.
“Which was me,” he agreed.
She lifted her flute. “Let’s toast your parents. To your mom and your dad. I hope your dad, if he’s looking down from heaven, is happy.”
“To Mom and Dad,” he repeated.
They spent an hour eating and visiting, ending their meal with a three-layer chocolate cake, which they shared, before returning to Joe’s truck. “I wish I could stay with you all day,” he said. “But Granddad—”
“I understand.”
He nodded, and opened the passenger door for her. “We probably should talk about the next steps, though.”
Sophie waited until he’d settled behind the steering wheel to ask, “You mean, telling everyone? Moving me to the ranch?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated. “Do we have to do that right away? Can we just enjoy a little bit of time as newlyweds before the world has to know?”
“You’re worried about my mom.”
“I’ve made a commitment to you. We’re going to make this work. But maybe we take it slowly for everyone else.”
He started the truck and backed out of the hotel parking lot. “How slowly?”
“I don’t know. I guess that’s what we have to figure out.”
At Bramble House he walked her to the front door. “I hate leaving you.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You look beautiful.”
Her cheeks felt hot. She ducked her head, suddenly shy. “Thank you.”
“I’ll come back for dinner.”
“Or just coffee. Make it easy on yourself.”
*
Joe returned that evening, taking her to Grey’s Saloon where a live band was performing. It was fairly crowded but they found two available stools at one end of the bar and ate dinner sitting at the bar, listening to music.
Joe looked particularly handsome in his blue denim shirt and crisp dark blue Wranglers, the fabric of his shirt taut over his muscular biceps. Sophie glanced at his profile. He was so incredibly good-looking. He was truly a catch. And yet he’d stopped putting himself out there. He’d just given up on dating.
He turned his head and caught her studying him, and he lifted a brow. “Regrets already, Mrs. Wyatt?”
“No, Mr. Wyatt, just thinking you’re a pretty hot cowboy, and a very hard-working cowboy. There was no reason for you to place an ad for a wife. Ladies probably love you.”
“You’ve seen where the ranch is—it’s not all that accessible. The terrain is rugged. I’m often gone all day, maybe even all night, and it’s not convenient to head into town to meet a girl for drinks.” He caught her expression and shook his head. “You’re different. By the time you arrived in Marietta, we’d already gone through the preliminary stuff, and we’d cut to the chase. We knew what we wanted. Which is why the ad served its purpose. It weeded out the women that wouldn’t be happy on the ranch. It weeded out women who couldn’t handle a long winter without access to town.”
“Is it really that bad in winter?”
“It can be, yes. And this past winter was particularly hard. We had three weeks where we couldn’t go anywhere, we were completely snowed in, and it was all we could do to take care of our livestock.”
“I’d think most Montana women would know that, and would be prepared for harsh winters,” Sophie said.
“There’s a big difference between winter in Marietta, and winter on our ranch. My former girlfriend—”
“The one your mom liked so much?”
He nodded. “She couldn’t handle the remoteness of the ranch. It’s essentially why we didn’t work. We loved each other, but she needed town, and her sisters, more than she needed me, so…” His broad shoulders shifted. “I don’t blame her, either. I respect her for being honest. Far better we end things when we did, than try to make it work, only for it to end in divorce.”
“You scare me a little bit with your description of winters. It’s called Paradise Valley, Joe.”
“Yeah, well it’s not really much like paradise six months of the year.” Then he leaned forward and kissed her, the kind of kiss that made the hair rise on her nape and her body prickle with awareness. “I can’t wait to have you at the ranch,” he said, lifting his head, “but I agree with you. I think we should give it a week or two. See how things go and reevaluate.”
“Sounds good,” she said. Sophie took a sip of her beer and then set the bottle down. “But if I’m going to be in town for another couple of weeks, I need something to do. I can’t just sit around all day and wait for my ninety minutes with you at night, Joe—even though they’re my favorite ninety minutes of the day.” She gave a pat to his arm, and then allowed her hand to linger, savoring the hard carved shape of his bicep and tricep. “This afternoon, I went online and looked at jobs in the area and there are plenty of businesses looking for help.”