Lucia’s own deep purple boots, along with her long-sleeved, formfitting brilliant yellow dress. She was a petite woman, with black hair that could only come from her Lakota Sioux grandmother. Intricately beaded purple-and-yellow earrings hung almost to her shoulders. She had great taste, an eye for color and, as a widow and single mother of three, needed to live frugally.
Aurora hoped that the “frugal” part would change once she married Sam, but she doubted her friend would quit going to secondhand stores. She liked the thrill of the hunt too much to stop.
Aurora wondered what Lucia would think of her new future brother-in-law.
There was a mystery here, but if anyone could get to the bottom of it, Lucia would. And Aurora couldn’t wait to find out.
* * *
“WILL YOU TAKE this woman to be your lawfully wedded bride?”
“I will,” Owen MacGregor declared amid impromptu male cheers. There was shushing and sniffling and a baby cried.
Aurora didn’t know whether to laugh or burst into tears. Since she never cried in front of people and wasn’t much for bursts of laughter, she sat quietly next to Loralee and hid a smile. Leave it to the rough-and-tumble men of Willing to cheer during a wedding ceremony.
She opened her little yellow purse and pulled out a tissue, which she handed to Loralee, the weeping mother of the bride. She, Loralee, Shelly, Lucia, Sam and the children were seated in the front row as Meg and Owen exchanged simple and moving vows.
“And will you, Margaret Ripley, take Owen MacGregor to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“After all this, she’d better say yes,” Loralee muttered.
“I will,” Meg said, prompting another burst of cheering from the congregation gathered in the historic and enormous barn. Aurora wondered how Owen had cleaned the place so quickly. He didn’t own cattle or horses yet, but she assumed that as he revived the once thriving cattle ranch, he’d use the barn for practical purposes.
Or rent it out as a wedding venue.
The rings were exchanged as the crowd watched in respectful silence. Aurora had heard that Owen’s mother was too ill to attend the ceremony, but Meg had confided that the woman had never approved of Meg and her relationship with her son. And that some things in life never changed.
So Loralee, the only family member, continued to sob quietly into Aurora’s tissue. Tony, Lucia’s youngest, climbed over his mother, stirring up a little cloud of hay dust, and settled himself against Aurora to examine the charms on her gold bracelet. Aurora held her arm still so he could peruse them to his heart’s content.
Someone from the church sang while Meg and Owen held hands and smiled at each other.
Yes, Aurora decided, all cleaned up like this, it was the perfect place for a wedding. Her own bar, the Dahl, was overdue for a makeover, too. But something more extensive than the good scrubbing Owen had given this barn. She’d been working on reno plans for months, not telling anyone what she intended. It was to be a surprise for the women in town.
We’ll have a patio, she mused. And a lovely room for bridal showers and bachelorette parties. The bathrooms, which she’d upgraded when she bought the place, would be enlarged and brightened. She wouldn’t do anything to change the log walls, of course, because the original building had an ambiance that was impossible to replicate, but she would definitely replace the stinky old wood paneling.
“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the minister announced. “You may now kiss the bride.”
The crowd roared its approval. Loralee pumped a fist in the air. Tony climbed from his seat beside her on the hay onto Aurora’s lap and surprised her with a wet kiss on her neck.
Life in Willing was about to improve in all kinds of ways.
CHAPTER TWO
AS THE GATHERED guests began to stand and mingle and the bride and groom signed official papers, the mayor of Willing, Jerry Thompson, sat trapped on a bale of hay between the town’s teenaged unwed mother and the infamous mother of the bride, a woman married so many times she’d lost count. As a young man deeply committed to improving the small town, Jerry was accustomed to being in situations where the utmost tact was called for. He was the master of small talk, of mingling, of schmoozing.
Unfortunately he was not comfortable sitting next to a woman who was feeding her baby in a very, um, natural way. There was a blanket, there was no skin showing, but still...
Awkward.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, there’s another one.” Loralee, mother of the bride and self-appointed grandmother to Shelly’s baby, wore a slinky purple dress and pale pink boots with purple embroidery on the shafts. She was sixty-two and, as she’d told Jerry earlier, not ready to wear a polyester housedress and serviceable shoes.
“Another what?” Shelly shifted her lump of baby against her chest. Little Laura didn’t make a peep.
“Another man hoping to meet women from California. Some of these men think that single women by the busloads are running rampant on Main Street.”
“So?” Jerry entered the conversation against his better judgment. Like eating half a chocolate cream pie, he would regret he’d done it. He didn’t bother to notice who Loralee was staring at, having decided to look straight ahead and avoid any risk of seeing the breast-feeding process.
“The word’s out.”
“That was the whole idea to begin with,” Jerry muttered. “Attract people? Make the town viable again? The word being out is a good thing, remember? Besides, he’s probably a friend of Owen’s from Washington. There were quite a few coming, weren’t there?”
“Not with a child. I pretty much memorized the guest list, having gone over it so many times with Meg.”
“He’s very handsome, too,” Shelly murmured. “He seems a little familiar. Are you sure we don’t know him?”
Jerry finally turned to look. An unfamiliar tall man stood inside the barn door and looked around as if he was hoping to see someone he knew. A young girl with gold short hair stood close to him. The stranger leaned over and said something to her and she shook her head.
“I’ve never seen him before. Maybe he’s another reporter,” Jerry said. “I’ll go find out.”
“Don’t give him an interview. This is a private party.” Loralee sniffed. “Publicity is okay, but not at my daughter’s wedding.”
Jerry paid no attention to Loralee’s complaint. He lived for publicity. He’d engineered the town’s involvement in the reality dating show and he’d welcomed the Hollywood crew to Willing. His girlfriend produced the show, which had resulted in at least one of the town’s bachelors finding the woman of his dreams, and the show was due to be aired the last Monday of April. He’d had many calls from many reporters, but he hadn’t talked to anyone who’d intended to come to Willing six weeks early.
He hadn’t talked to anyone who was interested in the MacGregor wedding, either, because it had nothing to do with the upcoming show.
“I’ll check him out.” Jerry lifted himself from the bale of hay and brushed off his pants. The barn, decorated in a real Western flavor, could be used for many wedding receptions in the years to come. They’d filmed one of the big moments of the show here this winter, and since then Owen had kept it empty. It was a huge space, undivided by stalls or stanchions or whatever barns had inside them. It would have held a lot of hay, if that’s what it was originally used for.
The wooden floor was faded and worn, but it had charm and character. The huge beams sparkled with ropes of tiny white lights.
“One whole day,” Les said, pointing to the beams as Jerry paused beside him. “That’s how long it took us to string those lights. We strung some for the show, but Meg wanted