A Wedding for the Widower (Brush Creek Brides Book 1) Read online

  A Wedding for the Widower

  Brush Creek Brides Romance Book 1

  Liz Isaacson

  AEJ Creative Works

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Eight Months Later

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  Sneak Peek! A Companion for the Cowboy Chapter One

  Companion Chapter 2

  Brush Creek Brides Romance: a spinoff series from the Gold Valley Romance series

  Meet the books of Three Rivers Ranch Romance series by Liz Isaacson!

  Books in the Gold Valley Romance series, a spinoff from the Three Rivers Ranch series

  About Liz

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  In the quiet misty morning, when the moon has gone to bed,

  When the sparrows stop their singing and the sky is clear and red,

  When the summer’s ceased its gleaming, when the corn is past its prime,

  When adventure’s lost its meaning, I’ll be homeward bound in time.

  Bind me not to the pasture. Chain me not to the plow.

  Set me free to find my calling and I’ll return to you somehow.

  If you find it’s me you’re missing, if you’re hoping I’ll return,

  To your thought I’ll soon be list’ning; in the road I’ll stop and turn.

  Then the wind will set me racing as my journey nears its end,

  And the path I’ll be retracing when I’m homeward bound again.

  Bind me not to the pasture. Chain me not to the plow.

  Set me free to find my calling and I’ll return to you somehow.

  In the quiet misty morning when the moon has gone to bed,

  When the sparrows stop their singing, I’ll be homeward bound again.”

  Homeward Bound, Marta Keen Thompson

  Chapter One

  Walker Thompson twisted the doorknob with care and stepped into the most glorious summer sunshine Utah had to offer. At least at six-thirty in the morning. He took a deep drag of the sagebrush-scented air and let the worries from the previous night drain from his muscles.

  They rushed back within seconds, the way his concerns about his son’s night terrors always did. Michael had been particularly restless during the night, and Walker’s exhaustion felt like a yoke he couldn’t bear.

  But bear it he did. Even managed to walk the circumference of his cabin, plucking weedlings from the flower beds that lined the house he shared with his nine-year-old son. It was a ritual he’d started the morning after his wife had passed away, six years ago. The calming, methodical way he could keep things beautiful, keep them uncluttered, allow the pretty flowers room to grow and breathe, had soothed him that day just as it did on this August morning.

  Walker didn’t live in that house anymore, but in every successive place he’d moved, he took meticulous care of the yard. It was something he could control.

  “Mornin’.”

  Walker glanced up at the sound of his boss’s voice. Landon leaned against the fence Walker had built with Michael over the summer, a long piece of straw extending from his mouth.

  “Hey, Boss.” Walker had known Landon for at least fifteen years, dating all the way back to their rodeo days. Walker had quit the year before Landon had been injured, and he’d worked a couple of ranches in Wyoming before coming to Brush Creek five years ago, when Landon bought it and needed help to make it the premier horse ranch he wanted it to be.

  “No one better at breaking horses than you,” Landon had told him when he’d called Walker.

  Walker hadn’t been able to argue, so he’d packed up his son and everything he owned and moved to Utah. And if he was being honest with himself, he’d been happier here than anywhere since his wife had died.

  “Goin’ to the festival today?” Landon asked.

  Walker nodded, his cowboy hat swaying with the motion. He clapped a hand to the top of his head to seat the hat properly. “You?”

  “Megan’s already got the twins in the tub.” Landon chuckled. “She wants you to come to breakfast.”

  Walker’s stomach dropped and rebounded, all within the space of a second. “Tell her thanks, but Michael and I have to get down to town to pick up the cotton candy machine.” He wandered over to the fence line and gazed in the same direction as Landon. The red-rock butte in the morning light sent peace straight through his soul. Utah did have gorgeous countryside.

  “She won’t like that answer,” Landon said.

  “She just wants to lecture me about dating again,” Walker said. He swung his gaze to his long-time friend. “Right?”

  “She’s worried about you.” Landon hooked his green-eyed gaze into Walker’s. “So am I.”

  “I’m just fine.” Walker wanted to believe himself, but he’d been unsettled for the last six months—ever since Megan had started needling him about “putting himself out there.”

  “How’s Michael?” Landon asked, going right for the jugular.

  Walker exhaled and shuffled his feet. “He’s doin’ okay.” But the truth was, Michael was barely hanging on. Most nine-year-old boys in Brush Creek rode bikes with their friends and went fishing at the water hole on the east edge of town. They slept in tents in each other’s backyards and built fires to roast hot dogs.

  They didn’t live with their widower father out in the middle of nowhere, with only twin two-year-old girls as options for playmates. Oh, and the horses. Michael did love the horses at Brush Creek.

  “School starts soon,” Landon said, like that would solve the world’s problems. It would at least get Michael out of the cabin and into civilization.

  Walker didn’t know how to answer, so he asked, “Who’s Megan got her eye on this time?”

  “She didn’t say.” Landon adjusted his cowboy hat. “She did mention that ‘at least five women’ would jump at the chance to go out with you.” He smiled. “Maybe you can just let her know that she should spread the word that you’re available.”

  “I’ve always been available,” Walker muttered. No one was looking in his direction.

  “Not true.” Landon cuffed him on the bicep. “See you in town.” With that, he strode back toward the homestead calling, “Oh, and Megan’s throwing a pool party tomorrow night for everyone. Barbeque and everything.”

  “Sounds great,” Walker yelled after him before turning back to his cabin. He’d helped Landon build the six cowboy cabins that lined the ridge directly across from the homestead. His was the largest, as he was the foreman and had a child. Each of the other cabins housed a single cowboy, all rodeo champions, all expert horsemen. None of them were married or had children.

  Walker’s mind whirred as he went to wake up his son. Maybe he should open his heart and mind to dating again. Maybe it would be good for Michael to have a mother, be closer to other kids.

  Walker didn’t want to admit that maybe it would be good for him if he found someone to share his life with. He’d loved his wife s
o much, he didn’t think it possible to feel something so profound again.

  He pushed open the cabin door and let the light rush in. “Come on, Michael,” he called, noting the catch in his voice. After six years, he still missed Libby so deeply it brought his emotion right into his throat. He cleared everything away—his thoughts, his fears, his feelings—and added, “We’ve got to get down to the festival.”

  An hour later, he pulled his truck into the parking lot at Oxbow Park. The place was already bustling with activity as vendors and volunteers set up booths, hung signs, and cleared pathways.

  “I’ll grab the machine,” Walker said as he opened his door. “You grab the sacks and twist ties, all right?”

  “All right.”

  Walker took a moment to appreciate his son. He had Walker’s shock of black hair and his skin that seemed to soak up the sun’s rays. But he looked back at Walker with eyes the exact color of Libby’s—hazel, with more brown than green—and the shape of his nose mirrored hers as well. More rounded and flat, whereas Walker sported a long, straight nose.

  “Will Tess have the sugar?” Michael asked as Walker lowered the tailgate.

  “Supposed to.” For some reason, his heart kicked out an extra beat at the thought of Tess Wagner. He’d been friends with Tess since the day she moved to Brush Creek, four years ago. She’d shown up with a two-year-old son and a tragic story about her husband dying in a sheet metal accident, at the very salvage center that he owned.

  They’d been selling cotton candy and donating the proceeds to the National Widow and Widowers Foundation for the past four summers.

  Walker had never known Tess to be late, and she wasn’t today either. He found her in their usual location—right across from the lemonade stand—setting up the awning that would protect them from the worst of the sun.

  His feet slowed when he saw her, allowing Michael to get ahead of him. Tess had a small flower pinned in her super short blonde hair. She wore a pair of dark blue shorts and a tank top that boasted her slender shoulders and the length of her neck.

  Walker’s face heated, something that had decidedly never happened when he’d encountered Tess before. He wasn’t sure why he was reacting this way to a woman he’d been friends with for years.

  Stupid Megan and her stupid insistence about dating, Walker thought as he finally got his feet moving again.

  Although, if Walker were really being honest with himself, if he had to start dating again, Tess would be his first choice. He swallowed hard and hefted the cotton candy machine onto the table the town provided.

  “Morning,” he said and turned his back on Tess so he could get control of himself. At thirty-six years old, he shouldn’t have to deal with raging hormones.

  “Morning,” she chirped. “Michael, Graham’s over on the playground. You can go on over, if you want.”

  Walker glanced up, because he knew his son would look to him for permission before running off. Sure enough, Michael was watching him. “Go on,” Walker said with a smile, thinking Tess’s seven-year-old son was the perfect friend for Michael.

  Maybe he should just ask Tess out. He was grown-up. So was she. She’d been married before. They both had sons. They had a lot in common. Why shouldn’t he go out with her?

  Why shouldn’t I? He tilted his head back and glanced into the sky, pleading with the Lord to give him a single reason to stay away from Tess Wagner.

  Nothing came. Only the richest, bluest sky stared back.

  At the very least, it would get Megan Edmunds off his back about “putting himself out there.”

  Determined in his plan to leave the festival that evening with a date on the horizon, he was finally able to relax in Tess’s presence.

  Chapter Two

  Tess Wagner shivered though the late-summer sun should’ve warmed her all the way through. Beside her, Walker seemed to be sweating, and almost everyone who came up to their booth looked like they were melting.

  She kept her smile in place, kept the cardboard tubes circling in the spun sugar, kept working until four o’clock, when the booths closed in preparation for the nightly entertainment that culminated the town’s apricot festival.

  Working next to Walker for the past six hours had been the sweetest kind of torture. He smelled like musky cologne and fresh air, and she wanted to bottle him up and take him home with her. Tess had been watching Walker with new eyes since the firefighter’s pancake breakfast over the Fourth of July. She’d seen him in a different light then, wearing an apron and flipping pancakes, laughing with the other volunteer firefighters, pouring syrup for his son. Something inside her had shifted then, and she hadn’t known how to deal with it.

  She did know she wanted to take things with him out of the friendship zone. She just wasn’t sure how, or if that was even fair to him. Or to her. Or to Graham and Michael. They’d all already lost so much.

  She finished cleaning the cotton candy machine and sighed as she looked out across the park. Oxbow Park was Tess’s absolute favorite place in the world. She lived just down the street, and she loved spending quiet afternoons walking the banks of the stream that flowed from one end of the park to the other. Loved watching the younger moms chat, while sitting on benches while their little kids ran and played. Loved bringing Graham here for weeknight picnics all summer long, her delicious German chocolate cake a favorite for them both.

  The park swarmed with people now, as it seemed like all of Brush Creek’s nine thousand citizens had come out for the festival. The other vendors started packing up, but Tess fell into the chair at the rear of her and Walker’s booth. “I’m tired,” she said.

  “Yeah.” Walker didn’t even glance over his shoulder to her. He continued to flip paper money, counting it silently. “We made more this year than any other year.” He turned and faced her, a wide smile on his handsome face. He made jeans and a T-shirt seem sexy, and something about the strength in his soul sang to Tess’s.

  She returned his grin, glad for someone so wonderful in her life. Her friendship with Walker meant a lot to her—and the cause they both supported each year meant even more. Did she dare risk their easy relationship for a chance at something more? Indecision and worry gnawed at her, making her already upset stomach downright angry.

  “You don’t look so great,” he said, coming closer and crouching to look right into her face. “You should go lie down.”

  She bristled at the suggestion even as a fair amount of heat enveloped her at his near proximity. She seized onto it and tried to use it to make herself warm. “I don’t want to miss the band,” she said. “Besides, Graham will be disappointed.”

  “I can take ‘im,” Walker said. “I’ll drop him off before I head up the canyon.”

  Without thinking, Tess reached out and traced her fingers down the side of Walker’s face. She pulled back at the fire in his skin, at the pure electricity that zipped through her hand, at the shock traveling through his eyes.

  He straightened and backed away from her as far as the table behind him would allow. She wasn’t sure if she should apologize or not, so she remained mute, hoping the heat from touching him would evaporate into the sky. It didn’t. It only amped up, roaring into a furious firestorm inside her veins.

  “I wanted to ask you something,” he said, his eyes trained on the ground.

  “Okay.” Her voice sounded like she’d swallowed frogs, but still Walker didn’t look at her.

  “Megan says I need to—” He cleared his throat and turned around. He stuffed the money into a bank pouch before saying, “I was wondering if maybe you’d like to go to dinner with me sometime.”

  Tess stood, thankful her legs didn’t wobble. She wasn’t sure why she was so tired today. She hadn’t had a chemotherapy treatment in ages, and her last body scan had confirmed that she was still cancer-free.

  She joined Walker at the table, definitely closer than she normally stood, but far enough away to be respectable to anyone passing by. “How did you know?”

&
nbsp; “Know what?” He glanced at her but didn’t let his gaze settle on hers before focusing on the money again.

  “That I was hoping you’d ask me out.” Feeling brave and courageous and all the things she usually wasn’t, she put her hand over his.

  “Dad.” Michael raced up to the booth, and Tess slid her fingers away from Walker’s, shifted away from him, and started boxing up the leftover sugar and plastic bags.

  “What?” Walker’s attention went to his son.

  “Can I sit by Troy and Ian for the concert?”

  Several beats of silence followed, and Tess turned back as Graham returned to the stand. She ran her hand over his hair and smiled. “Hey baby.”

  She faced Walker. “Troy’s last name is Munk,” she said. “He’s ten. Ian is his little brother. He’s seven. Their family owns the bakery.” Walker trained his eyes on her, curiosity dancing in the dark depths of them. She shrugged. “It would probably be fine. Graham and Ian are friends.”

  He nodded and looked back at Michael. “Take Graham with you then. What do you guys want for dinner?”

  “Troy says the food trucks will be here in an hour. Corny’s is coming.” Michael looked so hopeful, and Graham loved the corndogs and twister fries from the Corny’s truck too.

  Walker nodded and fished a twenty-dollar bill from the pouch. “Get Graham whatever he wants too. Check in with me so I know where you are and who you’re with. We’re not doin’ sleepovers tonight. It’s church tomorrow.”

  Michael grinned, plucked the money from his father’s fingers, and he and Graham raced back toward the pair of boys waiting for them near the pavilion. Tess watched her son go, a rush of love filling her that she was able to provide this life for him. A slower, more carefree life than the one she’d had in Salt Lake.