A Longtime (and at one point Illegal) Crush (8 page)

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The next
morning consisted mostly of putting the food together and decorating the reception hall. Kye was noticeably absent during all of this. Not even Carson knew where he was. Elsie supposed he was either busy with Lisa or didn’t want to spend any more time near Elsie. . . which, either way, was fine . . . because Elsie wasn’t interested in him.

It wasn’t until
ten minutes before the wedding, when Carson was cursing as he made yet another call to Kye’s phone, that Elsie began to worry about him.

Lucas
, who at this point in the preparations was wearing his tuxedo’s bow tie in his hair, said, “Maybe Kye got cold feet.”

“As the best man?” Carson shoved his phone back in his pocket. “I don’t think so.”

Lucas
slipped his tie around his neck and tightened it. “Some dudes just aren’t into commitment.”

“He’s got the ring,” Carson said.

It wasn’t like Kye to be late for his friend’s wedding. It wasn’t like Kye to be late for anything, actually. Elsie got a sick feeling in the base of her stomach. What if he’d died in a car crash? What if he had been trampled by a bull on his ranch? The place was so huge—anything could have happened, and it would take weeks of searching to find him.

Carson’s phone beeped. He
pulled it out of his pocket and read the text out loud. “Sorry I’m running late. Don’t worry. I’m five minutes away from the church.”

Lucas
shook his head and laughed. “He’s cutting it close. Lisa must be really hot.”

Elsie stopped listening after that. She went to the bride’s changing room to see if
Olivia needed anything. Elsie found Olivia’s mother there, fussing over her daughter. Olivia looked like a porcelain doll. Her wedding dress had a satin bodice with lace and ruffles cascading over the skirt. Her hair was pinned up in ringlets; her beautiful face looked happy and expectant. “Is everyone ready?” she asked Elsie.

“Just about,” Elsie said. No ne
ed to worry her about the still-missing ring.

Olivia’s mother kept
spritzing her daughter with hairspray. “You’re so beautiful,” she murmured. “I can’t believe you’re getting married.”

“Do you need anything?” Elsie asked.

“A time machine so I can go back and get more comfortable shoes.”

“Can’t help you there,” Elsie said.

A knock sounded on the door, then the pastor’s voice said, “The last member of the wedding party is here.”

Nice of
Kye to finally show.

“Can I come in?” a
man’s voice asked, one Elsie didn’t recognize.

Olivia moved toward the door, completely missing a cloud of hairspray sent in her direction. She
flung open the door, let out a gasp, and threw her arms around a middle-aged man. “Dad!” she exclaimed. “You made it!”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he said.
He seemed sober. Mostly. He was thin and wiry, with a flash of black hair and skin that looked too yellow to be healthy. His eyes were red, either from emotion or from not being quite sober. He hugged his daughter and looked at her in wonder.

The pastor peered around the group. “If you’re ready, we’ll have
everyone line up now.”

Olivia and her father headed out, her mother
close behind still adjusting and primping over ribbons on Olivia’s dress. Elsie followed in the wake of lace and ruffles and made her way to the chapel doors. Kye was there already, looking heart-stoppingly handsome in a black tuxedo and emerald green cummerbund. He was clean shaven and his normally mussed hair was sleek and perfectly in place. He looked so smooth he could have been in a cologne ad.

There is no us
, Elsie reminded herself.

Elsie
took a breath, smiled calmly, and walked over to Kye. His gaze ran over her approvingly. She wore a long, green taffeta dress, which vaguely reminded her of something a Barbie doll would wear. Pretty, but too poufy to be practical.

He held out his arm to her. “I believe I was supposed to use some charm on you. Was it my cowboy charm or my math teacher charm? I can’t remember which.”

“Cowboy charm. Math teachers don’t actually have any charm.” She had meant in general. After all, very few romance novels sported pictures of math teachers on their covers.

Kye
raised his eyebrow at her in disbelief. His look seemed to say,
Oh really? You found me charming enough to kiss
.

She looked away from him, concentrating on the door and waiting for their cue. It came a moment later
: the sound of the organ playing. An usher opened the chapel doors and Kye and Elsie moved forward, taking slow, measured steps toward the altar. It was easy to smile at Carson today. He looked so proud, so nervous, so unlike himself dressed in a tuxedo and standing at the front of the church.

Elsie
survived being in Kye’s charm-zone during their walk together, and she made her way to the bridesmaid side of the chapel. The hard part was over. Now Kye didn’t have a reason to talk to her and the two of them could go back to ignoring each other.

There hadn’t been a point to having a bride’s side and a groom’s side of the chapel. Not in a town where everyone knew everyone else. Elsie only saw a few clumps of people she didn’t recognize
—friends and family of Olivia’s, mostly. Several young, beautiful women were sprinkled through the crowd. One of them was Lisa. Elsie couldn’t help trying to pick out Kye’s girlfriend.

Lisa couldn’t be
the woman with florescent pink stripes in her hair that matched her fingernail polish and lipstick. Too flashy. Too look-at-me for Kye. Lisa also wasn’t the bleached blonde wearing too much makeup and a low-cut maroon dress. That wasn’t Kye’s type either. He would pick someone intelligent; someone who was pretty, but confident enough about her looks that she didn’t overdo her hair and outfit; someone more practical than the brunette who’d worn four-inch heels and a miniskirt to a winter wedding.

Elsie narrowed it down to
an elegant-looking redhead and a woman with shiny black hair who exuded a high IQ. Really, Elsie should have had the forethought to hire a model to pretend to be her date. Or at least begged one of her guy friends to come here with her. The truth was, she had never dated anyone seriously at college. Between work and school, she never seemed to have the time. And besides, most of the guys in her classes seemed so . . . uninteresting.

Three of Olivia’s friends joined Elsie on
the bridesmaids’ line and the groomsmen took their place alongside Kye. Then Olivia and her father walked down the aisle. The most noticeable thing about the bride wasn’t the yards of lace and ruffles or the ringlets in her hair. It was a smile that radiated her joy. That’s what love felt like when it was reciprocated—it lifted you up and made you glow.

Elsie was
happy for Olivia and Carson, happy in a way that made her feel sentimental and weepy. It brought the ache inside her to sharp focus. Would she ever glow with joy like that?

The pastor read off the vows and Olivia and Carson gave their “I do’s”.
With a two-second kiss, her brother and sister-in-law started their new life together—blissfully holding hands.

When the
wedding ceremony ended, everyone moved to the reception room for food, toasts, and finally dancing. There wasn’t a live band, just a guy programming music into the sound system, but the younger couples didn’t care, and the older couples sat around talking and sipping raspberry sherbet punch.

At first Elsie kept busy helping with the
refreshments—putting out more food, gathering up empty cups and throwing them away. She didn’t give the dance floor much consideration except in passing when she checked to see who Kye was dancing with.

She wanted to see if she
was right about her girlfriend prediction. Every time she spotted him, though, he was dancing with a different woman. Apparently Lisa didn’t mind sharing him with all the bride’s friends.

Kye was a good dancer.
His steps were smooth and fluid, his rhythm flawless. Maybe that should have surprised Elsie, but it didn’t. Somehow she had always known her math teacher knew how to move.

Eventually there wasn’t anything left to do
, and then Elsie stared out across the room at the ribbons and flowers and the soft glow of the twinkle lights. At all of the dancing couples. She was standing here alone. It had definitely been a mistake not to hire a male model.

She wondered
if anyone would miss her if she slipped away with a book for awhile. Probably not. Carson and Olivia were happily oblivious to most of what was going on around them.

“Do you want to dance?”

Elsie didn’t have to turn around to know it was Kye who stood behind her. She tensed and tried to think of a plausible excuse not to dance with him. He didn’t give her the chance. Before she could speak, he took a hold of her elbow and towed her out onto the dance floor. She supposed it had never occurred to him that she would turn him down.

Well,
fine. She would get through this dance and then leave. She was only a few verses and choruses away from freedom. A slow song was playing. Kye stopped on the outskirts of the dance floor, took hold of her left hand, and put his other hand on her hip. She felt the heat in his fingers, the possibilities. He had large hands, calloused by ranch work. That had never bothered her. It had seemed like a badge of honor. The hands of a strong man.

She ignored the feel of them against her body, blinked away the possibilities.

“So Elsie,” he said when they had danced for a couple of minutes, “how long are you planning on avoiding me?”

She feigned surprise. “What makes you think I’m avoiding you?”

“You’ve never come home from college in the summertime—”

“It’
s easier to find work in Missoula,” she said. Which was true.

“Every time
you came home for Christmas and I went over to your house to see Carson, you never set foot out of your room.”

She hadn’t though
t he would notice or remember this fact. “I was busy reading. Sorry, you can’t compete with Rochester or Mr. Darcy.”

“Y
ou never went anywhere you would see me, including church . . .”

She shrug
ged it off like it was a joke. “I became a vampire at college. I’m not supposed to step foot on hallowed ground.”

“
Which would explain why you’ve hardly stayed in one spot since the wedding.”

“I’ve been helping.”

“You won’t look me in the eye.”

She me
t his gaze to prove she could. He was staring at her. His blue eyes were intense, penetrating in a way that made it clear he wasn’t thinking about math. The heat from Kye’s hands seemed to increase, seemed to tingle from her hip up her back. She looked away.

He let out a disapproving
grunt. “See,” he said as though she’d proved his point. “You can’t even look me in the eyes.”

Well, what did he expect w
hen he looked at her like that? It was worse than staring at chocolate when you’d been starving for years.

He pulled her closer so he could speak into her ear. “
Elsie, you’ve got to stop this. Your parents live here. Your brother wants me to be his children’s godfather. He’s considering taking a job as foreman for my ranch. Are you going to avoid your family just so you can keep avoiding me?”

“What I do with my family isn’t any of your concern.
”

He made another
grunting sound. “I can’t believe you’re still acting this way. You know, I don’t think my cows surrounded your car on accident. I think they staged an intervention.”

He smelled so good.
He wore the same aftershave he’d used when she’d been in high school. It made her feel like she was walking back through time. All the old familiar feelings of longing were stirring around inside her, promises of a summer that never happened. It was dangerous dancing with him this way. She gazed around the room to clear her mind. “Shouldn’t you be dancing with Lisa? Where is your girlfriend anyway?”

“Lisa is just a friend, and she ended up not coming.
”

“Then where were you last night and all today?”

He looked at her in surprise, as though she should already know. “I drove to Billings to find Olivia’s dad and bring him here.”

“You did?”
Elsie not only met his eyes, she held his gaze. How sweet. How thoughtful. It made the ache inside her all that much worse. Kye was wonderful and he had never been and never would be interested in her.

Kye’s hand tightened on her hip possessively.
“You would have seen me come in with Olivia’s dad if you hadn’t been hiding in the bride’s room.”

“I wasn’t hiding.” Okay, she sort of was, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “I was seeing if Olivia needed anything.”

Kye pulled Elsie closer to avoid another couple. “Which brings us back to the topic at hand. We were talking about your inability to let go of the past.”