He and Ryder were sitting down in the living room, drinking beer. Colt and Jake were seeing to last-minute setup details. And the women were all upstairs, fussing with bridesmaid dresses, hair and makeup. He was sure that Sammy had said something about false eyelashes, but he couldn’t be certain.
He lifted a beer. “Congratulations. You get to give one away.”
“Yeah,” Ryder said, taking a drink of beer. “I guess I really did make it.” He laughed. “Of course, then in a few months I’m about to have a baby.”
“No empty nest for you, I guess,” Logan said.
“Wouldn’t know what to do with one anyway,” Ryder said.
“You did a damn fine job,” Logan said. “You had to raise all of us.”
“Oh, you were mostly raised. Maybe I had to do a bit with the girls. But you guys helped a lot. Iris helped more than she should have had to. And then there was Sammy.”
“I get the feeling we all supported each other pretty well.”
“Yeah, I think we did.” Ryder looked at him hard, and Logan felt suddenly uncomfortable.
“You going to do all this?” he asked.
“Me?” His stomach tightened. “Not. Not for me.”
“Why is that?”
“Just isn’t.”
“And there’s no other reason why? Because you’re not exactly going out on the town prowling around, and so I don’t think it’s because you don’t have it in you to settle down. In fact, you don’t really seem deficient in any way.”
“Well, neither did you. You didn’t figure you’d get married.”
“Right,” Ryder said. “I didn’t. Just takes the right woman, though, sometimes.”
“Sometimes the woman can be right as anything, but it still doesn’t make you the right man,” Logan said.
Because when he pictured Rose, all he could think was that she was right in every way.
He was the one that wasn’t quite.
“That’s when you figure out how to become the right man, Logan. When she’s worth it.”
He didn’t say anything. But the fact of the matter was, sometimes the woman was so worth it you had to be man enough to give her the space to find a man who was just as worth it. Sometimes that was the better part of virtue. He knew that Ryder and Sammy were halves of the same whole. And it might have taken them a while to realize that, but Logan had seen it from the beginning. He understood why Ryder had imagined he couldn’t have those things, and didn’t want them.
Even when he downplayed it, it couldn’t be denied, that Ryder had raised them all. That he had seen them off into life. That he had sacrificed his dreams and everything that he was for them.
Logan was happy being a rancher. He had never wanted anything more. Ryder’s father and uncle had been his father figures. Ranchers, and their dad had been a cop, too. Those had been his dreams. To be the kind of steady that they’d been.
Yeah, he hadn’t given anything up.
Ryder had imagined marriage and kids would be more of the same sacrificing. More of the same work.
It wasn’t the same for him.
Not at all.
“Well. Either way. You did it.”
“Yep. Probably the happiest a guy whose sister is marrying an ex-convict could possibly be.”
They both laughed at that. Then a few minutes later, he heard the rustling of fabric, and footsteps on the landing. He turned, and the procession coming down the stairs made his heart go still, then slam hard against his chest.
Pansy in a wedding gown made even him feel sentimental. And he could tell by the look on Ryder’s face, that his friend wasn’t faring much better. She was like a pocket-sized angel in the flowing fabric, her dark hair loose and falling around her shoulders in waves.
But then he saw Rose. And after that he couldn’t see anything else. The Christmas-green bridesmaid dress she had on hugged her curves in a way that made him ache. She was just so damned pretty.
He could hardly stand it. Having restraint around her was damn tough now. He had done it for five years years. Five long years. And then... Then, he’d spent the past month glorying in every fantasy he’d ever had about her. And all he wanted to do now was get up off the couch, pull her into his arms and kiss her. Kiss her because she was there. Because she was his. And he couldn’t do that. So he sat there, drinking his beer, not moving.
And he could swear he felt Ryder’s gaze boring a hole through the side of his face.
“Don’t you two clean up nice,” Sammy said, looking them both over openly.
“We tried,” Ryder said. “For Pansy’s sake.”
“You didn’t wear a suit for me,” she said.
“You didn’t want me to.”
“True,” she said, laughing.
The girls came closer, and he and Ryder both stood, because it seemed wrong to stay seated in the face of so much beauty. Pansy ran to hug Ryder, who pulled her into his arms and held her tight. But Sammy, he noticed, was staring at him. Rose was too, and he felt damned flattered over the way she was looking at him. But it was difficult to enjoy when he felt essentially pinned to the wall by his friend’s wife.
“You look great,” Rose said softly.
“So do you,” he said.
“You do look good,” Sammy said. “You know, I was down in the barn earlier. And saw all the guys in their suits there. They look a lot like you.”
No one else heard what Sammy said, except for Rose, who rounded quickly and faced her. “Don’t,” Rose said. “Let Pansy and West have their wedding. Dig into things later.”
Rose’s defense of him was unexpected, but welcome.
“That’s fair,” Sammy said, looking between the two of them. “I’m beginning to think there’s a few things that aren’t being talked about right now that maybe should be.”
“Nothing
