His brow furrowed. “Not real y,” he said. “There’s a general store that has some dresses, but I don’t think they’ll have what you’re looking for.”
“But they’ll have catalogs that I can order from.” She looked up at him from beneath lowered lashes. “Please, Cord. I want our wedding day to be
perfect.”
He regarded her for a moment, but she could tell that she’d gotten to him.
“Okay,” he said, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “We’ll stop at the general store so that you can get your dress.”
She smiled up at him. “Thank you, Cord.” Impulsively, she leaned up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. He smelled of leather and the outdoors, and
something else that was uniquely manly, something that made her want to
breathe in his scent even deeper.
Blushing, she took a step back, confused by her reaction to this man. “Let me just go freshen up.”
The general store, it turned out, was owned by friends of Cord’s, Matthew
Connelly and his wife, Rachel. The couple was around Cord’s age, making
them just a few years older than Kayla.
“When Cord told us that you were finally coming out here, I couldn’t wait to meet you, Abigail,” Rachel said to Kayla after Cord had made the
introductions. Rachel, a petite girl with honey-blond hair and amber-colored eyes, had a warm, welcoming smile that made Kayla like her immediately.
She’d been nervous on the ride to town because she knew that Cord would
be introducing her to people once they got there, but she was surprised at how easy it was to be herself with Matthew and Rachel, and she smiled at the other girl. “Well, Cord made Copper Creek sound so wonderful that I couldn’t wait to get here,” she said.
Cord put his arm around her slender waist, and Kayla felt her pulse flutter. “If only her trunk had gotten here as well,” he said with a wry smile. “It seems my bride is without a dress for the wedding, so we’re here to look at some
catalogs.”
Rachel laughed. “You mean that she’s here to look at some catalogs,” she
corrected reprovingly. “You are not to see the dress before the wedding, Cord Holderness.” Reaching out, she took Kayla’s hand. “Come on,” she said,
leading her toward the back of the store. “We can look for your dress while the men talk about whatever it is they talk about.”
Smiling, Kayla followed the other girl to a small table in the corner. On it were several catalogs, one of them a clothing one, and Rachel picked it up as she and Kayla sat down.
“So,” the blond-haired girl said with a smile. “What do you think of Cord now that you’ve actual y met him in person?”
Kayla glanced at Cord. He was still standing at the counter talking to
Matthew, and he grinned at whatever the other man had just said. “He’s
exactly as I imagined,” she said, turning back to her new friend. “Though
before I got here, I couldn’t help but wonder if he were really as nice as he sounded in his letters.”
Rachel laughed. “You couldn’t ask for a nicer guy. Except Matthew, of course, but he’s already spoken for.”
Though Kayla smiled at the other girl’s words, she couldn’t help but again feel a little guilty about misleading Cord. Why couldn’t the other girl have had something nasty to say about him, so that Kayla could feel better about what she was doing to him?
“This catalog has some wedding dresses, but I’m afraid that they won’t be like anything you could get back in Boston,” Rachel said, handing her the book. “I can get whatever you order in about two weeks, though.”
Two weeks would be more than enough time to get what she needed from
Cord, she thought as she thumbed through the catalog. Though there were
one or two pretty dresses, none of them were her style. She could make
something much nicer, providing that Rachel could order material for her. And that way, she reasoned, she could delay the wedding however long she
needed to.
She was still considering whether to order a dress from the catalog or simply make her own when Cord came over. “So, have you decided on a dress yet?”
Kayla looked up at him. His hair had fallen across his forehead and she
longed to reach up and brush it back. Staying in Copper Creek with the
handsome rancher for a little while longer wouldn’t be all that bad, she
thought. “Actually, I can’t find any that I like, so I was thinking of making one myself.”
His brow furrowed. “Making one? I thought you told me that you were terrible with a needle and thread.”
Kayla bit her lip. How was she to know that the real Abigail couldn’t sew?
“I...uh...well, I’ve been practicing,” she stammered. “I knew that I’d probably have to sew when I came out here. I mean, people have to know how to
make their own clothes out here, right?”
Cord said nothing for a moment, and then he laughed. “Sometimes,” he
agreed. “Most of the time, though, they just buy them.”
Kayla blushed, but Rachel spoke before she could think of a suitable retort.
“Stop teasing her, Cord,” the other girl chided, though when she turned to Kayla, she was smiling as well. “Don’t mind him. Actually, I just got material in that I think would be perfect for a wedding dress. You might have to order a little lace to go with it, but that should get here very quickly. I’ll get the material for you.”
Cord grinned. “Since there’s probably some kind of rule about me not seeing the material for your dress before the wedding, either, I’m going to go talk to the sheriff. I’ll be back in a little while to pick you up.”
Kayla watched him go, her gaze following his tall frame until he’d disappeared outside. She
