Til There Was You

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this insanity.” Cayla Black bitched into her white wine spritzer. Denver knew it was the only drink the active, single mom ever ordered, and she was looking at it like she wished it were something stronger.

“Are you backing out?” Kennedy Reynolds’ voice held a rare note of panic. His best bartender wasn’t prone to panic, and Denver paused in the noisy task of racking glassware before the dinner rush to listen in more closely.

“Oh, I can do it. I didn’t say I couldn’t do it,” Cayla insisted, as though the suggestion that she couldn’t mocked her event planner pride. “You just need to be fully aware that your race to the altar is giving me wrinkles. You see this line right here?” She pointed to some nonexistent blemish on her forehead. “I got that convincing Jolene Lowrey to make her prize-winning red velvet cake for your wedding. You’re just lucky she has as much fondness for Xander’s extremely fine backside as you do.”

Kennedy snickered and wiped down the already clean bar. “Your sacrifice is duly noted, but I object to ‘race to the altar’. We’ve been waiting for years. We just didn’t know we were waiting.”

“Oh, that’s…sort of lovely.” Cayla’s face went soft for a moment, then her brows came back down. “Do not get me sidetracked,” she warned, flipping open the bulging planner at her elbow.

Not for the first time since Kennedy had announced her engagement to Xander Kincaid—interim sheriff of Stone County—Denver wondered if there was a bun in the oven. He’d heard the pair had been hot and heavy in high school, but Kennedy had taken off after that, stayed away for a decade, and only resurfaced in Eden’s Ridge a few months ago. Xander had just proposed a couple weeks back, and it seemed Kennedy was hell bound and determined to be married next month. What was the hurry, unless there was an oops on the way that they wanted to legitimize before the official election for sheriff in November?

Even as the question crossed his mind, one of his waitresses asked it for him. “Seriously, girl, what’s the rush? Did the golden boy knock you up?”

Trish Morgan didn’t have a subtle bone in her body and was always all up in everybody’s business. But the customers seemed to like her—the men for the T and A and the women for whatever gossip she served up alongside their dinners.

More than used to Trish’s less-than-subtle attempts at ferreting out the latest dirt, Kennedy rolled her eyes. “No, we just don’t want to waste any more time apart.”

“I ought to hate your guts on principle for nabbing one of the Ridge’s most eligible bachelors, but it’s hard to do that when you look so damned happy.”

“Thanks. I think.” As Trish sauntered off to finish refilling ketchup bottles, Kennedy turned back to her conversation with her wedding planner. As talk shifted to bridesmaids dresses—oh hell, were those fabric swatches on his bar?—Denver flipped the channel of the nearest flatscreen to ESPN and turned up the volume a bit. Hopefully coverage of the College World Series would help offset the estrogen.

Kennedy did look happy. That hadn’t been the case when Denver had hired her a few months back, after her mom’s unexpected death in a car accident. Carving out a new niche in Eden’s Ridge and within her family had gone a long way toward banishing the shadows from her eyes. But fixing things with Xander seemed to have done the rest. Love conquered all, and all that s**t. Denver legitimately liked her—had, right from the start, and he liked seeing her happy. He just hoped her happiness and impending nuptials weren’t going to lose him a great bartender.

“—in with Misty Pennebaker.”

The name had Denver’s attention sharpening like a dog on point. Of course Misty would do the flowers. Even Denver knew she was the only florist in town. He’d taken note of Misty and her flowers every day on his drive to work for the last three years. Hard not to take notice of a woman who looked like she did—sort of neo-hippie flower child, with a smile that could light up Main Street.

But he’d never actually talked to her.

When she’d first showed up in Eden’s Ridge, he’d been focused on getting Elvira’s solidly in the black, after buying the bar from Len Draper, when the old man had up and decided to retire to Florida. No time for a woman then, and anyway, he hadn’t been sure a free spirit like her would stick. But she had stuck, proving that there was more to the pretty brunette than her posies or colorful wardrobe.

And yet he’d done nothing about it.

“Even though it’s short notice, she’s agreed to meet us here to discuss the options,” Cayla was saying.

Denver carefully, methodically stacked the empty trays. Misty was coming here?

She’d been in Elvira’s before. Everybody in the Ridge had, at some point or other, for lunch or dinner. But, as a rule, she didn’t drink. Since he seldom left his sanctum behind the bar, he’d never had the chance to casually chat her up. Not that he was a casual chat up kind of guy. He could’ve stopped into her shop on Main Street, but what reason did someone like him have to go in to a place called Moonbeams and Sweet Dreams? There was nobody he wanted to send flowers to or buy a gift for. He had no family. And while he’d made friends in the Ridge, none of them were the kind who’d merit the sort of thoughtful, artsy stuff Misty carried in her shop.

Thanks to the small-town grapevine, he knew she was single, but surprisingly little else was known about her. In a place that valued gossip as highly as gold, that was intriguing all by itself. Since Denver habitually kept to himself too, and he understood valuing privacy, he hadn’t tried to find out more. So, he’d just been admiring her from afar all this time, as if she were one of the wild, rare flowers she sold.

Denver hauled the empty plastic trays back into the kitchen, then shoved back through the swinging door to check the syrup levels on the drink fountain. And there she was, framed in the front entrance as the door swung slowly closed behind her. She was wearing one of those bright, flower child dresses that skimmed just below the knees of her very fine legs. The slanting rays of the evening sun teased out traces of red in the dark walnut strands of her hair, spotlighting the trademark crown of flowers she wore. It should have looked ridiculous on a grown woman, but Denver found it unaccountably appealing—a fact which he’d take to his grave and beat anybody for suggesting. She just seemed comfortable in herself, quirks and all. He admired the hell out of that.

“Denver?”

He jolted, realizing from the look on Kennedy’s face that she’d been talking to him for more than a second.

“I’m gonna take my break to sort some wedding stuff, okay?”

Ignoring Kennedy’s knowing smirk, and the fact that Misty wasn’t even looking in his direction at all, he jerked his shoulders. “Yeah, fine,” he told her, as he turned to the first patron of the after work crowd. “What can I get you?"