The wedding gift, p.1
The Wedding Gift, page 1
Also by Carolyn Brown
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Love Drunk Cowboy
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The Cowboy’s Mail Order Bride
How to Marry a Cowboy
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A Heap of Texas Trouble
Christmas at Home
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2020, 2023 by Carolyn Brown
Cover and internal design © 2023 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by Eileen Carey
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
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The Wedding Gift was originally published in 2020 as an audiobook by Audible Originals.
A Slow Dance Holiday was originally published in 2020 as an ebook by Sourcebooks Casablanca.
Summertime on the Ranch was originally published in 2021 as an ebook by Sourcebooks Casablanca.
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
A Slow Dance Holiday
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Summertime on the Ranch
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
About the Author
Back Cover
Chapter 1
“How do you know you are marrying the right person, Granny?” Darla Marshall asked her grandmother.
Roxie leaned in so she could see her reflection better in the round mirror in the middle of the antique vanity. She hated putting on makeup these days, but some days a woman had to gussy up a little, and besides, it gave her a moment to think about what her youngest granddaughter had just asked. Her lipstick ran into the wrinkles around her mouth, and she only had a few gray eyelashes to even try to put mascara on. But makeup was secondary to answering her granddaughter’s question. Roxie had babysat Darla from the time she was six weeks old, so they had a close relationship, and she’d always tried to be there for the girl—to be honest with her even with difficult questions.
“Honey, you’d have to ask someone else that question,” Roxie said as she applied a little blush to her cheeks. “For the first year of my marriage, I didn’t think I had married the right person. There were times that I thought I’d married the devil himself.”
“But I always thought you and Gramps had the perfect marriage.” Darla plopped down on the bed behind Roxie. “How did you know he was your soulmate?”
Roxie stood up and crossed the room to her closet. She pulled off her gingham-checked snap-front duster and hung it up, took out her dress, and laid it on the end of the bed. “He was not my soulmate there at first, honey.”
“Then why did you marry him?” Darla asked.
“Because he was wild and dating him was exciting. Are you having second thoughts, child? Your mama and daddy are out a lot of money for you to be calling off the wedding.” Roxie’s eyes bored holes into Darla’s soul. “Are you going to need me to hide you from your mama? I’ve got some money put back to buy your wedding present, but if you need it to run away, we can use it for that. But only if you take me with you. I would far rather go to Hawaii or even to the beaches in Florida than to this damned old anniversary party.”
“Why would I hide from Mama?” Darla asked.
“Because she’s going to throw a pure old southern hissy fit if you pull one of them runaway-bride things. She told me last week that the wedding had already gone over the budget your dad gave her, and she hadn’t even paid the florist yet or the caterer,” Roxie answered as she pulled her mauve-colored dress over her head.
“Be careful not to muss up your hair. Mama would have a hissy fit over that too. I’m not planning on running away”—Darla squirmed a little at the lie because she never lied to her grandmother and the idea of calling off the wedding had crossed her mind—“but marriage is until death, and I just want to be sure I’m saying, ‘I do,’ to the right person.” She held up her engagement ring and stared at it for a while. “How do I know for absolute sure, Granny?”
“Gloria is good at hissy fits, but I got to admit, she’s been a wonderful daughter-in-law. She and Kevin gave me you three girls.” Roxie lowered her voice. “You do know you’re my favorite, don’t you?”
Darla giggled. “You tell that to all three of us sisters, but since you babysat me so much when I was little, we’ve kind of got a bond that Sarah and Marilyn don’t have with you. A bond”—Darla gave her the old stink eye—“that lets me know when you are evading my question because you don’t want to answer it.”
“Yes, we do have something special, and yes, I am beating around the bush, but not because I don’t want to answer. It’s because I’m not sure how to without going into a lot of detail. Would you zip me up, please?” Roxie turned around. “And you look more like me than the other two, so that makes you extra special.”
Darla hopped off the bed and zipped her grandmother’s dress. She loved it when folks told her that she looked like Roxie did when she was young. “You look beautiful today, Granny. I wish I’d gotten your red hair, and then we’d look even more alike. Did you have a big wedding when you and Gramps got married?”
“Lord, no!” Roxie went back to the vanity and fastened a strand of pearls around her neck. “We got married on the side of the road. My folks didn’t like Claud. The Marshall family lived up in the woods near the Red River just north of Powderly, Texas. They didn’t value education very much, and none of the ten boys in the family finished high school. They were Christian people—at least their mother was—and hardworking folks, but the daddy in the family liked his liquor and had a reputation for wasting money on poker games. Back in my younger days, and in my family, that was a bad thing.”
“But you fell in love with him even though he was a bad boy, right?” Darla handed Roxie the pearl earrings that matched her necklace.
“I thought I was in love with him,” Roxie answered. “There now, we’re ready to go to the church. I really do not want this damned party. I’m only going along with it for Kevin and Gloria’s sake. I wouldn’t let them do anything for our fiftieth anniversary, so when they came up with this idea, I agreed. I’d rather for me and you to go to the bank, clean out my savings account, and head south to Florida. We could be beach bums until the money runs out.”
“What do you mean, you thought you were in love with him? Didn’t you know for sure?” Darla asked.
“As you kids say, that’s a conversation for another day,” Roxie told her. “Claud is probably already pacing the living room floor, so we’d better get moving.”
The two of them walked down the hallway, across the foyer, and into the living room, where Darla’s grandfather Claud really was pacing back and forth from the window, around the sofa, and back to the window.
“Don’t Granny look beautiful today, Gramps?”
Her grandfather pointed at the clock. “We’re going to be late to this shindig if we don’t get going. Than k God it’s in the middle of the day and don’t mess up my television shows tonight.”
“Was Granny this pretty on your wedding day?” Darla asked.
“Honey, that was sixty years ago. I can barely remember who won the domino games down at the senior citizens’ place yesterday. I don’t know if she was as pretty then as she is now, but I imagine she was, or I wouldn’t have married her.” He headed outside. “Y’all best hurry, or this heat is going to melt the makeup right off your faces.”
“Well, that’s a romantic thing to say on your anniversary,” Darla fussed at him as she slid into the driver’s seat of her granny’s SUV, started the engine, and adjusted the air-conditioning.
“Honey, sometimes romance takes a back burner to plain old common sense. It’s hotter ’n Lucifer’s pitchfork. Turn up that air-conditioning so we can cool off and not go to the party all sweaty,” he said.
“Gramps, tell me about your wedding day.” Darla was determined to get him talking about the past. “Granny said y’all got married on the side of the road. Why would you do that?”
Claud chuckled. “Her folks lived in Paris, right in the middle of town in a little white house with a picket fence, and they went to church every Sunday. The family even had Sunday dinner where they all gathered around the table and passed the food proper like.”
“We do that at your house every Sunday,” Darla said as she drove down Broadway Street, turned right onto Main, and headed to the Baptist church fellowship hall on the corner of Main and Byrd Streets.
“Yep, but that’s not the way I grew up. My mama and daddy had ten sons. I was the youngest. My daddy came from a family with eight boys and two girls. We were those wild Marshall kids from the backwoods up around Powderly. They called us Marshall cousins ‘river rats’ because we lived on the Red River, and we weren’t real smart like your granny’s folks.
“Accordin’ to your great-grandma, I wasn’t good enough for Roxie. She had a scholarship to go to college and was going to make something out of herself. But she said she would marry me, so I bought us a marriage license, and we was going to have us a weddin’ in my folks’ front yard.” He chuckled. “My mama used to say that when you make plans, God just laughs and throws monkey wrenches into the ideas to show you who’s boss.”
Amen to that, Darla thought as she snagged a parking spot close to the fellowship hall. God has sure been laughing at my plans lately.
“Didn’t you invite Granny’s folks?” she asked.
“You’ll have to hear the rest of this story later.” Roxie sighed. “Look at all the cars. Folks are already here, so we’d best get on in there and get this over with.”
“You know you love a party.” Claud got out of the back seat and opened the door for Roxie. “Even after we got married and made it to my mama’s place, you loved the party she had ready for us in the front yard.”
“I thought you couldn’t remember anything that far back.” Roxie got out of the vehicle and headed toward the fellowship hall with Claud right beside her.
“I told you we were going to be late,” Claud fussed when he opened the door and everyone applauded.
“Mama told me not to bring y’all until this time so that everyone could greet you when we got here,” Darla whispered.
“They’re here!” Gloria’s voice filled the whole place when she announced their arrival over the microphone. “Happy sixtieth to the best parents Kevin and I could ever ask for!”
“Sweet Jesus!” Roxie gasped.
“It’s okay. They’re all your friends,” Darla said.
“It’s not that, honey,” Roxie whispered. “I just blew a hole in my pantyhose. A glob of fat has snuck out, and it feels like I’ve got a chunk of salt pork between my legs. It’s sweating and sticking to my other thigh.”
“We’ll make our way to the bathroom.” Darla looped her arm into Roxie’s. “You can take them off and throw them in the trash. Nobody wears those things anymore anyway.”
They hadn’t gone two steps before a whole group of gray-haired ladies circled around Roxie. “You deserve a medal for staying with one man for sixty years,” Violet Parsons said. “I’m ten years younger than you, and I’ve already had three husbands.”
“Well, I think it’s wonderful,” Rosalee Davis sighed. “My poor Frank died just before our fortieth. I wish we would have had twenty more years together.”
“Ladies,” Darla whispered, “Granny needs to make a quick trip through the bathroom. We’ll be right back, but y’all could claim one of those tables for us.”
Violet nodded. “We understand, darlin’. When you get to be our age, the bladder has a mind of its own, and if you don’t listen, it retaliates. We’ll get some punch and cookies ready for you while you’re gone.”
“If I’ve got to listen to Violet tell stories about her three husbands and Rosalee whine about her husband that cheated on her the last ten years of their marriage, I’ll be ready to go to Florida all by myself.” Roxie opened the door and stopped in the sitting room right outside the bathroom. Darla locked the door and then eased down onto a rose-colored velvet sofa.
When Roxie jerked the tail of her dress up, Darla’s eyes widened, and her finger shot up to point at her grandmother. “What is that thing you are wearing? It looks painful.”
“Do you mean my girdle? A woman is only as well dressed as her undergarments,” Roxie said.
“Have you always worn those things? And if so, why?” Darla frowned.
“Ahhh,” Roxie said as she pulled it and the pantyhose off at the same time. “Freedom.” She sighed. “Now you know why I hate to go to these things. You girls today have life so much easier. Ladies of my generation wear girdles because it’s the proper thing to do, like hose or, in today’s world, pantyhose. See those little loops on the back and front of the girdle? Those used to hold hooks that kept our nylons up.”
“Throw that thing in the trash with the hose,” Darla said. “And if that slip is hot, take it off and throw it away too.”
“My mama would claw her way up out of her grave and fuss at me if I did that.” Roxie shivered. “She always preached that decent women don’t go half-naked under their clothing except at home.”
“I’ll protect you if Great-Granny comes gunnin’ for you,” Darla said, giggling. “Turn around and let me unzip you. When we leave here, all you’ll have on is your granny panties, your bra, and that pretty dress.”
“Honey, I just couldn’t,” Roxie said. “I carry an extra pair of hose in my purse. If you’ll get them out for me, I’ll put them on.”
“Yes, you can, Granny. Violet and Rosalee won’t ever know or even suspect. As thin as you are, I don’t know why you’d ever torture yourself with a girdle and hose anyway. Besides, you’ve always been full of spit and vinegar. Why are you letting society tell you to wear something that’s painful to even look at it?” Darla picked up the girdle and pantyhose and tossed them in the trash.
Roxie inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. “I don’t suppose it would be proper for me to go barefoot too, would it?”
“This is your party, Granny,” Darla said. “You can do whatever you want. I’m going barefoot and wearing toe rings to my wedding instead of shoes. I’m so clumsy, I’d fall if I tried to walk in high heels like the ones you’re wearing. Besides, my dress covers my feet.”
“Well, mine don’t.” Roxie removed her dress completely and pulled off the slip. “I feel downright rebellious.” She put the slip into the trash can.
“Granny, you’ve been rebellious your whole life. You eloped with a bad boy, got married on the side of the road, and then had a reception in the front yard of your shady in-laws’ place. Throwing away those torturous undergarments is nothing compared to that,” Darla assured her, wishing that she had half of her grandmother’s spunk.
Roxie laughed out loud. “I can’t believe I’m letting you talk me into this. That girdle is at least forty years old. They don’t even make them anymore.”
“That’s because they made women cranky, and probably caused hernias and fainting spells and all kinds of other ugly things. I bet they were the first birth control ever invented. By the time a guy got that thing off his woman, he was too tired for sex,” Darla told her.
Roxie threw back her head and roared with laughter as she turned around for Darla to zip her up. “My mama and my mother-in-law would have both dropped graveyard dead if they’d heard me say the word sex. And, honey, I do feel better with just the bare essentials under my dress, but”—Roxie shook her finger at her youngest granddaughter—“don’t try to talk me into wearing those thong things you girls call underpants. There’s not enough material in a pair of those to sag a clothesline.”
