Meet Me at the Chapel (8 page)

“What do you think, Hannah? Are you up for a little renovation?”

Hannah was eating her second helping of the vegetarian lasagna. “I hate the carpet.”

Casey couldn't disagree with her—the carpet was a hideous throwback from the seventies. It gave her the heebie-jeebies just thinking about what might be living in that gnarly shag.

“It's definitely got to go,” Casey agreed.

“Well.” Brock dropped his napkin on his plate. “Make a list and we'll get started.”

That was all the encouragement Casey needed. At home, her apartment was basically the size of the kitchen. It was tiny and she had already feng shui'd it, rehabbed it and decorated it several times over. Now she had an entire house with which to go crazy? Heaven.

Hannah and Casey spent the next hour writing a priority list for the house while Brock watched TV. They both agreed that the living room was the first room to be tackled. Even though Hannah wanted to be there for every inch of the demolition fun, they decided that it would be better if Casey got started first thing in the morning before Brock had a chance to think about it and change his mind.

So, first thing after breakfast, right after Brock and Hannah left for school, Casey did what she had wanted to do since the very first moment she had walked into the dreary living room—she began to pull down the awful brocade curtains that must have been hanging there since the house was first built. One by one, the curtains were yanked down, leaving plumes of dust hanging in the air and flying up Casey's nose.

“Achoo!”
Casey started to sneeze.
“Achoo!”
She sneezed again and again until her eyes were watering and her nose was running.

She left the pile of curtains in a heap in the center of the living room and ran to the bathroom.

“Oh, lord.” Casey looked at her reflection. Her eyes were swollen from the dust; the end of her nose was red from her itching it. She splashed water on her face, hoping to get the dust out of her eyes and her nose. It was in her hair, on her shirt,
inside
her shirt, on her pants—the fine dust that had accumulated for years had landed on her.

She came out of the bathroom only to hear the faint noise of a micro-poodle sneezing.

“Oh, not you, too, Hercules!”

The teacup poodle had been sleeping contentedly in his carrier—but he wasn't sleeping now. She had thought that she had put him out of range and out of danger from the dust, but she had miscalculated the sheer quantity that had been collected on Brock's curtains.

Hercules sneezed once, twice and then again and again, until she lost count.

“I'm so sorry, sweet boy!” Urgently, she got the poodle out of the house and up to the loft where she kept a bottle of liquid Benadryl to control Hercules's allergies.

She was just finishing tending to her micro-poodle and he had just stopped sneezing, thankfully, when she heard a truck pull up. Assuming it was Brock returning to the ranch because he had forgotten something, she hurriedly went downstairs to meet him. But when she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw that the truck stopping in front of the house didn't belong to Brock at all.

“Howdy!” Wyatt, the flirtatious cowboy from Bent Tree, hopped out of his early model Ford truck.

“Hi.”

Wyatt met her halfway. “I took a chance that you'd still be here.”

Taken aback, Casey's eyebrows lifted and then drew together. “You're looking for me?”

Wyatt adjusted his brown cowboy hat on his head. “I'm looking for you.”

“Why?”

The stark confusion in her single-word question made the young cowboy laugh. Man, oh, man was Wyatt easy on the eyes. So handsome—golden skin, dark gold hair, good nose, straight teeth, deadly dimples... Wyatt must have been leaving broken hearts and broken dreams all over the state of Montana. He wasn't of a settling age, but she had no doubt that female after pining female had given it their best shot to wrangle him.

“I've been trying to catch you at Bent Tree, but I keep missing you. I was starting to wonder if you were avoiding me.” Wyatt smiled at her. “But then I thought—that's not possible.”

Now it was Casey's turn to laugh. It was a foreign concept to Wyatt that a female wouldn't be swooning at the thought of his baby blues—she didn't have the heart to tell him that she had forgotten about their brief meeting in the barn.

Wyatt reached out and pulled some chunks of dust out of her hair. “You look like you've been rolling around in a dustbin.”

“Close.” Casey laughed. “I was trying to get rid of Brock's curtains. I'm afraid I lost that battle.”

“Do you need a hand?”

She actually did need a hand. But it struck her as weird that the cowboy had stopped by to see her in the first place.

“No. I've got it.” She put her hand up to shield the sun from her eyes. “Why'd you say you were looking for me again?”

Chapter Eight

W
yatt didn't get to answer that question, because Brock pulled up and parked his truck right next to the Ford.

Brock didn't look happy to see Wyatt. The ranch foreman's strides were long and determined, and he covered the distance between them quickly and with purpose.

“I wasn't expecting to see you here, Wyatt.”

“I was just stopping by to see Casey.” The young cowboy held his ground, which impressed Casey. Brock was a big man with a big presence,
and
he was this cowboy's boss.

Brock looked at his watch. “Last I checked, you're supposed to be saddled up and heading up to the north pasture to move the herd.”

Wyatt grinned sheepishly—he winked at Casey. “Busted.”

“You're late,” Brock snapped.

The cowboy tipped his hat to Casey. “Have a nice day.”

Wyatt gave one last wave of his hand before he disappeared down the driveway.

Brock stood watching him for a minute; he turned to her. “What was all that about?”

Casey shrugged. “Beats the heck out of me.”

“Huh.” Brock's jaw was tense—his lips thinned. “I expected to find you tearing apart my living room.”

“I was!” Casey explained. “But I caused poor Hercules to have an allergy attack. I had to give him a shot of Benadryl and left him in the loft so he can get some rest.”

“Let's go take a look.”

Once inside, they both stared at the lumpy pile of heavy brocade curtains she had left in the middle of his living room. She looked between the curtains and Brock to see a reaction—she was pleased to discover that he wasn't upset.

“Well...” He took his hat off and hung it on one of the hooks in the entryway. “It is much brighter in here. I'll say that.”

He rolled up his sleeves and started to haul the curtains outside. The minute he started to move the curtains, the plume of dust was back, and they both wound up coughing and sneezing out on the porch. Somewhere in the middle of coughing and sneezing, Casey started to laugh and so did Brock.

“I think I'm going to need a hazmat suit!”

Still coughing a little, Casey wiped the tears from her eyes. “I can't go back in there. I really can't. I'm allergic to dust.”

“You stay out here,” Brock said, and she was only too happy to oblige. An allergy attack, once started, could last for days.

Brock covered his nose by tying a bandana around the lower half of his face. He dragged the curtains outside, down the porch steps and away from the house. She let the dust settle a bit and then she braved the inside of the house.

“Seriously,” Brock told her when he came back inside, “it's a lot better. What next?”

Casey looked up at him. “Don't you have to go to work today?”

“I can take a day off. I've got time on the books.”

Casey looked around the room—the one place her eyes kept landing on was the carpet. “Carpet?”

“I'm game. I've actually been wanting to get rid of this for years—you've motivated me to do it now.”

“Well, the question is then—what's going to take its place?”

Brock gave a small shake of his head. “I've always wanted to go with wood.”

“You could consider something sustainable—like cork.”

He smiled at her with an amused smile. “Let's not get crazy.”

Several hours later, Casey was amazed by what they had accomplished. The carpet had been torn out of the living room, the hideous curtains were gone and there was now a nice rug on the living room floor to cover the cold concrete until new flooring could be purchased and installed.

“I'd really like to get rid of the wallpaper—paint the walls with a fresh coat of paint and, of course, paint all of this dark wood white so it's not such a downer in here.”

“It'll all get done,” he reassured her. “It's started now.”

* * *

Brock took the rest of the week off from work, and because he never called off from work or took time for himself, Casey's uncle gave him the time without question. Hannah helped them pick out flooring and paint and much of the work got done while she was at school. Casey was relentless when it came to projects—she didn't like to slow down and she didn't like to take a lot of breaks. Brock matched her work ethic and, because of that, by the end of the week the living room had been transformed. Brock removed the wallpaper—a tedious job she was glad to hand over to him. She was in charge of following behind him with a fresh coat of paint. They had picked a pretty light green for the walls that looked soft and inviting, but not too feminine.

“I am beat.” Brock slumped down onto the couch.

She had to give the man credit—he didn't give up and he didn't give in. He just kept on working until Humpty Dumpty had been put back together again. Casey joined him on the couch. She didn't have the heart to tell him that the furniture really needed to get taken to the dump with the curtains and the carpet. Baby steps.

“We rock.”

Brock put his hands behind his head. “We do rock.”

She felt too tired to smile or laugh. She just wanted to melt into the couch and never get up.

“You have paint splattered all over the top of your head,” Brock informed her.

Eyes at half-mast, she rolled her head to the side so she could see his profile. “You have paint all over your beard.”

“I should probably take a shower,” he murmured. “Do I stink?”

“A little ripe—yes.” She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Oh, my stars. So tired.”

Those were the last words she remembered mumbling. The two of them fell asleep on the couch, side by side, completely exhausted. And it wasn't until she heard Brock moving around that she realized she was curled up on her side, her face planted in the knotty fabric of the old couch, drool on the corner of her mouth.

Lovely
.

“I've got to go pick Hannah up from school.” Brock looked worried.

“Okay.” Casey pushed herself upright.

“I think we went too far with this thing. She's going to freak out.”

“If she does, we'll handle it. We've involved her in the decision-making process, so this isn't going to be a surprise. Why don't you take pictures of it so she can look at them on the way home?”

Brock took pictures of the new and improved, uncluttered and unclogged version of their living room. Even with all of the prepping and priming Hannah to handle the change, it still could be tough going for the first couple of nights. But it had to happen at some point. The house needed to change in order to provide Hannah with the most supportive, stable environment possible. Change was hard—yes—yet Hannah had to learn that it was also a part of life. If Hannah was going to live an independent adult life, Brock had to start developing her coping skills now.

* * *

As it turned out, Hannah had several meltdowns over the changes in the house. But when Brock realized that his daughter had to be able to process and cope with change while she still had the benefit of a strong support system, he focused all of his attention on rehabbing the living room. There was still a monumental amount of work to be done in the house beyond this one room, but the living room was the most used room in the house besides the kitchen and Hannah's bedroom, so it was the most important. Casey was impressed with Brock's determination and work ethic—once the man got going, there really wasn't any stopping him. Casey didn't like to take breaks, but Brock was even worse. She constantly had to remind him to hydrate and eat a snack or break for lunch. If the rancher got it in his head that what he was doing was for the betterment of his daughter, he was a man with a righteous purpose. In that way, Brock was very much like her own father.

After a physically taxing week of painting and renovating and cleaning, Casey decided to allow herself the rare luxury of sleeping in and lingering in bed. She had grown attached to her loft—early in the morning, before sunrise, she would hear the horses begin to move in their stalls, whickering as the time when Brock would feed them drew near. Sometimes she would awaken completely and listen to the sound of Brock's deep, distinctive bass voice as he went about his morning routine in the barn. There were some mornings she would meet him in the barn and share the chore of feeding and mucking out the stalls. Occasionally, like today, she would hear Brock's voice and the sound of the horses in a half-asleep, half-awake state. She remembered it happening later, but she had been too tired for the noise to awaken her fully.

“Oh...” Casey felt a cramp in her stomach, so intense that it yanked her out of a dream and slammed her into reality without any warning.

“Oh!” She curled her legs upward and pressed her hands into her stomach. Her body broke out into a cold sweat. She pushed her face into the pillow; tears of pain and confusion were absorbed into the pillowcase.

Hercules started to whine—he licked her cheeks and her forehead.

“It's okay, sweet boy.” Casey bit the words out. “Momma's okay.”

She pushed herself upright and then immediately buckled forward to rest her head on her knees. She swallowed several times, pushing down the feeling that she was going to be sick.

“Uh!” Casey forced herself to stand up. She pressed her hands tightly into her abdomen as she ran to the bathroom. Hercules was too short to make the jump off the bed—he stood at the edge of it barking in distress.

Casey grabbed the side of the pedestal sink to hold herself up. These couldn't be menstrual cramps, could they? She'd always been irregular and had terrible pain during her periods, but nothing like this. She was bleeding. Hard. As soon as she put a heavy-flow sanitary napkin in place, she fished around in her travel bag for ibuprofen. Still bent over, she fumbled with the top of the bottle until it popped off and fell into the sink. She shook out several pills, the maximum allowed in a day, and stuck her head under the faucet to fill her mouth with water.

She sat back down on the lid of the commode and rocked back and forth, pleading with God to stop the pain. The entire time she was waiting for the meds to kick in, she counted backward and realized that it was about the right time for her to have her period. The last period had been over a month ago on the trip from Chicago to Montana. The cramps had been so bad that time that she'd had to add another day to her travel plan so she could rest in the hotel. Her gynecologist, a woman she went to out of habit and a lack of enthusiasm for going through the hassle of finding a new doctor, diagnosed her with endometriosis and suggested that she get the Depo-Provera birth control shot to control it. When she told the doctor she wanted to think about it and the doctor responded by asking why—Casey knew that the patient-doctor relationship was over for her. She fully intended to find a new gynecologist after her summer in Montana—if her body would just
cooperate
until then!

If she didn't have Hercules to worry about, she would have stayed locked in the bathroom. But the tiny poodle hadn't stopped whining since she had left him abruptly. She would need to get dressed and get him downstairs to go to the bathroom, feed him breakfast and then get right back into bed. At the moment, that little to-do list seemed insurmountable.

Casey slowly pulled on her jeans and her favorite comfy Chicago Cubs sweatshirt. She had just sat down on the bed to push her bare feet into her boots when she heard a knock at the door.

“Casey?”

It was Hannah. Even feeling lousy like she did, she waited to see if the social stories and all of the practice had paid off—would Hannah wait after she knocked? She had been knocking consistently—now for the next step.

“Come in, Hannah.”

Hannah bounded in. “I knocked.”

“And what else?” Casey prompted in a slightly strained voice. She pasted a weak smile on her face, not wanting to alert the preteen to the fact that she wasn't feeling well.

“I waited.”

Casey held up her hand to give Hannah a high five. “Nice work!”

“Do you want me to take Hercules out?”

Blessing from above!

“Yes—thank you.” Casey pointed to his bowl and his bag of specialty food for a sensitive stomach. “Could you feed him, too, and then watch him for a bit?”

Hannah was enamored with Hercules and the feeling was absolutely mutual. Brock's daughter couldn't take her up on the offer fast enough.

“Are you coming for breakfast? Dad wants to know.”

“Oh, no, honey. Tell him I'm not feeling hungry.”

Hannah nodded and then slammed the door behind her. They had made a lot of progress on the entrance, but they were going to have to work on Hannah's exit strategy next.

Casey rolled into the bed with her knees tucked up to her chest, pulled the comforter over her shoulders and closed her eyes. The ibuprofen had begun to take the edge off, but not enough to feel remotely normal. Female problems. What a bum rap. She must have dozed off again because she hadn't heard Brock come up the stairs leading to the loft apartment.

“Casey? It's Brock. Can I come in?”

“Come in.”

Brock opened the door to Casey's world. The loft had been transformed with some artfully placed rugs and throw pillows and vases with freshly cut flowers. Admittedly, he hadn't known her all that long, but the one thing he had picked up on was that she liked her breakfast. It didn't matter if it was a light breakfast, like a protein bar, or a heavy breakfast, like eggs made by free-range, vegetarian, happy chickens, Casey ate breakfast.

“I was concerned about you.” Brock had his hands tucked into the front pockets of his jeans. “Are you okay?”

What should a woman say to a question like that? Skate around the issue or just be blunt?

“I'm not feeling my best today.” She didn't lift her head off the pillow.

Brock pulled a hand-carved wooden chair closer to the bed and sat down. Casey had pale skin, but today it looked pasty and gray. Her cinnamon freckles stood out in stark contrast compared to the paleness of her cheeks.