I'm Still In Love With the Groom novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Don't Tell My Uncle

At the ranch Kat begs Annie to hide that she and the groom ever met, and Kat's uncle Ray asks Annie straight out, and she lies.

The pickup rattled over a cattle guard, and we had not said a word to each other in forty miles.

Kat was waiting on the porch of the ranch house in muck boots and a white sundress, and she came down the steps at a run.

"You're here," she said. "You're actually here."

She hugged me hard, and I stood there with my arms at my sides for one second.

Then I hugged her back, because she smelled like hay and horse liniment and she has smelled that way since vet school.

Ryan had stayed in the truck.

I could see his hands on the wheel through the windshield.

"Walk with me," I said.

I took her into the tack room, shut the door and stood in front of it.

Saddles hung on racks all around us, and the air was warm and sweet with leather.

"Katherine," I said. "The groom is Ryan."

"Yes."

"You told him I knew."

"I did." She didn't look away. "I told him you knew and you were coming anyway."

"Why would you say that to him?"

"Because if I told you, you would have stayed in Chicago."

"Yes. I would have."

"And I need you here more than I need you not to be mad at me."

I had known her since we were eighteen, and I had never heard her say it that plainly.

It made me angrier.

"You let me buy a dress," I said. "You let me stand at a gate in Denver and hear it from him."

"I know."

"Is he in love with you?"

She actually laughed, short and surprised.

"Ask him," she said. "No. Annie, I will explain all of it. Saturday. I swear on my grandmother."

"Saturday is four days."

"I need one favor first."

"You don't get a favor."

"You and Sam never met. Not in Chicago, not ever." Her voice dropped. "My uncle Ray lives in the house across the yard. He doesn't know there is any history between you, and he can't find out. Not from you, not from a look. Please."

"Why can't he know?"

"Saturday."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I can give you today." She took my hand, and her grip was cold. "I would never ask for this if I had another way. Say yes."

I wanted to say no.

I wanted to take my dress back to the airport and put it on a conveyor belt and let it go to Phoenix.

But six years ago my phone buzzed on a living room floor, and I had never found out why.

If I left on Wednesday, I would never find out.

"Four days," I said. "Then you tell me everything."

"Everything."

"And I'm not forgiving anyone."

"Nobody asked you to," Kat said, and she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.

The door opened behind me.

A stocky man in a pressed western shirt stood in the light, with a gray mustache and a big silver belt buckle.

"There she is," he said, smiling. "The famous Annie."

Before I could answer he lifted the garment bag out of my hand.

"Careful, I've got it. You've been traveling all day. Ray Salazar, Kat's uncle. I'm the one who pays for the champagne and complains about it."

He had a nice laugh.

It was the first kind thing anyone had done for me since the airport, and I was ashamed of how much I wanted to lean on it.

"Thank you," I said.

"You two go back a long way, I hear. Kat talks about you every Christmas." He shifted the bag to his other arm. "Sam got you from the airport?"

"He did."

"Good man, Sam. Five years on this ranch, never once been late."

Ryan had come to the doorway behind him.

He stood very still and he looked at the floor.

"Funny thing," Ray said, still smiling. "Sam did a few years of office work in Chicago, before he came out here. I just thought, what a small world. Did you two ever cross paths back there?"

Kat's fingers tightened on mine until the bones ground together.

I looked at Ray's friendly face.

I looked at the man in the doorway whose hands I had once known better than my own.

"No," I said. "I've never met him."

Ryan did not move.

"Well, good," Ray said. "Then nobody here has any history."

He set my bag on a saddle rack, and he took a small spiral notebook from his shirt pocket.

He wrote something down in it, slowly, and then he tucked it away again.

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