Fortune's June Bride (Mills & Boon Cherish) (The Fortunes of Texas: Cowboy Country, Book 6) by Allison Leigh Read Free Book Online

still conversing, so she made her way over to the buckboard and fit her microphone into place where it was mostly hidden in her hair. She wasn’t donning the veil until she absolutely had to.
    She patted her hand over the black horse already in harness. “Hey, pal. Ready for another show?” The horse, imaginatively named Blackie, jerked his head a few times before shaking his mane and turning his attention back to the few weeds sprouting up in the dirt underfoot. “I know. You’ve got a tough job,” she murmured. “Running down Main Street a few times a day.” The rest of the time, the show horses for Cowboy Country spent their days in pampered comfort in air-conditioned barns located behind the lushly landscaped public picnic grounds.
    She gave him a final pat before hiking her wedding dress above her knees to work her toe onto the edge of the front wheel so she could pull herself awkwardly up onto the high wooden seat. She didn’t mind portraying a nineteenth-century Western bride, but she sure was glad she hadn’t been one for real.
    But then again, she wasn’t exactly a twenty-first-century bride, either.
    She propped the thin sole of her old-fashioned boot on the edge of the wood footrest at the front of the wagon, pulled her heavy skirt above her knees, then lifted the curls of her hairpiece off her damp neck. It was early June in Texas, and the sun was high and hot overhead. And buckboards didn’t come equipped with air-conditioning any more than they came with upholstered, padded seats and running boards to make climbing in easier.
    Eventually, she saw her cast mates start assembling and Galen finally tore himself away from Serena the chatterbox to walk with Sal the Sheriff toward their own gate.
    “You’re getting grumpy in your old age, Aurora,” she muttered under her breath, and sat up straighter, letting her dress fall back down where it belonged while she fit the brain-squeezing band of her veil around her head. The springs beneath the wood seat squeaked loudly as Frank climbed up beside her and fixed his mic into place.
    “What’s wrong with you?”
    “Just hot.” She looked over her shoulder. Serena had returned to the rest of her dance line and the women were all standing around, adjusting the straps of their vibrant dresses and tugging at the seams running down the back of their fishnet stockings.
    She faced forward again. “You should leave Cammie alone,” she told Frank. “She looks too young for you.”
    His shoulder leaned against hers. “Then stop saying no to me every time I ask.”
    She shifted as far to the right as she could without falling off the seat altogether. “I don’t date people I work with.” The statement was almost laughable, since she didn’t date, period.
    Over the loudspeaker, they heard their cue, which meant whatever Frank might have said in response had to go unsaid since their microphones had gone live.
    She swallowed, tilting her head back and closing her eyes as she willed away the surge of stage fright that made her feel nauseated before every single performance.
    Frank took up the reins, lightly tapping them against the wood as he clucked softly to Blackie. The horse immediately lifted his head and shook his mane again as he started forward toward their gate.
    And the next show began.
    * * *
    “And here, straight from his Academy Award–worthy stretch playing the ooh-la-la hero, Rusty, is our very own Galen—”
    Galen shoved Liam’s shoulder hard enough to push his brother—a year younger and four inches taller—right off the arm of the couch where he was propped. “Give me a break,” he growled.
    Liam laughed silently and moved around to sit properly next to his new wife, Julia, on the couch in their mama’s front parlor.
    It was Sunday afternoon, and Jeanne Marie Fortune Jones had called all her children home for a proper family meal. As if they didn’t have one damn near every weekend to begin with. If
Wild West Wedding
didn’t take a