Clayton's Made-Over Mrs.. Sandra Steffen

Mel’s lips twisting snidely. “You can see how disappointed he is.”

      “No,” Jillian replied, “I meant for you. How awful for you.”

      Mel sighed all over again. “Is it so wrong to dream of a little romance?”

      DoraLee patted her bleached blond hair with one hand. “Maybe Boomer should give Clayt a few lessons in the romance department.”

      The blossoming relationship between Boomer Brown and DoraLee Sullivan was another thing that had changed in Jasper Gulch, but DoraLee was right. There was nothing romantic about sort of.

      Sighing, Mel whispered, “I want him to notice me. As a woman. As a desirable woman. Just look at me. Pretty silly, huh?”

      “But you’re beautiful,” Jillian admonished.

      “Yeah, right”

      “You are,” Lisa insisted. “I noticed the first time we met.”

      “Your beauty doesn’t flash like a neon sign,” Jillian said quietly. “It’s more subtle than that. Yours is the kind of beauty a person notices a little at a time.”

      DoraLee nodded her head, a tender expression crossing her round face. “Shoot, sugar, I thought you knew that.”

      Mel took her time looking into these three women’s eyes. Smoothing her fingers over the thick strands of hair secured in a loose braid over her shoulder, she said, “I appreciate the votes of confidence, but if I’m so danged beautiful, why hasn’t Clayt ever noticed?”

      The expression in Lisa’s dark eyes changed. She drew Mel away from the cash register and circled around her. Within seconds DoraLee and Jillian were doing the same.

      “Hmm,” Jillian murmured.

      Chin in hand, Lisa said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

      Jillian nodded. “I think it’s time she made him notice, don’t you?”

      Mel eyed them both skeptically. “What do you mean?”

      “How long have you worn your hair in a braid?” Lisa asked.

      Without waiting for Mel to answer Lisa’s question, Jillian asked another. “Has Clayt ever seen you in a dress?”

      Looking to DoraLee for help, Mel said, “He’s seen me in that blue jumper I wear to church.”

      “Mel,” Lisa said, “how would you like to open Clayt Carson’s eyes once and for all?”

      Fingering her hair with one hand, Mel thought about the way Clayt had smoothed Brittany Matthew’s short wispy strands off her cheek. “What would I have to do?”

      Lisa sidled up to her. “The question is what are you willing to do?”

      Mel looked at Lisa, and then at Jillian, but it wasn’t until she’d met DoraLee’s smiling blue eyes that she said, “What do you have in mind?”

      DoraLee rubbed her hands together and laughed out loud. “Ooo-eee. Clayt Carson isn’t going to know-what hit him.”

      “And I know the perfect time and place for the unveiling,” Lisa stated.

      “At our double wedding,” she and Jillian said at the same time.

      Mel tried to protest that that was only four days away, and Lisa and Jillian had too much to do already. Lisa and Jillian exchanged knowing grins.

      “There’s plenty of time.”

      “You just leave everything to us.”

      Swallowing the trepidation that was fast becoming a-fistsized knot around her vocal chords, Mel hoped to high heaven she didn’t live to regret what she was about to do.

      

      Organ music was playing softly when Mel slipped into a pew near the front of the church. Unobtrusively gliding to the center of the row, she glanced around to see if anybody had noticed.

      So far, so good.

      Candles flickered on the altar and on windowsills throughout the old-fashioned church. Daisies and mums tied up with white bows and pale yellow ribbons adorned the front of the church and the end of every pew. The church was a hundred years old, yet it was filled with a sense of excitement and urgency it hadn’t seen in a long time.

      Wedding guests had started arriving twenty minutes ago, but it seemed that half of them were making a fuss over Hugh and Rita Carson, Luke and Clayt’s parents, who’d arrived home from Oregon yesterday morning. The other half—all area ranchers and cowboys—were tripping over each other in their efforts to draw Brittany Matthews into conversation. As a result, no one had paid any attention to the petite woman in the peach-colored dress who’d hugged the shadows in her efforts to remain unnoticed.

      Mel smoothed her hand over the soft fabric of her dress and crossed her legs the way she’d practiced. She recognized most of the voices coming from the back of the church, from Boomer Brown’s booming baritone to Isabell Pruitt’s annoying whine, all the way to DoraLee’s infectious laughter. Today’s wedding would be the first in more than five years and the only double wedding in the history of Jasper Gulch. Automatically reaching for the braid that was no longer hanging over her shoulder, she smiled to herself. Melody McCully planned to make a little history of her own.

      Talking in undertones, guests began filing in. A short time later Boomer ushered Clayt’s parents to the front pew on the right, while Jason Tucker ushered Ivy Pennington, a special guest of both brides, to the seat next to Mel. She smiled at the gray-haired lady, then glanced up to gauge Jason’s and Boomer’s reactions to the new Melody McCully. Looking stiff and uncomfortable in their suits and ties, they nodded nervously then hurried to the back of the old church, none the wiser.

      Mel settled herself more comfortably in her seat and smiled to herself. Things were working perfectly. At this rate Clayt was going to be the first person to notice her, exactly as she’d planned.

      Louetta Graham began to play another song on the organ, and the grooms took their places at the front of the church. Clayt, best man to both Luke and Wyatt, fell into line a few feet behind them. All three men were tall, all three were wearing dark suits, all three were handsome in their own right. Mel loved her brother, and she liked Luke Carson, but her heart beat a steady rhythm for Clayt alone.

      His hair looked freshly cut and appeared darker beneath the flickering light of so many candles. His face was cleanshaven, his skin stretched taut over high cheekbones and that angular chin that could be so infuriatingly condescending. His nose was a little too wide to be considered aristocratic, and today his gray eyes looked serious and thoughtful.

      At the first strains of the wedding march, everyone rose to their feet. Feeling tall in her new heels and giddy with joy and excitement, Mel held perfectly still, waiting for the moment when Clayt’s eyes would meet hers.

      

      Clayt could see Luke and Wyatt in his peripheral vision. It had taken everything he could think of to keep them calm this past hour. The hard part was over. Now, all he had to do was hand them the rings at the appropriate time and his job would be done.

      Patting his right pocket where he’d placed Luke’s and Jillian’s rings and his left pocket where he’d tucked Lisa’s and Wyatt’s, Clayt peered through the crowd where the first bridesmaid was slowly making her way to the front of the church. Jason Tucker almost fell out of his seat as Allison Delaney floated by. If Haley was half as graceful at sixteen as Allison, Clayt was going to be in big trouble. The woman who came next didn’t look old enough to be Allison’s mother, but he’d met Corinna Delaney, the maid of honor—a newlywed herself and a close friend to Jillian and Lisa from when they’d lived in Wisconsin—at the rehearsal last night, and she was definitely Allison’s mother.

      His vision blurred, and for a moment he saw only a patch of pale peach. Before his eyes could focus, an “Ahh” wound through the church, and he turned his head slightly