The Accidental Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

her, and she wouldn’t be subjected to that again, thank you very much.
    Shay pulled the gown from its hanger and stepped into it. Would the ceremony stir it all up again? The gossip around her husband’s desertion, the humiliation of being second to the rodeo circuit and a musical career?
    Somehow, despite the fact that Garrett’s desertion was more recent and seemingly more heinous, it was the memories of the one before it that made her hands shake as she pulled the dress over her hips.
    It hadn’t helped that she’d returned from her disgrace in Cody, Wyoming, by bus. That she’d had no change of clothes and had stepped off the public vehicle into the busiest intersection in Moose Creek on a bustling Saturday night in her wedding dress. Alone.
    It had taken years to live that down. People still told the story to their young daughters, a cautionary tale against premature marriage. She was going down in the Moose Creek annals just like Prudence. Maybe someday they’d do a reenactment of her bus stop arrival.

    Bridal Falls was situated eleven miles south of town, just across the Wyoming border. As the story went, Joseph Adams had ordered himself a bride after striking gold in nearby South Pass City. When his bride-to-be, Prudence Wilcott, arrived by stagecoach, it was love at first sight—or so the legend went.
    With no permanent church in the settlement, the couple exchanged vows at Bridal Falls before a handful of friends. Their honeymoon took them north a short distance, where they camped by a bubbling brook in Paradise Valley, snuggled between the Gallatin and Absaroka Mountain Ranges. The first morning they awoke to find a moose and her young in the middle of the creek and named the stream Moose Creek. Later they settled in the area, and the name stuck.
    Shay cared about none of this as she made her way down the wooded path beside Miss Lucy. All she wanted was to get through the next fifteen minutes. She hiked the dress to her knees, careful of the delicate fabric. Last thing she needed was to be known as the woman who destroyed the town’s most precious relic.
    Judging by the cars lining the road and filling the grassy meadow, all of Moose Creek had turned out. When she and Miss Lucy emerged from the forest, Shay stopped, dropping the skirts to the ground. Folks were gathered on the grassy shoreline, a short distance from the falls, leaving a path down the middle for her.
    Someone spotted her. “She’s here!” All at once, the mass of people turned to stare.
    Shay’s spine stiffened. “They’re staring.”
    Miss Lucy tugged her forward. “Of course they’re staring. You’re the bride.”
    â€œPray for me,” Shay said.
    â€œI always do. And don’t forget . . . you look beautiful!”
    As they approached the rear of the group, Miss Lucy left Shay to walk the grassy aisle alone. She pulled her shoulders back and lifted her chin.
    I don’t care what anyone thinks. I. Do. Not. Care .
    Whispers tickled the air. She blocked them all and focused on the gentle whoosh of the distant falls. On the call of a magpie from a nearby branch. On the swish of her boots through the grass. Don’t let me fall, God .
    â€œOh my word . . .” The whisper, so close, was impossible to miss. “Does she . . . groom?”
    Warmth flooded her cheeks. She looked toward the groom’s spot but couldn’t see Riley Raines for the crowd. She forced her eyes to Pastor Blevins’s round face at the end of the pathway. At the tuft of hair the wind pulled across his balding head. At the black Bible in his hands, burgeoning with papers and bulletins and notes.
    She wondered if Missy Teasley’s eyes were shooting darts into her back. It was no secret Missy had gotten her mama’s possessive genes. She’d probably made poor Riley wish a thousand times he’d just said no. Why hadn’t Miss Lucy just asked Missy to fill the