Free The Bride Wore Denim by Lizbeth Selvig Page B

is no job.”
    Cole hadn’t thought the silence could get any deeper either. Wrong again. He knew exactly what the others were thinking because the disbelief rocketed through him, too. This was Joely—perfect, tanned, admired, and always put-together Joellen Brigitta Crockett. Never a hair out of place, rarely anything but a smile on her face. Suddenly she looked like a ghost of that golden girl.
    “Oh, Joely, what’s going on?” Harper was the first to move, her anger evaporated and her natural empathy back in place.
    She threw her arms around her sister, enveloping her face and shoulders. For a moment they clung and then Joely pushed her back.
    “I couldn’t bear to tell you,” Joely said. “Tim left a month ago. Classic LA story—he got tired of me and found someone he says he loves more. Simple as that.”
    “Sweetheart, I’m sorry.” Bella reached her, and this time Joely stayed enveloped in the embrace.
    “I’m sorry, too.” Her voice caught, diffused and muffled against Bella’s slender arms. “I had no intention of telling anyone now. Even when Grandma noticed I was keeping something in. Like Harper said, this time isn’t supposed to be about any of us. It’s about Daddy. But I’ve known for months now I can’t stay in LA. And I can’t sit here and let anyone talk about selling Paradise when I was just starting to think I could come home.”
    “I wish you’d have told me,” Bella said in a quiet voice.
    “I couldn’t. You would have had to tell Dad, and he . . . ”
    “He what?” Bella scoffed gently. “He loved you.” Her eyes roamed the table, taking in everyone seated at its venerable sides. “Someday you’ll believe he loved you all. Joely, family pulls together when something goes wrong. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t live here, this is home. Tell us what happened, we’re here.”
    “We’re all here, sis.” Mia leaned forward and rubbed Joely’s upper arm. “I’m sorry, too. Is it appropriate to call my brother-in-law a douche bag?”
    Joely sat up and wiped tears from her cheeks. A small smile crept onto her lips. “You know what? Sure. He’s a class-A douche. If there are rankings for such things.”
    Cole pushed from the table, stepped behind Joely, and planted a kiss on her crown. She’d been one of their Crockett-Wainwright band of kids, right along with him and her sisters.
    “I’m sorry, too, Jo-Jo,” he said. “I’ll go beat him up for you if you want.”
    “Would you?” She tilted her head way back and looked up at him.
    “I’m on a plane first thing.”
    “Thank you.”
    Cole patted her shoulder. He touched Harper’s as well, although when she caught his eyes he wanted to do more than touch—he wanted to erase the mess of hard, sad emotions on her face.
    Harper had always absorbed emotions like a sponge. Always taken on too many worries and championed too many causes. Now he could see her concern for every problem facing the family warring with her righteous indignation over her environmental beliefs. But what were her deep-down feelings? What was she burying inside to cause such confusion in her eyes?
    He turned without explanation and made his way into the kitchen. Alcohol was rarely the right solution to desperate emotional times, but maybe this once Sam’s medicinal cure would be a balm and a needed anesthetic—and Cole had something specific in mind.
    In the wall between the kitchen and the dining room was an elaborate, built-in entertainment bar that opened from either side. Cole took his time looking through the variety of good alcohols Sam had stocked and searching out the item Sam had shown him once several years before. He found it still there, a golden, barrel-shaped bottle tucked into the farthest corner of the bottom shelf. Sam had said he was saving it, but for exactly what he didn’t know.
    “Well, Sam, you know now.” Cole lifted the Scotch bottle and saluted the sky with it.
    To connoisseurs, the odd-shaped bottle was