“Getting to host the wedding would be winning?”
Chance held up a hand. “Believe me. I have had that conversation. Back out now. You won’t win.”
“Now that’s what I like,” Juniper said. “A Carson admitting when he’s beaten.”
“It’s just a Carson admitting he knows how to choose his battles,” Chance said, grunting.
“Well, it’s no problem,” Kit said. “There’s no shortage of pickup trucks between us. We can carry whatever the hell you need up that way.”
“I got a pickup truck too,” Shelby said. “And I’m the maid of honor.”
“I don’t think we need all the pickup trucks we have between us,” Juniper said.
His eyes met Shelby’s again, and she looked away, faint color on her cheekbones. She felt it too. He knew she did. He’d always known that. What he didn’t know was what story exactly she told herself.
It didn’t matter. He might want Shelby, but there was no way in hell he would ever do anything to make her his. She was the marriage-and-family type. She’d been in love, and she lost that love. He didn’t want to step into that. Not even a little.
“I’ll tell you what,” Kit said. “You just give orders, and I will follow them.”
“Speak for yourself,” Shelby said.
“Would you rather take orders from me?”
She looked away from him quickly, and he realized that he...stepped into something. Because she didn’t fire anything right back at him, and he almost felt guilty about that.
And then she looked up at him, dark fire banked in her eyes. “I’d like to see you try that.”
He held back his answer. He held it back because everybody was here. He held it back because he didn’t know how to make it not explicitly sexual.
He held it back, because the last thing in all the world he needed to do at this wedding preparation party was declare his sexual intent with a woman he was inextricably linked to through his brother’s relationship with her sister.
Especially when he knew that he couldn’t have any intentions toward her at all.
Shelby was exhausted, carrying all the baskets of various things into her cabin.
Juniper was helping, basket after basket of different wedding favors coming in after the other.
“You know,” Shelby said, “I’m trying not to be nosy, or in your business, but aren’t you marrying a superrich cowboy?”
Juniper laughed. “What’s your point?”
“My point is, you had to make all of this. The guy couldbuy it. Why are we doing favors for every table, and ribbon curls?”
Juniper looked at her, confusion etched into her features. “You really don’t know?”
“I mean, your pride, I assume.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have any of that with Chance. We’re getting married. We have a partnership. We don’t divide things up, and we certainly don’t keep score on what’s his and what’s mine or any of that. It isn’t that. It’s just I wanted to do this because this is what we did for your wedding.”
Shelby blinked. “Is it? I was just trying to remember. And I couldn’t. I just remembered the wedding dress. Which, by the way, you should’ve talked me out of.”
“I loved it.”
“Well. You were also a teenage girl. Neither of us were trustworthy.”
“Do you really not remember? We wrapped all those different terra-cotta pots that we found for cheap down at the dollar store in pretty paper, made paper ribbons, and you had those potted plants up all around in the wedding venue.”
She frowned, her forehead creasing. “Yeah. I do remember that. It’s weird. I just don’t... I don’t think about it much.”