“What’s going on?” he asked, cupping Morgan’s face.
“Well,” Morgan said. “I’m thinking of combining a loan for the Grange with a loan for the windows. That way, it’s just one payment. One tax write-off. Improvements to property, that sort of thing.”
“Boring.” Jack kissed Morgan’s nose. “I’m making mac and cheese for lunch, and I’ll bring your coffee down in a sec.”
“I’ll come up,” Morgan said. “It’ll give me a break from the scanner.”
Before his self-care revolution, he’d needed Jack to bring his coffee to him. Jack hadn’t minded doing it, which was fine, but now they could sit together at the wooden table and and talk over cups of coffee and whatever baked good Mabel had provided, or delicious raspberry filled frozen donuts, which came from Donut King in Billings, or store-bought gingersnaps, which Jack had an odd fondness for.
The sitting together part, in that warm yellow-and-white kitchen, was domesticity of the highest order. Had anyone told Morgan six months earlier that this would be a source of happiness, he would have called them a liar.
It was at this table, over cups of coffee and gingersnaps, that Morgan, that very morning, found out that Jack wanted to be married at a place outside of Butte called St. Timothy’s Memorial Chapel. That he wanted a winter wedding.
“Do you mean a Christmas wedding?” Morgan asked, thinking of the fierce storms and the distance.
“The chapel’s already booked for that date,” Jack said. He sipped his coffee and looked up at Morgan through his dark eyelashes.
He was flirting, though he didn’t need to do that. If Jack wanted a church wedding in wintertime, then that’s what he would have.
“When, then?” Morgan asked. Maybe the credit union could give him an equity loan on the feed and grain so they could pay for the wedding. Whatever it took. Whatever Jack wanted.
“Thanksgiving, maybe,” Jack said. “Or the week after. Mabel says she knows a gal who used to be a clerk in their office. She can help us book everything.”
“Sheknowsa gal?” Morgan asked. Just how far did connections in Montana reach?
“I figure we could go up there, you and I,” Jack said. “Bring two witnesses with us. We can have an overnight honeymoon at some hotel in the area, then come back here and have a little party here. Rather than drag everyone up there.”
“Everyone meaning the whole town,” Morgan said. It was not a question because it was obvious from Jack’s sweet smile that yes, Jack meant to invite theentiretown to their wedding reception.
In his other life, before the accident, before he’d arrived in Hysham, he would not have thought any of this possible. That a green-eyed, wild-haired train-hopping boy would be sitting kitty-corner from him, making such romantic suggestions that Morgan’s heart just about couldn't take it.
“Anything you want,” Morgan said. “I mean it. Whatever you want.”
“I’m not planning all this myself,” Jack said. “You have to have some preferences, too.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know anything about how to plan a wedding.” Morgan sipped his coffee and wondered if they could afford a wedding planner. Probably not, since all of their cash was about to be spent on Jack’s surprise.
“These are Mabel’s ideas,” Jack confessed. “I think she and her bridge-playing friends would be happy to take care of it. All you have to do is pick the hotel near the church.”
Unsaid, of course, was the idea that Morgan had already picked a hotel in Santa Monica for Jack, back when they both expected that Jack would leave town. That wasn’t going to happen, not anymore, not ever.
“I can do that,” Morgan said. “Have you picked out a ring for me yet?”
“I will,” Jack said.
He got up and slipped gently into Morgan’s lap, and the moment turned from a simple coffee break into something more. Something low and sweet that connected them.
Jack’s arms came around Morgan. Morgan leaned into the embrace and returned it with his own. Jack’s weight on his lap grounded him, and Jack’s soft kiss to his temple made him float. He was the luckiest man alive.
The day continued with the usual concerns: that Jack should go to the store that afternoon and certainly before the snow came. That Morgan should truly have his list ready for Jack. And that he should call Gus when Jack wasn’t around.
“What do you have for me?” Morgan asked after Gus had answered his call.
“It’s a beaut,” Gus said. “Bright red. A front winch, a row of cab lights, plus two spotlights. Snow tires, brand new. Raised axel. Growly engine. Everything you want, nothing you don’t.”
“How old?”
“Ten years,” Gus said. “Manufactured during a good era, so I’m told.”
