Given the circumstances, he wasn’t having the church wedding his mom would have wanted. Or having a priest. But they were on a tight time frame.

They were going to sign paperwork. Ryder Daniels was the kind of man who never defaulted on a loan, never went back on an agreement. Never shook hands on something he couldn’t stick to. That meant for him, the wedding was final.

So it mattered. It really did.

He had put on a suit, too. A suit and a black cowboy hat, and the sun was sort of resting on the top of the fabric, mocking him a bit. He imagined this was what it was like to wear a coffin.

Stuffy and completely and totally constricting.

But he was doing it for her. He wanted to do it for her.

They hadn’t gone and gotten official with the wedding party, but Logan was his best man. With Iris, Rose and Pansy serving as Sammy’s maids of honor.

Iris had outdone herself baking a cake that had scant frosting and flowers and berries pouring over it, serving as decoration.

It was very Sammy.

She had also worked at making a beautiful lunch, which was absolutely overkill, considering the only attendants to the wedding were their family, the minister, his wife and Pansy’s fiancé.

It wasn’t like it was a big shindig, and not altogether different than the Fourth of July gathering they’d had only a couple weeks earlier.

But everybody had put on their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, and they all looked damn serious, like this was some kind of momentous occasion.

And it added to that constricting sense that Ryder had been noticing not long before.

But then Logan approached him, not in a suit, but wearing a sport jacket, which he had assured Ryder was the best he could do without disintegrating.

“Be good to her,” Logan said.

“I will,” Ryder said. “I’ve been nothing but good to her for all these years.”

“Yeah. But it’s different now.”

“Yeah, so everybody keeps saying. I got her a ring.”

“Really?”

“I did. That’s why we built this big trellis thing. I have a real wedding band in my pocket, too.”

“Did you get yourself a ring?”

“If Sammy cares about that she’ll make sure I get one.”

He didn’t know why he was so sure of that. Only that he was.

“You going to wear it?”

“Of course. When I make vows I stick to them. And I’m not going to have any trouble where she’s concerned.”

“Not going to be tempted to sleep with other women?”

He laughed, the sound rusty, getting stuck in his throat. “I’ve had trouble forcing myself to look at other women for the past seventeen years. Now that I have her it’s not going to be any trouble to look only at her.”

“I knew you were in love with her,” Logan said. “All this time.”

He shook his head. “I wish. I wish it were that easy and that simple. I just want to keep her forever.”