Page 7 of Fall Wedding With the Mountain Man (Ozark Mountain Men Falling For Love #2)

Elizabeth

Everything had gone sideways.

First the plane.

Then the rental car.

And now this.

How had I met a man that I was actually interested in for the first time in years who hit exactly zero of the must-have criteria I’d laid out for myself?

And what were the chances that the same man just happened to be going to the same wedding as me?

His strong arms reached out and stabilized me one more time as I almost took a faceplant right onto a cow patty.

Hudson was intoxicating to be around.

You put a hot man and a cute kitten together and the combination was irresistible. Leona seemed perfectly content to hitch a ride on his shoulder.

But I was feeling seriously out of my element.

My Ferragamo heels were sitting inside the truck while I clomped around in someone else’s mud-spattered boots.

Surely not everyone would be dressed like Hudson at the wedding, right?

As we got closer, I saw one woman who was dressed to the nines, although I did note she was wearing sensible flats.

The woman next to her did a double-take when she saw us. She was at least eight and a half months pregnant, and she started waddling over at a fast clip.

“Lizzie! Holy shit! You’re here!!!”

I wrinkled my brow. “Hi! Um, do we know each other?”

“I’m Sara. And this is Steve. That’s Brook and Cole. I work with Shelby. I’ve heard all about you.”

I tried to take in all the new names and faces. Brook was the impeccably dressed woman. Two burly men stood next to her. One was wearing jeans and a t-shirt that said Georgia Peach on it. And the other was wearing shorts even in this cold weather, with a peach bow tied around his neck.

I was starting to get an idea of what a casual wedding in the Ozarks actually meant.

Honey, we are not in the Hamptons anymore.

Then Sara’s attention shifted. “Hudson, where’d you get the kitten? I want one!”

Hudson grinned. “This one’s taken. This is me and Lizzy’s kitten.”

Sara looked back at me and laughed. “You’ve been in town for two minutes and you’ve already laid claim to the sweetest man in the Ozarks?”

“Uh, no claim. And no one really calls me Lizzy. I go by Elizabeth.”

Sara said, “Shelby does. She calls you Lizzy.”

On the one hand, it was sweet that Shelby had been talking about me to her new friends. On the other, I felt like she was dragging me back to my college years. She knew I went by Elizabeth now. It was my grown-up name. I’d changed it when I got the internship at the law firm.

But I didn’t want to make a big stink out of it at my best friend’s wedding. So I didn’t say anything more about it. “Lizzy’s fine. You can call me by either name.”

The last thing I needed was to make waves. I was here to repair things between Shelby and me, not make them worse.

“Where’s Shelby?” I asked. “I want to apologize to her for being late.”

“I can take you to her. Hudson, are you coming? Your brother was starting to fret that you wouldn’t show up on time. He said he should have chosen Buck to be his best man instead of you. You’re thirty minutes late.”

I glanced at Hudson. “ Brother ?”

The man’s grin got even wider. “Yup. One of us is a trash hauler. The other’s a shit hauler. Imagine that.”

My heart dropped out of my chest and ran off to die of embarrassment.

“Thatcher’s your brother ?”

“Yup. Sure is. There’s a third one of us running around too. He’s the only smart one in the lot. Buck moved away and joined the Navy.”

My cheeks turned hot, and I was certain they were flushing scarlet red. But Sara didn’t notice. She took me by the hand and said, “Come on. We only have a few minutes before we all need to get into position.”