The Best Man in Texas
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Marie Ferrarella
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Prologue
It was all coming together.
Thinking about it, Dr. Neil Eastwood smiled to himself. After what had seemed like an endless wait, Neil could finally—finally—see the goalpost. His wedding to Ellie was no longer a nebulous mirage shimmering seductively off in the distance. It would actually be here in thirty days.
If he was being honest with himself, he would have preferred that the wedding would be here within a day or two. But in the last six months, he had learned that things didn’t exactly move all that fast in Forever, Texas.
Not unless it was an emergency that involved Miss Joan, the town’s undisputed matriarch. And although this did involve Miss Joan, it wasn’t her opinion but her health that had been the problem these last six months.
To make things more complicated, he was the one who had to sign off on her, the one who had been brought in to operate on the woman in order to stabilize her heart and now had the last word when it came to her ability to get back to life as she knew it.
Who would have ever imagined, Neil now thought, that his own heart would come into play when he had gotten involved in what had amounted to this selfless act—he hadn’t charged Miss Joan for the operation.
But his heart had definitely gotten involved. He had fallen in love with Elliana Montenegro, the feisty, independent pilot who had flown out to fetch him so he could attend to the opinionated matriarch.
He had quickly learned that Miss Joan all but ran Forever.
And now the woman was putting together their wedding in her own inimitable way. Quite honestly, he could have sworn that planning this wedding had actually contributed to and insured her complete recovery. It didn’t take him very long to look beneath the layers and see that the crusty Miss Joan really enjoyed leaving her mark on people’s lives.
The added bonus to having saved a life was that if it hadn’t been for his coming out to attend to Miss Joan, he would have never met the woman of his dreams. He certainly wouldn’t be anxiously waiting now to finalize their union.
The smile on Neil’s lips intensified. All that was left to do on his end was to secure his best man.
He knew just the man for the job, had known him ever since they had been young boys together, growing up in New York City.
It occurred to Neil as he put his cousin’s number into his cell phone that he hadn’t talked to Jason in over six months.
Had that much time really gone by? Neil caught himself wondering. It seemed like one day he was answering an old friend’s request and getting on a plane to Texas, the next he was getting involved with a bright-eyed, sexy pilot, and suddenly, the entire structure of his life had completely refocused.
Hearing the phone on the other end being answered, Neil straightened in his office chair. “Jason?” he asked the moment he heard his cousin say “Hello?”
There was a pause on the other end and then a deep, puzzled male voice asked, “Neil?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” Neil confirmed happily, leaning back in the chair again.
“Wow,” Jason marveled, happy to hear from his cousin. “It’s really you. I was beginning to think you had fallen into an abyss. So what’s it been, nine months?”
“Six,” Neil corrected.
Jason laughed softly under his breath. “Six,” he repeated, then confessed, “I’ve been busy myself. I guess I kind of lost track of time. Where are you these days?”
There was a time when their paths crossed with a fair amount of regularity, but that hadn’t been for a while now.
“I’m still in Forever, Texas,” Neil replied, just about to launch into his request. This, he was certain, was bound to knock Jason’s socks clean off.
“Sorry to hear that,” Jason said, cutting in. “The locals decide they couldn’t pass up the chance of having a cardiac surgeon in their midst and took you prisoner?”
“Not exactly, although technically I am a prisoner—” Neil began, only to have his cousin cut him off again.
Jason wasn’t sure if his cousin was putting him on or not. “You’re kidding, right?” he asked Neil.
Rather than explain his comment, Neil went right to the heart of the reason behind his call. “Listen, Jason, what are you doing in a month?”
The question stopped Jason in his tracks. He assumed that his cousin was asking him about his work. While the rest of the family had gone into some discipline of medicine, including his parents, Jason had gone into the practical aspect of building and outfitting the medical facilities where surgeries could take place. Lately he had been building or updating hospitals.
“As it is,” Jason told his cousin, “I’m just wrapping up my latest project in Staten Island and looking for something new to work on. Why? What’s up?”
Neil felt that although there was no one to witness it at the moment, his grin would split his face. “I want you to fly out here and be my best man.”
Neil heard the sound of the cell phone being dropped, then the sound of that same phone being grabbed and picked up again.
“Jason? Are you still there?” Neil asked. He had figured that his cousin would be surprised, but not this surprised.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m still here. I thought I heard you saying something about wanting me to be your best man,” Jason explained, certain he must have misheard. He had just assumed that he and his cousin were eternal bachelors.
“I did and I do. Will you?” Neil asked.
When he spoke, Jason sounded nothing less than stunned. “This must have been some rescue mission you were on,” he said, referring to his cousin’s last communication via email.
Neil laughed. “You don’t know the half of it. But I’m more than willing to fill you in on all the details once you get here. Which leads me back to my first question—can you come?”
“To your wedding?” Jason asked incredulously, finally getting his bearings back. “Just try and stop me. All I need to know is exactly where and when,” he said, remembering the boyhood pact they had made long ago to be there if the other ever found “someone dumb enough to marry you.” They had been ten and twelve at the time.
Neil quickly gave his cousin the date and the location, and added, “Oh, and Ellie and I will meet you at the airport so she can fly you in the rest of the way.”
“Fly me in the rest of the way?” Jason repeated. “Why?”
“There’s no connecting flight to Forever,” Neil explained. “The closest airport is over fifty miles away.”
That caught Jason off guard. He had been aware, from what Jason had said before he left, that Forever was a small town. But he had just assumed the airport was only a hop, skip and jump away from the place.
“You’re kidding, right?” Jason asked.
“No.” Neil thought his cousin was referring to his bride-to-be doing the piloting. “Ellie has her own plane. Like I said, I’ll explain everything when you get here,” he promised again. And then he thought about the town needing a hospital. “And, if you’re interested, I’ve also got a really great project for you to sink your teeth into.”
This whole proposition was beginning to sound more and more enticing, Jason thought, as he looked at the calendar on his desk.
“I can be there in three weeks,” he told Neil, his mind already making all the necessary arrangements. It wouldn’t hurt to come out early so that he and Neil could spend some time catching up before everything took off. “Oh, and Neil?”
“Yes?” Neil asked, preparing to terminate his call.
“I’m really happy for you,” Jason said warmly, even though he was still trying to get used to the idea that Neil was actually getting married.
Neil laughed, picturing what life would be like four weeks in the future. The thought definitely excited him.
“Yeah,” he answered, “me, too.”
