Read Online Meg's Best Man: A Montana Weekend Novella by Cynthia Bruner - Free Book Online

moved one position toward the right, giving them a new set of neighbors to dance with.
    Sonya kept everyone going until all she had to do was call out the name of the move, and then she had the makeshift band begin to play. “Slowly,” she suggested. “At least at first.” The music started, sounding not much better than an orchestra tuning up. And the crowd of dancers were a disaster. But Sonya kept cheerfully calling out the steps and words of encouragement.
    Just when it all seemed hopeless, something shifted. The band found its rhythm and so did the dancers. Any time Meg forgot the next move, there was a partner there who remembered it, and the reverse was true as well. For each round she do-si-doed and swung once with Gage and then with whoever was to her left. When they hit the end of the long line, they switched places and came back the other way.
    Because of the way contra dancing worked, Meg ended up dancing with every single man and boy in the long line, and she laughed her way through every bit of it. Gage was smiling and gracious to every dance partner and was pretty smooth on his tennis-shoed feet. When they made it through the whole line, Sonya encouraged the band to speed it up, and they danced faster and faster until it all fell apart in a foot-stomping, hilarious mess. The band took a well-deserved bow, and a few of the dancers and musicians offered to switch places.
    There was hardly enough time to get some water before Sonya was teaching the band another simple song. This time almost everyone came back to make happy fools of themselves again, no coercion needed. Sonya added two new moves to their repertoire and arranged them in a new combination, and as complicated as it seemed at first, Meg got to a point where Sonya calling the next move seemed to go straight from her ear to her feet without her having to think about it.
    It was evening, but during summer in Montana the sun lingers into the night. The cooler air soothed the dancers, who had worked up a sweat. It was a hardcore and determined crew of newborn contra dancers that stayed for a third and then a fourth song—and demanded something more complex. Sonya’s voice was getting hoarse but not quieter. She led them through new moves and patterns with enthusiasm. Meg wished she could have seen the dancers from above, as they must have looked like flowers unfolding and shifting across the meadow.
    Meg was beginning to like the moment in each cycle when she came back to Gage’s arms. He was tall, that was certain. But he had a way of holding her that was firm and steady. They could spin like crazy across the dirt and grass, but his arms were like the eye of the storm. For someone who seemed to break things a lot, there was nothing but grace in his dancing.
    And while it seemed at first that she had to lean back to look him in the face, she found that up close she didn’t notice very much other than his amber eyes and the dark streaks of sweat at his temples that did little to tame his wavy hair. And always, every moment he held her, the grin. She couldn’t help but smile back.
    Then he would gently lead her into the next move, charm his next dance partner, and be there to pull Meg into the dance again.
    When the song was over, the musicians nursed sore fingers, the dancers were worn out, and Sonya sounded like a frog. Meg teased Caleb about line dancing, since they had in fact been in a line, and Caleb said that if you got to hold a girl it didn’t count. That sounded a lot like Gage’s reasoning to her and she would have teased him, but Meg let the conversation drop because Caleb seemed to have his eye on one of Joshua’s friends. As she expected, he scurried over to where the girl was standing.
    A plastic glass of water appeared in front of her. “Here you go, Mouse Girl. Turns out you can dance as well as you write.”
    She wrinkled her nose at him. “Thanks for the water.” She looked through the crowd until she spotted Leah, who was