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Prologue
“None of this is going to work if you don’t start acting a little more poorly,” Zeke Carey’s beloved wife Belinda said one summer afternoon. And she rolled her eyes at her husband for emphasis, as she liked to do. “You’ve never seemed healthier than you have this summer. They’re going to figure it out, and then what?”
For a moment, Zeke didn’t know what she was on about.
He was in the prime of his life. He had friends his same age who were only gnarled renditions of themselves. Others had let bitterness do what the arthritis couldn’t and were little more than black shrouds instead of men, waiting for the faintest sign to shuffle on off this mortal coil.
That would never be Zeke.
Life was much too precious to him for that.
And he opened his mouth to remind his lovely wife of this fact that, really, she should know by now—
But then he remembered.
He had decided a few months back that he was sick and tired of his five adult sons failing in their duties. Oh, they were all good men and they all pulled their weight on the ranch—with the exception of Ryder, the younger of Zeke’s twins, who was off riding bulls for fame and fortune. Which everyone but Ryder seemed to understand was an enterprise with a fast-approaching sell-by date, if his body didn’t give out first.
The four who were still here in Cowboy Point, Montana—a community that was technically a part of the greater Marietta area in Paradise Valley, though ten miles up and over Copper Mountain—were excellent in all ways but one.
They had all consistently failed to provide Zeke with the grandchildren he felt were his due.
It was an enduring outrage.
“You want me to act like I’m poorly?” he growled at Belinda.
“I want you to commit to the course of action we agreed upon,” she retorted, completely unfazed by any gruffness on his part. “You seem to think that we can relax just because we’re one for five. The battle has only just begun, my love.”
And the thing about Belinda was that she meant that.
She was martial to her core. It was how she’d raised five sons, only two of them hers by blood.
And so even though it was a Sunday and most of the sons under discussion would be turning up any moment now for the traditional Sunday dinner that they always put on—because a wise man celebrated his family while he could—he gathered Belinda in his arms and kissed her until they were both smiling against each other’s mouths.
While that sweet fire of theirs burned as brightly between them as ever.
“I want grandchildren too,” Belinda told him when they finally pulled apart. “But you’re the one who came up with the idea of telling the boys that you’re dying, so you’re the one who has to act like you’re dying. I would take to the nearest bed. They’d be writing my obituary and producing grief babies within the week.”
The boys in question were all grown men now. Too grown to have gone this long without contributing to the gene pool, in Zeke’s opinion. At least three of his friends had been given the pleasure of grandkids early, mostly when their own children had made unfortunate first-marriage decisions. They’d had the joy of their grandbabies and the opportunity to opine on the perils of unwise choices. A win-win by any reckoning.
Zeke thought that really, he should have made pronouncements sooner. Because as soon as he’d finally done it, his oldest, Harlan, had acted on the so-called bad news and had produced a wife seemingly out of thin air.
Or via an old-fashioned ad in a newspaper, call it what you would.
Zeke and Belinda considered it a kind of magic either way.
Kendall, their new daughter-in-law, was delightful. She seemed like a perfect match for Harlan, practical and down-to-earth and most importantly, head over heels for Harlan in all the ways where it counted.
She had also picked up on Zeke’s teeny tiny little white lie, but that only made him like her more.
Having had the pleasure of finding and marrying two loves of his life—the late and always-lamented Alice, mother of Harlan and twins Wilder and Ryder, as well as his Belinda, the mother of his youngest, Boone and Knox—Zeke had long considered himself an expert on the subject of romance, love, and the importance of finding the right woman.
Twice, if necessary.
When it came to his sons, however, he was over right.
He just wanted them married off, as was right and proper.
All of them had been shockingly impervious to his attempts at gentle matchmaking over the years, and so he was no longer quite so worried about their happiness. This was Montana. Happiness was a sweet, short summer like this one, but hunkering down through the winter required grit and determination, and those were the things that made good marriages.
Happiness could be learned. Joy was earned.
Particularly if the bed was warm and it was cold outside.
Montanans were a practical sort.
At this point he would have applauded pretty much any woman for any of them, no questions asked. Because in the meantime, while they were lollygagging their way through life, time was ticking and he had no grandbabies.
What was a teeny tiny little lie next to that?
And besides, knowing his sons and how discerning they were when it came to the ranch, he had no trouble imagining that they would be just as capable of picking out the appropriate women.
They just needed a little impetus.
“I hear the pharmaceuticals can make an old man feel young these days,” Zeke said gruffly. “Maybe I’m doped up, for all they know.”
Belinda sniffed. “They would know.”
“Besides, they would find it suspicious if I suddenly volunteered medical information. That’s not the Carey way and you know it.”
“They’re going to find it more suspicious if a year passes and you’re as healthy and garrulously robust as you are right now,” Belinda retorted, and that was a fine thing indeed. His fiery wife calling him garrulous when she could give lessons on the application of the term. But that was what he’d signed up for. Alice had been a gentle rain. Belinda was a gale. A wise man longed for both, and a lucky man got to love them each in turn. Zeke was happy that he’d known enough to enjoy gentle while he’d had it, so he could love the wildness, too. “In the meantime, in case you forgot since you’ve done nothing about this all summer, we have four sons left to get through and the year you claimed you had left to live is ticking by too fast.”
She wasn’t wrong about that.
Belinda wasn’t wrong about much, and well did she know it.
“If we go in birth order, which I believe you claimed was only sporting, we might be up against a roadblock,” Zeke reminded her. “As far as I can tell, the twins are allergic to anything that smacks of more commitment than a man can expect when he orders a beer.”
“What they are, my love, are a pair of hard-headed men—a lot like their father—who think that they can spend their whole lives avoiding anything that looks like a feeling, talks like a feeling, or might actually present itself as a feeling,” Belinda replied, stepping away from him and turning back to the dinner preparations. “It’s not at all surprising that Harlan stepped right up and found a solution to the problem. He’s been like that since he was little. While he was figuring out how to help, the twins were off raising hell and getting away with it, because who could resist those cheeky little smiles of theirs?”
Zeke sighed. Because he couldn’t argue any part of that. “What do you suggest I do?”
She pointed at him with the wooden spoon she was using in the potato salad. “You better start tugging on those heartstrings. And hard.”
And Zeke had never cared for weakness. His father had been a hard man at times, and Zeke prided himself on learning how to stand tall without necessarily giving himself over to the mountains that kept watch all around them, immovable and impossible.
Even pretend weakness made him feel… itchy.
But a man had to do what was necessary.
So he went out and laid himself out on the couch in the living room like he was auditioning for his own casket.
And when his sons began to arrive, he made a great show of sleeping through their arrival. Something that would have been impossible if he was in any kind of decent health, given that they were about as tender-footed as a herd of Clydesdales. And something that he expected would alarm them all since he wasn’t sure they’d seen him sleep during the day in the whole of their lives.
He could identify all of them by their tread. Wilder’s saunter. Harlan’s easy pace, with Kendall by his side. Boone’s slower, more determined walk. And Knox, the baby of the family, charging in on the verge of late, even though he knew that drove his mother crazy.
Zeke listened to them all and sent Ryder, no doubt risking life and limb on the back of a gigantic bull right at this very moment, his good thoughts the way he always did. He checked in with Alice, his first love, to catch her up on his thinking and to wait for the usual sign that she was right here with him.
When he heard the birds break into song outside, he accepted it as her support.
And he stayed right where he was, acting half-dead until Belinda came in to wake him up.
Her eyes sparkled with merriment as she put on a deeply layered performance. Acting as if she was pretending not to be upset for their listening sons, as if she was putting on a good show for their benefit. Then making low, soothing noises that were completely out of character, and acting as if she was trying to hide them from the boys as she walked into the kitchen with him in an overly solicitous manner.
Zeke half-expected the boys to groan and see it all for the prank it was.
But they ate it up. And he would have been insulted if he didn’t notice that Wilder, particularly, looked stricken.
Good, he thought.
He and Belinda exchanged a look and he knew they were on the same page.
Maybe it was about time his charming ladies’ man of a son took Zeke’s final request—delivered with a deep gravitas at Easter dinner that would have served him well on a stage, as Belinda had told him that very same night while howling with laughter—with the seriousness it deserved.
Maybe that was just the thing that would get Wilder to treat his own life like it was worth living—and loving.
Chapter One
Wilder Carey rolled into the Wolf Den in Marietta, Montana, with nothing on his mind but whiskey and women.
The ingredients to a perfect Saturday night.
There were other bars around. Better bars, depending on a person’s requirements. There was one over the mountain in Cowboy Point, his actual home, and Wilder knew that the Copper Mine did a booming business even when it wasn’t the sweet, long, dog days of August. The Wolf Den might have been about ten miles down the side of a temperamental mountain, but it catered specifically to troublemakers. Some folks went straight there. Others treated it as their after-hours bad-decision option, coming in to finish off the night with something to talk about the next morning. They trickled in when everything else closed because those other places in pretty, happy Marietta were better suited for a meal, a conversation, maybe even some dancing.
Only the Wolf Den catered to those who already knew exactly what kind of trouble they wanted to get into, saw no point in putting it off, and liked it loud while they got into it.
Tonight it was exactly what Wilder needed.
On a summer night in the mountains, in a northern state with precious little summer to go around, the place was packed. He found his way in and up to the scarred and dented bar, nodding at the surly bartender, who he recognized. And who, more to the point, recognized him—sliding Wilder his preferred whiskey on the rocks without comment. Wilder threw a few bills on the bar top, took his first pull, and felt himself relax as that dark, peat fire arrowed its way down deep and felt a whole lot like a solution.
It had been a hell of a few months.
His seemingly invulnerable and eternal father, Zeke, had told them all he had about a year to live. Wilder had four brothers, all of them as mouthy as they were stubborn, and not one of them had managed to respond much to that announcement, aside from a few clinical questions. Even his stepmother, Belinda, had been uncharacteristically quiet.
To say Wilder had been reeling ever since was not an exaggeration. Especially when his down-to-earth, not remotely spontaneous older brother Harlan had responded to that news by… going out and eloping. It was a good thing his new wife, Kendall, fit him so well or Wilder would have thought his brother had been possessed.
The rest of them were coping the way their father had taught them. By working the land of the family ranch, showing up to Sunday dinner, and otherwise keeping it stoic. Which in Wilder’s case also meant periodically driving down the mountain to cut loose.
Wilder liked working with his hands. And he liked playing with them, too.
He turned to survey the situation in the bar, taking in the classic rock anthem blaring from the jukebox and a set of intense-looking gentlemen he’d bet were truckers involved in a game of pool. He thought he saw a few familiar faces here and there, but the Wolf Den wasn’t a place that encouraged community. Certainly not amongst the locals who might see each other in the grocery store the next day.
If he’d wanted to hang out with his friends, he would have stayed up the mountain in Cowboy Point, where he could expect to see friends, family, folks he went to second grade with, and all manner of familiar faces. And, accordingly, stay on the straight and narrow—or close enough to it, anyway.
Tonight, Wilder intended to let the whiskey take him where it would.
The thing about drinking in Marietta was that there were always tourists. Particularly here at the end of summer, when Montana was still putting on the kind of show that made people from California delusional enough to imagine that because they’d road-tripped up from Yellowstone they could also make it through a winter in Paradise Valley.
Sometimes, in aid of that delusion, they liked to try out a cowboy.
Just to see if it took.
He let his gaze move over the crowd, packed in tight and getting rowdy tonight. There were some bikers in one corner. What looked like everyone who had ever worked in the tattoo shop a few doors down. Some hard-bitten cowboys who he figured were here ahead of the annual Copper Mountain Rodeo coming up in a few weeks, and thinking about the rodeo made him think about his twin brother. Ryder had only moments ago been blowing up his phone, complaining about the bull he’d been riding tonight—at a rodeo a lot farther back east than Wilder ever cared to venture, if he remembered it right—and how close he’d come to getting trampled this time.
I don’t need to hear about your death wish, Wilder had shot back.
His brother liked bad-tempered rank bulls, buckle bunnies, and life on the road, far away from the responsibilities of High Mountain Ranch and his family. He already knew Wilder’s thoughts on his decision to stay away despite their father’s condition.
Wilder had left his phone in his truck so he could be certain to ignore Ryder’s inevitable response. And anyway, he preferred smaller deaths of the pleasurable kind. He didn’t have to run away with the rodeo for that.
There was a pretty blonde in the corner, dancing dramatically to the country song that came on that would have folks in other, more family-friendly joints two-stepping. There was a pack of squeaky-clean, yoga types—carefully cute tattoos, athleisure, and expensive outfits—bunched together in a booth, all laughing too loud while pretending not to look around.
Tourists. Exactly who he was looking for.
He settled in against the bar, picturing a happy little evening of banter and heat, then a wild ride or two in a hotel room with no expectations come morning.
When a female body slid into a tiny space at the bar beside him, he shifted automatically.
Then paused.
She had her back to him, so what he noticed first was her curvy body on a taller frame, packed into the kind of jeans that made a man fantasize about stripping them off. With his teeth. They were tucked into cowboy boots that looked lived in, not bought to make a Montana vacation feel like real life. He liked that.
Wilder let his gaze travel up the length of her, taking in the way her waist nipped in and her dark hair spilled down her back with hints of copper in the gentle waves.
The scent of rosemary, lavender, and something like spun sugar was suddenly all over him, and he had the near ungovernable urge to get his hands in that hair. It would have been all too easy to turn her around, tilt her face up and—
You’re getting ahead of yourself, cowboy, he told himself then, faintly alarmed that he was having this kind of strong reaction to her already. He didn’t do strong unless it was liquor. He liked his women easy and forgettable and this one was already a problem.
And not his problem.
But then she turned around.
Her blue eyes widened in shock, and something like horror—not the typical response he got from women—almost as if—
But less than a split-second later, reality slammed into him like a sledgehammer.
“What in the name of all that is holy are you doing here?” he belted out.
Because he knew her.
More than knew her.
He was looking at the youngest member of the Lisle family, Cat, though she had always gone by Cat. Wilder had gone to school with her brothers, who were his age and therefore much older than her, and who he had considered his enemies for his entire life—hell, from long before his entire life. The Carey family had considered themselves in a blood feud with the Lisles since settlers had first turned up in these parts to try their hands at mining.
It was so impossible that he had been thinking dirty thoughts about Cat Lisle that he immediately decided that he hadn’t. He couldn’t.
“How old are you?” he demanded.
Cat glared at him. And having never given the youngest Lisle the time of day, much less any thought, much less so much as a stray dirty thought, Wilder was profoundly disconcerted to discover that he… could not turn off his notice of her.
The particular kind of notice that wasn’t any better now that he could see the front of her. All those curves. That skimpy little tank top that did nothing to hide them. On the contrary, he was fairly sure she was wearing a push-up bra, a device he had historically been a huge fan of, but not on Cat Lisle.
Cat Lisle, whose face should have been too familiar for him to have the slightest thought about her one way or the other. Now that she was facing him. Now that there was no pretending she wasn’t the girl who worked in the General Store up in Cowboy Point that Lisles had been running since they’d won it from the original Carey in these parts in a still-disputed poker game.
She was the enemy, plain and simple.
Except, for some reason, he couldn’t help but notice that she was also pretty.
Really, truly pretty.
The kind of pretty that could make a man silly, not that he was that kind of man. But he noticed it all the same.
And it made everything worse.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Cat replied, crossing her arms right there beneath her breasts, which was not an improvement on… anything. “Except I already know you’re ancient. And let me guess. You think places like the Wolf Den are good for you, but not for me.”
There were too many issues with that little speech to pick it apart. Ancient? But he decided what he felt was not any kind of heat. It was concern. It was downright noble. “Do your brothers know you’re here?”
Cat laughed, and that did not solve a single one of the problems he refused to admit he was having. “Like you care what my brothers think about anything.”
“We don’t have to have tea parties and braid each other’s hair for me to know that they would not take kindly to their baby sister running around Marietta and getting herself into trouble,” Wilder drawled. “Particularly the kind of trouble you can find in the Wolf Den.”
“And you, Wilder Carey, wildly renowned for carousing behavior calculated to make the pastor cry and a body count too high to tally up, intend to be the voice of virtue?” Cat laughed again, and her hair danced, and Wilder put his nearly untouched whiskey down because he was clearly already drunk. “It’s Saturday night. I’m here to have a good time. I don’t care what you think about that.”
She tossed her hair back, picked up the glass beside her, and tossed it back before he could even see what it was that she was drinking. Then she slammed the glass back down, aimed an incredibly fake smile in his direction, and whirled around like she planned to swan dive into the middle of the disreputable crowd.
And she was right. This wasn’t his business. He had never gotten along with her brothers and had no reason to change that healthy, historic dislike of them. They were Lisles first, assholes second, and he’d never felt particularly inclined to dive any deeper into it. He was a Carey. Their ancestors had hated each other, and that was good enough for him. He and Ryder had done their part for the family honor and mixed it up with Dallas and Tennessee on the football field in their day.
He would describe them all as enemies, though in a small-town way. A very small town, cordial sort of way. Meaning they didn’t break out in fisticuffs or call for pistols at high noon when they caught sight of each other, but he also wouldn’t hurry across the street if one of them had a flat tire.
Wilder shouldn’t care at all what their baby sister was up to. Tonight or any other night.
And yet he couldn’t keep his gaze from following her as she moved deeper into the crowd, filled with men who had no scruples about checking her out.
Or any other scruples at all, for that matter.
He told himself it was nothing to him if she sidled up to a man who was plainly some kind of weekend warrior biker with a possible steroid issue. It wasn’t any of his business if the smile she gave the guy was not the least bit fake. It didn’t concern him when she put her hand on the brute’s arm, tilted her head back, and let all that copper-tinted dark hair dance—
Wilder was across the bar in about three seconds flat.
He had his hand wrapped around Cat Lisle’s upper arm—not a tactile sensation he needed to know about, it turned out, all soft and satiny and that scent again—and then had her out the door and away from this den of iniquity before Easy Rider knew what hit him.
And before he knew what possessed him, too.
Cat jerked her arm as if to dislodge his grip, but Wilder didn’t let go.
“You can’t go around manhandling people out of bars!” she threw at him.
“I just did.”
Her mouth dropped open, even while those blue eyes of hers flashed fire. “What do you think you accomplished? I’m just going to turn around and walk right back inside.”
“No,” he said, low and sure. “You are not.”
The expression on her face… shifted. This time when she yanked her shoulder back, he let her have it. She took a step back, but she didn’t make a break for the door. She studied him instead. “What do you want, Wilder? Why do you care what I do?”
“If I had a little sister, I’d want someone to care what she was doing. Especially if it was this stupid.”
“You have little brothers and I’ve never seen the slightest indication that you care at all what they get up to,” she retorted.
“I care,” he countered, which was not entirely untrue. “But I also know they can handle themselves.”
“Because they’re men.”
“Because they’re all over six feet tall and know how to take a punch. And better yet, how to hold their own. They are not small, fragile girls who don’t understand danger when they’re standing knee-deep in it, ordering frilly little drinks.”
“It was a bourbon, not a Bellini, and it doesn’t matter anyway. There is absolutely no reason you should be talking to me, much less hauling me out of bars.” Cat shook her head at him as if he was a grave disappointment. Wilder had to chalk that up as a first. He never stuck around long enough to disappoint a woman. Cat was on an accelerated track. “I don’t think you’ve ever said three words to me in the whole of your life before tonight.”
There was no earthly reason he should have felt the need to defend himself. “I haven’t had occasion to say anything to you because you’re usually right where you belong. If I’d caught you making stupid decisions outside the General Store that you’re likely to regret for the rest of your life at any point, I would have done the exact same thing.”
She laughed at that, but it was an indignant sound. “You have got to be kidding me. You’re a Carey. I’m surprised you even know where the General Store is, since you’re all so allergic to the idea that your ancestor was bad at cards. And what makes you think you have the slightest idea what I might regret or not regret?” Cat had moved away from him when she’d taken that shoulder back, but now she moved toward him again, getting right up in his face. This really meant that she was right up on his chest, her head tilted back so she could look up at him, and he absolutely, positively did not feel anything rush through him like another hit of the whiskey he wasn’t drinking. “You don’t know anything about me. I’m surprised you even know my name.”
“Cat,” he drawled, making a meal of the name, though he did not choose to ask himself why he enjoyed it so much. “Cat for short. I’m not oblivious.”
The look she gave him indicated that she did not believe that for a minute. “A hundred years ago or so, two crotchety men who probably hadn’t bathed in their lifetimes played cards and got butt hurt about it. This somehow turned into a quote unquote blood feud that all of our unhinged relatives up and down the family tree have been entirely too interested in ever since.”
“Thank you, Cat. I’m aware of the history of Cowboy Point, the disgraceful behavior of Ebenezer Lisle, and the heroic efforts of Matthew Carey to soldier on despite his shocking betrayal.”
“That would be the same Matthew Carey who helped himself to the vast acreage that is now High Mountain Ranch, is that right? The very land you’ve all been working your whole life and that, last time I looked, was enough of a living to support generations of Careys?” She rolled her eyes heavenward as if asking for divine intervention outside of Marietta’s answer to the gateway to hell. “Anyway, the point is, you should be delighted that you think I’m getting myself in trouble. Maybe I’ll become the black sheep of the family. Then there’s one less Lisle for you to worry about.”
Wilder had never worried about a Lisle in his life, but here he was arguing with one on a public sidewalk. He couldn’t deny that the optics were not on his side. Then again, this nobility thing was a new look for him, so no wonder it felt weird. Maybe if he made a habit out of saving women from their terrible choices, it would come a lot easier.
“But you’re not the black sheep of the family,” Wilder said with what he thought was tremendous patience. “Here are some other things you’re not. A big drinker. Or the kind of barfly who hangs out in the Wolf Den on a weekend night, looking for a one-night stand and a hangover.”
As someone who had watched her grow up into a perfectly nice girl, from a distance, he thought this argument was unassailable. So he didn’t understand it when she straightened, then lifted her chin into something defiant.
Like he was fighting with her.
“As a matter of fact, I’m looking to change all of those definitions,” she told him, and that blue gaze of hers was surprisingly direct.
But there was noise from behind them as the door to the bar swung open and a group of loud, bleary-eyed folks poured out onto the street, hooting and hollering enough that Wilder took it upon himself to shift them once more. He steered her down the block a ways and stopped when he could maneuver her back toward the door of the tattoo shop, into the entryway alcove and out of the flow of any further traffic that might come down the sidewalk.
And he wasn’t too proud to block the exit, too. Just in case she got any bright ideas.
“What?” Cat demanded. She crossed her arms over her chest, which did not improve Wilder’s mood any, because all these good intentions on his part did not keep him from noticing her. In all the wrong ways. “You keep staring at me like you expect me to bare my soul. Why would I do that? See again how we’re not friends, we’re not even friend-ly, there’s a whole Wild West blood feud, it’s none of your business anyway, the list goes on and on.”
“Consider this a toll,” he suggested. “Like it or not, you’re going to have to pay it if you want to walk away.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. This not actually being the Wild West any longer.”
“By all means, call the sheriff.” Wilder laughed. “Better yet, call Atticus. I’m sure he’d be only too happy to come all the way down the mountain with his deputy star pinned to his chest, so you can explain to him what it is that you object to about what’s going on here. And then he can take you back home to your brothers and you can all explain it to them, too. In fact, I’ll call him right now myself.”
He watched her fume at that, as expected. Atticus Wayne was a deputy of the Crawford County Sheriff’s Department. The actual sheriff was here in Marietta, but Cowboy Point was remote enough and sometimes inaccessible enough that Atticus operated fairly independently—especially in the dark of winter.
But the key point was that the deputy sheriff of Cowboy Point maintained excellent relationships with all the business owners around, which included the Lisle brothers. He also wasn’t opposed to a drink or two at the Copper Mine when he was off duty, and was friends with them, too. He was also friends with Wilder and all four of Wilder’s brothers, but he figured Cat knew that already. No need to rub it in.
Involving Atticus was not likely to help Cat any.
He was pretty sure he could see her come to that conclusion herself.
“What do you want?” she asked, and her blue eyes seemed more shadowy, then.
“I told you what I want. Tell me what the hell you think you’re doing.”
“Looks like I’m out here doing the exact same thing you’re doing, Wilder. You should be able to recognize it when you see it.”
He leaned in then, and wasn’t that he forgot that his back was to the street and all of Marietta, but he couldn’t seem to focus on anything but the woman in front of him. “Chances are, the worst thing that’s going to happen to me on a night out is that I sleep in my truck and wake up with a headache. The same can’t be said for a pretty girl like you, Cat. That’s just reality.”
She blinked at that as if he had said something astonishing instead of purely factual, but then she blew out a breath.
“You’re not going to understand,” she told him after a moment. “Because you’re not a girl. You don’t have two completely overbearing older brothers.”
“I just have the one,” he agreed. He thought of Harlan, who was about as steadfast and dependable as they came, though he would never say that to Harlan. He preferred to give his older brother a hard time, as was his right. “But the really annoying thing about Harlan is that he’s usually right.”
Cat sighed. “Tennessee and Dallas are medieval. They know what they got up to when they were in high school, so they made sure that no one ever dreamed of getting up to that with me. They didn’t ask me what I wanted, naturally.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I thought when I graduated that they’d acknowledge that I was all grown up, but no. They didn’t. They haven’t. Absolutely nothing changes, year after year.” There was that fire in her blue eyes again, then. “They scare off anyone who strays too close to me. And maybe I could see their point when I was a teenager. But I’m not a teenager anymore. I’m twenty-four and half the girls I went to high school with have their own families by now. I still have my childhood bedroom. I work in the store with my mother. And I live in the same tiny postage stamp of a town where everybody knows me and I can never, ever do anything unless I want someone picking up the phone and telling my brothers about it. Immediately.”
Wilder eyed her. “What is it that you want to do?”
She threw out her arms in a gesture of pure exasperation. “I don’t even know. That’s the point. Maybe I want to get ridiculously drunk and have one-night stands I’ll regret bitterly in the morning. Maybe I want to drink tequila and dance on table tops and make a fool of myself, so that everyone whispers about me when they see me coming.”
“I don’t think you want any of that.”
“Maybe I do.” She dropped her arms. “Or maybe I just want the opportunity to make my own mistakes, learn something from them, and grow. Or cry. Or move to a beach somewhere and do restorative yoga. Or do whatever the hell it is people do when they’re actually allowed to have their own life experiences.”
Wilder was of the opinion that life came looking for a person and not the other way around, but he didn’t tell her that. She was too worked up.
And she didn’t think she’d like it if he told her that the flush on her cheeks made her even prettier. An observation that was a simple fact, that was all.
“Tonight all I really wanted was to dance a little bit with an exciting man, have a drink, get too close. See if I liked his hands on me. I don’t know.” Cat blew out a breath that was closer to a groan. “What do you come to the Wolf Den for?”
“Whiskey,” he told her flatly. “And loose women.”
“Maybe I’m a loose woman,” she countered. “How would I know if I’ve never had the opportunity to… loosen?”
Wilder shook his head. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know that I don’t,” she threw at him. “I’m sitting around, waiting for my life to begin, but it’s not going to. Nothing’s going to change if I don’t change. And I’m tired of being good. I’m tired of being told who I am, what my personality is, and what my life is going to look like. I’m sure that when they feel ready, Tennessee and Dallas will rustle up some inoffensive, bland little man that they’re confident they can dominate, and present me to him like a prize. When maybe I don’t want to get married at all. Maybe I don’t think a man who would kowtow to my brothers is particularly attractive.” She threw her hands in the air again. “Nobody knows, because I’ve never had the opportunity to experiment with any of this.”
“And you think that getting cozy with some creep in fake leather in a dive bar is going to be the gateway to the brand-new you, is that it?”
“I just want to feel something,” Cat told him. And there was something wise and even a little bit sad in the way she looked at him. “I want to live a little. I want to feel like a country song. One of the good ones, all emotional and hot and maybe a little bit sad. Doesn’t everybody get to feel like that at least once in their life?” She shook her head and laughed, but she was looking away when she did it. “I’ve never even been kissed.”
And that, Wilder thought, was a damn shame.
He wasn’t the sort of man a woman could depend on, he’d always made that clear, but there were some things he was remarkably good at. Kissing was one of them.
Thinking about it that way, this was basically a public service.
“You should have just said so,” he told her gruffly. “You don’t need to go back in there and find yourself a questionable stranger, Cat. You want to kiss the cowboy with a bad reputation, sing yourself a little country song, and live a little on a summer night?” Wilder grinned, slow and dirty, until her blue eyes went wide and hot. “Kiss me.”
End of Excerpt
