Page 1 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

Prologue

“None of thisis 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 toactlike you’re dying.Iwould 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 grandbabiesandthe 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 overright.

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.

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