Page 10 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

He really was made of muscle. Hard, ridged, and perfect.

His hips were narrow. He was… proportional.

Even thinking that word made her shiver, everywhere.

A block or so down, he stopped at a truck she recognized as his, the way she could recognize the vehicles of pretty much everyone in Cowboy Point. He opened the passenger door and when she didn’t move immediately to jump in, he dealt with it by lifting her up off the ground and placing her on the seat inside.

He had already slammed the door and walked around the truck by the time she actually processedthat, and then he was sliding behind the wheel and starting up the engine.

Then another impossible daydream was occurring in real time.

Wilder Carey was driving her home.

Country music played softly from the speakers. Cat had the urge to snuggle herself deeper into the seat, or maybe stretch out along the bench and put her head on his lap. Such urges seemed to go along with the dark night pressing in and all around, the faint music, and the simple joy of riding with him.

It was a ten-mile drive up the side of Copper Mountain to get back home, but at this time of year that was no trouble at all. As they drove out of Marietta, there were fewer and fewer lights along the way.

And when they hit the single winding road that led to Cowboy Point, there were none.

Out the window, the Milky Way seemed to hang there, almost close enough to grasp.

And inside of her, Cat felt that same mess of stars. Too many to count, too many suns exploding, shining, building galaxies she could neither name nor entirely understand.

She could still taste him in her mouth.

It felt like its own North Star.

When they finally made it to the top of Copper Mountain, they crested the final incline just below the peak—that little breath of space on the road, poised forever between Marietta on one side and home on the other.

And this was the real trouble, Cat knew. Much as she wanted everything to change, much asshewanted to change, she loved it here. She loved the way their tiny little valley unfurled before them as he drove down into it, the stars making a meal out of the evergreens and dirt roads snaking off this way and that. There was no one around. Not even a glimpse of another car. There were some lights on peeking out from the trees in the hills, but they were few and far between.

The General Store was dark at this hour, sitting on the main street with its front part the same old bit of timber that had been thrown up almost two hundred years ago as a little outpost for the miners who didn’t want to go all the way back down into Marietta after looking for copper. Her oldest brother, Tennessee, lived there, in the tidy house out back that was only slightly newer than the store itself, separated only by a bit of yard and the seasonal creek that rose in spring and was more like a dry moat in the cold fall weeks before the snow came in.

The rest of them lived farther back on Lisle Hill. Cat still lived with her mother in the pretty Victorian house that Ebenezer’s oldest son had built about halfway up, to give the wife he’d imported from Boston the view he felt she deserved. And maybe she’d felt that she deserved it, too, because at the top of the hill she’d commissioned a lighthouse. Legend was, she missed the sea. Cat’s brother Dallas had been living there for a long while, though as far as Cat knew, he’d never seen the sea.

During the day, she liked to look up the hill and see those things. The lighthouse at the top, the house in the middle surrounded by all her mother’s gardens, and down at the bottom, the dirt road that led out to the store. Like a layer cake of Lisles.

She assumed that a Carey had a different thought process when he looked at Lisle Hill, and that amused her so much that she almost asked him—but stopped herself when he turned off on a narrow little dirt lane a bit before the one that led directly to her house.

Cat understood immediately. That was the thing about tiny places like this one. Usually, there was no one around at this hour. But if someone was around, they would absolutely recognize Wilder’s truck, the same way she had.

Obviously there was no way that Wilder could drive her up to her door.

But the fact that it wasn’t even a discussion between them sat oddly inside of her, like this was a secret. And somehow, the idea of being Wilder Carey’s secret wasn’t as thrilling as she wanted it to be.

Not that she would turn down the role. And anyway, it was too late for that.

Wilder turned off his headlights and slowed down. And then they were bumping along in the dark, down an old dirt road. Though this was less of a road and more the suggestion of one. The trees stood dark and judgmental all around them, and for a while he could have been driving her deep into the mountains that stretched all the way to Big Sky for all she knew.

But she could see the gleam of the stars. And she realized that she didn’t care where he was taking her. These quiet moments between them seemed precious. Possibly because she’d never known Wilder Carey to be anything but the center of attention.

This felt like a gift.

Eventually he stopped and climbed out of the truck, and she didn’t want to move—but she made herself. Cat climbed out and met him at the front of the truck, and only then realized that she was holding her breath.

“Come on,” he said in that low voice of his. “I’ll walk you as close to home as I can.”

“I’m sure I can find my way.”

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