Page 12 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

And saw nothing.

Her heart sank. Had she made the whole thing up?

But then, across the clearing, she caught the faintest hint of movement behind a tree, and she knew.

It was him. This was real.

And she knew he was going to stay there until she went inside. No matter that she didn’twantto go inside.

Cat was holding her breath again. It made her lungsache.

But she did the hardest thing possible. She turned around once more, went inside, and closed the door behind her.

But she didn’t breathe normally for a long, long time.

Chapter Three

Wilder woke upthe next morning in a wholly uncharacteristic foul mood.

He stared up at the ceiling of the bedroom in his cabin, scowling, and couldn’t pretend he didn’t knowwhyhe wanted to chew off his own arm. He knew why. It was the first time he’d gone out in as long as he could recall with the express purpose of scratching an itch and… hadn’t.

Truth was, his body wasn’t used to abstinence of any kind.

He rolled out of bed, threw on a pair of jeans, and then prowled his way into his kitchen, cursing at how long it took to make his coffee—but then, coffee was one of the few things in this life that he wasn’t the least bit laid back about. There was grinding the beans that he’d selected. Preparing the water, fresh from the ranch’s well. He had to take his time with the pour into the French press his brothers mocked—though they sure liked the coffee he made—because he wanted the grounds agitated the correct amount. This was difficult, he could admit, whenhewas agitated himself.

Likely this was why, as a rule, Wilder didn’t allow himself to get worked up about much.

It was his ritual to wait the optimal two minutes and thirty seconds of soaking in silence, but today it was torture. He could still taste her. He could still feel her legs around his waist. He could still remember his astoundingly virtuous decision to walk away.

Him.Virtuous.He let out a hollow laugh and poured himself his coffee early, not at all surprised that it was slightly sour on the first, too-hot sip.

It seemed to fit the moment.

He cursed his impatience as he headed out of the kitchen. And then added on to it as he went, cursing the fact he’d tossed and turned all night long, to add insult to injury. He was cursing himself, and the entirely too tempting Cat Lisle herself, and everything else he could think of until he made his way out to his wide, simple porch.

Then he sat there as the dawn gathered itself around him, glaring out at the land until it worked its usual, inevitable magic on him and he felt himself… relax.

The coffee still wasn’t perfect, but it was hard to be mad about that when he was looking out at nothing but pure beauty.

He had chosen this plot almost entirely because of the view. His cabin sat on a small rise that looked out into the trees and the hills, with the peak of Copper Mountain pretty much framed there in the far distance. There was a hint of snow at the very top this morning, but everything else was that big, blue, cloudless Montana sky. The green pines stretched high and proud with a hawk soaring overhead. There were wildflowers in the most unlikely places, pops of yellow and purple. Everything smelled like summer, still, despite the tiny hint of a bite in the air.

This was how Wilder usually spent his coffee time in the morning—looking out at that mountain and reminding himself who he was. Telling himself that life would go on, no matter what happened to his father, or to him, or to any of the rest of the people he loved.

One way or another, life endured.

Like it or not.

He’d learned that as a kid when they’d lost his mother and Wilder didn’t reckon it had changed any since.

But today, all he could think about was Cat.

A grade A catastrophe if ever there was one.

Sitting here, on the porch of his peaceful little cabin, he couldn’t understand how he’d let himself get so caught up in her. Maybe that whiskey he’d tossed back in the Wolf Den had been more potent than he’d realized, because that wasn’t the way he operated.

He was no one’s savior, that was for damn sure.

Wilder was about a good time and that was it. He didn’t get mixed up with anything too complicated. He certainly didn’t do consequences of any kind. And Cat Lisle was nothing if not both.

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