Page 14 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

Today was a Sunday and his dad looked good. Reason enough to call it a comfort, by his measure.

They all jostled into their usual places around the table as Belinda and Zeke started delivering platters of food. There were the usual rapturous comments about how good everything was, because it was. It always was. Belinda went all-out with her Sunday dinners and claimed that she did so because at least she knew they were fed properly at least once each week.

Wilder knew that he and Harlan were perfectly capable of feeding themselves well, and he suspected solid, dependable Boone was too. There was no telling what Knox did, as the baby of the family and all around reprobate.

And Ryder, of course, existed entirely on pain and panic—but at least he had the decency to do it away from the rest of the family, who might have felt honor-bound to intercede. They discussed his latest winning rides over everyone’s first helping.

“You tell him we’re all cheering him on,” Zeke said.

“I will do no such thing,” Wilder replied with a drawl. “He’s bigheaded enough already.”

Dad can’t remember what you look like, he texted his twin.

That’s a funny way to admit you’re the ugly one, Ryder texted right back.

By the time Wilder finished a creative stream of insults involving a few childhood secrets and ruminations on Ryder’s longevity, everyone else was good-naturedly arguing about whether or not they supported the new clinic that was coming in Cowboy Point, saving folks that drive down the hill.

“How is this up for debate?” Knox asked with a laugh, piling another huge serving of meat and mashed potatoes onto his plate. “We need medical services here. All it takes is one bad snowstorm and we have to act like we’re independent of Marietta anyway. Might as well be prepared for it.”

“Like those loons out in the way far hills,” Zeke said, nodding at Belinda like she knew them, personally. “The ones who want Cowboy Point to claim independence from Marietta altogether.”

“I would personally like independence from the people who live closer to Big Sky than here, come in once a season, and want to tell us how to do things,” Belinda said with a sniff.

“We need a clinic here,” Knox argued, as if she’d said otherwise. “It’s ridiculous that there’s any other opinion on it.”

“And this surprisingly passionate take on local medical facilities has nothing to do with the fact that the doctor opening this clinic is awfully pretty, I’m sure,” Boone added.

Knox gazed at him, the very picture of offended dignity. “I am deeply invested in the health of our community, Boone. I’m not trying to fatten them all up with artisan dairy like some.”

“Just say you’re lactose intolerant and have the hots for the new doctor, man,” Boone said not taking the bait about his new dairy enterprise. “This is embarrassing.”

“You seem extra quiet,” Kendall, Wilder’s still-new sister-in-law, murmured from beside him. When he looked over at her, she smiled and offered a shrug. “Not that you’re loud, generally. But you’d normally be more in the middle of things, I would have thought.”

Bythings, he assumed she meant that he would normally have been riding Knox on the doctor thing the way everyone else was.

“Sometimes I like to listen,” he told her, and that wasn’t untrue. “The better to build up ammunition for later. Besides, I like to report back to Ryder like I’m some kind of stenographer. Just so he knows what he’s missing. On an hourly basis.”

Kendall smiled. “Both worthy pursuits. You just looked so sad there, for a minute.”

Wilder made himself grin. “Me? Sad? I didn’t think that was possible.”

But he could feel Kendall’s gaze on him long after he threw himself into the rowdy conversation, so he did his level best to make it even rowdier—until Belinda ordered them all out of the house.

“You’re worse than a pack of wild dogs,” she told them as she shooed them off. “It’s like you were raised in a barn when I know better.”

Pretty standard Sunday dinner, all told.

He had tired himself out that morning and the big meal didn’t help, but by evening he decided that he might as well head on down to the Copper Mine. Have a beer and take in a local band, out there in one of the last summer evenings with all the food trucks in a line near the road and the lights strung up. Because yes, it was still August. But this was Montana. Winter came in fast and when it did, it stayed put.

It wasn’t unusual for Montanans to exhaust themselves out there in all the summer light, enough to feel slightly relieved when it got cold and dark again and there was nothing to do but rest.

But tonight it was still light and warm. Wilder drove down from the ranch as the light faded and the sky seemed to hum with late-summer blues and the brightness of the stars. He knew this old dirt road as well as he knew the lines of his own land and the map of his face in a mirror. He liked the gentle incline on the way up toward the lodge, then the easy descent into pretty Cowboy Point itself.

This early on a late-August night, the place was hopping. It looked like the Lisles had kept the diner open into the evening, something Tennessee Lisle only did on weekends, even though the store was closed—though, little as Wilder liked the Lisle family, it had to be said that even if the store was closed, they were always happy to open it in a pinch and help people out.

That didn’t make them good people or their ancestor any less of a card cheat, mind you. That was just how folks operated out here, because they lived a whole lot closer to the elements than some.

He parked his truck and walked to the Copper Mine. He could hear music from down the way at Mountain Mamas, a pizza restaurant with an outdoor patio where they tended toward more family-friendly acts. When he crossed the creek, he could hear that the band at the bar trended more toward rock than anything that would invite dancing.

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