Page 2 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

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 callinghimgarrulous 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 pretendingnotto be upset for their listening sons, as if she wasputting on a good showfor 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.

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