Page 21 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

But it was different tonight. Because it was Cat.

And then, just in case he needed to make his situation clear to himself and the watching stars, he proceeded to… act like a fool.

When he had been many things in life, but never a fool.

And certainly not over a pretty girl.

But there he was, sneaking up to the house and circling all the way around the place so he could look in the windows, fully aware that this was not appropriate behavior by any measure, but there was nothing to see. The only lights on in the whole place were on the ground floor, where he could see Jenny Lisle sitting on her couch and watching a program on her television, alone.

That meant he had a nice long creep back to his truck to think about his behavior. Except what he really kept thinking about were those prospects of hers.

He could name every male between the ages of eighteen and eighty around here. He could also list a thousand reasons each one was absolutely wrong for Cat, and he did.

Back in his truck, he drove himself back out of the woods, though it was earlier than usual and he knew he needed to be careful. He had to wait in the shelter of the woods until he was certain no one was coming from either direction. Because he had to make sure no one could see that he was pulling out of the woodshere, at the base of Lisle Hill, where everyone knew Wilder Carey wasn’t welcome.

Especially on a holiday weekend. And particularly when it wasthisholiday, that marked off the end of summer—something that mattered this far north when he could already feel the coming fall season in the air.

He told himself that was why he was so edgy.

And livestock on ranches didn’t cater much to holidays, so he’d never been much for celebrating them the way some folks did, but when he drove into the main part of town he noticed a lot more people wandering around the place than usual. And to add to this night of weird new reactions from him, Wilder found himself irritated that Cat could walk from her house to both the Copper Mine and the only other place open this late, Mountain Mama, and therefore he couldn’t civilly drive to see if her vehicle was parked somewhere, thereby giving him a better idea of where he might find her.

Not that he was looking, he told himself. He just wanted to know.

The fact she’d likely walked meant he was forced to pick an establishment, so he went with the Copper Mine because that was where he’d seen her a lot lately, but it was the wrong choice. She wasn’t there. And unfortunately for him, a whole lot of other people he knew were.

It would look strange if he didn’t stay for at least one drink, so he did. He smiled and he laughed and told tall tales with the Starks—some of his closest friends, despite the fact that they were far more feral than he would ever be and seemed dedicated to remaining that way—and the whole time he did, he wished that he could extricate himself.

Quickly.

When he finally managed it, he walked down the main road to Mountain Mama, waiting for the hint of crispness in the air to set him straight. But it didn’t.

Down at the pizza place, there was music pouring out into the night. He walked past the entrance to the big, red barn and looked in on the big, wide patio area that flowed all the way inside in the warm months. And there was a decent-sized crowd, adding fuel to the fire that Zeke liked to stir up around the Carey family dinner table. About the changes here. About the fact that some folks wanted this place to be a whole lot more than the remote little refuge it always had been.

Wilder’s knee-jerk reaction to that was that he didn’t like it, because when had change ever done anything for him? But on the other hand, he liked what he saw tonight. One of the last summer nights, filled with good cheer, dancing, and happy people moving around beneath strings of light.

Or maybe he liked it because Cat was there in the middle of it all with a few other women, her hands in the air and her head tipped back, dancing to bring the stars down to her level.

Something in him seemed to catch. His ribs ached.

He felt like someone punched him straight in the face, and yet somehow he was still standing.

Something in him seemed to blare, then, like some kind of alarm. He had the deep, instinctive urge to turn around, to melt back into the shadows, and get the hell away from here.

Before it’s too late,something in him whispered.

But before he could act on that, Cat twirled around and her gaze caught his.

Wilder wanted to tell her to stop, immediately. That everybody would know what was going on between them at a glance. That she was making it obvious—but he thought that actually, he was the one doing that.

He reminded himself that this place was crowded tonight. No way could anyone tell who she was looking at, or who he was looking at, for that matter. She was dancing with a bunch of women and he could have been looking at any of them. Or more likely, all of them, like everyone else. Not because they were making a spectacle of themselves, but because they all looked so happy and like they were having fun.

But it was like all of that was noise and it was happening somewhere else.

Because she caught his gaze, and the silence that went through him waselectric.

She looked at him and Wilder felt the punch of it. And he thought he really would have preferred it if it had been an actual fist straight into his mouth. Or his eye. The center of his nose, maybe, so that he could black out and wake up without thislongingin him that he didn’t know what todowith—

But she didn’t do any of that.

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