Page 24 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

She blew out a breath, a frustrated sound. “Just say that you’re afraid of my brothers. It’s okay. Everyone else is too.”

Wilder laughed at that, and realized that he’d forgotten where he was when she looked over at the entryway to the alley, alarmed. “I’m not afraid of your brothers,” he told her, and it was hard not to keep laughing. “I already know what they think of me. I can imagine that they’d have some more intense thoughts about me if they saw me with you. But mostly, I’m thinking thatyoudon’t need the aggravation of your brothers knowing about this.”

He watched her blow out a breath and how she didn’t seem to want to meet his eyes. “It shouldn’t matter what my brothers think about anything.”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but your brothers happen to be two of the most ornery people in Cowboy Point, which is saying a lot.” Wilder found himself smiling, though he couldn’t think why. “And besides, there’s a blood feud to consider.”

“Yes, the blood feud really keeps me up at night,” she threw back at him. “Two grizzled miners playing a card game in a wooden shack over a hundred years ago really sits on my heart.”

But she had told him her feelings and that made it impossible to ignore his. And the most noticeable of them at the moment was the need to protect her, when he knew better than that. He was a charmer, sure, but not a protector. Ask anyone.

Still, he couldn’t seem to help himself. “Cat, it wouldn’t surprise a single person in Crawford County if it turned out that unbeknownst to everyone, I was sneaking around with another pretty girl. But you have to ask yourself if that’s the kind of reputation thatyouwant. There’s a reason that I usually contain my damage to tourists.” She looked at him again in that way of hers, big and blue like she didn’t get what he was trying to tell her, and he sighed. “Everybody thinks of you as a good girl. You should let them keep thinking that.”

“They think I’m about sixteen.”

“What they think is that you’re sweet and lovely,” Wilder said gruffly. “They think you’re pure and untouched, and that your brothers are scary enough that you’ll stay that way.”

“No one’s bothered to ask me ifIwant to stay that way.”

“That’s because any man who’s ever looked at you twice gets an eyeful of Tennessee or Dallas the next time he looks around, and that’s not a bad thing. That’s a safety net.” Wilder shrugged. “You shouldn’t throw all that away for someone like me.”

She looked at him again then, something quizzical and sad in her gaze. And he didn’t want to hear what she was going to say. He didn’t want to know what she thought, because he wasn’t sure how many more blows he could take.

Not tonight.

“You’re not my dirty little secret, Cat,” he finally said. He reached over and tucked a piece of her dark hair behind her ear, because he couldn’t stand not touching her, but that was a problem for another time. Another night. “Don’t you get it? I’m yours.”

Chapter Six

September came inlike honey, golden and blue. The nights got crisper and the mornings grew colder, but the days seemed to go on forever—holding on tight to summer even as it slipped away.

Maybe Cat over-related.

Wilder brought blankets when he came to find her in the woods on Lisle Hill and they huddled up beneath them in the back of his truck. As close as it was possible to get without crossing the boundaries he continued to keep high and strong.

They didn’t speak of what had happened on Labor Day weekend again. They fell into a rhythm instead, as if that night had made everything right.

When, deep down, Cat knew it hadn’t.

How could it have?

But as the days bled together, one into the next, they talked of other things instead.

It wasn’t that everything had gotten any less wild or electric. It was that that electricity seemed to… expand. Fewer lightning bolts, more simmering.

Or maybe it was that she was used to it now. It didn’t make it any less intense, but it also didn’t leave her too speechless to function.

Or not as often, anyway.

One night she lay there next to him, still fully clothed against her will, wrapped up in blankets while she used his bicep as a pillow. The stars were already looking autumnal, because the sky was so dark and the cold was pressing down, making her nose feel like ice.

He, on the other hand, was his own furnace. She thought that as long as she was holding onto Wilder, she could make it through whole blizzards if she had to.

Their breathing had only just now started to come back to normal.

Cat was beginning to think his hands were made of magic. Pure magic, and heat besides.

“What’s it like to have a twin?” she asked him.

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