Page 27 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

She didn’t know what she was talking about. She didn’t even know if it was true that Harlan Carey had actually put an ad out for a wife, or if it was a rumor that was so much fun that everyone had decided it was true. It seemed unlikely to Cat, given that he was a Carey and therefore looked like all the rest of them.

Though not, in her opinion, as dangerously hot as Wilder. But then, who was?

“You should see your faces,” she told her brothers, shaking her head. “I don’t know that I believe that Harlan Carey had to stoop to putting out an ad, because why would he? That’s never made sense.”

“I’m going to have to disinfect the entire store now,” Tennessee said darkly. “It has Harlan Carey all over it.”

“Why have we now said his name three times?” Dallas asked, sounding outraged. “That feels ominous. Ebenezer Lisle is going to haunt us all tonight.”

“But also,” Cat said loudly, interrupting the blood feud nonsense, “if I did decide to run off and marry some man, you have no one to blame but yourselves. Becauseapparently, every single man in the greater Paradise Valley area is afraid to come near me because of you two.”

Dallas grunted. “Good.”

“I don’t understand why we’re talking about your romantic life instead of the fact that you’re taking a week to audition for a job that isn’t in the family business,” Tennessee said tersely. “What happens if you actually get the job?”

“Then I’m taking it,” Cat replied, only shooting a dark look at Dallas. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because we have responsibilities to the family.”

And Tennessee was talking to her in very much in the same tone she remembered from when she was younger. She hadn’t liked it much then. She certainly didn’t like it now.

“I’m not planning a revolution or a poker game, Tennessee,” she said, maybe a little sharper than necessary. “I don’t even know what hours Ramona plans to keep the clinic open. And, fun fact, it’s literally a five minute walk away. It’s not in a different country. I’m not running off with the circus. We could maybe take the looks of betrayal down a few notches, that’s all I’m saying.”

“I don’t know that I like the idea of this at all,” Tennessee growled.

“I don’t know that I asked you if you liked it,” Cat replied, and she had watched Dallas and Tennessee have too many fights in her time. She knew that the kiss of death was to get emotional. Tennessee liked to think that he was too logical, and Dallas believed that he was too numb to ever break from their fierce grip on rationality.

She knew they were full of it, but there was no point arguing it with them. She turned to the monitor instead and started clicking through to the purchasing page she’d left open earlier.

“Maybe I’m going to become a nurse someday,” she said when they just stared at her. “Maybe I just want something different. But none of that matters, because I wasn’t asking for permission.”

And Cat didn’t look up again until Tennessee muttered something dire under his breath, and then went slamming over to the diner part of the building.

Dallas, however, stayed put. “What’s gotten into you? I know it’s fun to rile him up, but what’s the endgame?”

“What exactly do you do up in that lighthouse all day?” she asked him, instead of answering.

He didn’t miss a beat. “I’ve been restoring it. As you know perfectly well. I’m going to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast.”

She knew that was what hesaidhe was doing. And she had made her feelings about Dallas as a grumpy innkeeper perfectly clear already.

Still. “That’s not a twelve hour a day project, Dallas. There’s no reason why you couldn’t pick up my shifts, is there?”

He settled in next to her, leaning his side against the counter next to her. “Now, why would I do that in the absence of being asked nicely?”

And Cat had the presence of mind to act just outraged enough by that that he might forget to ask follow-up questions. Because she thought that it was a major giveaway she’d mentioned the Carey family at all. She certainly didn’t want Dallas putting those pieces together.

Later that evening, she walked back up the hill after she closed the store, and found herself so close to all-out skipping that she felt something like giddy.

And she knew why.

Because before Wilder, she never would have walked over to the clinic today. She never would have talked to Doctor Ramona about an actual job. She never would have said that she wanted to be a nurse, which was a silly dream she’d never told anyone.

And she certainly never would have stood up to her brothers.

That was the thing about Wilder and these last few weeks.

It was almost like she was brand-new.

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