Page 29 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

He had no intention of discussing what was going on with him with anyone. If it was up to him he wouldn’t discuss it with himself, either. “I’m just saying that there’s a clear demarcation between the three of us who lost our mother, and Boone and Knox, who didn’t. Don’t freak out because I mentioned feelings.”

He had never seen Harlan freak out in his life, but it was always fun to tell people who weren’t worked up to calm down. Entertainment always followed.

But Harlan didn’t take the bait. “Little brother, I’m a married man now. I think about feelings all day, every day. Because making my wife happy is a priority.Thepriority.” Then he switched back to his older, wiser brother routine. “And besides, I’m the one who remembers Mom the best.”

Wilder felt the usual twist of shame and guilt at that, but he didn’t say anything. Not about that part, anyway. “I remember her too, asshole.”

Harlan looked entirely too pleased with himself for getting that reaction, and Wilder sighed, because if he wasn’t soagitatedall the time he would have handled that better. Cat was twisted up inside him. It was making him crazy. “One of the things I’ve always liked is that Dad doesn’t hide Mom away somewhere. There’s no pretending she wasn’t the force of nature that she was. Belinda never pretends either. It’s all out in the open, shared and obvious, all the time. Never a secret.”

He stopped talking when Harlan shot him another look. “Why would she be a secret?”

“Lots of people pretend that a dead person never existed,” Wilder muttered, but that wasn’t the kind of secret he was thinking about. And he knew it.

Hefelt itwith every breath.

Hisribshurt.

“I’ve never seen the point in keeping secrets,” Harlan said, because of course he didn’t. He was light and truth, a steady support to all and sundry. He was direct and forthright in all things, which was why he was the one folks compared to their father.

The highest compliment any of his sons could imagine, because Zeke Carey had always seemed to them as if he carried that big Montana sky on his broad shoulders.

And everyone who encountered them across the span of the Rockies was only too happy to talk about the Carey men at High Mountain Ranch, and howdependablethey were. In a remote place like this, that was about the highest compliment that anyone could pay another. They all got put under that umbrella, but Wilder knew it was primarily Harlan and Zeke that folks meant when they said things likesalt of the earth.

And okay, now that he was thinking about it, Boone, too. Boone, who had decided he wanted to see if he could start a little dairy and had gotten that business up and running in record time, with a list of customers at the ready.

Maybe what Wilder needed to accept was that he was still the one who was the actual problem. He knew Ryder had always thought the same about himself, which was why he’d left, so that his trophies and his prizes could give people something else to talk about than how not like his revered father and beloved brothers he was. Maybe it was time that Wilder stopped pretending he was anything but the black sheep of the family, since Knox was the baby and got away with murder no matter what he did.

Because the thing was, everyone else already considered him the bad apple. He knew that.Hewas the one who kept thinking that there was something good in him. That if he thought on it long enough, he could figure out how to be a decent man.

That if he nobly and virtuously refrained from taking Cat the way he wanted to, what they were doing wouldn’t leave the scars he could already feel taking shape inside of him.

With every damned breath.

And he was still pretending not to think about that later, when he dropped off the supplies at the main barn with Harlan and then wandered over to the main house.

This time when he went inside he made his way to that bright little room that he remembered as his mother’s favorite place, filled with sun and her sweet smile. Now it held pictures of her, that smile always kinder than he remembered and sunnier than he deserved. Expecting to spend a moment or two with her, the way he sometimes did, Wilder stopped short when he saw his father sitting in the chair that was set right next to the picture of Alice Carey, young and beautiful andalive.

Zeke glanced up and Wilder nodded a greeting, aware that his head felt stiff on his neck. That he was suddenly standing there like he was wearing someone else’s body as a suit.

“You look like something’s wrong,” Zeke pointed out, all gruff drawl and that clear gaze of his.

Wilder just feltrawtoday, that was the thing. It had been that way since he’d woken up, still half-tangled in a wildly vivid dream that involved Cat very, very naked and in his bed. He had not been pleased to discover she wasn’t, and worse still, it was the kind of dream that kept its hooks in him all day. He told himself it was because he hadn’t been sleeping a lot these days, since he spent longer and longer in the woods with Cat each night.

It was a reasonable physical reaction, that was all.

It had nothing to do with the way she had looked at him last night, wrapped up in his arms with the stars on her face, and whispered his name.

Nothing at all.

“Nothing more than the usual,” Wilder said. And when Zeke’s expression didn’t change, he frowned. “Maybe you forgot your own announcement, but I didn’t.”

Zeke blinked, as if he didn’t know what Wilder was talking about. As if he didn’t have a clue—then he looked down.

“We’re all dying,” he said, his voice gruffer. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but that’s the only way out of here.”

“That’s very comforting, Dad. Thanks.”

When he looked up again, Zeke seemed his usual brash, unconcerned self. “That’s just the way it is. You work with livestock, so you should know this already. The circle always turns. That’s the game.”

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