Page 4 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

She had her back to him, so what he noticed first was her curvy body on a taller frame, packed into the kind of jeans that made a man fantasize about stripping them off. With his teeth. They were tucked into cowboy boots that looked lived in, not bought to make a Montana vacation feel like real life. He liked that.

Wilder let his gaze travel up the length of her, taking in the way her waist nipped in and her dark hair spilled down her back with hints of copper in the gentle waves.

The scent of rosemary, lavender, and something like spun sugar was suddenly all over him, and he had the near ungovernable urge to get his hands in that hair. It would have been all too easy to turn her around, tilt her face up and—

You’re getting ahead of yourself, cowboy,he told himself then, faintly alarmed that he was having this kind of strong reaction to her already. He didn’t dostrongunless it was liquor. He liked his women easy and forgettable and this one was already a problem.

And nothisproblem.

But then she turned around.

Her blue eyes widened in shock, and something like horror—not the typical response he got from women—almost as if—

But less than a split-second later, reality slammed into him like a sledgehammer.

“What in the name of all that is holy are you doing here?” he belted out.

Because he knew her.

More than knew her.

He was looking at the youngest member of the Lisle family, Cat, though she had always gone by Cat. Wilder had gone to school with her brothers, who were his age and thereforemucholder than her, and who he had considered his enemies for his entire life—hell, from long before his entire life. The Carey family had considered themselves in a blood feud with the Lisles since settlers had first turned up in these parts to try their hands at mining.

It was so impossible that he had been thinking dirty thoughts aboutCat Lislethat he immediately decided that he hadn’t. He couldn’t.

“How old are you?” he demanded.

Cat glared at him. And having never given the youngest Lisle the time of day, much less any thought, much less so much as a straydirtythought, Wilder was profoundly disconcerted to discover that he… could not turn off his notice of her.

The particular kind of notice that wasn’t any better now that he could see the front of her. All those curves. That skimpy little tank top that did nothing to hide them. On the contrary, he was fairly sure she was wearing a push-up bra, a device he had historically been a huge fan of, but not onCat Lisle.

Cat Lisle, whose face should have been too familiar for him to have the slightest thought about her one way or the other. Now that she was facing him. Now that there was no pretending she wasn’t the girl who worked in the General Store up in Cowboy Point that Lisles had been running since they’d won it from the original Carey in these parts in a still-disputed poker game.

She was the enemy, plain and simple.

Except, for some reason, he couldn’t help but notice that she was also pretty.

Really, truly pretty.

The kind of pretty that could make a man silly, not that he was that kind of man. But he noticed it all the same.

And it made everything worse.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Cat replied, crossing her arms right there beneath her breasts, which was not an improvement on… anything. “Except I already know you’re ancient. And let me guess. You think places like the Wolf Den are good foryou, but not forme.”

There were too many issues with that little speech to pick it apart.Ancient?But he decided what he felt was not any kind of heat. It wasconcern. It was downrightnoble. “Do your brothers know you’re here?”

Cat laughed, and that did not solve a single one of the problems he refused to admit he was having. “Like you care what my brothers think about anything.”

“We don’t have to have tea parties and braid each other’s hair for me to know that they would not take kindly to their baby sister running around Marietta and getting herself into trouble,” Wilder drawled. “Particularly the kind of trouble you can find in the Wolf Den.”

“And you, Wilder Carey, wildly renowned for carousing behavior calculated to make the pastor cry and a body count too high to tally up, intend to be the voice of virtue?” Cat laughed again, and her hairdanced, and Wilder put his nearly untouched whiskey down because he was clearly already drunk. “It’s Saturday night. I’m here to have a good time. I don’t care what you think about that.”

She tossed her hair back, picked up the glass beside her, and tossed it back before he could even see what it was that she was drinking. Then she slammed the glass back down, aimed an incredibly fake smile in his direction, and whirled around like she planned to swan dive into the middle of the disreputable crowd.

And she was right. This wasn’t his business. He had never gotten along with her brothers and had no reason to change that healthy, historic dislike of them. They were Lisles first, assholes second, and he’d never felt particularly inclined to dive any deeper into it. He was a Carey. Their ancestors had hated each other, and that was good enough for him. He and Ryder had done their part for the family honor and mixed it up with Dallas and Tennessee on the football field in their day.

He would describe them all as enemies, though in a small-town way. A very small town, cordial sort of way. Meaning they didn’t break out in fisticuffs or call for pistols at high noon when they caught sight of each other, but he also wouldn’thurryacross the street if one of them had a flat tire.

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