Page 48 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

“The love ofmy life,” Wilder repeated, while his heart did its level best to explode straight out of his chest, in a way that he expected would make a cardiac event seem tame. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

But Cat did not look away. She did notlet go.

“I do know what I’m talking about,” she told him, with a quietcertaintythat shook him. “Because I’m right here. I was there at the Wolf Den that night and I was there every night since, but it was very clear that while you didn’twantto be there, you couldn’t stay away.”

“And I should have,” he gritted out.

He knew he should get up now. He knew he should get her hands off him and put his body where his mouth was.

But her eyes were so blue.

And he couldn’t seem to tear himself away.

“I was also there yesterday, when you married me in front of our family and celebrated that marriage in front of our friends and neighbors,” Cat said in that same quiet andsureway. “Most importantly, I was there last night. All of last night. When you, who made us wait to have sex until marriage, took my virginity in your own bed. In this cabin I’m pretty sure you built yourself. And do you think that I don’t know that this is not how you normally behave?”

That gaze of hers was beginning to feel like a spotlight, and he hated it.

He told himself he hated it, because it was that or ask himself how she knew all these things he’d never said directly. That he’d never brought a woman to the ranch, much less this cabin that he and his brothers had built together the summer he was twenty-five.

That he had treated her like something special from the start.

“How would you know anything about how I behave?” he asked anyway, scowling, and he had never felt less…himself.

That was what he told himself, anyway. Because he had made such a study of being unbothered by everything. He had made it his entire personality. Wilder Carey was never wound up. He was entertaining and always amused. Good for a laugh and always easy-going, as if everything rolled right off of him.

Nothing was rolling today. He felt as if every word she spoke was a boulder and it was sitting directly on top of him.

“I told you this before,” Cat said.

She took her hand off of his face, and the thing was, he wanted her to put it back, because everything about her was a challenge and a problem and he didn’t have the slightest idea what to do about it.

Except this. Except getting away from her, by a divorce because he couldn’t manage tojust stop going to see her. Which is what he should have done from the start.

“Harlan is the good one,” Cat told him, like she was reading a book. She was huddled up in her blanket, her hair a dark mess that he wanted—desperately—to feel all around him again, like a curtain. He had rosemary and lavender all over his skin, and he couldn’t taste anything in his mouth but that sugar of hers, no matter how much coffee he drank. “You and Ryder are the naughty ones, Boone is a sweetheart, and Knox is a problem.” She shrugged at the look on his face. “That’s the legend of the Carey Brothers, Wilder. And you know it. Every single woman in Cowboy Points, and probably all of Montana too, knows exactly how it is that you and your brothers achieved your reputations.”

His heart was thudding all the time now, much too hard. He was surprised he was still functioning.

“You don’t understand,” Wilder said, feeling something likepanickedwhen that should have been impossible. “Ryder and I really are bad, and I don’t mean in bars.”

She frowned as if she was about to launch into a new argument, but she stopped herself. “What do you mean by that?”

He stared back at her, at this woman who he should never have touched in the first place. This woman who had somehow insinuated herself in between his bones, so he couldn’t take a breath without feeling her, everywhere.

Wilder didn’t understand what sorcery it was that she’d wielded that they’d managed to end up here. Cat in his bed. Cat in this cabin, where he’d never even considered bringing another woman, because he kept his indiscretions in hotel rooms and houses that he could leave behind when he went.

And before her, he always, always went.

Usually before first light.

“My mother was sick,” he found himself saying, haltingly. Because her blue gaze didn’t waver. Because it was cold and she was wrapped up in a blanket and she looked as if she intended to sit there forever. And this was never a story he’d had to tell. He and Ryder never spoke of it, because they didn’t have to. They knew. “Ryder and I were only five or six, but we got into everything. My dad was a mess, understandably, and so my mother’s cousin came to stay. She was supposed to take care of us. As far as I know, Harlan was a saint that summer, but Ryder and I…”

He shook his head. His throat hurt. Wilder regretted even starting down this road.

“What do you mean?” Cat was asking. “You were two little boys. What were you supposed to do?”

Wilder blew out a breath. “Cousin Roberta couldn’t keep us quiet and one day, we got in to see our mother while she was supposed to be sleeping. We jumped all over her, the way we always did, until her cousin had to drag us out. She told us it was our fault.”

“Your fault?” Cat’s voice was barely above a whisper. Her eyes never left his. “What could possibly have been your fault?”

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