Page 52 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

But he couldn’t quite make himself believe that.

Because she made him feel like that perfect jump from that rock, high over the water. There had been that moment where he and Ryder had been suspended between the two—not falling, not flying.

The next moment had been the shock of the water, cool and deep. And the rush of sensation, fear, and excitement, all mixed together until they were indistinguishable, one from the other.

That was what it felt like now.

She threw him headfirst into that flight. And she could do so anytime she wished, with all the blue in her gaze.

But out there on the porch, she had dumped him in that water, too.

Wilder remembered another part of the story, the part he usually blocked out. That when he and Ryder had gone in and crawled into bed with their mother, she hadn’t cried out. She hadn’t shooed them away, or passed out from the pain.

On the contrary, though she had been frail then—with strange machines standing sentry beside her bed—she had sat up anyway. And she’d taken them in her arms, one of them on each side like always. She’d kissed their heads in that way of hers that he could sometimes feel even now, from across time and memory.

The poker game continued.

And now here they were.

They were getting close to the final moment, and he thought both of them knew it. He lost and removed his T-shirt.

But on the next round, Cat lost her T-shirt and she sighed, as if that was a hardship.

She stood then, but not without looking at him. A lot.

Then she peeled that T-shirt up and over her head, pulling her hair up behind it, so that suddenly, the storm inside of him was lost somewhere in the swirl of rosemary and lavender, and the sweetest sugar there was.

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think.

And damn her, she needed to wear a bra so he could have access to his rational mind once again.

But instead, Cat, his brand-new wife who he wanted to divorce, stood there before him in absolutely nothing but a pair of white panties.

He looked up the length of her sweet, gorgeous body and he wondered why it had taken him so long, just as she’d asked him before.

Because he had seen a great many women make regrettable decisions in bars. In the Wolf Den itself, for that matter. He had never felt compelled to involve himself. It had never even crossed his mind, unless he was the regret in question.

He had never driven a woman home unless he’d already known that he’d be spending the night—or at least, a few hours—inside.

But the key point that he’d somehow gotten himself to miss all this time was that he kept going back.

Night after night after night.

He’d known it was a problem. But he hadn’t stopped.

And he hadn’t told Ryder about it either.

Wilder had kept her secret even from his twin. Almost as if he knew that if he mentioned Cat, someone he would be far more likely to listen to than himself would state the obvious.

Up to and including that night when Tennessee and Dallas had come upon them in the woods.

And maybe that was the real truth that he found only as he stared at Cat, now.

His wife.

As she stood there almost completely naked before him.

Her hair was dark with those bits of shiny copper that made him deeply sympathetic to all of his ancestors who’d trudged across the country to get their hands on a little bit of that precious metal. His wife, with those small, upthrust, perfect breasts that he’d spent a lot of time on last night, and it hadn’t been nearly enough.

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