Page 7 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

“I just want to feel something,” Cat told him. And there was something wise and even a little bit sad in the way she looked at him. “I want to live a little. I want to feel like a country song. One of the good ones, all emotional and hot and maybe a little bit sad. Doesn’t everybody get to feel like that at least once in their life?” She shook her head and laughed, but she was looking away when she did it. “I’ve never even been kissed.”

And that, Wilder thought, was a damn shame.

He wasn’t the sort of man a woman could depend on, he’d always made that clear, but there were some things he was remarkably good at. Kissing was one of them.

Thinking about it that way, this was basically apublic service.

“You should have just said so,” he told her gruffly. “You don’t need to go back in there and find yourself a questionable stranger, Cat. You want to kiss the cowboy with a bad reputation, sing yourself a little country song, and live a little on a summer night?” Wilder grinned, slow and dirty, until her blue eyes went wide and hot. “Kiss me.”

Chapter Two

Cat was sureshe hadn’t heard him right.

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t move back, or indicate in any other way that either he was kidding or she had completely misheard him, which was admittedly highly possible after she’d spilled out her whole life and all her existential angstathim.

At Wilder freaking Carey, of all people.

But if anything, he seemed to be… waiting.

Cat told herself she couldn’t possibly have heard him say what she thought he’d said. And certainly not in thatvoiceof his. With thatlookon his ridiculously handsome face.

“Go ahead,” Wilder said, in that low, deep rumble of a voice that she could feel in every single, silly cell of her body. “Kiss me, Cat.”

So.

She hadn’t imagined it.

This wasn’t a figment of her imagination. She hadn’t blacked out in the Wolf Den, and she wouldn’t wake up from this in a rush in her bed at home, because it was happening.

This was really happening.

Wilder Carey was telling her to kiss him.

And Cat felt as if she was free falling. She had known Wilder Carey all her life. In the same way that she knew Copper Mountain—the peak that rose up between her tiny little hometown and Marietta—with its steep sides, pretty views, and weather patterns like moods. Meaning she had always seen him from afar. He and his twin brother Ryder had always been the subject of intense fascination in town, and no matter that they were older. That was the thing about a small place like Cowboy Point. No one was ever focusedonlyon their own age group. There weren’t enough people for that.

Besides, all of the Careys were astonishingly good-looking. That was a simple, inescapable fact no matter how old they were. In a family of five boys it was reasonable to expect at least one or two to come up short in the looks department, in one way or another.

That was not the case with the Careys. Those high-cheekboned, chiseled-jawed genes ran strong.

But Cat, like every other female who drew breath beneath the Montana sky, had always had a soft spot for Wilder.

She’d heard him laugh and tell people, in his usual flirty way, that he liked to live up to his name.The wilder the better,he liked to say.

And everybody knew he more than lived up to his nameandhis reputation.

The sweet, good girl inside of her, who’d been in charge of Cat for her whole, entire life, cautioned her against being reckless here. This was almost certainly a dare. He likely expected her to back down, to put her tail between her legs and run back up the mountain, straight back into the soft, sweet little cage her brothers had made for her.

But that other part of her was louder.

The part that wanted something else—anything else. The part that couldn’t stand the cage any longer.

The part of her that had decided that even if it scared her, she had to get out there and do wild, exciting, potentially foolish things, just to see what it felt like.

Because she loved her home. She loved her family. But no one talked about the fact that that big sky up above them was more like a ceiling. Especially in a family like hers.

Cat was pretty sure it was because her own father had been such a waste of space. He had in no way lived up to the general Lisle family expectations. If it had been up to the late and unlamented Patrick Lisle—which was Cat’s preferred way of referring to the father she barely remembered, not like her brothers who remembered too much—the General Store would have closed. The oldest establishment in Cowboy Point would have gone away like he had, taking with it all the lore and legend—good and bad—that had always been attached to the Lisle name.

Cat’s mother Jenny had picked up those pieces, though Cat often thought they must have felt like glass shards in her hands, and she’d raised her children to respect what they had. Where they came from. And who they were.

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