Page 5 of The Cowboy's Secret Babies

Today, there were feet of snow piled high, everywhere he looked.

He could see the lights on in the library and in the elementary school, working hard to ward off the bitter cold and the dark that fell hard and quick. Farther down the road, the cluster of buildings that made up what passed for a town boasted even more lights. In the little shops, strung along the roofs, anything to beat back the northern winter dark. Because this time of year, spring always seemed too far away.

Higher in the hills that rose above the narrow valley that made up Cowboy Point, he could see more points of light in the houses that clung to the hillsides and up high on Lisle Hill, where some maniac Lisle had built himself a lighthouse. Some eight hundred miles from the sea.

A lighthouse that was no longer the beacon of his family’s enemies, he reminded himself. Given the fact that Wilder had gone ahead and married one of them.

He crossed over the frozen creek, considered a spot of day drinking at the always-open Copper Mine, but kept driving. No point in making things worse by dragging it all out.

On the far side of the small valley, the road led him up another hill and he blew out a breath as he passed the lodge that had stood tall at the top for more than a hundred years. It had been closed for most of Ryder’s life, victim to disputes within the family that owned it. It was still closed, as far as he knew, though he could see lights on inside its graceful old windows too, and had a vague memory of someone at Wilder’s wedding telling him that Jack Stark, the oldest Stark cousin in Ryder’s generation, had big plans to revamp the place and get it up and running again.

From what he could remember about Jack, he always had big plans, and yet here he still was in this tiny speck of a place that only made some maps, and only the ones that zoomed in.

For the sake of the community, Ryder hoped that the extended Stark family who communally owned it—or so the rumors went—had finally gotten their act together the way their parents had not. Thinking about the Stark family did not make him feel better about this whole homecoming situation, however.

Well. It was only the one member of the Stark family that made his chest feel a little too tight—but this wasn’t the time to think about Rosie. Or that night in Austin that he really shouldn’t think about as much as he did.

Ryder hated regret and avoided apologies, but he’d long since accepted the fact that if he was ever home for long enough—and if Rosie Stark was still around, which would surprise him, because pretty as it was, Cowboy Point was nothing but a wide space in a little-traveled road—he owed her one.

A man should know better than to treat a girl next door like a buckle bunny. No matter how she’d responded when he’d pulled her into his arms.

That was on him. And he’d say so, if he ever saw her again.

He had to believe he was still that much of a man, despite what his brothers liked to tell him.

Thinking about Rosie was a good way tonotthink about where he was headed, a problem he had encountered more than once over the years since that night, but soon enough he was there anyway.

High Mountain Ranch. Home.

Ryder squared his shoulders and guided his truck onto the acreage that had been in his family since crusty old Matthew Carey made it all the way to Montana, failed at being a miner, grew an epic mustache, and decided to try his hand at cattle instead.

“You’re being ridiculous,” he muttered at himself.

That was true. He knew it was true.

But he still didn’t want to be here.

Something he had tried to make clear to his brothers, who were famous for not listening to him.

Especially his twin.

You need to come home, Wilder had said at Christmas. Not in a text that time, but to his face.It’s time.

It can’t be time, Ryder had replied in his usual glib fashion. Or anyway, he’d smiled blandly at his brother, and had acted as if he had no idea that Wilder’s tone had gotten… intense.I have bulls to ride, bunnies to buckle. It’s hard being the pretty one.

Because that was what he always said.

Because it was always true.

What you have, his twin had replied in a low voice that Ryder didn’t like at all, because it was serious and they made a point of never being too serious,is one sick father. You’re going to regret it if all you remember of his last year is not being here.

But Wilder was the dramatic twin. Ryder probably would have blown what he’d said off if he hadn’t talked to Harlan.

Harlan was the most dependable. That was why he was in charge. It was true that his brother Boone was a close second in the dependability department, and the next in line age-wise after Ryder, but Harlan was the one that Ryder trusted the most.

Harlan was the one everyone trusted the most, because Harlan was the one who always told the truth. Like it or not.

Unlike Wilder, Harlan also didn’t exaggerate.

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