Page 1 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

Prologue

It was abeautiful afternoon in a southwestern Montana late May. The sky was achingly blue and the sun was bright enough to make it feel like summer might show up again this year after all. Locals knew better than to think that might be soon. Sneak peeks like this were enough to trick the unwary before the last of the snow inevitably fell, because around this part of the Montana Rockies, there were only three seasons in a given year: winter, July, and August.

Anything could happen before summer and probably would.

But today it was pretty and warm and Zeke Carey was enjoying a stroll with his wife through their land, some ten miles above Paradise Valley.

Spring was evident in the snow melt that made the creeks run high and the rivers treacherous. The birds were cheerier. Wildlife were waking up and wandering where they liked. The land was green and there were lilacs in vibrant bloom in the lower elevations, though these hills where they lived stayed colder and snowier.

All these signs of a new season making its way into the world made a man feel alive.

And Zeke Carey had been pretending he was dying for over a year now, so he tooklifea little more seriously than he might have before.

Not just his life. He was involved in the lives of his five hard-headed sons as well.Too involved, some might say, but Zeke had never been much for external opinions. Especially if said opinions came from his children, who were all grown but still needed a helping hand to get where they needed to go. Or a good, swift kick in the butt.

Whatever worked.

Zeke wanted to be the kind of grandfather who got to know his grandkids. Who watched them grow up a bit. He wanted to be more to them than a distant memory and a gravestone.

Sometimes a man had to take matters into his own hands, and Zeke had.

But pretending to be dying for over a year now sure made a man contemplate his own mortality in interesting ways. Mostly, how glad he was that he wasn’tactuallydying—or at least, not more than anyone else.

Luckily, three of his five sons were already married thanks to his announcement of impending doom. And a little push here and there, when needed. Better yet, his eldest son and the wife he’d married like one of the good, old-fashioned mail-order brides that had made the West great were pregnant. Almost five months along now.

Things were coming along nicely.

And they were about to get even better.

Beside him, her hands deep in the pockets of her vest—because while it was warmer than usual, but that didn’t meanwarm—his wife Belinda was walking with her brow furrowed. A sight that would make any of their boys’ blood run cold.

This was an expression that indicated that Belinda wasworking on something. And the things Belinda worked on always came to fruition. They did not always get therecomfortably.

“Whose life are you planning to ruin this time?” Zeke asked her, mildly enough.

Because if he’d wantedcomfortable, he would have stayed on his own after he lost his first wife. But Belinda had made him one of her projects. She’d done some of her best work on him and, like most things, she’d been right.

His Alice, God rest her soul, had been a gentle thing. Alice had made things easy and sweet. She’d been a soothing presence, even when she got sick. Zeke had promised to love her forever and he intended to keep that promise, though it looked different now than the forever they’d planned.

Belinda had never begrudged him that. On the contrary, she accepted Alice as a part of their lives, and in the way she loved all their children, too. The three Alice had left behind, little as she’d ever wanted to say goodbye, and the two more that Belinda and Zeke had made together.

But the thing about Belinda was that she was fierce. She was wholeheartedly ferocious in all things, from the way she gardened to the way she cooked, to the way she loved Zeke, deep and wide and right before they’d set out on this walk, on the kitchen floor like they were kids.

Zeke’s forever was complicated in all the best ways. He was a deeply lucky man.

“I’ll ruinyourlife if you’re not careful, my love,” she replied and then smiled at him, her hazel eyes gleaming. “It’s Boone. It’s always Boone.”

Boone was in some ways the hardest headed of all their sons. He had been born self-contained. Even when he was very young, he had always had a different kind of presence about him. When he made up his mind, that was that. He never retracted. He never circled back or changed his mind.

When Boone set himself upon a course, he never varied from it.

Yet he was, for some unfathomable reason, considered ‘the sweet one.’

“He’s going to be the hardest nut to crack,” Zeke said.

Beside him, Belinda nodded. Then rolled her eyes. “I would agree, but I think fate might have to take the wheel.”

Zeke laughed, looking down at her in all the soft spring sunshine. “Since when have you ever been one to step aside and let fate take charge? I thought you told fate what to do, and how, and better yet, when to get it done.”

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