Page 11 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

Knox was many things, Boone thought. Arguably the smartest of them all, he was the only one of the brothers who’d gone on to college after high school. He’d done it on a football scholarship and had still managed to graduate with an agricultural degree over in Missoula, even though he made it sound as if he’d never stopped partying.

These days he was the efficiency expert on the ranch. He was the one who studied the systems they used and made recommendations about how to shift gears, though he managed to do it in a way that honored the history of this place and the way the Careys had always done things.

Boone figured that kind of thing had to take a lot of smarts.

Pity Knox didn’t apply any of that to the rest of his life.

“If you came all the way out here for the sole purpose trying to get under my skin, you’re doomed to failure,” Boone drawled. “You also clearly need to talk to Harlan about giving you a better workload.”

“My workload is fine, thank you,” Knox said with a laugh. “Can’t I be worried about my brother?”

Boone stopped messing around with his fence and stepped back to eye his handiwork. Mending fences was an ongoing task without end when a person worked on a ranch. Or a farm. Or any sort of outdoor environment that required a person enclose some areas to keep the animals from roaming freely and getting themselves into trouble. Some members of his family viewed the job as an inconvenience, which was fair enough, because it was like playing whack-a-mole. Fix a fence here and another section went down there. The livestock were forever finding new ways to wriggle their way free of the fences set to contain them.

Still, Boone enjoyed it. It was downright meditative.

But then, he took pride in the things he did. Even a section of fencing way out here in a corner of their land that no one but him was likely to ever see. If the fence didn’t matter here, then nothing did. If the fence mattered, everything mattered.

Boone liked to believe that it really did matter what he did with his hours each day. Either a man took pride in his life or he was wasting it, to his way of thinking, and he wasn’t one to waste much of anything. Even a little bit of mending fences.

Besides, a little existential meditation never went awry when forced to deal with his meddling brothers.

“Sierra needed to get out of Marietta for a while and I happen to have the extra space,” Boone told Knox, wiping at his own brow and keeping his eyes on the mountains. The quiet, enduring mountains who did not have toclaimtheir power and authority. They simply exuded it. He tried to do the same. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“You justhappento have that space,” Knox said, rolling his eyes. “Like you didn’t build that barn with hope in your heart and Sierra’s name in your mouth.”

Boone chose to ignore the commentary on hisheartand anything involving Sierra and hismouth. “It’s a win all around, because she and I want to kick the dairy into high gear this summer.” He eyed his brother. “Does that satisfy the little gossip in your soul?”

“You can call me a gossip all you want,” Knox said with an unbothered laugh. “What do you think it’s going to be like at Sunday dinner, though?”

“I think it’s going to be perfectly polite.” Boone frowned at his brother. “Because Sierra will be there, Know. In person. So unless you plan on getting in her face, which I really wouldn’t recommend, I think you’ll keep your commentary to yourself.”

“I might.” Knox grinned, clearly enjoying himself. “But Mom? Keep her opinions to herself? Unlikely. Not just unlikely—unheard of. Are you really ready for that?”

Boone thought about that a lot over the next couple of days.

He’d told Sierra to take her time settling in and getting acclimated. She was used to living in town, so it would take some getting used to the rhythms of living this far away from amenities like a supermarket. She was going to have to learn what to buy in bulk and how to handle the perishables. She was going to have to pay a lot more attention to the gas level in her Jeep.

That wasn’t even getting into what he assumed would be the significant emotional turmoil from leaving her whole life behind her. Because he never met anyone taking a break from or exiting a marriage who didn’t have a pretty intense reaction to it. No matter what the situation.

He’d told her that Monday was soon enough to start talking about the dairy business. In the meantime, he’d showed her around the office that was on the lower level of the barn and had invited her to get comfortable there.

What he wanted was for Sierra to find herself comfortable. Everywhere. All over his life in whatever way she liked. And what Knox didn’t understand was that it wasn’t torture. It feltright, the way Sierra always did and always would.

But no one needed to understand anything except the fact that Boone was going to do what he wanted to do. Every time. Up to and including giving his best friend a safe space to land.

By the time he and Sierra walked in to the ranch house that first Sunday in June, he’d come to the conclusion that Knox had been trying to get a rise out of him—a lifelong pursuit on Know’s part. Because he knew his family. His brothers might like to talk shit and roast each other whenever possible, but there wasn’t a single one of them who would hurt Sierra’s feelings. Not deliberately. And not a one of them who would ever do a single thing to make her feel uncomfortable.

This was because they were all decent men, of course—even Knox—and not because they were worried about Boone’s reaction if they insulted or hurt Sierra.

Though he imagined that potential reaction didn’t hurt, either.

Besides, there were more important things to talk about. His oldest brother Harlan’s wife, Kendall, was solidly pregnant—something that had been suspected a while, but only confirmed about a month back. She was due in September.

Zeke and Belinda were delighted. Beyond delighted, in fact.

Sunday dinners were already different than they been a year ago. A lot louder and more disorderly than ever before—and with five boys turning into grown men, it had never been all thatorderlyaround here.

These days, Ryder and Rosie came with their four-year-old twins, Eli and Levi, who were terrors in all the best ways. The little boys tore through the house, wild with glee, and were doted upon by everyone they raced past. Belinda worked her usual magic in the kitchen, these days with more help than she’d ever accepted before—mostly because Wilder’s wife, Cat, insisted and would not be dissuaded.

---