Page 12 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

And somehow made Belinda laugh when usually she preferred to wave the rest of them away and mutter aboutinterferencebeneath her breath, but always loud enough to be heard.

Zeke sat there in the middle of it all like the chaos was giving him life.

Literally, Boone hoped.

But he didn’t like to think too much about how unlikely it was that his father was going to watch any of these kids grow up.

“I myself have been known to play with fire,” came his brother Ryder drawled from beside him. Boone didn’t respond. He was standing in the kitchen, watching the mayhem unfold and minding his own business while it did. Ryder laughed. “But even in my wildest days, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an act of self-immolation like this.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Boone replied mildly.

This was a lie, of course.

Sierra, like Cat, was incapable of sitting around and being waited upon. She and Cat were talking a mile a minute over there by the stove, where Belinda was directing traffic and batting Wilder’s hands away from her roast potatoes.

“What I have to wonder,” Ryder said in a low voice so that only Boone could hear, “is what happens when the only person in the state of Montana who doesn’t know how you feel about this girl—meaning, Sierra herself—finds out? How do you think she’s going to handle the news that her dependable best friend had actually been nursing a thing for her all along?”

Boone laughed. “Never going to happen,” he assured his older brother with a grin. He clapped Ryder on the shoulder. “Maybe you don’t know this but I’m a sweet, kind angel. As far she’s concerned, I have wings and a halo.”

Ryder laughed, as his sons came barreling by, but when Boone didn’t laugh with him, he shook his head. “I don’t see it ending well, Boone.”

“That’s because you have less self-control than I do,” Boone retorted, and lifted a brow at the now-brawling toddlers on the kitchen floor.

Ryder took that with a grin. “You may have a point.”

Boone’s mother was harder to shake off. When he volunteered to help with the dishes after a long, lazy sort of meal that was repeatedly punctuated by laughter and toddler outbursts and the usual brotherly nonsense, Belinda took that as an opportunity to send him out to the compost pile.

Mostly so she could follow him and corner him away from the rest the family.

“You can’t really believe you’re going to trick that girl into falling in love with you simply because you put a roof over her head,” Belinda said, glowering at him.

Boone would have taken a swing at one of his brothers if they’d dared say something like that to him, but this was his mother. So he only rolled his eyes. “You’re right. I can’t think that. I don’t.”

“I know your father demanded that all five of you marry and start on grandchildren,” Belinda continued. “But I never thought that you’d bethiscompetitive.”

Boone felt his jaw go tight, but he couldn’t let himself think about what his father had called hislast, best wish. “I’ve never been competitive a day in my life.”

That wasn’t strictly true. He’d played football in high school. And a man didn’t grow up with four hard-headed brothers without a sense of healthy competition—he just preferred to compete by appearing to beabovecompetition. It usually worked like a charm.

Belinda sniffed, but her gaze was assessing. “I don’t think he meant that you should take him so seriously that you’d move in with Sierra. That seems extreme. Isn’t she still married?”

“Sierra’s marital status isn’t my business,” Boone growled out. “I’m not clear on how it could be yours.”

His mother was a tiny thing, especially in this family. But what she didn’t have in stature, she more than made up for in intensity. She poked her finger into his chest and scowled up at him.

“You deserve a woman who can love you back, Boone,” she snapped out with a serious look on her face. “You should demand it.”

They were away from the ranch house, on the backside of the outbuildings. None of his brothers were in earshot. Sierra was safely inside the house.

Boone let out a heavy breath.

“She loves me, Mom,” he said, and shrugged. “Is it the kind of love you and Dad have? No. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less worthy. If that’s what I get in this life, I’ll can’t complain.”

Belinda looked as close to chastened as he’d ever seen her. “I want more for you.”

“And I want Sierra,” he told her, simply. “In whatever capacity I get her.”

Belinda started to argue and he shook his head. “I’m not going to fight about this with you, Mom. And I don’t intend to discuss it further. But I need you to respect it—and her. If you can’t manage that, then respect me.”

---