Page 15 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

Again, another sort of hush fell over the whole table, and she wished she could claw that question back.

“Harlan likes to say that Boone is the most determined man he’s ever met,” Kendall said after a moment, and what looked like a little too much eye contact with her sisters-in-law.

But Sierra was too busy nodding at that to run that down. “He is,” she said. “I think most people would be satisfied with taking part in High Mountain Ranch. Who wouldn’t be satisfied? It’s one of the best ranches in Montana. I’m not surprised, though, that Boone still wanted to branch out and try something on his own. I think that’s just who he is.”

“Wilder always says that while Boone plays a man of very few words, he has a whole lot to say if you really listen,” Cat said. This time she made eye contact with Sierra. And held it. “And also that he’s never done a single thing he hasn’t wanted to do. Not once in all his life.”

Sierra felt something seem to shimmy down her spine at that, almost like foreboding, though she couldn’t have said why. It was almost as if there was an answer to a question she hadn’t known she was askingright there, just within reach, if she would only—

But Rosie changed the subject, asking Kendall all kinds of questions about her pregnancy and her baby plans, and Sierra forgot all about it.

The next morning was Monday and Sierra was looking forward to really getting into the details of what she in good would be doing with the dairy business this summer. Maybe even using that minor in business that she’d gotten at MSU.

But before she could do that, she had to drive back down into Marietta to tell her father she was quitting her job as his paralegal.

The morning was cold and a little bit foggy, and she drove carefully down the winding switchbacks that took her into Marietta. Her hometown gleamed as the mountain fog receded, giving way to the sunlight. It looked like the sort of place where nothing bad could never happen. As if all the Old West brick and elegant Victorians could make it a real life fairy tale, suitable for the Hallmark movies she loved to watch.

On mornings like this, driving in from up high and getting a bird’s eye view of the whole town, Sierra believed it.

Once on the valley floor, she could have gone to see if her father was getting ready at home. She knew his schedule better than she knew her own, so she knew full well he would be having his second cup of coffee in the kitchen with the front pages of at least three papers, wearing an apron over his good shirt so the newsprint wouldn’t transfer to his clothes.

But she didn’t turn down her old street. Individually, her parents were… More manageable. Together it was always the same thing.

And last week’s unpleasant dinner was still ringing in her head.

She went to the office instead in the center of town and waited to feel a pang of nostalgia when she parked on the street in front of the law office that had been a part of her life since she was a child. Surely she ought to feel something now that she was walking away from the only job she’d had since graduating college.

But no matter how long she sat there and waited for the sadness to hit her, it didn’t.

Shelikedwaking up in her new apartment every morning. She kept expecting to feel some sense of shock, or sadness, that she wasn’t in the house she and Matty had lived in together for a decade. Instead, she woke up and stared directly into the sky that seemed to be right there in the bedroom with her, thanks to that skylight.

It had been a full week and Sierra didn’t miss that excruciatingly clean and showy house over in the flashy new build neighborhood on the road out of town that most locals were still furious about. She decided that it probably just hadn’t hit her yet.

Maybe changing a whole life took longer to really land. Emotionally, that was—because so far, she thought Cowboy Point in general and life in Boone’s barn, where she could do precisely as she liked at all times, was pretty fantastic.

She was early to the law office, arriving even before Mrs. Lloyd. So she let herself in and took the opportunity to empty out her desk, so that she wouldn’t feel any pressure to do should there be a temper tantrum going on at the same time. Then she went sat in the waiting room, knowing that her father would walk in at 9 o’clock on the dot.

Mrs. Lloyd came in first—precisely fifteen minutes earlier—and if she was surprised to see Sierra sitting there in what was most certainly not an appropriate work outfit by her father’s standards, she said nothing. Because she had always been the soul of discretion. She said hello and then went to her desk to begin preparing for the day ahead.

Exactly fifteen minutes later, at precisely 9AM, Kenneth Tate marched in through the door.

Unlike Mrs. Lloyd, he stopped dead at the sight of Sierra, sitting in his waiting room in jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and a sleek wool vest to ward off the morning chill. He stared at her as if she was wearing something scandalous, or possibly risqué, when she could have been an advertisement for standard Montana wear.

“Is a casual day?” he asked. As ifoffended.

“I came talk to you, Dad,” Sierra said, staying bright and focused, because it was always the little sidebars that ruined everything. “Things got a little heated a dinner the other night, so I thought I’d—”

“We can speak in my office, Sierra,” Kenneth said in a darkly reproving voice, as if poor Mrs. Lloyd didn’t already know every last detail about their whole family and where every single one of their secrets was hidden after all these years.

She and Sierra exchanged a look, in fact, as Sierra dutifully followed her father into his office. Inside, he made huge production of shutting the door behind them and then fluttering around behind his desk as if the entire state and federal judiciary was clamoring for his attention. All to make certain Sierra got the message that she was disrupting his cherished morning routine.

Sierra took one of the chairs in front of his desk and waited. As she did, she studied the pictures he kept on his wall, all of them of himself with various people he’d consider luminaries, without a family photo to be seen.

That made her feel a pang of something—not quite sadness. And somehow that seemed to connect emotionally to the fact that, as far she was aware, this was the first time she had ever worn jeans in this office.

Not every revolution started big and bold, she reminded herself. The point was starting at all.

“I can’t imagine what could cause you to come to the office like this,” Kenneth said fretfully as he finally sat down. “It’s incredibly irregular—”

---