Page 2 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

Belinda tried her best to look guileless, and failed. “I can’t help it if fate moves too slow for me, most of the time.”

“Boone made up his mind about that Tate girl back in the seventh grade,” Zeke reminded her, though he knew she hadn’t forgotten. “Walked right into his first day of junior high down in Marietta and there she was. He took one look, and that was that. You know Boone. Mountains change faster than he does.”

“Don’t I know it.” Belinda sniffed, though her eyes were dancing. “Stubborn as a thousand mules, that one. He must have gotten it from your side of the family.”

Zeke hadn’t been born a wise man, but two marriages and five headstrong boys had helped him along. He kept his thoughts on that to himself.

Because he might have been descended from generations of hardy Montana stock, themselves the product of single-minded, determined folks who had set off into the great unknown from back east and had made the best of what they’d found.

But his Belinda was pure fire.

And she not only supported what Zeke was doing, she’d been holding back as he handled the first three. But now it was time for the younger two. She’d talked of nothing else since their third son, Ryder, had gotten married in March—to hometown girl Rosie Stark, who’d come back pregnant after a night in Austin when she’d met up with Ryder as part of his rodeo career. They’d made two beautiful twin boys that first night, and if it had taken the two of them three years and some intensity to find their way to each other, well.

Zeke and Belinda knew a thing or two about complicated paths. As long as they led to the right place, it was worth it.

Besides, Ryder and Rosie’s complicated path meant Zeke had two ready-made grandsons already, so he was all for it.

They walked to the ridge that let them look down the gentle sweep of their land, and over four parcels of land tucked away in the trees where three of the four youngest had built themselves homes over the years. Ryder had broken ground on his last month. Harlan, as eldest, lived on the other side of the ranch house, but it was Boone that Zeke was focused on today.

Down a ways from the houses the boys had built, and accessible by a more direct path directly from Boone’s house that didn’t use the main drive, there was the creek that ran through this part of the property. On the other side was Boone’s dairy barn and the little farm he’d started over the last couple of years.

That was another thing about Boone. He was satisfied with what he had, but always interested in what came next, too.

“I can’t believe that child decided to start a dairy,” Belinda said, clearly looking in the same direction.

“He’s always been quietly innovative,” Zeke pointed out. “I’ve never known him to sit still for too long.”

Belinda was frowning down at their son’s life, laid out before her with the snowcapped Copper Mountain rising in the distance and, closer in, the old Cowboy Point Lodge that was in the process of a long, drawn-out renovation. Boone’s house he’d built years ago and had refined over the years. The barn he’d put up two summers ago now. The field he was cultivating, though Zeke hadn’t asked what crops he thought he might produce.

What he did know was that Boone was sure to have a plan.

Then again, so did Belinda.

“I like Sierra well enough,” she said now, though the way she said it made Zeke laugh. Especially while she was looking down on all the things Boone had built.

“Sierra is a good girl,” he told his wife, maybe a little chidingly.

“My firstborn child has been pining for that so-called good girl for more than half his life,” Belinda retorted. “I question her choices. But then again, as I said, I think that fate has finally decided to step in.”

“I thought that I was pretending that fate already had.” Zeke eyed her. “Do I have to tell you that out of all of them, it’s going to be Boone who takes it the hardest when he finds out I lied to him?”

“Boone could do a little more gray in his life,” Belinda declared, a bit airily to Zeke’s ear. “He’s been black or white, light or dark, with nothing in between for as long as he’s been alive. It might be the best thing in the world for him to spend some time reckoning with a white lie told for all the right reasons.”

Privately, Zeke thought that was easy for Belinda to say. Every single one of his boys loved her to distraction, as well they should. It was Zeke who was their father. And he knew exactly how much Boone had always looked up to him.

Boone’s regard for Zeke was going to take a hit. There was no way around it.

He’d known that going in.

On the other hand, Zeke agreed with Belinda not only that it was for the best reasons—hell, he’d do anything at all to see to it that his sons were happy—but it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for Boone to take off those rose-colored glasses of his for a minute. Integrity mattered to Zeke. He’d made it a cornerstone of his life and had done his best to instill it in his sons too, so that they could call themselves good men.

But he was also old enough to know that when it was used as a weapon, it was no different from any other in the amount of damage it could do.

“What I’ve been trying to tell you,” Belinda said impatiently, bumping her hip against Zeke’s to make sure she had his full attention, “is that fate might actually have stepped up to the plate. At last.”

“You’re going to have to tell me what that means,” Zeke told her. “I know the land. I know cattle and weather and can occasionally predict my wife’s moods. Fate I leave up to you.”

“My love, you will never predict my moods,” Belinda replied with a laugh.

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