Page 29 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

“I love summer,” Cat said, as they set out on the patio at Mountain Mama, listening to the band while sharing a large pizza and one of Kitty Bennett’s signature salads that were always complicated and fascinating and delicious. This one involved pickled onions and blue cheese, and only the fact that the pizza was also to-die-for got Sierra to stop eating it.

As she pulled another slice onto her plate, it occurred to her that she hadn’t really been tracking her food the way she normally did. That was strange. Usually summertime made her even more ferocious in her attempts to keep herself under control.

But the pizza was too good for her to let that revelation change her behavior. Tonight, anyway.

“What I always wonder,” Cat was saying, “was if I didn’t live in Montana, would I be able to appreciate summer this much? Or do you have to suffer through the endless Montana winter to truly get the glory of a good, long summer?”

“A lot of places have terrible winters,” Cat’s friend and boss said. Ramona was not only a doctor, she came from back east and had only visited Cowboy Point when she was a girl and her grandfather was still alive. Now she’d made his old house into a clinic, and for some reason had settled down here. Sierra would have thought that her kind of willowy blondness was better suited to luxury ranch resorts, Bozeman, or even flashier cities further out.

“Do they all have perfect summers like we do?” Cat fired back.

“A lot of them do pretty well.” Ramona smiled. “But I would agree with you. There’s not much like Montana in the summertime. It’s what brought me back. The winters are a small price to pay for something this spectacular.”

Sierra had to agree. It stayed bright so late. The daylight had serious work to do to make up for all those months where it barely made an appearance. And it lingered well into the night. Sierra didn’t know a single local didn’t try their best to soak it all in, foregoing sleep if necessary. To hoard up all that vitamin D—and besides, they could all sleep in the dark months.

“We have to celebrate Sierra,” Cat announced. “She just got divorced.”

Ramona looked startled, but only slightly. “And that’s cause for celebration?” Her tone was careful.

“It definitely is,” Sierra assured her.

It was easier to say that now. Every time she said it, it was easier. Something had shifted in her so hard her on her birthday that it was like this moment had always been inevitable. She would never go back. The truth was, she barely even thought about Matty, no matter how many times her mother left her passive aggressive voicemail messages.

She was ignoring those, too.

The three of them lifted their glasses and Ramona made a wry sort of face as she put hers back down. “I’m sorry to inform you that the single scene leaves something to be desired around here.”

“That’s right,” Sierra said, shaking her head at the thought. “I’m going to have todate.”

But when she said that, the only thing she thought about was Boone.

“I was actually kidding,” Ramona said, looking back and forth between Cat and Sierra. “Not about the single scene, such as it is, but I was under the impression that you were already dating someone.”

Sierra laughed. “Oh, I’m not dating anyone. I’m not sure that Iwantto be dating anyone, honestly. On the other hand, I don’t know that I’ve ever really dated, because Matty and I got together so young that it just kind of—”

“She means Boone,” Cat interjected. She shrugged when Sierra looked at her. “I’m serious. You already know he likes you. Why not see how much he likes you?”

Sierra thought about that awkward, tense conversation in his truck the other day. About howcarefuleverything had been between them since. She’d thought about nothing else since, if she was honest, and it was high time she came to a conclusion.

She leaned in. She looked at Ramona. “You know Boone, right?”

“I do. Yes.” Ramona looked slightly uncomfortable, but Sierra brushed past that.

“He’s never dated anybody,” she told the doctor and Cat, who was leaning in herself. “I think he’s basically celibate. Like a monk. He’s so kind and gentle and sweet that I think maybe he just wants to keep it all inside—”

But she stopped, because her two companions were laughing. And not a little bit—a lot. They weren’t even pretending to hide it. Cat and Ramona looked at each other and they looked at Sierra, and they laughed and laughed and laughed.

Sierra was baffled. “What’s so funny?”

Cat was wiping at her eyes. It was Ramona’s turn to lean in closer, so she could be heard over the band yet not overheard by the next table.

“So I moved here to Cowboy Point as a single woman,” she told Sierra. “And while I might have gotten myself into some trouble, I also—”

“She doesn’t mean Boone,” Cat chimed in. A little quickly, to Sierra’s ear. “To be clear. Ramona did not date or touch Boone. Boone is not a factor in Ramona’s romantic life.”

Sierra frowned at her. “Thank you? Are you okay?”

Cat waved her beer in the air and the Sierra got the impression that she was not drunk, but more something like… baffled. It was clearly going around.

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