Page 44 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

Boone did not choose to share with them that he’d made sure that they weren’t avoiding Marietta. That he’d tested the waters one night and Sierra hadn’t balked at all, the way he’d wondered if she might. He also didn’t share that he’d forgotten abouttestsafter that, because all he focused on was taking her out and showing her what it was supposed to feel like to spend time with a man, by his reckoning.

It wasn’t supposed to be a long list of external rules. It was supposed to befun.

“Oh, I bet there’s more than just astirdown the mountain,” Ryder was agreeing, too heartily, because he and Wilder were two sides of the same irritating coin. “Because last I heard, Boone’s very best friend who he had no romantic designs on—despite all the evidence I saw with my very own eyes for the past three hundred years when I didn’t even live here—is only very recently divorced.”

“So recently that I doubt the ink is dry,” Harlan agreed.

“Obviously, certain parties want everyone to think that this is an affair that’s been going on for a long time.” Wilder wasn’t smiling then, when he looked at Boone. “But I think we all know that’s not you.”

“Anybody who knows me or Sierra knows that there’s no possibility she was having an affair,” Boone agreed, flatly. “And anyone who doesn’t know us can think what they want. They will anyway.”

“I think that means that he pretty much just confirmed it,” Knox pointed out with a grin. “Right?”

“Not that I needed confirmation,” Wilder said, shaking his head. But his smile was huge. “But it’s about damn time, brother.”

And Boone couldn’t decide if he was irritated or touched by the fact that all of his brothers came and clapped him on the back, one after the next, like he’d finally won the grand prize.

Which was pretty much how he felt about Sierra these days, so that tracked.

Later, when they’d exhausted all the ribbing they could come up with—and they were masters in that arena—he found himself back in the ranch’s big barn. He finished the chores he was doing and then wandered back into his dad’s workshop.

Zeke was sitting there by an open window that let the summer afternoon in. He was polishing up some of his finished pieces, making them all shine. But he looked at Boone and nodded.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” the old man said.

Boone blew out a breath, and didn’t bother to ask how he’d heard so fast. “Sierra and I are together,” he said gruffly. “If that’s what you mean. But we haven’t put any labels on it.”

Zeke stopped what he was doing and stared at him for a moment. “Why not?”

This, Boone decided, was significantly worse than anything his brothers had thrown at him. He could handle ribbing. He could handle all four of his brothers.

But his father was a different thing altogether.

Boone liked and appreciated his brothers. But Zeke was the man he’d modeled his adult life after. That meant something different.

He moved further into the workshop and took his Stetson off, then sat down on one of the other benches near his father’s workbench. He felt like a little kid, called into this workshop to explain a teacher’s call home or to give his side in a brotherly war. The nostalgia was both comforting and ill-fitting at once.

Why not?Zeke had asked. Why wasn’t Boone putting labels on things?

“This is all new to her,” he told his father. “She just got divorced. She has a whole life to figure out. And anyway, there’s no rush.”

“Of course there’s a rush,” Zeke retorted.

And Boone realized—with a sickening sort of lurch in his belly—that he’d actually forgotten. He blew out a breath and couldn’t believe he’d actually let himself get so distracted that he’d forgotten.

“You always look so healthy,” he said quietly. “I forget.”

Zeke eyed him. Almost balefully, Boone thought, though that couldn’t be right. “That’s not what I meant.”

Boone shifted uncomfortably on the low bench, because there wasn’t a thing on this planet that could make him fidget except his father. His father talking about Sierra? When Boone had just forgotten how little time he likely had left with Zeke? This was a recipe for disaster as far as Boone was concerned.

He cautioned himself to remain calm. “I would love to say that I took what you said at Easter last year to heart,” he said after a moment. “That it made all of this happen, but it didn’t. The simple truth that she got divorced and she leaned on her best friend. And for the first time since high school, she wasn’t taken. That’s the beginning and the end of it.”

Zeke continued to study him, and Boone ordered himself to sit still, like a man.

Not some awkward, prepubescent kid whose body was going to do what it liked no matter how he tried to keep his limbs in order. He didn’t miss those days at all. Except maybe the ability he’d had at sixteen to eat… everything, and then go back for thirds and fourths with no aftereffects.

He figured he’d probably miss that the rest of his life.

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