Page 6 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

He allowed himself to feel that familiar tightening in his chest. He was used to it. He breathed it out and then put it away.

Because Sierra was his friend. And Boone was—always had been and always would be—the best one she had.

She blew out a breath. “Part of me is afraid I’m going to chicken out,” she admitted. “And it will just drag on forever until they finally discover my marriage is over because he’s marrying someone else, because you know he will. He’s that type. He’ll do it fast.”

Boone had long ago decided that nothing good could come from any discussions about whattypeher husband was. No good at all.

“You’re not going to chicken out,” he assured her, like he knew. Like it had already happened. When he knew entirely too well that it was possible she would. “What do you think your parents are going to do?”

Not what his parents would do, he knew.Hisparents had always made it clear they loved him and supported him, even if they thought he was wrong. Sierra had never had that foundation.

“Come on.” Sierra laughed. Only a little hollowly. “You know exactly what they’re going to do.” She came over and sat down on the couch, curling her feet up beneath her on the far end of the sofa from him. “Mary Catherine will have the vapors as usual. All the fluttering and complaints of vague disorders triggered by my insensitivity. Kenneth will start blustering about his position in the community and what this will mean for his golf game. It’s all very boring. It will be tense and uncomfortable and I wouldn’t be surprised if they race from the table to go see if they can intercede themselves and make it all go away.”

“I never have understood why they are so attached to all this,” Boone said, quietly. Carefully.

He had to go easy. Because he’d always understood that if he let himself vent his full feelings about Sierra’s long-term relationship and then marriage to the so-called scion of the uppity Quealey family down in Marietta, he wouldn’t stop. Not only would he not stop, he would probably get into subjects that Sierra would not like.

And Boone had made an art—not to mention a whole life—out of being a comfortable place for Sierra to land. A safe space for her to be herself.

He wasn’t going to go jeopardizing that now.

“Of course you don’t understand,” Sierra said, and there was an edge in her voice. She picked at the knee of her jeans that he thought were far too baggy for her body. “The Quealeys are money with a capital M. Snooty Bozeman money. They’re exactly the kind of people that my parents have always loved the most. After all, according to them, everyone in Paradise Valley is a redneck hick, not a fancy lawyer like my father or a hedge fund czar like Fletcher Quealey.” She rolled her eyes and took on a certain cadence that he knew was mimicking her father. “He used to work on Wall Street, you know.”

Boone did know. No one could live around here and not know more than they wanted to about the steady influx of rich city people who came from places like New York City or Los Angeles and decided that what they really needed was a Montana ranch house. Not an actual ranch, because that was hard work, but the idea of one. A lot of them settled in trendy, flashy Bozeman to start, but then, soon enough, some of them began to resent thateveryone elsehad settled in Bozeman too.

That was why Sierra’s father had taken his law practice out of Bozeman and down into Marietta when Sierra was a baby. And that was how the Quealeys, who would have made great copper kings if only there was still the option to exploit the land and its people, had built themselves one of those showy, pointless ranchettes out on the edge of town. In true Bozevegas style, it was all fake antlers and decorative horseshoes, Pendleton blankets tossedjust soon pristine leather couches, and rooms dominated by stone fireplaces and interior barn doors.

Every now and again, Boone and his brothers would run into folks like the Quealeys in the feed store, pretending to be real ranchers. Those interactions generally provided significant merriment at all the bars in Crawford County.

But when it came to Matty Quealey, the spoiled little rich kid who’d been in his and Sierra’s class in school, Boone had never found much to laugh about.

Matty was a douche.

That had been true when they had been in high school. It had been true when he gone off to college somewhere on the West Coast but had never let Sierra go. It had proved even more true when he’d finally come back, no doubt because he’d realized that he was little more than a guppy in the big bad world out there.

Only here in Marietta could he saunter around like he meant something, but he’d obviously taken to it, because he’d been doing it ever since. Always keeping Sierra close. First as his girlfriend, then as his wife.

Boone had managed not to kill him for so long now that it was no longer a danger. Just another ache. Another arthritis that had no cure, but that he could live with, right along with all the other aches and pains that defined this. And him.

Because he already had lived with it. For years.

“They are not going to like the fact that I finally left him,” Sierra was saying dryly. “But if I’m completely honest, once the smoke clears? I think my dad’s really not going to like that I’m quitting work, too.”

“You don’t have to quit,” Boone felt compelled to say, even though if it was up to him, he would more than happily steal Sierra away and secrete her up here on Carey land, where she would finally be safe from all the things that had hurt her over the years.

Her family. Matty Quealey. That particular slice of Marietta society that spent far too much time in The Graff Hotel here and the fine resorts all over this part of Montana, amusing themselves with charity events and thought they were better than the place they lived. When it was obvious to anyone who knew the land the way Boone did that they had no idea what the real Montana was about. They just came in, stole water resources and sometimes land too, and liked to look at the mountains through their floor-to-ceiling windows.

They neverunderstoodthe mountains.

“I absolutely do have to quit thanklessly paralegalling for my father,” Sierra said, meeting his gaze and holding it. “I’m starting a new life, even if it kills me.” She lifted up her chin. “I’m throwing out everything that’s felt like an anchor all this time and I’m stepping into what’s new. And at the end of the summer, I’ll see where I am. I’ll seewhoI am.”

“Still,” Boone said, because this was his job. Being the voice of reason even when he would have been perfectly happy if Sierra never saw her parents or her husband again in this lifetime. Because what mattered was thatshewas happy. “I want you to know, if at any time this summer you think you’ve made a huge mistake—”

“Boone.” She scowled at him. “Shut up. I’m moving in. You and I are going to make this dairy of yours a sensation. Thanks to you, I’m going to be happy if it kills me.” Sierra blew out a breath then and laughed, but only a little. “And it might.”

Not before it killed him, Boone thought.

But he was used to that, too.

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