The Cowboy’s Mail-Order Bride (The Careys of Cowboy Point Book 1)

Chapter Five

At some point Kendall was going to have to really think about why it was that Harlan had decided this was the way to make an introduction. Why he’d thought it would be a good idea to surprise his entire family with a whole wife.

She told herself it wasn’t about her, because it couldn’t be. She hadn’t known the man a week. They’d been in touch only a little longer than that.

Nonetheless, no matter who it was about, she had to jump in.

Because it was that or… sink into the floor.

For a moment, his entire family seemed to be frozen in shock, staring back at the two of them as if they didn’t entirely comprehend what Harlan had said. She took in the crowd of people, mostly men, in the room—and she told herself it was the growing hysteria inside her that made her imagine the number of them was expanding by the second—and the way they looked from Harlan to her. Then down to their clasped hands, which she hadn’t exactly had time to adjust to either.

This went on for what seemed to her to be an eternity or two, and she couldn’t take it.

“It’s so nice to meet you all,” Kendall said merrily, before she combusted. “But I’m guessing that this is something of a surprise.”

The woman at the stove broke first. She threw up her hands, cried out something in what sounded like Spanish, and then came barreling over. She wiped her hands on her apron as she came. A tiny sort of woman, all curves and flashing gold eyes, she grabbed Kendall to her heart as if she’d been waiting her whole life for this moment.

And in doing it, somehow gave the impression that she would have chosen Kendall for Harlan if she’d been consulted.

“I’m sorry that no one in this house has a single manner between them,” she said when she released Kendall from that first, surprisingly welcoming hug. And Kendall, who was not used to hugs at all and certainly not pleasant or welcoming ones, could only stand there dumbly. Luckily, this did not seem to matter. “I’m Belinda. I’m Harlan’s stepmother and clearly he has secretly hated me all this time, because why else would he want to give me this heart attack?” She stepped back, squeezing Kendall as she went, and then turned on Harlan. “Married? You got married? How is this possible when not one of us was invited to the wedding?”

Though she glared around the room as if she wasn’t sure about that, and was checking to see if more betrayals had occurred.

“It wasn’t the kind of thing that needed a crowd,” Harlan said, and he looked calmer than ever in the midst of what was clearly a whole lot of family emotion and reaction. Kendall filed that away, too, because it was more interesting information about this man she’d married so quickly.

It turned out that she was… thirsty for as much information about Harlan as she could get.

Kendall told herself that was just smart on her part. Didn’t they say information was power? She’d never had much of that, but she knew it couldn’t hurt.

Harlan tugged her close to him, so that the rest of the tall, brawny men in the room could stop looking like a huge crowd and simply be his brothers—because they couldn’t be anyone else.

“I’m Wilder,” said the tallest of them with an easy sort of grin that indicated he, too, recognized an awkward moment and was enjoying it, the same as Harlan. Wilder looked as if someone had taken Harlan and figured out how to make all that ruggedness a little bit prettier, a whole lot wickeder, and the kind of dangerous that made a woman look twice despite herself. Wow, Kendall thought, and inched even closer to Harlan. “If you ever happen to see someone wandering around who looks like me, but much uglier and notably less charming, that would be my twin, Ryder. Though currently he’s off at the rodeo.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Ryder, the ugly twin.”

“Exactly.” Wilder grinned. “Feel free to use that as a nickname when you meet him.”

“I’m Boone,” said the next brother. He was about Harlan’s height, but he was built like a brick house. Like he could knock structures down with a single glance, and maybe a mountain or two if he got his shoulder into it. “And I can see why Harlan wanted to keep you a secret. He never did like competition.”

“In order to compete,” drawled the brother beside him, “you’d have to stop mooning around over your best friend, wouldn’t you, Boone?” He laughed when Boone scowled at him and reached over the table to shake Kendall’s free hand. “I’m Knox. I’m the baby of the family. They’ll tell you I’m spoiled but they’re ornery and jealous because they had to earn their love. I just get it, free of charge.”

“More like free of consequences,” Harlan growled. “Kendall, they’re all liars. You should know that before you listen to anything they might tell you about me.”

“We’re not going to scare her away,” Wilder said with a roll of his eyes. “We’ve been trying to convince someone to put up with you for years.”

Boone nodded. “Never thought we’d see the day.”

“We tried a reward, but no one took us up on it,” Knox said sadly. “They’ve all met him.”

Harlan looked down at Kendall. “What did I tell you?”

Kendall laughed, then again as he guided her away from the little scrum of his brothers and toward the older man who stood by the stove. She knew who he was immediately. He looked the way she imagined Harlan would, sometime in the future. His hair was gray but his eyes were bright, and he stood tall and strong.

Kendall thought that he didn’t look the slightest bit sick, but she knew better than to say something like that.

“This is my father,” Harlan told her. “Dad, this is my wife, Kendall. Behave.”

“My son thinks his brothers’ wild behavior comes from me,” the old man rasped, also reaching over to shake hands. His grip was firm and friendly. “I don’t know how to tell him it’s in reaction to how uptight he is.”

“Don’t worry,” Kendall said with a wink. “I’ll be sure to make that clear.”

“Harlan could use a little positive reinforcement from time to time,” Zeke said, with a bland look toward his eldest son. “Otherwise he gets a little testy.”

“More than a little,” came Boone’s voice.

“Are we calling it testy?” queried Knox. “I thought anal retentive was more on point.”

“Don’t scare off the only woman who’s ever given the bastard a chance,” Wilder chided them. “Who knows when he can trick another one into giving him the time of day?”

Harlan rolled his eyes at all of them, and helped himself to a stolen bite of the roast that his father had gotten swatted at for attempting. “Idiots.”

And it was fascinating, Kendall thought as the conversation swelled once again, to have spent a little time getting to know someone only to see, here in this kitchen and around the huge table that dominated it, an entirely different way that he was known.

It was more fascinating that he had expected this reception, seemed unbothered by it, and seemed perfectly happy to let her see him here. Surrounded by a family that did not treat him with any kind of reverence whatsoever.

She found it refreshing, coming as she was from a life filled with so many theatrical productions in place of actual relationships.

More than that, it was a particular sort of treat to sit in the middle of a family that seemed to enjoy each other so much. Oh, sure, there was grumbling. There were complaints. They clearly all took tremendous joy in giving each other a hard time, and whatever one of them gave out, they got it back even harder.

Belinda included.

Yet what struck her the most was that all of it was done with laughter.

They poked at each other. They sat around the table with huge platters of food and settled in like they had nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. As if it was the highlight of their week to gather together like this.

And Kendall knew perfectly well how to talk to people. It was a skill like any other and she’d always been good at it. So she wasn’t sure when it occurred to her that she wasn’t playing a role here.

All the brothers were going back for seconds and thirds, and she was asking them questions about their lives, and not only because that was the easiest way to get people talking. Strangely enough, she found that she really wanted to know the answers.

She learned that Belinda had grown up in California, though everyone at the table muttered about as if she’d said she grew up with a plague. She discovered that Zeke had been an only child, which was why he’d made sure to have a big family himself.

“You need to make sure you have that free labor,” he drawled.

She found out that Wilder missed his twin, though he was proud of him, and would obviously deny he’d ever said that out loud. That Boone had branched off from the family’s main ranching concern and had started his own dairy, with a little farming thrown in. Just to see what he could do. That Knox was the only member of the family with an agriculture degree, though of all of them, he was the one who deflected her questions and acted like the only thing he’d done at the University of Montana over in Missoula was play a little football and drink.

And despite all the brothers giving him a hard time, they all clearly adored Harlan.

It made her feel warm all over, as if that was somehow a reflection on her, too.

They were all so alike, these brothers and their father. All these different versions of the stranger she’d married, and seeing them together like this allowed her to see the different facets in him.

She wasn’t playing a role when she rose to clear the plates when everyone had finished eating. Kendall wasn’t trying to ingratiate herself, she just wanted to help.

Or maybe be a part of this family too, in the only way she could.

Though she didn’t really think anything of it until she was standing by the sink, getting a start on the washing up.

“Guests don’t do dishes,” Zeke told her in that raspy voice of his. “That’s a house rule, I’m afraid.”

Kendall shot the old man a look. “I married your son. I think that makes me not a guest, by definition.”

Zeke grinned, then settled in to help dry. And by the time they finished, Belinda had taken three pies out of the oven and laid them out down the center of the table.

Knox followed after her, plunking down cartons of vanilla ice cream at intervals.

And then Kendall watched as these grown men threw themselves into their dessert as if they hadn’t eaten all day, when she just seen them all polish away a giant roast, trays of potatoes, and thick pieces of freshly baked bread.

“Believe it or not,” Belinda said dryly, watching Kendall’s reaction, “they ate a lot more when they were teenagers. This is the pack of them slowing down with age.”

That set off a debate all its own. About what skills they’d already lost because they weren’t teenagers any longer. And how it was that Harlan could not only be the oldest of them all, but already have taken on the characteristics of a geriatric old man. At least according to the rest of them.

“A geriatric old man who can kick your ass,” her husband replied, almost lazily. “All your asses, in a row.”

After dessert, Kendall helped clean up the kitchen, but all the brothers trooped out to one of the barns to consult about something having to do with hay. Or maybe it was horses. Or maybe it was time for bodies to cash checks made by smart mouths.

Because when they came back a while later, it was clear that there had been a few wrestling ass-kickings, if the hay on the back of shirts and the smirks on faces were anything to go by.

“Did you actually wrestle?” she asked Harlan when they climbed back in his truck.

“They wish,” he said with a laugh. “They’ve been trying to take me down their whole lives. They’re still trying.”

But he looked smug when he said it.

She had a million questions to ask him, because she wanted to know… everything. She had never had such an up, close, and personal connection with a family that wasn’t already rotten, hemorrhaging, and in its death throes.

Thinking back, she’d never really been around people like the Careys before. People whose care for each other beamed out bright in everything they did and said. Who would, she had absolutely no doubt, squabble with each other until the end of time but be the first to defend each other against any comers.

It made a funny sort of feeling settle deep in her gut, as if her own nervous system didn’t know how to handle what that meant. Or that kind of love that, until today, she’d always believed was a myth.

Something for TV shows and movies, where problems could be solved in an hour or two, and no matter what happened, people loved each other the whole way through.

Fairy tales, she’d always thought.

But before Kendall could really commit to that spiral, she noticed that Harlan was headed the opposite way from his house. He took the dirt road that wound back down through the ranch and all around, as if they were on their way back to Marietta.

“I thought I’d take you on a little tour of Cowboy Point,” Harlan said, reading the questions she didn’t ask him in the way she looked over at him. “Give you a lay of the land.”

“Do I need a lay of the land?”

“You do.” He looked at her as the truck bumped over a rough patch in the road. “Because you can’t be comfortable in a place you don’t know, can you?”

Kendall had a lump in her throat, suddenly, and she didn’t know why. She nodded, then looked out the window, hoping that whatever emotion was gripping her would fade.

And the same way as always, she was struck by the beauty of the landscape immediately, like a different sort of emotion altogether. By the mountains rolling out all around them and the fact that for miles and miles and miles, there was no one else around.

Just the two of them in Harlan’s old red truck, with a bright sky above them and mountains that were still clinging on to the remnants of winter.

Slowly, she found that the lump in her throat dissolved. And she could breathe normally without worrying that any moment, a rogue sob might break free.

He slowed as he crested the hill where the old Lodge he’d shown her sat and nodded up at it again. “To catch you up on the history around here, the Lodge is owned by the Stark family. The Stark brothers, whose names you might see on all kinds of things around here, are getting on now. They’re the reason the Lodge got into such bad shape. The three of them couldn’t agree on a thing and it fell to pieces while they argued. Now it’s up to the cousins, their kids, to see if they can put it all back together again.”

Kendall gazed up at the old building. She didn’t have to know any history to see the possibilities in the graceful lines of the place. In the windows and the grand porches that needed no adornment with such a stunning view in all directions. “You think they’ll do it?”

Harlan made a low sound that wasn’t quite a laugh, more a sound of acknowledgment. “Jack Stark is the oldest cousin. I’ve never known him to fail at anything.” His dark eyes gleamed when he caught her gaze. “We played football together in high school. I wouldn’t bet against him.”

He drove her down into the little valley that was Cowboy Point, and Kendall was sure that in the few days she’d been here it was already changing into the new season. There were buds on the trees, new flowers opening in tidy yards, and green coming in everywhere. The graceful avenue of all those tall pines stretched toward the sky and the sun danced down between their branches, making Kendall feel something like dazzled.

As if this place was enchanted.

Maybe it was, because there were people strolling down the road as if… that was a thing people did. Eat a Sunday dinner, have a Sunday drive, top it off with a Sunday stroll. That was astonishing enough.

But Kendall saw that everybody waved at Harlan as he drove by. That hadn’t been an aberration that first day, or just his friends. Everybody here knew him, or his truck. Everybody here waved, at everybody else. And he lifted his hand in reply as he drove her down the main strip again, pointing out the same few places she’d seen before. But always in terms of the families involved and the members of those families he knew.

As if he was engaged in an ongoing conversation with all these people. All these neighbors and friends.

This place, Kendall thought, was its own fairy tale.

He took one of the side roads that wound out toward the creek, where she could see the bar in the distance, but also the small church tucked away closer to the woods.

“I don’t know your take on the hereafter,” Harlan said when she looked at him, not sure what his aim was. “I thought you should know where the church was, anyway. Not too far from the bar, of course.” Again, the gleam of dark eyes and amusement from beneath his cowboy hat. “Montanans are practical like that.”

Kendall didn’t know how to tell him the Darlingtons avoided sacred spaces, lest they be struck down from on high upon entry. She only nodded, not sure why her throat was tight again. Maybe she liked the idea that this man wasn’t only concerned with the roof over her head and the food she might eat, but her immortal soul as well.

When the people who should have loved her best were only concerned with what she could do for them.

That was such an oddly heady—and heavy—thought that it took her a while to recognize that he was driving them back through town so slowly that it had to be deliberate. A wave here, a wave there, and a whole lot of curious looks aimed at Kendall in the passenger seat.

“Are you giving me a tour?” she asked lightly. “Or are you making an announcement?”

Harlan looked over at her and grinned. “It’s a fine day for a walk, don’t you think?”

She was laughing as he parked, though she couldn’t have said why. But that giddy feeling didn’t go anywhere as she climbed out of the truck and walked with him, from one end of the little slice of a mountain town to the other.

He greeted everyone they passed. He introduced her as his wife. And while his friends and neighbors were exclaiming over that surprise, he filled her in on who they all were and how they all related to each other, like one big Cowboy Point tree of many families.

“The Bennett sisters are newcomers,” he told her when they passed by Mountain Mama, the pizza and ice cream place. The renovated barn was even more cheerful up close than it had seemed while driving by. Inside, everything was brightly painted to be as vibrant and inviting as possible and, she imagined, was a happy sort of beacon in the dark of winter. “They’re from somewhere at lower elevation. Colorado maybe. Some folks come up here and try to open businesses that don’t make a lot of sense and don’t last through the first big snow. It looks like they knew what they were doing, because they’ve been here five years now and most nights, you have to wait to get a table. Even in winter.”

“I guess the pizza must pretty good, then.”

“They claim that it’s a family recipe, handed down in secret through the generations,” Harlan said with a grin. “Wilder claims it’s crack. I don’t know what it is, but it keeps us all coming back.”

He nodded toward the wide lot next to the barn. “Folks are already clamoring for them to expand.” Harlan lifted his chin in the direction of the store across the street but there was something… tighter in his features. “It’s just about warm enough for the coffee cart. That’s another newcomer and another new business, but it took off last summer. There’s talk of getting something going year-round for that, too. Everyone likes coffee.”

But Kendall was following his gaze to the General Store. “You don’t like that place.”

Harlan’s mouth crooked. “It’s not about liking it or not liking it. That General Store has been around since the first Copper Mountain miners figured out that first, there wasn’t any copper, and second, it was exhausting to make that ten-mile trip up and down the mountain. If you ask the Lisles, the current owners, how the store came to be, they’ll give you a song and dance about how Ebenezer Lisle settled the whole of Montana and half of America on his way here. Then, out of the goodness of his heart, set up an outpost to give back to his associates.”

“Why do you sound personally offended by something that had to happen in… what?… the 1800s?”

“Not offended. But if you ask my family, or anyone who knows the actual history of Cowboy Point, the Careys were here first.”

Kendall squinted up at him, looking at the laughter in his gaze but the stern set of his jaw. Like he thought this was silly… but also true. “I thought you were ranchers. All that land out there backs that up. What do you want with a store?”

Harlan shook his head at her sadly. “At first there was nothing here but a busted-up mine, and a questionable pack of miners milling around. Legend has it that there was a high-stakes poker game, and Ebenezer Lisle won the store from crusty old Matthew Carey with a royal flush. The Lisles claim it was down to good old-fashioned luck, a family gift, the way they tell it. But we know that the Lisles aren’t lucky. They cheat.”

Kendall stared at him in amazement. “And you’re still arguing about this? Over a hundred years later?”

“Folks take claims mighty seriously in these parts,” Harlan told her, all drawl and that gleam in his gaze. “And I wouldn’t say that anyone’s actively feuding these days, except maybe my brother Wilder and Tennessee Lisle, the way they have been since kindergarten. But no one’s forgotten, either.”

Kendall couldn’t help but laugh at that. “This all sounds very healthy and not at all small town.”

“This,” Harlan said, almost gently, “is how the West was won, Kendall. One ancient blood feud and tall tale at a time.”

And when she smiled, Harlan gazed down at her in that same intense way of his that made her feel even more shivery than usual, out here in the sunlight on a public road where anyone could see.

She felt her smile fade. But the more it did, the more his gaze seemed… brighter, somehow.

Until her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she didn’t know what might happen next. Would she topple over? Would she topple… into him? Would she do what she really wanted to do and kiss this man, her husband, the way she’d longed to do when she’d had the chance at their wedding?

She was only aware that someone walked up to them because Harlan straightened. And then had his hand on her back in the kind of unconsciously chivalrous gesture that made her want to… melt, maybe.

All over him.

“You couldn’t make it down the length of the street without the gossip beating you to the punch,” said the man who stood there. He was another tall one, with broad shoulders and a star on his chest that read Sheriff. The name on the other side read Wayne. Kendall’s first thought was Batman? “I hear congratulations are in order.”

Harlan grinned. “This is my wife, Kendall.” He looked down at her. “Kendall, this is Deputy Sheriff Atticus Wayne. He’s the reason Cowboy Point is free of any latter-day gunslingers.”

“We prefer to avoid high noon situations whenever possible,” the deputy sheriff agreed.

And when he and Harlan got into a discussion about the details of the last town meeting, Kendall knew that really, she ought to pay attention. She knew she ought to study the things they were saying so that she could make a contribution, so she could make sure to earn her place in this partnership she and Harlan were meant to be building.

But her belly was full. She was drunk on all those family dynamics and the laughter that had been its soundtrack.

Then again, maybe it was the May sunshine. Or this place—this lovely, happy little wide part of a remote road, tucked away from the world. She would have said that Paradise Valley itself was off the beaten track.

But if that was the case, then Cowboy Point was trackless.

And yet, somehow, it didn’t feel like she was hiding here.

She stood there on the main drag where everyone could see her, letting the sunlight dance all over her. When she looked around, she found herself waving at these people who were her neighbors now, who she could tell already knew who she was even if she hadn’t met them.

Yet.

And the truth was that she couldn’t wait to explore each and every one of these places. To meet the people that Harlan had told her stories about, and the ones she hadn’t learned about yet. To settle into all of this, so that she, too, could be a story these folks told.

About the wife he’d brought home from somewhere else, a newcomer in one sense, but connected to him just the same. Almost as if she was as rooted here as deeply as his family was, by proxy, stretching all the way back to a disputed poker game that the participants’ descendants were still pissed about.

Deep down, she felt a surge of something like anticipation, like she couldn’t wait.

Like she already belonged here.

Like she was ready to spend a little quality time in a fairy tale.

Or, after so many years out there running from other people’s bad decisions, like she was finally home.