Chapter Six
Harlan liked being married.
Or he liked being married to Kendall, anyway.
May got brighter and warmer, then rolled over into June—which came in with a snowstorm like it was March again, because this was Montana. This high up in the mountains, summer was never a given no matter what it said on the calendar.
And Harlan found he could put up with the vagaries of the weather just fine when there was more daylight to go around. That was the point of June, to his mind, no matter if it was snowing or not. Happily, the snow didn’t last. And even the chilliest pastures on the ranch warmed up again when there were fewer long shadows to keep the land cold.
With one thing and another, it was headed towards the middle of the month and the official start of summer before he knew it.
Meaning he’d been married more than a month. Almost two.
Once he’d decided to get married, and quick, he’d assured himself that it would work out no matter who answered his ad. Harlan figured that a marriage was like any other relationship and he had business relationships and friendships stretching back decades. He’d believed that he and whoever he married would settle into each other the way people had done throughout history when the marriage was when they’d gotten to know each other. He’d assumed that they would find a way to make things work, one way or another. That at the very least they’d set up a routine they could both depend on to make their days hum along well, because the partnership was the part of the marriage that mattered.
What he hadn’t expected was that it would be so easy. Or feel so… effortless.
He looked forward to seeing her every morning. He rolled out of bed long before sunrise and got a first round of coffee going, so he could choke down a cup before he trudged out to do the morning round of chores. The same way he knew his dad had always done for both his mother and Belinda, and Lord knew, Zeke had always been a happily married man. By the time he got back, Kendall was up and showered, there was a fresh pot brewing, and she was setting out a hot breakfast.
It was amazing how cared for a man could feel with a hot meal in his belly on a cold morning.
Over breakfast, they worked out what their day would look like in consultation with the rest of the family in the group text, where all of his brothers checked in and they divided up the tasks. They decided what could be done individually or what required that they gather together to get something bigger handled. Sometimes it was a local ranch thing, sometimes it was Boone’s dairy farm, sometimes it was all about the hay they sold to ranchers all over the West.
Kendall came with him some days, particularly when he knew he was headed out into some of the most beautiful and remote parts of the ranch. Other times, she stayed behind to handle the office—a job she’d volunteered for in her first week. Within the month she had not only familiarized herself with the mountains of paperwork that routinely gave him headaches, but had reorganized the room he used as an office and set up a system to handle things like invoices, vendors, and outstanding bills.
Harlan often thought he would have married her for that alone, had he had even the slightest inkling that the wife he’d decided to get could also be a kind of office manager, not only capable of handling the tasks that tied him in knots, but good at them.
More than that, she even seemed to enjoy doing that kind of stuff, which he found nothing short of miraculous.
Some days on the ranch called for all hands on deck, like the vaccinations and castrations of the season’s calves. And if Harlan had expected Kendall to be squeamish about the necessities of ranch life—and the ranching business—he was in for a surprise. She took to it the way Belinda had back when she’d started coming around, elbows deep in what needed doing and no complaints.
“Seems like you got yourself a good one there,” Wilder said that bright June day as he and Harlan took a breather after a particularly tough round of wrestling disobedient calves into the corral to get taken care of.
Harlan didn’t have to look over at Kendall, who had been given instructions about what she needed to do to help and had nodded, then waded on in. She was as muddy as the rest of them now, which he viewed as a badge of honor.
The thing was, muddy on Kendall translated to cute.
Much too cute for a family day involving castrating the bull calves to make them steers—and notably less aggressive.
So cute it was hard to focus. He didn’t want to give Wilder any encouragement, as part of his lifelong personal policy regarding handling his brothers, but he couldn’t keep himself from grinning. “I can’t complain.”
“I heard a rumor,” Wilder drawled, clearly encouraged. Harlan lost the grin. “The story is, Jack Stark dared you to put out an ad for a wife. And you, Harlan James Carey, known for taking exactly zero risks in the course of your lifetime, went ahead and took that dare.”
Harlan stared at Wilder. Wilder smirked. “I’m just telling you what I heard.”
“You didn’t.”
“Hear it? Pretty sure I did, brother. Loud and clear.”
Harlan sighed. “You didn’t hear a random rumor floating through the pines, Wilder. You were out carousing with the Starks and they shot their mouth off about what their cousin might or might not have done.”
The way Wilder laughed, Harlan knew, was as good as an admission of guilt. Jack Stark, the oldest of all the Stark cousins in his generation, was a lot like Harlan. Steady. Determined. It was some of his younger cousins—Steven Stark’s disreputable pack of wildcat sons, who’d grown up motherless and had basically lived by their wits and their willingness to throw down—who were the rowdy, rumor-mongering Starks.
The rest of the extended family were jack’s younger sisters, dreamy Matilda who liked small, furry animals better than people and poor Rosie, who was a local scandal these days because she had twin toddlers—and refused to name their father no matter how many times her male relatives demanded she tell them so they could sort the man out. And, of course, there was Sarah Jane, Cowboy Point’s librarian, who was the closest thing to a proper Old West schoolmarm Harlan had ever seen.
He knew exactly where Wilder had heard about his mail-order ad.
“So that’s a yes or no on the newspaper ad campaign?” When Harlan only gazed back at him, sternly, Wilder laughed. “Maybe I want to follow your example. After all, Dad told all of us to get moving on the wife and kids front. Not surprising that you took that as seriously as you did. You always have been the most competitive.”
“That would be you,” Harlan said, shaking his head. “You and Ryder, since the day you two were born.”
“Before we were born, if the stories are true,” Wilder said in lazy agreement, though his gaze was as intent as ever. “Dad always likes to say that we were wrestling in the womb.”
Because only a fool thought Wilder was as lazy as he acted, Harlan continued, “I should have gotten married a long time ago. And I would have, but there always seemed to be too much to do around here to be bothered with finding the right woman.”
His brother shook his head. For what seemed like an unnecessarily long time, to Harlan’s mind.
“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Wilder said. Eventually. “I find the right woman every Friday and Saturday night. She’s not the same right woman, mind you. But right now works just fine.”
Harlan didn’t dignify that with a response—because he knew his brother wanted one—and he felt especially virtuous when he didn’t even roll his eyes. “I should have gotten it done years ago,” he said again. “If I had, maybe there would already be grandkids running around the place. I know that’s what he really wants.”
And what he wouldn’t get if his sons didn’t get a move on—though Harlan didn’t say that either. He didn’t have to say it. None of them had said much about Zeke’s diagnosis since he’d made his announcement, but then, none of them had to.
What was there to say about something so profoundly unimaginable?
Even Wilder had nothing smart-ass to say as they both looked over to where Zeke was sitting up on an ATV with Belinda at his side, the pair of them discussing something with great intensity—knowing his father and stepmother, it was likely what to have for dinner.
Over by the fence, Knox and Kendall were engaged in some kind of conversation that had Kendall looking fascinated in that way of hers, with a smile and her clever gaze so curious, while Knox laughed his head off as he told a story that involve a lot of hand gestures.
Both of those things—his father hale and hearty for the moment and his wife wrapped up in the middle of his family like this—and Harlan’s ribs felt almost too tight to breathe.
“It doesn’t seem real,” Wilder said quietly, no longer sounding the slightest bit lazy. “That he can be sick.”
“It doesn’t,” Harlan agreed in the same tone, and was grateful when Boone gave the sign to let the next set of calves through.
Because however little time his father had left, he was here now. That was what mattered.
That was what he held onto as the afternoon wore on and they all worked together, one big family missing only Ryder. Out on this land that had been in Carey hands for generations and would, God willing, stay in Carey hands for generations to come.
Out beneath that big Montana sky that felt like theirs and theirs alone on days like this.
He liked being married, he thought again, as he and Kendall headed back to his house when the day was done, both of them a little bit dirty and a whole lot tired. He liked not being on his own. He liked having her there beside him so they could talk about the day and share it all. Those tiny little moments, so easily forgotten, that stitched together and were the basis of everything. The point of it all.
Houses were built one brick at a time. Maybe what he was learning was that marriages were too.
“You never have told me why you moved around as much as you did,” he said later that night.
They’d thrown together an easy dinner after such a long day. And there was more light in the sky now, it being June, so they took their food out to what he’d always considered the summer porch, where they could sit under the trees and enjoy being outside.
Harlan thought that life really couldn’t get a whole lot better than it was in that moment.
He was so busy with that thought that it took him a minute to realize that she hadn’t responded. When he looked over, Kendall seemed unduly preoccupied with her plate. And with the process of cutting herself a bite of the meat that he knew was tender enough to fall off the bone, because if a Carey knew anything in this world, it was meat.
“You really don’t want to answer the question, do you?” he asked, with a laugh.
Kendall put down her fork and knife without actually taking her next bite. She didn’t look up at him.
“In your family everyone is welcoming, but not putting on some kind of act. They all seem generally themselves. It’s lovely.” She looked up then, a kind of set, nearly wary expression on her face that he’d never seen before. “That’s not how everyone is, though. I’m not sure you know that. I’m not sure you understand how rare it is.”
“I’ve met more than a few folks in my time who didn’t exactly make honesty and transparency their watchword,” he replied, not sure why he felt… stung. “Cowboy Point might seem like it’s not a part of the world, because we like it that way, but it is.”
“What you have here is rare,” Kendall said, too quietly. “That’s all I’m trying to say.”
“I don’t believe you’re trying to say anything,” he observed. And sure, he still felt that sting, but it was also true. “You’re doing what you always do. You deflect. You change the subject so fast it’s hard to remember there was ever a subject at all.”
To her credit, she didn’t look away. “Is that a problem for you?”
And it should have been. Harlan knew that. It should have been a big, bright red flag. A hard no.
He had always prided himself on honesty. He had always insisted on integrity, in himself and anyone close to him.
But this was Kendall. She was already his wife.
The real problem was that he knew he wasn’t going anywhere.
“It’s a problem,” he told her, after a moment. “But not a dealbreaker.”
She considered him. “How much of a problem are we talking about?”
Harlan studied her face in the light of the small lantern he’d set up in the center of the table, while the sky played with shades of blue far above. “I want to know who you are, Kendall. Is that a bad thing?”
“It’s not you wanting to know me that’s the bad thing. It’s that I don’t think you’ll like what you find out.”
He sat back in his chair, the pretty near-summer evening forgotten. “Are you a murderer?”
She let out a laugh, then swallowed it. “Um. No. What a question to ask.”
“Are you wanted by the law in any capacity, in any state of this union or abroad?”
The startled laughter on her face faded. “No.”
Something else occurred to him, and he wondered why he hadn’t asked this before. “Are you already married to someone else?”
He watched color flood her face. “Absolutely not. I wouldn’t—” But she cut herself off.
“Just trying to cover all the bases here,” he said, with a shrug. “Trying to work out what’s so terrible that you think if you tell me, I’ll kick you off the mountain.”
And he’d said that last park as a joke, really. Because of course he wouldn’t be kicking anyone anywhere, but the moment he said it he could see that she thought that’s exactly what might happen.
“Some people have a past,” she told him, carefully. “It’s not the kind of past you have, filled with tales of poker games, crusty old miners, and family legacies that come with an expansive and beautiful acreage. Some people’s pasts are a bit darker than that. And significantly more distressing.”
But he had married her on the same gut feeling that he had now. The same gut feeling that governed all the things he did, and if Harlan was wrong about her, he was wrong about everything. Absolutely everything.
He just didn’t believe that was possible.
“I’m a man who makes up my own mind. Your past isn’t going to sway me one way or another.” He moved a hand to indicate both of them and the table between them. “This. Here. Now. That’s what matters, Kendall. That’s all that matters.”
And the smile she aimed his way then was heartbreaking. “I hope so,” she said softly. “I really do hope so.”
She stood then, gathering up their plates to take them inside.
And he almost let it go.
Almost.
But when she came back out, Harlan stood and reached out to put a hand on her arm when she drew near.
And it was like the summer night shimmered into stillness all around them. Like the earth beneath their feet came to a shuddering halt.
He forgot, completely, what he’d meant to do. Why he’d stood up in the first place.
Because the night was soft around them and her eyes gleamed green, like pine trees and the best part of summer. And that same spark was there between them, blooming brighter than any flower could have.
It was that humming thing in him, bursting into a full throated song.
Because his hand was on her arm, his palm flush against the soft skin of her bicep, and he could feel that touch in every part of his body. He could feel the intensity of that connection, like she was hardwired into him, so that even so simple a touch was like flipping a switch.
He’d spent all these weeks pretending, he realized then.
Pretending he didn’t dream about her at night. Pretending he wasn’t consumed, that he wasn’t obsessed. Looking for excuses to touch her whenever he could, so he could hoard them up and go over them like polished coins, one after the next, when he was alone.
She was a fever in his blood, and God help him, but he liked the burn.
And now, here, everything seemed possible.
More than possible.
He dropped his gaze to that mouth of hers that had captivated him from the start. Tonight it looked vulnerable, sensual.
And he wanted more. He wanted her to brush her lips over his again, but more than that, he wanted her to follow that up. To kiss him like she meant it. To move closer, put her hands on him, and then indulge herself in him the way he dreamed of indulging himself in her.
“Kendall,” he managed to grate out. “I want to kiss you more than I want to take my next breath.”
Her eyes widened at that. Her lips parted, just slightly. Just enough to make his obsession all the worse. He watched something shiver over her, and through her as she blew out a breath.
“That sounds like a serious condition,” she said, what seemed like an eternity later. And her eyes were a dark green now, like she was part of the pines rising all around them. “I wouldn’t want you to pass out from a lack of breathing, Harlan. I think you’d better kiss me.”
And so he did.
At last, he did.
Something roared in him, deep and resolutely male in a way he did not usually allow himself to indulge. He pulled her closer, careful but sure, and he slid his hands up to take her face between them.
Then, finally, he leaned down and fit his mouth to hers.
And everything became that same song.
It rose in him like a whole chorus, singing loud.
He angled his head so he could take more of her, learning the way she kissed and teaching her what he liked. It was a tangle of tongues and a dance, a perfect dance to all that wild and perfect singing, as they found their rhythm.
As the heat between them blazed hot.
As the need for her thudded in him, the irresistible drumbeat more intense with every second.
He wanted to get closer. He wanted to kiss her forever, and he wanted more.
Harlan wanted everything.
There was no pretending, now, that he was anything but infatuated with this woman. Fascinated didn’t begin to cover it.
It didn’t help that she tasted better than she looked. That the particular chemistry of his mouth and hers was something several degrees more than extraordinary—
Maybe she knew it too, because she wrenched her mouth away from his then.
And for a moment they were breathing together, stricken in the same way. He could tell. She had the same astonished look on her face that he felt in him.
Everywhere in him.
“Kendall…” he began, though he didn’t recognize his own voice.
Her hands had made their way to his chest and she pushed herself back to look up at him. With eyes so dark, now, that he couldn’t see any green at all.
“You like making a mess, don’t you,” Kendall said.
Harlan made himself step back. He ran a hand over his face. “What?”
“This is what you do.” Her voice was calm, but her gaze was nothing short of hectic. “You like to drop a bomb, then sit back and wait to see what happens. Isn’t that what you did when you threw me like a grenade into the middle of your family’s Sunday dinner?”
“I don’t think I like the way you’re categorizing that.”
“You say you want to know about me.” She moved away from him, putting more space between them. “Do you really? Or is it all a stockpile of weapons you like to gather, then seek to deploy when it suits you best?”
“It was a kiss, Kendall.”
And he was surprised to find that he was actually getting a little hot as he stood there. When he would have said that he’d gotten rid of his own temper a lifetime ago. Because there had never been any point to it.
He’d been angry when his mother died. He’d been angry when his father remarried, and angrier still that he couldn’t hate Belinda the way he’d wanted to. He’d been angry that the twins were so disruptive, but so funny. Angrier still that Boone and Knox insisted on being impossible to dislike.
He’d been sixteen and like many sixteen-year-old young men, he’d been angry.
So he’d poured it into football. Then he’d taken all that temper, all of that heat, and sunk deep inside of him until he’d given it to the land.
And now everything that mattered in him was the ranch, so nothing in him was personal.
Except this.
Except Kendall, who was looking at him as if she knew exactly where his temper was and was poking at it deliberately.
“You’re so interested in knowing what my life is like,” she was saying. “I’ll tell you that one thing I got very good at, out there, was reading people. Especially men. Everyone thinks that they’re great at hiding their feelings when the truth is, few people really are. You took pleasure in causing a commotion that night, Harlan. Why?”
He couldn’t understand why this was what she wanted to talk about. Right at this moment. When he could still taste her in his mouth.
“I don’t know,” he bit out, amazed that he could also taste his own temper. Like Kendall was the one person alive who could access even the parts of him he’d been certain he’d laid to rest a lifetime back.
And now she was looking at him like she could see straight through him. “I don’t believe you.”
Harlan shook his head, trying to get a handle on all the things surging in him now. “Look, I’m not the kind of man who goes around hating his life, going through the motions, wishing for things he can’t have. I like who I am. I like what I do. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t.” He ran a hand over his face once again, but that felt like he was fidgeting when he had never been the kind of man who fidgeted, so he dropped it to his side. “But that doesn’t mean that every now and again, I don’t think about what it might be like to shake up everyone’s ideas about who I am. To remind them that I’m not actually one of the mountains around here. That I can be as surprising as anyone else. Sometimes they forget that I’m methodical and dependable because I choose to be, not because I can’t be just as spontaneous as anyone else.”
She was breathing too hard, he thought. Too heavily for the circumstances—or maybe she was having trouble handling the way that same song was swelling in him still. Maybe it was in her, too.
“Thank you,” Kendall said quietly. “I can tell that was honest.”
“Maybe you can tell me something in return. Why would you want to talk about that Sunday dinner with my family now. Now, of all times?”
“Because,” she threw at him, fiercely. Desperately, something in him whispered. “I don’t want to be a mess you make, Harlan. My life is messy enough on its own. This is supposed to be an escape.”
“From what?” And he was aware of the urgency in his voice, though there was nothing he could do about it.
Just like there was nothing he could do to keep his fingers from twitching with the urge to get his hands on her once more, though he kept them to himself.
Somehow, he kept them to himself.
Yet she didn’t answer him either way. She held his gaze for what felt like an eternity, and then she turned and left him there.
Standing out beneath the June sky as it slowly, slowly darkened. With all that heat still inside him, and that song as loud as ever.
But he had a clear understanding that he couldn’t go after her. Not now. Not like this, when she didn’t trust him.
No matter how much he thought they both wanted him to.