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

Chapter Eleven

In the end, Kendall convinced Harlan that it was unwise to let Mayrose and Breanna actually see the ranch.

“I understand what you’re going for, but the last thing you need is them actually grasping what a ranch is, what you do here, and… all of this.” They were in the living room then and she’d waved her hands around in all directions, trying to take in the mountains, the pastures. All that land. “We’ll never be rid of them.”

Part of her expected him to wave that away like the rest of her objections, but he didn’t. And she gave herself a stern talking-to about categorizing him like that. He hadn’t waved away anything she’d said, ever. Now, like then, he considered it.

This time, he nodded.

“And to be honest,” she said when he did, “I’m not sure you should let them come up to Cowboy Point, either. Marietta is close enough.”

“Marietta isn’t ours,” Harlan said.

And that was how they decided to ask her mother and sister to meet them at Mountain Mama that afternoon.

“This is actually humiliating,” Kendall told Flannery when she went in to ask if they wouldn’t mind letting her take over some space even though it was summer. The middle of their busiest season. “My family is terrible. We’re meeting in public so they can’t do as much damage as they might do otherwise. I can’t imagine why you’d want that cluttering up your happy restaurant, to be honest.”

She tensed, expecting that this woman she’d privately—hopefully—wondered if she might make into a friend would get chilly with her and put some distance between them, but Flannery didn’t do that. She stepped closer instead and pressed her shoulder to Kendall’s.

“Someday, we’ll sit down and tell each other stories about how we ended up on the far side of a Rocky Mountain peak far, far away from our families of origin. Because believe you me, mine is no picnic either.”

It was a gift. Kendall tucked it away in her heart that was already overflowing with the things that Harlan had said to her. With that first night and that morning after and the magic of every moment since.

With the notion that he was her family now.

And with a sense of sheer, giddy wonder about what that might mean.

She felt so plush with these gifts that it was close enough to easy to call her sister when she got back to the house and extend the invitation that she would rather not have had to extend at all.

Though at least they wouldn’t be coming here, she thought, looking up at the house she shared with Harlan. At least she could keep this sacred.

“You’re inviting us to pizza?” Breanna asked, laughing. It was not a nice laugh. “Is that a euphemism?”

“It’s a meal,” Kendall said dryly.

“This is so typical,” Mayrose said then, obviously snatching the phone away from Breanna. “Do you really think we didn’t have anything better to do than chase you all over the state of Montana? It’s summer, Kendall. And thanks to your selfishness, we’re shuffling around cold mountain towns instead of bustling, sparkling, gleaming resort towns near the ocean. I hope you’re proud.”

“You’re welcome to take yourself off to any beach you like, Mama,” Kendall gritted back at her. “With my compliments.”

Breanna took the phone again. “Now you’ve done it. She’s in a rage.”

Kendall had been pacing back and forth in front of the house while she made this call, aware that Harlan was watching her from inside. Letting her have her space while he made a few calls of his own. Because really, as far she could tell, he might be the perfect man.

And she didn’t need him hearing what sounded like Mayrose’s patented scream-into-the-pillow performance that had always terrified her as a child.

“How did you find me anyway?” she asked her sister.

“I’ve been tracking your phone for years,” Breanna said with a certain offhandedness that made everything inside Kendall just… go cold. “You’re always much too squirrely.”

“Squirrely,”Kendall repeated, though her lips felt numb.

“I assume that wherever you are now is out of range, but we tracked you to Livingston easily enough. Then here to this little Podunk town. Bozeman, then back.”

Breanna sounded careless and breezy, but Kendall knew her sister. And so she knew that Breanna wanted to make sure Kendall knew that they’d been on her from the start. That she’d never actually escaped them. That any sense of freedom she’d had was a lie.

“We spent a lot of time in Bozeman,” her sister was saying, and this made sense to Kendall. There were very wealthy people in Bozeman and therefore better hunting for the Darlingtons. “I’m betting this Cowboy Point of yours is up some mountain, isn’t it? It’s impossible to track you until you come back down.”

“Good to know.”

“Thing is, we want to move on,” Breanna said, her voice less breezy, now. “Montana is a drag.”

Kendall looked around, unable to imagine what her sister was talking about. She thought that she would want to live right here, on this hill with its stunning views, crisp mountain air, and the smell of the pines in everything, whether she was with Harlan or not. And she knew that if she left this place, she would grieve it for the rest of her life.

She would dream about it every night, always.

And that was just the actual place. The trees, the craggy skyline, the dirt.

That wasn’t even getting into all the other things she’d miss.

“You can come meet me today, in exactly one hour, or you can take the easier option and go away right now without bothering to meet up,” Kendall told her sister, in a calm voice that she was inordinately proud of. “Those are your choices and in neither of them will I be going with you. Just so we’re clear.”

“We’ll see about that,” her sister said in that singsong voice of hers that always heralded her being absolutely horrible.

So Kendall got ahead of that and hung up. She stared down at the phone in her hand and frowned, then looked up how to remove any sort of tracking software. She followed the directions, squatting down on the steps that led up to the front door.

And while she turned off the various location services and checked for tracking apps, she tried to get herself to calm down.

“All set?” Harlan asked from behind her.

She turned, and wondered if she would always lose her breath a little at the sight of him. Jeans and a Stetson and all that Harlan in between. If they had more than an hour, she would have suggested they revisit some of last night’s high points.

Instead, she nodded. “They’re coming.”

His dark eyes gleamed. “Good.”

And then she got another gift when they headed down into Cowboy Point, because Harlan’s entire family came with them. They were all waiting at the main house, and followed Harlan’s truck all the way to Mountain Mama’s.

All of his brothers. Zeke and Belinda. Once they made it to the pizza place, they all rolled in and assembled themselves like a wall of Careys in the dining room, where Flannery had said they could have this meeting.

Kendall stared at them, pretty sure that her jaw had actually dropped open.

“Didn’t Harlan tell you?” Wilder asked, with that lazy grin of his that she noticed, the way she always did but even more so today, in no way made him seem less dangerous. “You’re family, Kendall.”

“And in this family,” Zeke said with a certain placidity that was completely undercut by the look in his eyes, “it’s all for one and one for all.”

Kendall had never felt anything like this in her life. This high tide of hope and what if. She wanted to give each and every one of her in-laws a hug. She wanted to promise them that if the time came, she would wade into battle for them in a heartbeat.

But all she could seem to manage was a watery smile.

“You got this,” Knox told her.

“And we got you,” Boone agreed.

Kendall almost forgot why they were gathered here, but then the door to Mountain Mama’s opened and in came Mayrose and Breanna, as slinky and terrible as ever.

They didn’t look any different. Kendall wasn’t sure why she’d thought they should. Mayrose was still dedicated to her engine-red hair that she wore in a cloud all around her, always a counterpoint to her pale ivory skin. Breanna maintained her golden brush of a tan and a perfect blowout no matter what, and these days spent a lot of time plumping up her lips.

Full of sharks, Kendall thought. That’s what they are no matter what they look like.

“My goodness,” purred her mother as she floated in, wearing a pair of jeans that showed off every square inch of her body, a crop top that showed off more, and a pair of heels that could not have been more out of place on the top of this mountain if she’d tried. “You brought a whole crowd of big, strong men to protect you against us? Little old us?”

Kendall could feel herself bristle as she watched the pair of them size up each member of the Carey family. She wanted to stand between Mayrose and the line of them. She wanted to slap that assessing look off her sister’s face.

And that was new. Normally, she just… shut down in the presence of her mother and sister. Because there was no point fighting with them. There never had been.

Kendall never won. It was impossible to win a fight with people who only cared about causing pain, who never let anything go, and who, in the end, only ever thought about themselves.

But this wasn’t just about her. She could put up with the Darlingtons. She’d been one herself for the whole of her life. She’d learned how to protect herself as much as possible when they were around.

You’re not a Darlington anymore, she reminded herself.

And that made all the difference.

Because today was about these people who she’d come to like so much. To care for. And in Harlan’s case, to love.

There was no way that she was going to let them treat these people—her people—the way they treated everyone else.

“Who are all these big, strong strangers, Kendall?” Mayrose asked, in that cutesy, little girl voice of hers.

Kendall took a quick glance around and was pleased to see that every last one of her in-laws looked as put off by Mayrose’s act as she was.

Maybe Harlan was right. Maybe it wasn’t men her mother and sister preyed on.

Just the weak ones.

“Kendall is my wife,” Harlan told them, with that drawl of his somehow making the announcement seem more official.

And he waited there with that intent, stern look on his face when Breanna and Mayrose looked at each other, then fell about laughing.

When Kendall made a move as if she was going to either go over to them, or yell at them to stop, he settled his hand on the nape of her neck and kept her where she was.

Tucked up next to him like she’d been made to fit right there. “Is something funny?” he asked.

With a deadly sort of calm that made all of his brothers wince.

“Your wife?”Breanna repeated. She trilled out another laugh. “Oh please. What scam is this?”

“It’s not a scam,” Kendall replied, because she couldn’t help herself. “You wouldn’t understand that, I know.”

But she realized that she wasn’t shut down.

She didn’t feel dead inside at all.

In fact, it was the opposite.

“You look well-nourished,” Mayrose purred, which was her way of saying that Kendall had put on weight. A deadly insult in their ranks, though today, Kendall took it as a compliment. Because she was well-nourished, inside and out. She wasn’t the same person who had run away from Idaho. From them.

“After all these years, I guess you really did figure out how to live on your own, without us.” Mayrose continued, batting her extremely fake eyelashes in an overly innocent way that put Kendall’s teeth on edge. “Or maybe you had some help? You never have been any good at independence, have you?”

Kendall knew this playbook inside and out. What normally happened when Mayrose put on her act was that men leaped to do her bidding. They normally fawned all over her. And no matter what she might have been doing, or what game she was already playing, she usually walked away with a few more prospects.

Men like to imagine they can take care of you no matter what standard of care you require, Mayrose had always told them growing up. Testosterone is so cute.

Kendall didn’t fully realize that she was braced for this very thing to happen—for chivalry to take over and make the men behind her bend over backwards to get Mayrose batting those eyelashes in their direction—until nobody moved.

Not a single member of the Carey family took even a small step forward.

And on the other side of the dining room were the big barn doors that were opened wide to let the summer in, and allow free-flowing access to the patio. Kendall could see other folks from Cowboy Point there, drifting closer with arms crossed. The cold-eyed Jack Stark and a mess of his cousins. The deputy sheriff. Cat from the General Store and Helena from the coffee cart, who, in her emotional state, she thought looked surprisingly alike standing side by side.

Even Dallas and Tennessee Lisle, who normally did nothing but look at Kendall with suspicion, were there, aiming those suspicious looks at Breanna and Mayrose for a change.

In fact, Kendall realized as her heart seemed to stutter in her chest, everyone she’d met in Cowboy Point was here. The pastor and his wife. The artists whose jewelry and ceramics and paintings she’d oohed and aahed over at the market. Some folks from the ranches and communities even farther out.

They all crowded around the opening, looking unwelcoming—and they were aiming that look at Kendall’s relatives. It was like they could see right through this act that always played well in motel bars and grubby casinos in midsized cities.

But this, Kendall thought, was Cowboy Point, where folks liked where they lived and looked after it, too.

It had never crossed her mind that might apply to her, too.

Mayrose didn’t notice, so focused was she on the Carey men lined up before her like a prize. Breanna was the one who looked around, frowning a little, because it was so unusual to lose the interest of a roomful of men.

“I reckon there’s been a misunderstanding,” Harlan said in his low voice that somehow managed to silence the whole room and outside, too. “We didn’t invite you here so you could play your usual games. I wanted to meet my in-laws. And make it as clear as I can that Kendall won’t be involved with any of the things you’ve got cooking from this point forward.”

Mayrose went from helpless and slinky to outraged in a single blink.

“I don’t believe you speak for my daughter,” she replied, with a lot less of that thicker-than-molasses drawl than normal.

“He can speak for me if he wants to,” Kendall jumped in then. “And believe me, he’s being a lot nicer than I would be.”

She watched her mother consider that. She watched Mayrose glance around, finally reading the whole room as well as the patio.

Like clockwork, on came the waterworks.

“After all I’ve done for you,” Mayrose began in a trembling voice.

“That’s not going to work, Mama,” Kendall told her, softly.

And she kept waiting for the townspeople to look at her in that speculative way people did sometimes, when the Darlingtons had gone too far in a single community. She kept waiting for it to be made clear that she was at least part of the problem, but no one was looking at her like that.

They were hardly looking at her at all. They were all studying Mayrose and Breanna in the same flinty manner.

“Thing is,” interjected the deputy sheriff from over by the door, and Kendall found she got a kick out of the way both her sister and her mother flinched when they saw the star on his chest, “we don’t like it when troublemakers come up here to Cowboy Point. Not to say we don’t have our own brand of trouble, but we don’t like to import it. And I’ve heard some reports about ladies meeting your description down in the Graff in Marietta the last week or so. I bet that if I put my mind to it, I could trace a path of destruction all the way back to where you came from. Bozeman, most recently?” Atticus Wayne shook his head. “Maybe I’ll go ahead and do that anyway.”

“One thing that’s not going to happen is you staying here,” Kendall told them, just to make that abundantly clear.

The deputy sheriff nodded. “We don’t do your kind of trouble in Cowboy Point, ladies.”

“This is a family matter,” Mayrose said, her immediately tearless eyes narrowing.

“I have a family now,” Kendall replied. “A real family.”

And that felt terrifying. To open her mouth like that, in front of the entire community, and claim the Careys—

“Always wanted a daughter,” Zeke barked out then, and Kendall thought she might actually tip over. Or dissolve into those tears that threatened the back of her eyes. Or maybe they were already tipping over, tracking heat down her cheeks. “Seems to me I got the best of them right here.”

“I have too many brothers,” Wilder added, and it was fascinating to see all of his intent and wickedness untempered by any curve to his mouth. He was just as much of a force as his older brother, Kendall thought. Maybe more so, in his way, because he wasn’t as patient—that was clear. “Have to say, I’m loving having a sister.”

“Same,” Boone belted out. With Knox right behind him.

And then, as if to remove any possible remaining doubt, Belinda stepped forward, and grabbed Kendall’s hand in hers.

“Go on then,” she said to Mayrose, woman to woman. “Get going. You can come back one day, if and when you’re ready to be a grandmother. But not before. Do you understand me?”

Kendall almost felt as if she was floating up above everyone, looking down at the scene unfolding here. This scene that was her life, somehow, but was also as close to a high-noon shootout in a Wild West town as she was likely to encounter.

The old Kendall would have crumbled.

Today’s Kendall stood tall.

Mayrose was spluttering and trying to talk back to Belinda’s quiet toughness.

But it was Breanna’s gaze that Kendall caught then.

“You were never any good at this anyway,” her sister said, shaking her head. “We’ve been carting your dead weight around for years.”

“Then I guess congratulations are in order,” Kendall replied, without a single shred of regret. “You’re footloose and fancy free, Breanna. The way you’ve always wanted.”

“We will come back,” her sister singsonged. “I can promise you that. And maybe not when you have a crowd around you to make you feel big.”

And there was a part of Kendall that wanted to challenge that. A part that wanted to step forward and say something cutting right back so her sister could feel what that was like, for a change.

Yet another part of her, the bigger part, couldn’t quite get there.

Because she knew the life that Breanna was clinging to so tightly. She’d lived it all these years. It had been all she knew, too.

But she’d seen that ad and she’d imagined something else.

And she’d traded that bleak, sad life in for Harlan’s hand on the nape of her neck. Belinda’s fierce grip on her hand. And a wall of caring men standing behind her.

While all around, the rest of this magical little valley stood ready, as if all they needed was one signal from her to handle the rest of this themselves.

Kendall had Harlan. Breanna had nothing at all. Just Mayrose’s increasingly erratic behavior and a lifestyle that revolved entirely around coercing others and trading on her looks.

A life that was fading away in front of them. Kendall thought they all knew that.

So it didn’t hurt her any to be kind.

“If you ever want to come back here and try being a real sister, you’re welcome to,” Kendall told her. “The door is always open.”

“But if you take that as an invitation to come see what you can lift, I’d advise against it,” Harlan added in that drawl of his. “This is Montana. We don’t take kindly to rustlers or thieves of any description.”

Breanna scoffed at that, then she went over and took Mayrose by the wrist. “Come on, Mama. We have better things to do than waste away on the backside of beyond with a pack of rednecks.”

Mayrose knew when she’d lost a battle, and maybe even a war. She shook off Breanna’s grip and flounced out, like she’d wanted to leave anyway.

Like it was her choice and anyway, they were all beneath her.

Kendall watched them go, surprised to find that she felt something like grief wash over her.

She loved that Belinda had left open the possibility for their return. And people could be surprising.

But, deep down, Kendall knew she wasn’t going to see the Darlingtons again.

And that grief flowed through her. Not so much for losing her mother and her sister today. She’d never had them, not the way she’d wanted them.

This was more for the mother and sister she’d never had.

She stood there in the dining room of a pizza place that felt like home, that grief all over her, and watched them go. She watched the way the two of them swayed together as they walked, like two sides of the same too-shiny, counterfeit coin.

“You just don’t like that she decided on her own to go,” Breanna was saying, loud enough to float back inside. “We’ve talked about ditching her a million times. Let’s take it as a win.”

And she looked back over her shoulder to make sure that Kendall had heard that. To make sure that if there was any possibility of sinking in one last knife, she’d get it in there deep.

She and Kendall stared at each other for one last, long moment.

Breanna sneered. The door fell shut.

And for a moment, everybody inside Mountain Mama’s was still.

Kendall felt that grief, yes, but beyond that, the heat of Harlan’s hand on her neck. The comfort of the weight of his palm.

Belinda’s tight grip on her hand.

The folks out on the patio remained frozen, in a hushed sort of silence. There was the sound of car doors slamming, an engine turning over, and then, at last, a car pulling away.

“I believe they’re headed for Desolation Drive,” the deputy sheriff said after a moment.

When he looked back inside, he exchanged a long look with Harlan. It made Kendall think that Mayrose and Breanna might have a tougher time out there then they imagined.

And she did not plan to do one tiny little thing about the bed they’d made but let them sleep in it.

Belinda squeezed Kendall’s hand in three short bursts, then let go. Harlan pulled her back into his chest, tipping her chin up so he could gaze down at her.

“Welcome to Cowboy Point, baby,” he said, in that voice of his that carried, maybe all the way up to the peak of Copper Mountain, down into Marietta, and back. She couldn’t imagine there was anywhere on this earth that couldn’t hear Harlan Carey if he wanted them to. She hoped she’d never find out. “Welcome home.”

And everybody cheered.