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

Epilogue

“Well, well, well,” Belinda said happily the next morning, settling in with her coffee on the arm of Zeke’s chair and raising her mug toward Alice, “I think this is going splendidly.”

“Better than expected,” Zeke agreed.

In her picture, captured forever young and bright, Alice seemed to smile straight at them, like she was giving her agreement.

“Though I think Kendall suspects,” he felt compelled to say. When Belinda only looked at him, he shrugged. Only a little sheepishly. “I may have confirmed her suspicions, in fact.”

“I like her.” Belinda sighed contentedly. “She’s perfect for Harlan and she’s smart enough to see through you? That makes her the perfect daughter-in-law, and Lord knows, I need more women around here. She’s an excellent start.”

She was. There was no debating it.

But Zeke hadn’t expected that he’d want the daughters-in-law his little gambit would bring him. Not personally. He hadn’t given any thought to whether or not he would come to like them for themselves, having nothing to do with their relationships to his own children. How he would watch them with his sons and think of them as his own.

If Kendall was any indication of how this was going to go, he had four more women to meet and make room for in his gruff old heart.

There was a beautiful sort of discomfort in that. He really hadn’t expected it.

A lot like he hadn’t expected that telling his sons that he was dying would be… less entertaining and a whole lot more upsetting than he’d figured. He’d kind of glossed over the emotional part of all that in the planning stage, because he knew he was as healthy as a horse.

He’d been too busy focusing on the end goal. Grandchildren, yes, and his sons not so damned aloof and lonely all the time, no matter how many times they claimed they weren’t.

A father knew.

Zeke hadn’t been prepared for the way they’d all stared back at him that Easter Sunday after he’d made his announcement. Five grown men who’d looked, for a moment, like the toddlers they’d been so many years ago. All wide eyes and an unusual, heavy silence that had lasted too long.

He’d hated it.

Just like he hated the way they’d all treated him since, fluttering around him like a pack of hens. Extra careful. Extra solicitous, like he was visibly broken and might shatter at the first glance.

Like he was already gone.

Mind you, Zeke had been working this land his whole life. He knew how to hunker down and work with what he had for a season. Even if it was this nonsense.

Careful what you wish forhad never rung more loudly in his own head.

Today, however, he settled back in his chair with Belinda on the arm and Alice at his elbow. Because today was a day for resting on laurels.

His laurels, thank you very much.

“One down,” he said with great satisfaction. “Four to go.”

“Hear, hear,” Belinda said, clinking her mug to his, then to the edge of Alice’s picture frame. “We got this. Grandbabies on tap.”

Zeke gazed out at the beautiful view that never failed to lift his spirits and make his heart feel strong enough to rearrange all the mountains as he pleased. The endless blue sky and the trees that rose to meet it. The hills that soared above the tree line, many still with patches of snow. This glorious land that gave him so much. The first, great, endlessly enduring love of his life that had brought him all the rest of the things he loved.

And then he thought about the personalities of these boys he’d raised into men. The ways he knew them better than most and, in some ways, better than they knew themselves. A father’s prerogative, he often thought. He’d held the whole of their lives in his hands so far and he would until he actually died, which he hoped was far off in the future.

Maybe, he thought now, it was time he did more than just issue a challenge and sit back.

Now that he knew the game was afoot, shouldn’t he also take the opportunity to put a few things in motion?

The fact was, he should have known that Harlan would be the one to act quickly and decisively, to get the ball rolling. That was what Harlan did, each and every day. That was who Harlan was.

Zeke had started to wonder if they hadn’t believed him before Kendall turned up. If he might have to make an even more dramatic announcement. Or play up that fragility they all seemed to think he was suddenly riddled with.

But now that he knew his plan was in action, Zeke figured he needed to make sure that things continued at the same pace.

Because a man could only take so much coddling from a pack of boys he’d diapered and burped, bandaged and rocked to sleep after nightmares, and taught to walk. And talk. And then, inevitably, talk back.

He held the marvel that was his Belinda close. He smiled at his sweet Alice in her frame.

And he allowed himself to think, deeply, about exactly how best he could rock each and every one of his sons’ worlds. Maybe take them down a peg or two, problematic as they were to all the ladies in Cowboy Point—and beyond.

Starting with Wilder, Zeke thought, because the good Lord knew, the next oldest in line needed his world rocked a little bit. He was far too comfortable. Too arrogant, some might say.

But not for long.

Zeke would see to it. Personally.

He already knew how.

The End