Chapter Four
“Y ou seem different,” Cat’s mother said one morning in the General Store.
It took everything Cat had, every scrap of willpower, not to openly and obviously react to a statement like that the way she did inside.
Outside, she kept it together—somehow.
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t blush. She didn’t stare at her mother with big, round eyes, like a cartoon character caught in the act. She was working on one of their little in-store displays and so she kept on doing it, stacking up the back-to-school items because fall was looming.
Like it or not, it would be September over the weekend.
And it had been the best almost two weeks of her life, but that was something she couldn’t share with anyone. Not even her mom, who she had always told everything. She couldn’t share it, and so she also couldn’t share that she was terrified that this was just a summer thing.
That September would come and she would never see Wilder again—not up close, in the dark, where she could crawl all over him and taste the skin beneath his perfect jaw and listen to him breathe—
That fall would start and he would be someone she saw in passing and heard the odd story about, here and there. The way he had been before.
She was terrified that she would have to live like that, with her heart forever ripped out of her body. That she would have to walk around like that and pretend she was fine. She knew that people did this, but she had never understood how .
She understood even less now—and she couldn’t talk to anyone about it.
That was the whole point of it being a secret.
“I think I got too much sun,” Cat said instead, pretending to study the notebooks, binders, and pens with a critical eye, as if their customer base in the off-season was likely to be concerned with aesthetics over necessity. “Gardening is brutal.”
Jenny made a noncommittal sort of noise. “You do seem to have a glow about you, but I didn’t think it was sunburn from playing with the roses for all of an hour yesterday. Maybe it’s just that you’re normally a bit more broody this time of year.”
Cat did look up at that. “Broody? I don’t even want to know what that means.”
Jenny Lisle had the face of an angel, and was as tough as she was sweet, but she leveled one of her serious looks on her daughter, then. “You know exactly what it means. You’re in want of a little direction, my girl. There’s no shame in that. Just because your brothers want to stay put doesn’t mean you have to. There’s a whole world out there and Lisle Hill isn’t going to go anywhere if you go off and explore some of it.”
She had said things like that before, but it seemed a lot more pointed today. Cat immediately wondered if somehow, her mother had cottoned on to the fact that Cat spent most of her nights out in the woods. She would have imagined that Jenny would be more direct, but it was hard to say. After all, it wasn’t as if Cat had brought a whole lot of boyfriends around before.
Not that she would call Wilder her boyfriend . Not that Wilder was her anything .
Except, maybe, her own, personal heart attack. But it turned out she was a big fan of that kind of cardiac arrest, and all the ways he had to take her to that brink and then bring her back again.
And Cat was just as happy that the front door of the store opened then, so her mother’s all-seeing eye turned elsewhere, and most importantly, away from the goose bumps that prickled down Cat’s arms.
Later, after her mother had left the store to walk up the hill and work on some of the bookkeeping, Cat found herself daydreaming. This was how she’d spent approximately ninety-eight percent of her time before the last couple of weeks. But these days, it was different. She spent a lot less time looking up distant cities to try to imagine herself there and a lot more time counting the hours until she could see Wilder again.
Because every time she did see him, she thought she was that much closer to convincing him that they really should have actual sex.
I’m sorry that what we’re already doing isn’t living up to expectations, he liked to drawl in response.
Then he’d show her something new that left her sobbing out his name into his shoulder, which she knew perfectly well was his way of changing the subject.
It was effective.
But she knew that there was more. That if he was this good at all the other things, there was no doubt that he was going to be mind-blowing at the main event.
She just really, really, really wanted that main event. With him.
Especially now that she had experimented with his great many recipes, it had to be him. How could she possibly downgrade to someone else? She couldn’t imagine it.
So instead, Cat sat on the stool behind the counter, imagining the thing she spent a whole lot of time picturing these days. What it would be like to take all of Wilder deep into her body, and be able to cross her legs over his back and look him in the face while he did it—
She had to stop. This was not a private place.
Something that was driven home to her when Tennessee came in through the little passage that connected the General Store to the diner and she had to immediately worry about… whatever her face was doing. Her oldest brother’s eyes were ridiculously blue, just like hers and just like Dallas’s, and she found that she did not really love being on the wrong side of that glare.
He scowled at her as he got closer. “What’s the matter with you?”
“It’s so nice to see you too this fine day,” she said cheerfully. “Summer is waning, fall beckons, and yet your bad moods are as predictable as the turning of the seasons.”
Her brother grunted. “I don’t know what that means. Sounds like you’ve been reading too much again.”
Cat made a noise of mock horror. “We wouldn’t want that . No one likes it when the women get those terrible ideas in their silly heads.”
Tennessee ignored that, moving behind the counter and brushing past her so he could do something involving the register and some cash. “Did you get lunch yet? I just closed down the grill, but I can fire it up again if you want.”
Because even grumpy and annoyed with her, he took care of her. It was why she loved him even when he drove her up the wall, which was pretty much every day.
“I’m good,” she said. “I think I might walk down and get a slice of pizza, though. Want something?”
Tennessee had taken against the newcomers who’d swept into town some five years back, made over an old barn that had sat on the main street of town forever, and turned it into a pizza, ice cream, and music place. Not because there was any reason to take against the Bennett sisters, other than the fact they came from somewhere else, but because newcomers with big ideas in the summers were usually gone before another summer rolled around and Tennessee wasn’t the only local who couldn’t take any of them seriously. He was the one who kept the betting book in the General Store for everyone to vote on how quickly said newcomers would leave.
But the Bennetts had stayed put.
In the summer, the outdoor patio stayed open good and late, and in winter it was cozy and always open for locals to come warm themselves up. In some ways it functioned like a community living room. The Bennetts had already integrated themselves into the community here and even Tennessee had finally softened his stance. Probably because there was never any chance that he’d lose any customers to the new restaurant in town, any more than he did to the various new food truck options that people were all excited about. It was the diner that did the fueling up of all the ranch hands and cowboys and anyone else who needed to be up early with a meal in their belly to get to work. It was the diner that gave folks solid country food for solid country lives, and around here, that was not only appreciated but supported.
Mountain Mama was more of an experience. Even Tennessee had unbent enough to eat there, a time or two, but he always took a moment. Like he was deciding whether or not to be mad about it all over again. Today he just shook his head. “I can stick around for a while if you want to take your time at lunch,” he told her. “But you’re closing tonight, right?”
“That’s what it says on the schedule you made up this Sunday, the way you make up a schedule every Sunday,” Cat said, and smiled when he glared at her. “What? You not only send it to all of us, it’s posted right there.”
She pointed past him to the staff bulletin board, and decided, today, not to point out how funny she thought it was that they called it the staff bulletin board when the staff was just family. Just the same four of them it had always been.
“I hear you’re becoming a fixture at the Copper Mine,” Tennessee said then, without pausing in the counting of the bills before him. “For all I know you had big plans to head over there early and tie one on while it’s still light out.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever tied one on a day in my life,” Cat replied. Because that was still true. Wilder had stopped her from the tying-on and general carousing she’d planned to do.
And yes, she supposed a case could be made for the fact that she was carousing now, but privately. But there was no way Tennessee knew that. Because if he did, he would not have been concentrating on the cash in front of him.
“You’ve never seemed that interested in the Copper Mine before,” he said instead. “Suddenly you’re there all the time.”
“Everyone’s there all the time.” She shook her head at him. “It’s actually weird that you’re not there all the time, Tennessee. Given that there’s nowhere else to go in this town.”
He let out a small laugh. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Maybe this weekend I’ll go on a bender. That sounds like me.”
She bumped his hip as she moved around him, then wiggled her fingers at him as she headed outside into one of the last August afternoons of the year.
The mornings were getting colder now, but it was hard to remember that with all the sunshine of the afternoon. She tipped her face back as she walked down the road, letting the light dance all over her and smiling as she passed people she knew.
Summer got better here every year. Every Saturday there was the Farm and Craft Market, where local artists, craft makers, and businesses set up booths in the little square by the library. Anyone with something to sell, local produce and honey and the like, put out little stands at the bottom of their dirt roads. The artists who lived out in the hills kept a gallery going in one of the fields on the far side of the creek, there was a whole fiber and textile bazaar in one of the big barns nearby, and the food trucks were everywhere. Even Tennessee ran his summer plate specials.
The tourists came from down in Marietta or in from Livingston and even Bozeman, or sometimes from even farther afield, like all the way down in Jackson Hole. They came up for the weekend, wandered around, and fell in love with the place—and it was easy to see why. They marveled at how unspoiled it was here. They would look for real estate. They would talk a big game about buying land and building, when really what they wanted was the perfect summer escape.
On a perfect day like this, who wouldn’t want to live here?
Cat knew that the summer glory would keep going a little way into fall, but the first snow always came earlier than folks expected and it changed everything. It blocked off some of the roads that led way out into the mountains, where there were artistic communities and whole ranches dedicated not to livestock, but to creativity. It also started limiting what the farmers brought in, and the hours businesses stayed open, and the outdoor options were packed up until spring.
Every local knew that they’d better enjoy the summer days while they had them.
She walked around to the side of the store to find the little coffee truck that had started last summer thanks to yet another newcomer. But it was coffee. Who didn’t want more coffee options? Cat hadn’t been the only person excited when the weather started to get warmer and the coffee cart came back.
And since she always had to stand in line to order her drink, she figured that the mysterious Helena Patrick was hitting it out of the park.
“What are we going to do without you all winter this time?” she asked as she got her afternoon pick-me-up, iced coffee with a splash of cream. “What happens if I’m an addict?”
“You’re going to have to talk to your brother about that,” Helena said with a smile, her dark hair pulled back so it wouldn’t fall into the drinks and her gaze on the shots she was pulling. “Because I’m pretty sure the cart can make it through the winter if he’s okay with me parking it here. I’m willing to try, anyway.”
“We have to make sure this happens,” Cat said immediately, making a mental note to talk to Tennessee about it.
And as she walked away, she once again had that same odd inkling that she’d seen Helena somewhere before, when she knew she hadn’t. She’d met her like everyone else the May before last when Helena had arrived in town, moved into one of the cabins on the hill below the old lodge, and had started floating the coffee cart idea around shortly after.
She took a sip of her drink as she walked—it was perfect, as always—and told herself that Helena must just have one of those familiar faces. Probably everyone in town thought she reminded them of someone. One of these days it would come to her.
Down at Mountain Mama, the place was bustling. Cat didn’t recognize anyone at one of the tables out on the patio, so it was a good bet that they’d all come up for the day from Marietta, or other points down in Paradise Valley. She walked through the crowd that spilled from the cozy interior to the very edge of the patio, making her way to the counter, where the youngest Bennett sister, Indy, greeted her with a big smile and a bandanna wrapped around her strawberry-blonde hair like a headband.
“Check out this crowd,” she said with a laugh. “I thought it would be dead this weekend, what with Labor Day on Monday, but I guess Cowboy Point is everybody’s new holiday destination.”
“Go Cowboy Point,” Cat said. She placed her lunch order, then swiveled around on her stool, taking in not just the crowd but what their presence here meant.
Things really were changing. A lot of good people had been working hard to make sure that they did, that this place really could become something more than another dead western town too abandoned to even be a ghost town—and maybe that was why she felt so dissatisfied with everything. Or had, until recently. Because what was she doing to help move the needle? How was she helping Cowboy Point go from a wide place in the road filled with people who were here because they’d always been here, to a destination ?
“This is a mob scene,” came a voice from beside her, “I obviously should have called in my order ahead of time.”
The voice was good-natured, and when Cat turned, she recognized the smiling woman who stood there. Ramona Taylor was tall and the kind of slim that suggested she was either highly anxious, did a lot of running for fun, or both. She looked elegant even though she was wearing jeans and boots like everyone else and a T-shirt with the name of the fancy college from back east emblazoned on the front. Her hair was up in one of those complicated braids that showed off all the many shades of blonde that were in it, and Cat had no doubt that she’d probably done that herself, without even looking in a mirror. Cat knew exactly one thing to do with her own hair. Wash it, brush it, and let it dry as it would.
Ramona was also a doctor, Cat knew, because of course someone that elegant wasn’t only elegant. She was also new to Cowboy Point.
“In my next life,” Cat said with a sigh, “I want to come back as you. Polished. Put together. Educated.”
“Effortless,” came Indy’s voice from the other side of the counter, in the same dreamy tone. “Not to mention poised, fascinating, and never wearing the scent of pizza dough and garlic like a perfume.”
“Or fried food from the family diner,” Cat agreed. “So enticing.”
Ramona laughed. “It worked!” she cried. “I’ve convinced you all that I’m the person I always wanted to be when I grow up. I knew I liked this place.”
And when Indy bustled off with her order, the doctor settled in next to Cat on the stool beside her like they were friends.
Come to think of it, Cat kind of thought that they were, now.
“I’m betting you’re a local,” Ramona said. “Born and raised?”
“Don’t tell me there’s a local tattoo, or something,” Cat said with a smile. “Is it all over my face? How have I never seen it?”
“If I was going to ask someone to picture what the perfect Montana mountain girl would look like, I’m pretty sure that it would be a picture of you,” Ramona said. “That’s all. I mean it as a compliment.”
“I wouldn’t be offended if there was a tattoo,” Cat confided in her, because the coffee was doing its heavy lifting and she was running with it. That was what she did now—she ran with things. “I’d just be mad that I missed the experience of getting it. In my dreams, I’m covered in tattoos, sleeves and legs and all around my back. But in real life? Not a one.”
The doctor looked at her a moment. “I’m pretty sure there’s a tattoo parlor down in Marietta.”
“There sure is. But I can never decide what I actually want.” Cat tipped her iced coffee in Ramona’s direction. “Since we’re sitting here, having become best friends in the past five minutes, I can tell you that that’s a life issue for me. Wanting a whole lot of things, not sure what.”
“I think that’s an issue for most people,” her new friend replied.
“I’d rather examine that issue with some letters after my name,” Cat said with a laugh. “That seems more like a career . My current quarter-life crisis, as I believe these things are known, isn’t much more than me brooding around. Which I do every fall anyway, according to my mother.”
“You work in the General Store, don’t you?”
“I do, and I always have, and I suppose I always will.” When Ramona raised a brow, Cat shrugged. “It’s a family thing, and my family’s been here since the beginning. And we’ve been running the store since shortly after the beginning. That makes it a tradition.”
“And you don’t like the tradition.”
“I actually love the tradition,” Cat said quietly, a little surprised to find that she meant it. “I think I’m trying to decide if I have a personality outside the tradition, or if the tradition is who I am. There are no wrong answers. But I do wonder.”
A family came to the counter then and placed a loud, long order, so it was a few moments before the ravenous children were placated with some garlic knots and the two of them could pick up the conversation again.
“I’m going to need help,” Ramona said. “I need someone to run the office once I get the clinic up and running, if I really want to see patients and all the rest.”
Cat grinned. “Are you offering me a job? I should compliment people in pizza joints more often.”
“I’ve seen you around since I moved here at the end of June,” the doctor said, and though she shrugged, her gaze was shrewd. “Everybody knows you and your family, so there’s some accountability there whether you’re happy with that tradition or not. Better still, everybody seems to like you, and that takes some doing in a small town. Might be an asset.” She smiled. “I’m not actually that impetuous. There would be an interview process to make sure we suit. If you’re interested, come by the clinic and let me know. No pressure.”
“You’re in old Mr. Dade’s house,” Cat said with nod. “Over by the library.”
“Old Mr. Dade was my grandad,” Ramona said, her smile a little deeper, then.
And Indy came rushing back over then, delivering them their orders with a huge smile on her face, so there was no time for Cat to register her surprise that a man who had been very old when she was a kid, and always on his own as far as she’d ever known, had actually had a family at all. Much less a fancy granddaughter from back east.
“I hope I’ll see you both later tonight or sometime this weekend,” Indy was saying. “Every night we’ll have live music, happy hour until eight o’clock, a whole two-for-one appetizer situation, and locals always get their first drink free.”
Both Cat and Ramona made interested sort of noises, though Cat knew as the two of them walked out and said their goodbyes on the street that she would not be doing that. Not because she didn’t like it at Mountain Mama, or the idea of the evening that Indy had laid out before them, but because she knew that Wilder was unlikely to come here.
He preferred the Copper Mine, so that’s where she would accidentally-on-purpose end up tonight and likely every night, though she wasn’t sure she liked the fact that Tennessee had noticed her sudden new interest in the place. That probably meant that others had, too.
But then, this was a very small place. The smart bet was that everyone noticed everything. Kind of the way she noticed their deputy sheriff talking to Sarah Jane Stark, the librarian, out in front of the barn where all the knitting enthusiasts gathered. The same way she noticed Deputy Atticus Wayne lift a hand to wave to a passing truck, all neighborly.
And she noticed the truck, too. She recognized it, just like she recognized Boone Carey behind the wheel and the nod he delivered to Atticus.
But what really got her attention was Wilder in the passenger seat.
And she certainly noticed—and felt, deeply—the way Wilder’s gaze hit hers like a bolt of lightning and then—
Moved on.
As if she was… a shrub. A fire hydrant. A garbage can.
And because everything between them was a secret, she had to keep walking. She had to not react. She had to give Boone and Wilder the same noncommittal smile she gave everyone she passed, and she hated it.
It was different at night, in the Copper Mine, when she knew that it was a game and that she would see him in the woods in a little while. It was different when she knew that he was playing that same game, in the same way.
Here, on the main road, in the bright summer sun, it didn’t feel like a game.
Cat felt something like ashamed.
She hated it.
And when she got back to the store, she didn’t go inside. She circled around and walked over the creek to Tennessee’s house, where she could sit on his porch, shove pizza into her mouth, and ask herself why it was her feelings were so hurt.
Because they had agreed that it would stay between them.
She had thought it was smarter and it had seemed like fun, too.
Keeping him as her secret had seemed like such a great idea out there in the dark, rolling around with him in the bed of his truck, wondering how it was possible for any one human body to contain all of that sensation at once.
Keeping secrets seemed sophisticated and delicious when his mouth was on her skin and he was doing those things with his hands, teaching her things about her own body that she blushed just thinking about.
It hadn’t occurred to her to think about this part of keeping him secret. Feeling like a spurned little kid, not invited to the party, ignored on a public street.
She didn’t like how this felt at all.
And there was nothing for her to do but sit there, blinking away tears, until she could get herself under control. Until she could make herself stand up, shake it off, and walk back in to face her brother with a smile.
Because all the reasons she was keeping Wilder a secret still held. All of those long, wild, glorious nights were theirs, she’d agreed, and she was still hungry for more.
Cat just wasn’t sure how much she liked it now that reality had smacked her in the face right there on the street in the bright light of day.
Or what she thought she was going to do about it.