Chapter Eight
C at didn’t think. Wilder had already set her down, but she turned immediately, as if she intended to block him with her body when she was the smallest one in this clearing.
Still, she knew her brothers. Or more to the point, she knew all the big talking they’d done over the years about the very idea of a boy looking at her twice on the school bus all the way down into Marietta. All that mayhem they intended to unleash and so on, and that was a bus filled with other kids.
Not a clearing in the woods and a grown man with his hands on her.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded before they could say anything else. “Because this looks a lot like you’re following me, and I know that can’t be true, can it? Since that would be creepy and weird.”
“If you thought it wasn’t creepy and weird to be out here with him, it wouldn’t be a secret, would it Cat?” Tennessee returned while Dallas stood there stone-faced, looking every inch the Army Ranger he’d been in the service.
Cat huffed out a laugh. “Are we going to start talking about secrets? Really? In this family?”
“It’s not a secret,” Wilder said then, sounding so unbothered that even Cat looked at him, astonished that he wasn’t getting the gravity of this situation. “It’s just not public. That’s not the same thing.”
“This is just like a Carey,” Tennessee said, glaring at him. “Lying with a straight face like you all have from the start.”
And by the start , of course, he meant the 1800s.
Cat could not believe that this was happening. That her brothers had trekked out into the woods, found her with Wilder, and instead of anyone taking any of that on board, Tennessee was settling in to argue about a disputed poker game no one here had been alive to witness.
No one here’s grandparents had been around to see it either.
“Yes,” she seethed at her brother. “The feud between Ebenezer Lisle and Matthew Carey is definitely at the top of the list of things I think we should be talking about right now. In the woods. After midnight.”
Tennessee scowled at her. But Wilder laughed, and it was a dangerous sound.
“It’s not the Careys who do the lying and cheating,” he said, in that exaggerated drawl that she knew he used when he wasn’t nearly as laid back as he was pretending he was. “It wasn’t Matthew and it sure isn’t me. You’re doing it in real time, Tennessee. Your sister is standing right in front of you and you’re not even talking to her about her life. You’re too busy making trying to get at me.” He smirked. “Feels familiar. Must be that genetic memory, rearing its head again.”
And all three of them got a little loud, then, until Cat was forced to take desperate measures.
She screamed. Bloody murder.
So loud that a dog barked somewhere down the hill and more satisfyingly, all three of them jumped.
Then turned as one to stare at her in shock.
“Why are all three of you standing around discussing me and what I do with my life like I’m not right here?” she demanded.
She didn’t look at Wilder, who had advanced that notion previously, sure. But then he’d been happy enough to start arguing poker games and blood feuds and football grudges they still held from high school with her brothers, and it was too much.
They were all too much .
“Tennessee. Dallas. I don’t know why you’re out here in the woods tonight.” Cat glared at them each in turn until Tennessee looked away, his jaw working. “I certainly hope it’s an accident. You were out for a brotherly stroll in the lovely autumn darkness and happened upon us. Is that what’s going on?”
Dallas did not look away, but he did ratchet back the Army Ranger a little. Just a little. “I think you know it isn’t,” he replied.
“You’ve been acting weird,” Tennessee told her bluntly. “Suddenly you need a new job. Suddenly you’re out all night and hanging out at the Copper Mine. It has teenage rebellion written all over it.”
“Except, fun fact, I’m not a teenager,” Cat bit out when he showed no sign of retracting that statement. Her temper snapped, though she tried not to give into it completely. “I’m completely grown and have been for years now. If I want to dance naked on the pool table at the Wolf Den, then that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“How do you know that there’s a pool table in the Wolf Den?” Dallas asked.
Tennessee’s scowl darkened. “How do you know anything about the Wolf Den at all?”
“I’m done with this,” Cat announced, no longer caring if her brothers saw that she was mad at them.
She was. She wanted them to know that she was.
She reached over and grabbed Wilder’s wrist, and then yanked him with her as she started back toward the house. What was amazing was that he let her.
“Come on,” she said loudly, as much to the trees as to him—and, okay, maybe it was to her brothers most of all. “Since they’ve come out here and ruined this spot, we might as well go and sit in the house like civilized people.”
And she thought that there was some resistance, then, but she chose to ignore it. She walked and Wilder went with her, and that was a good thing.
If he’d balked, if he decided he didn’t want to go along with her, she wasn’t sure what she would have done.
But he didn’t.
He let her tug him along as she headed up the hill, and she kept herself focused on what was ahead of her. The house that waited there with too many lights on for this time of night, indicating that her mom was probably still awake.
Oh well, she thought as she walked. Might as well rip the Band-Aid off all at once.
Wilder was keeping pace with her. That was what mattered, even if she was pretty sure that if she looked back over her shoulder, he would almost certainly be smirking at her brothers as she towed him along in her wake.
She couldn’t really blame him.
And as she stormed back towards her mother’s house—the childhood home she’d never moved out of, something she found herself thinking about far too much now that she’d decided to work for Ramona at least part time—she found herself thinking not about her brothers emerging from the woods like a nightmare come to life, but the thing Wilder had almost said right as that happened.
They needed to talk ? Was that ever a good thing?
Had he finally been about to brush her off, the way she had half-expected him to do every day since this had all started?
Was it possible that her brothers had actually been a reprieve?
The very idea made her feel sick. And foolish.
But then again, he could have pulled away back near his truck. He could have politely excused himself. He hadn’t. She had to think that meant something.
She needed that to mean something.
Once they made it up to the house, Cat stormed inside. She threw open the front door and tugged Wilder directly into the living room. Her mother was sitting there on the couch, her dark auburn hair piled on the back of her head, her nighttime bowl of popcorn in her lap, one of her shows on the television, and a startled look on her face.
“Hi Mom,” Cat said. Or, really, it was more of a proclamation . “Wilder and I have been together for the past month. Tennessee and Dallas just stormed the woods, apparently because they’re sad little stalkers with nothing better to do.”
“Evening, ma’am,” Wilder drawled, nodding at Jenny.
“There’s actually nothing stalkery about looking out for my younger sister,” Tennessee gritted out from behind Cat. “I’m not going to apologize for it.”
“I was trained to do recon by the U.S. Army,” Dallas chimed in. “It’s a feature, not a bug.”
“Wilder Carey.” Jenny’s face was unreadable for all that it was sweet. It was one of her superpowers. She set aside her bowl. “I think you might very well be the first Carey that has ever set foot in this home.”
“He’ll be the last,” Tennessee growled. “If I have anything to say about it.”
“It’s an honor,” Wilder said, nodding his head again in Jenny’s direction, as if Tennessee didn’t exist.
Cat wished he didn’t, just then. “What makes you think you do have anything to say about it?”
“I regret to inform you, Mom, that this man you’re being so friendly with was in a compromising position with Cat. Out in the woods. In the dark.” Tennessee made this announcement as if he deeply regretted that he had to do such a thing in the first place, a tone he had not taken with Cat in a long time. It was amazing how well she remembered it, from that span of years when Jenny had been a mess. Tennessee really had been the adult in the room then, though he’d still been a kid himself. “I doubt very much that this was the first time that she snuck off to meet up with him.”
Cat reminded herself that no one here was a kid now. Especially not her.
“Is this true Cat?” Jenny asked, but very mildly. So mildly it was almost like she was commenting on the weather.
“It is absolutely true,” Cat said, turning to glare at Tennessee. “Not that it’s any of anybody’s business but mine. And Wilder’s.”
Beside her, Wilder didn’t comment on that. Did she imagine that he tensed? Or was she making these things up, that broken-off sentence still swirling around in her head…?
“I have to commend you, Cat,” Jenny said after a moment. “When I told you that you ought to get out there and explore, I didn’t mean men. I didn’t not mean men, but I always thought you imagined yourself traveling. Still, I have to applaud the fact that you went out and found the most unlikely one around.” She eyed Wilder for a moment. He looked amused. “Then again, you must be your mother’s daughter. I too liked a pretty face, to my detriment.”
“Mom.” Dallas looked revolted. “Please. You told us the stork brought us.”
“Wilder Carey has the distinction of being the biggest—” Tennessee cut himself off, shooting a look at Wilder, then at his mother. But not at her, Cat noted. Of course not. “He’s the freest with his affections of all his brothers.”
“I know what a man whore is, Tennessee,” Jenny replied in that mild way of hers that only the unwary failed to notice had a sharp edge or two. “I was married to your father.”
“I take exception to that,” Wilder said while the Lisles in the room digested the fact that their usually sweet and contained mother had just uttered the term man whore . “Ryder is a rodeo star. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about what he does with his…” He glanced at Jenny, then smiled. “Affections.”
“It wouldn’t matter if Wilder slept with every woman above the age of consent in Crawford County,” Cat said hotly, though the truth was, that would actually matter to her. It would matter to her more than she wanted to admit, but that wasn’t the point she was trying to make. “I’m an adult and I’m going to do what I want. That’s the end of the discussion. The only reason we’re standing here having this conversation at all is because I don’t want you two—” and she pointed at her brothers, each in turn “—to run around thinking that I feel like this is anything to be ashamed of. Because I don’t. You want to know why we decided not to tell anyone about this?”
She could feel Wilder’s eyes on the side of her face, and Cat understood that this was dangerous ground. She shouldn’t be speaking for him. She had no idea what he’d been about to say.
But she supposed that in that moment she trusted him enough to go along with her, even if he disagreed.
If only to annoy her brothers.
So she didn’t wait for the two of them to answer. Or for Wilder to correct her.
“Because of you,” she told her brothers. “Because of this . Because you’re overprotective to the point of psychosis, and I didn’t want you involved. I love you, but I don’t care what you think about this.”
She looked at Tennessee directly. “You’re not actually my father,” she told him, and he flinched. “I understand that you had to step into some heavy stuff while we were growing up, and I’m grateful to you for that. We all are. But I’m not your daughter.”
“No,” Jenny said softly. “You aren’t.”
Cat looked at Dallas then. “And I’m deeply sorry for the things that you went through, that left you numb and grieving.” When he started to protest, she lifted a hand. “We don’t need to lay them all out. But we both know you should focus more on yourself and a whole lot less on me.”
She moved back then and put her arm around Wilder’s waist, as if they really were a couple. A daring gesture that she wasn’t sure she’d thought through, but once she’d committed to it, there was no taking it back. Because she wanted them to think they really were that kind of couple. The kind of couple that she could admit, standing here in her mother’s living room with her entire family staring at her, she had wished they were all along.
But, we need to talk , he’d said.
“That’s all well and good,” Tennessee muttered. Cat thought that he looked like it was neither well nor good, but she didn’t argue. “Still, Wilder, the question remains. Why do you have a death wish?”
“After almost two hundred odd years of your family claiming that they are somehow more honorable than the rest of us,” Dallas added. “Honorable is not what sneaking around in the woods looks like from over here.”
“Then look somewhere else, Dallas,” Cat suggested.
“I can accept that you want to be your own person,” Dallas told her. “Hell, I applaud it. I’m the only one in this family who went away for a while and I get it. You want to do something different. But that doesn’t explain what he was doing.”
Wilder sighed, and he did it a little theatrically. “It doesn’t surprise me that the two of you have somehow missed the fact that your sister is a beautiful, grown woman. Anyone would not only be delighted to date her, but would feel nothing but lucky if she let them.”
Cat looked up at him, her arm still around his waist, which meant his was across her back. They didn’t spend a lot of time together standing, and certainly not like this. There was something so tender about it. It made her feel warmed, and wanted, in a way that nothing else ever had.
Like he was hers.
Like he really was.
“We didn’t miss any of that.” Tennessee was growling at him. “We were just hoping for a higher caliber of man when she finally brought one home. Instead, it’s you.”
And because she was holding on to him, Cat could feel the way Wilder stiffened at that. She didn’t think it was visible to her brothers. The smile never left Wilder’s face. But she could feel that sudden tension in him.
“But you all seem to be under the impression that this is something it isn’t,” Wilder drawled.
And everything in Cat froze.
This was where he was going to do it.
He was going to tell them all that it wasn’t anything, that it was over, that he’d been about to end it before they’d interrupted her.
And it was going to kill her.
When it did, her brothers would kill him, because she was upset and they wouldn’t be able to stand that and she didn’t know how she was going to handle any of it—
“I’m deadly serious about your sister,” Wilder told them, in that quiet voice of his that seemed to fill the whole house. And found its way into her, too, until she felt as if she was shaking from the inside out. “And I am an honorable man, as it happens. Or I’d like to be.”
And Cat thought there was a whole world in the difference between those two sentences, and how could she know how he tasted and what his laughter felt like before it happened and not know what that was?
He shifted to look down at Cat and there was a glint in his dark eyes she didn’t understand. It made her shiver. It made her wonder. “What do you say, Cat? You want to make this thing legal?”
Once again, everything inside of her… stopped.
She tilted her head back to look at him, aware that in the periphery of her vision, her family was reacting to what Wilder had said—but she didn’t care about that.
What she cared about was what he’d said.
And there was a part of her—a large part of her—that wanted nothing more than to shriek with joy and toss herself in his arms and start planning a wedding before he could take it back. Cat was aware this was not, maybe, the healthiest response.
But there were only so many ways to handle a skittish man, and the primary one, as far as she could tell, was the one he’d been holding over her head this whole time.
Maybe marrying him would change his mind on that.
He gazed back down at her, and there was that glint .
And she couldn’t forget that she was a Lisle and he was a Carey. That her brothers had questioned his honor and he was claiming it.
There was a part of her that had to believe that this was a bluff.
But the joke was on him.
Because marrying him sounded like a fine idea to Cat.
So she called his bluff.
“Yes,” she said, and smiled at him, ear to ear. Then, to make sure everyone was on the same page and there could be no claims of any misunderstandings later, especially when her brothers inevitably brought up blood feuds , she confirmed it. “Yes, Wilder. I would love nothing more than to marry you.”