“Who just swoops in and makes all this happen out of the goodness of his heart?”Logan, another cousin, demanded.
“Not Tennessee Lisle,” her other male cousin answered shortly.
She had corralled them all here on a Sunday afternoon because they were brawny and covered in muscles and she did not want to lug all the debris inside the barn out herself.
“I have always wanted to open a rescue,” she told them all, folding her arms and glaring each one of them in turn, just in case they were under the impression that she really was as ditzy as her mother.When they should know better.“I discussed this lifelong dream of mine with Tennessee, who as you may know, having grown up here, has his fingers in everything.That means he knows exactly who, for example, has an old barn sitting around with nothing to do.What is difficult to comprehend about this?”
“And he’s helping you renovate it too?”Wyatt asked, sounding darkly dubious.Like Tennessee’s help was nefarious, somehow.
“He might, yes,” Matilda said, glaring at him.“Because—and again, I don’t know if any of you are aware of this in between your questionable trips down into Marietta to hang out at the Wolf Den and make fools of yourselves—butsome peopleactually care about Cowboy Point.And are invested in its growth.And community-based organizations like animal rescues, just to pull something out of a hat, are good for communities.It pulls people together.It makes them feel like they all belong to a place that cares about them and the things they care about in return.I know none of this is meaningful to you three since you all run wild and are literally known for nothing but your escapades, butother people, grown people—”
“We get it,” muttered Noah.
“My God,” Logan agreed.“I’ll renovate the damn barn myself just to make you shut up.”
“Your assistance is appreciated and accepted,” Matilda shot back.
And because she made sure to make her family as miserable as possible, they got the barn cleared out pretty fast, too.
It was when Sara Jane showed up that things got trickier.Because she came with her crew of best friends in tow.Esther Wayne, whose true crime podcast was the only thing better than coffee in the mornings when Matilda was inching her way down the slick side of Copper Mountain on her way to work.Juliet Cross, one of the elementary school teachers—and the one Mrs.Bonney had mentioned by name, admiringly.And Kitty Bennett, the culinary genius behind the best pizza around.
“Did I see Tennessee Lisle in here the other day?”Esther asked, which meant that she had absolutely seen Tennessee right here, probably seventeen times, before she asked.
“He helped put this all together,” Matilda said.It was another Sunday, and the girls had come by to see the place before Matilda started transporting the animals she still had in the outbuilding up at the cottage.“He likes to come by from time to time and see how it’s going.Even helped put together the kennels and the runs.”
This was all true.It was equally true that out here in rural Montana, things that took months for city folks happened fast.Especially at this time of year, when the snowmelt wasn’t happening fast enough and every man with a toolbox was only too happy to lend a hand to a project that would get him outside.
It was also true that she and Tennessee had celebrated all of these truths and accomplishments, naked.
Though not here.
“I’ve never known Tennessee to be at all helpful,” Sara Jane said, studying Matilda much too closely for her liking.
But Matilda gave her nothing, even if she wanted to bristle in Tennessee’s defense.She made herself laugh instead.
“Are we talking about the same Tennessee?”she asked.“Grumpy, I grant you, but since when is he unhelpful?Remember the Farm & Craft Market last summer?Sure, he refuses to put up a booth for the store or the diner, but that Saturday when it was so hot, who was out there handing out drinks?”
Kitty nodded.“That is true.He’s like his own sneaky, kind of off-putting chamber of commerce.”
Sara Jane did not look convinced.Esther lookedintrigued, which did not bode well.
Still, Matilda delighted in telling Tennessee what Kitty had said later that same night.When he was deep inside of her, slamming into her from behind.
“Obviously not off-putting enough,” he growled, gripping her hips in that hard, masterful way of his that made her nearly shiver herself over a cliff just remembering, later.
Rosie rustled up her husband and brothers-in-law to help Matilda get the animals down the hill one afternoon, and they did that so quickly that she was surprised.She’d been certain it would take a lot longer.Multiple days, endless trips.But the Careys handled it in an hour or two, like it was nothing.
“We’re ranchers,” Ryder told her with a grin.“It’s literally in our blood to move animals from one space to another space, repeat forever.”
“Some of us are good ranchers,” the oldest Carey brother, Harlan, said with a laugh.“So if there’s maybe a little more art to it than that, Ryder wouldn’t know.He’s still got the rodeo in his head.”
The Carey brothers, who always spent time together and seemed to enjoy each other’s company even with all the teasing, had always been a kind of mystery to Matilda.Her brother Jack was solitary and dark, and she thought that he took pleasure in that.Her cousins were, always, wild.She and her sister and Sara Jane had never really fit the mold around here.Rosie had gone and gotten pregnant and hadn’t intended to tell anyone who the father was.Matilda was, well.She was herself.And Sara Jane hid it a little better, but she was just as strange.She just dressed it up behind books at the library.The Starks had always been a little edgier.
The Careys were wholesome.Sweet.Though Rosie had cackled when Matilda had advanced that theory.There was certainly no denying that they were also remarkably good-looking.Not just good-looking, buthot.
Now they were also all married.They’d gone from a whole lot of bachelors who made the women around town act like fools to a whole lot of weddings and babies in record time.Matilda couldn’t imagine that happening in her family.Nobody liked the Starks that much.
“I’ve never known a Lisle to put himself out unless there’s something in it for him,” Boone Carey said as they got the last of the dogs situated in the new kennel area.
