The Maverick's Holiday Masquerade. Caro Carson

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      “It’s not frivolous, though,” he said. “Happiness is serious. It’s the driving force behind our lives. ‘The pursuit of happiness’ is a legal right. We all have the right to try to find it.”

      “To try.” She echoed the words he’d emphasized. “Have you been successful in your attempt?”

      He raised their joined hands and placed a light kiss on her knuckle.

      “Today, yes.”

      She made him happy.

      She sucked in a little breath at the compliment. But he’d said today, as if happiness were a rare occurrence.

      “Isn’t your life usually happy?”

      “I’m working on it,” he said with all the confidence of a man who was certain he’d solve a problem soon.

      That kind of confidence must be nice to have. “How do you work on happiness?”

      “My job isn’t as fulfilling as it once was. I need to reevaluate. Refocus.”

      Kristen could imagine that even if he was born for the rodeo, it could easily be more stressful than happy. Rodeo careers were physically punishing and therefore short. He looked to be about thirty. He’d said he was considering a change of pace, getting out of the fast lane, but maybe he was being forced to by circumstances.

      “It’s more than my career, though. I find myself envying my brother and sister.” He paused, and Kristen suspected that he was giving these thoughts voice for the first time. “Within a year of each other, they got married. My sister had a baby just a few months ago, and my brother is expecting his first.”

      “So now they’re happy?”

      “I wouldn’t have said they were unhappy people before. They had great careers and a family they could rely on, but I can see that they have more now. Even though they weren’t missing anything, they found something else, anyway, and now they are really living. Or more accurately, I should say they found someone else. Not a thing, a person.”

      A little distance away, the bride laughingly yelped as she and Braden were pelted with birdseed as they ran toward the opening in the fence. The groom’s black truck was parked on the street beyond.

      Ryan didn’t move as the whole wedding party came closer. “I’m starting to believe it’s not how much fame and fortune you have, but whether or not you have someone by your side.”

      As Braden and his bride ran past them, Kristen waved and shouted “good luck,” but they already seemed incredibly lucky to her. She and her sister had started the afternoon by wishing they had what the newlyweds had. It hadn’t occurred to Kristen that she ought to do something about it besides hope and wait. Ryan was right about pursuing happiness. It was sobering to realize that she’d been so passive about her life.

      “I’m sorry,” Ryan said quietly, and she realized he was studying her closely. “Here we are at a happy occasion, and I’m being too maudlin and reflective. Montana has that effect on me.”

      “Montana makes you sad?”

      “Montana makes me think. I wish I didn’t have to leave tomorrow. I feel more at peace here than anywhere else.”

      Then he’d be coming back.

      She felt her buoyant mood returning. The truth was, no matter how much she admired Ryan’s determination, hoping and wishing had worked for Kristen. Who was she to double-guess how the universe worked?

      The groom opened the passenger door of his truck and began helping his bride gather up her full skirts so she could climb in. He knew which door to open for her because his friends had very helpfully used white shoe polish on the window to write the words Bride Goes Here with an arrow.

      Kristen gave Ryan a gentle nudge with her shoulder. “The truck isn’t as romantic as the carriage, but infinitely more practical. It wouldn’t be too romantic to ride off into the sunset and then spend the first hours of your wedding night unhitching a team and stabling the horses, would it?”

      “I would never argue with a cowgirl. If you say unhitching horses would delay the fireworks, then I trust you.”

      “You’re just humoring me now.” He was doing that serious-joking thing again, implying she knew more about horses than he did.

      “I’d bet the ranch that you live on a ranch. You must know horses.”

      The black truck drove off, the cluster of empty cans that were tied to its tailpipe clattering loudly behind it. Ryan gave their joined hands a tug and started leading her along the fence, away from the send-off crowd who were now milling about.

      “I do live on a ranch, but what made you guess that? Do I smell like I mucked the stables this morning? I’m not saying I did, but is there hay in my hair? Or do I just snicker like a horse when I laugh?”

      He stopped walking once they reached a cluster of spruce trees. She moved a little closer into his personal space.

      He didn’t back up an inch. This close, in order for him to look down at her, his eyes got that heavy-lidded look. Bedroom eyes.

      “Those aren’t the clues that you live on a ranch.”

      “The boots, then?” She felt a little nervous, a little excited. Ryan had been willing to follow her playful lead all day, but the way he looked at her now left no doubt that he was a man who knew where the game was leading—and who’d know exactly what to do when they got there.

      “You must be a cowgirl because you have incredible stamina,” he murmured, “on the dance floor.”

      A shiver threatened to run down her spine.

      “You practically glow with health. Your hair, your skin. You. Every single inch of you.” They were so very close, bodies nearly touching in the quiet twilight, the sounds of the band and the crowd far in the background.

      She wanted to kiss him. She could go up on tiptoe and taste his lips as she’d been dying to do forever, but she wanted him to initiate it. Good girls didn’t steal the first kiss. How such an old-fashioned notion had been ingrained in her brain was beyond her, but there it was. She kept holding his hand, wanting so much more.

      An evening breeze carried the crisp air from the distant mountains into the park, stirring the evergreen sent of the spruce trees, blowing a few strands of her loose hair over her cheeks. Ryan brushed them back, those bedroom eyes making the touch of his hand on her hair as sensual a feeling as she’d ever experienced.

      As Ryan tamed her hair, she stayed still, wishing, wishing. His body was so much larger than hers, his muscles moving under the polished cotton of his shirt with the gentle motion of his hand.

       Kiss me.

      He let the last lock of her hair go, and his fingers brushed the bare skin of her shoulders, then higher, a smooth, light run up the length of her neck, a barely there brush of fingertips on her jaw.

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