Kensington
September 30, 2025

Outlaw Lake

True to their family name, the Wilders of historic Rustler Mountain, Oregon, have an outlaw lineage and a wild nature to match. But when it comes to love, an untamed heart might know best . . .

Carson Wilder and Perry Bramble have been best friends forever, starting with their painful childhoods. As far as romance, Carson always knew he wasn’t good enough for her. And by the time they were grown, their bond was too important to risk messing up. Now, Carson is grieving the death of his wife. And like always, Perry is his rock. He can’t imagine life without her. But he may have to.

Perry has loved Carson since she was 7 years old. He never showed a hint of interest in her beyond friendship, but two decades later, he’s still the most important person in her life. Maybe too important. Inspired by the diary of an ancestor who left everything behind to come west as a mail order bride, Perry stuns Carson with a decision: She’s moving to a neighboring city to expand her florist business—and to find love and start a family.

Carson hates the idea, but he’ll do anything for Perry’s happiness. He’ll even help get her historic home fixed up for sale. She can stay with him at his ranch house on Outlaw Lake in the meantime. What ensues are dinners filled with laughter, dating app disasters—and Carson wondering why he’d look for another woman when the one he loves is right here. His answers may lie in the letters he finds from the man who married the mail order bride. . . . But can he finally gather the courage to be true to his wild heart—before it’s too late?

Also In this Series:

Rustler Mountain

February 25, 2025

Excerpt

There is nothing left for me here. I’m going west.

—Mae Tanner’s diary, June 15th, 1899

Perry Bramble loved Carson Wilder with all her heart.

It was just that her heart had been irrevocably broken into pieces when she was a child, along with any trust she might have had in the world, and Carson was an emotionally unavailable hot mess who had fallen in love with another woman.

As caveats went, those were pretty big ones.

It was why Carson was her best friend in the whole world, and nothing more. It was why she spent every evening with him, and many mornings, even though it wasn’t convenient for either of them.

It was why they were attached—if not at the hip, then at the very least, the soul.

They had been best friends since she was seven years old, when her family had moved in next door to the Wilder Ranch.

Stay away from them, they’re not the right kind of people.

That was what her dad had said, in his neat clothes with a bland expression on his face. And later he would turn into a monster and roll up those same sleeves while he hit her mother, and if that didn’t satisfy his rage—Perry herself.

Perry lived with a villain. She hadn’t understood that right away. What she did know was that . . . if her dad thought the Wilders were bad, she wanted to know about them.

She’d sneaked onto their property, and she could still remember plain as day, meeting a nine-year-old boy in overalls—nothing else—with skinny arms and a bony chest—who looked her square in the eye.

Do you want to play?

I do.

They’d spent the afternoon playing pirates, and when it was over they were best friends. As they had been ever since.

Not without trials, tribulations, and her dad trying to tear them apart, but Perry had learned one thing when she’d decided that Carson Wilder was her person: She was more than happy to be a rebel as long as she had a cause.

Her cause was Carson.

Though now she was thinking maybe—maybe—her cause needed to be herself.

She chewed the inside of her lip as she finished putting together her last arrangement of the day, which was due to be picked up just as she closed her shop, Bramble Flowers. Then she was going to Carson’s for dinner.

Instead of going on a date with Stephen Lee, which was stupid. He’d asked her to dinner, and she would have said yes, but she had her standing plans with Carson. They were not firm or official and could easily be blown off, but she hadn’t done it.

It was hard to want a new relationship when the one she had was so all-consuming.

And also she was wary of men.

Thanks, Dad.

She had once loved her dad with all her heart too.

It would have been easier if he had consistently been a fire-breathing dragon, but he hadn’t been. It was why she rolled her eyes when young girls on the internet talked about red flags in men. As if there were clear and obvious signs that were visible to anyone and everyone from the first—and sure, there were men like that.

Those men didn’t scare Perry.

It was the ones who smiled, who went to church every Sunday, and Wednesday besides.

The ones who built such a good facade that no one would believe they were monsters if you told them. And even if they did believe, they’d make excuses.

Why ruin a good man’s life?

Her father had status, had friends in the community, and a good job. He smiled easily.

A smile that could quickly turn, changing the temperature of the room. A smile that trained everyone in the house to walk on eggshells to avoid the explosion that could come if anyone stepped wrong.

Perry was very good at taking careful steps. Ironically, given what an absolutely transparent mess he was, Carson never made her feel she had to watch her step.

If Perry thought back really hard, all the way back, to the last time she’d had someone who counted as a boyfriend, she could easily say why it worked so well.

She’d never cared about that guy more than he’d cared about her. She’d always known walking away would be easy.

She’d never wanted her whole life to be wrapped around a man, not the way her mother’s had been.

The joke was on her, she supposed. She had thought that sort of obsession only came with romance.

But she chose not to think about Carson Wilder. Instead, she chose to think of the building in Medford—an hour away from Rustler Mountain—that had ivy climbing the sides and would be available in six months to house a new, larger florist shop.

The building that would require a heck of a down payment—one she could only realize by selling her house. Since she was renting this little building on Main Street, she wouldn’t get anything from vacating it.

Her only asset was the Victorian house she’d inherited from her grandmother—which had issues that went well beyond the cosmetic. But if she sold it, she’d be able to buy the building in Medford and that would allow her to expand her business and her focus.

Most of which involved trying to grow a massive array of flowers for weddings. And maybe working nights at the twenty-four-hour drive-through coffee stand off the freeway—also over an hour away, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

She had a plan. For the first time in a long time.

She finished up her arrangement and waited for the customer to arrive. And once he’d left, she turned the sign, locked the door, and zeroed out her register.

She took a deep breath, and her lungs expanded, her heart lifting slightly. She always felt this way when it was time to see Carson.

Which was why she had to move forward.

It was also the reason for the broken date.

And the dry spell of the last several years.

Her general girl treading water in circles around a man aesthetic.

She loved Carson with all her messed-up, broken, crushed little heart, and that ended up looking a lot like codependence.

Or so a therapist she saw once eight months ago had said. She hadn’t gone back because who wanted to hear that the most important relationship in their life was holding them back?

Not Perry.

But the worry had wormed its way into her brain like a weevil and had sat there, chewing and chewing and chewing.

She was devastated over what she was going to tell Carson tonight, yet she still felt so happy she was going to see him. As if she was racing toward the best part of her day even though tonight, it was going to be weird and difficult and maybe even terrible.

She was, perhaps, dramatizing.

It wasn’t like she was moving to Canada. Or like she was moving tomorrow.

They’d lived farther apart before.

The last time that happened, he got married to someone else.

She had comforted herself for a number of years with the knowledge that Carson didn’t seem to be interested in love. He was stoic and hard, her dearest friend. A man who was sometimes more like a well-guarded safe than a human being.

But he trusted Perry more than he did anyone else.

And in the absence of romantic affection, she’d been . . . happy with that. Sort of.

But he’d fallen in love with someone else. So the problem hadn’t been him. It had been Perry all along that he couldn’t love. That had been a wound she’d had a hard time healing.

She shoved that thought way, way, way out of her brain.

If she moved away, maybe she’d get married. Or not. She would move forward with starting a family because that was what she wanted, and she wasn’t going to wait around for a man she might never meet to get the ball rolling.

Just as she was done waiting for a man who was never going to . . .

She was doing this . . . well, not because of him. It was because of her. And her need to get a life. A bigger life.

She told herself that as she drove down Rustler Mountain’s quaint main street and looked at all the beautiful hanging baskets of pink petunias, smiling slightly at the new, updated plaques shining bright against the building facades.

Along with local wine and stunning mountain views, history was one of the big tourist draws in Rustler Mountain. As a gold-rush town eight miles from the California border, the romanticized American West was baked right into the red brick of the buildings.

The most notorious local legend was the death of notorious outlaw Austin Wilder right on the main street Perry was driving along now. An ancestor of her very dearest friend in all the world.

But Carson’s brother Austin, named for the same man who was killed in these streets, had written a novel based on that event. His research had changed the long-held narrative in town, and since then there had been a lot of updates that gave folks a much deeper understanding of the history of town.

She’d miss this place.

That hollow thought reverberated through her as she drove on, out of town and along the road that would carry her to Outlaw Lake, Carson’s part of the vast Wilder Ranch.

When she pulled up to the modern ranch house, Carson was halfway out the door. Ready to greet her. She smiled and her heart squeezed.

She could remember him when he was a child. That skinny little boy in overalls. She had that picture so clear in her head, and she thought she probably always would.

But he was not that boy now.

Carson Wilder was well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and the physique of a man who lifted tires and hay bales for fun. He had let his military haircut grow out over the last few years, his dark blond hair still short on the sides, but now longer on the top. It was rare to see him without his cowboy hat, but he’d clearly come in from working the ranch a while ago. His hat had been discarded, along with his boots. He was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, his feet bare.

A common enough sight, and yet it also spoke to the level of intimacy in their relationship.

Intimacy was the wrong word. It was a nice word. But it made them sound like emotionally healthy human beings, and she had to remember that they were not.

She put her car in park, and Carson opened the door and held it, waiting for her. “Hey,” he said, a smile on his handsome face.

His blue eyes were more intense than the sky.

She had to look away. “Hey, yourself.”

She ducked under his arm and went into the house. It was military neat, just like always. He was terrifying that way. Perry herself was more . . . eclectic. She liked a clean dining table and a made bed. But there were also ribbons and odds and ends all over the place, and dried flowers hanging from every corner of her kitchen ceiling.

Carson’s house had been as clean as if it was awaiting inspection until after his wife had suddenly died. Then it had been a mess, which was so unlike him it had been scary. A few weeks of untidiness had been one thing, but the ongoing mess had been a reflection of the pain inside him, pain he couldn’t get a handle on.

Thankfully, right now it was clean. Which made her think he was doing well. Was more like himself.

“Pizza?” she asked.

“Yeah, I had to go into Medford earlier, so I got a take and bake.”

“Ooooh.”

She smiled, and for a minute things felt normal.

The oven timer went off and she followed Carson into the kitchen. It was such a pretty kitchen. A lot more stylish than anything Carson would have chosen on his own, but then, that was the whole house.

The white countertops and emerald green cabinets had been chosen by Alyssa, who’d died less than a year after the house had been finished.

And Carson still had to live in it.

She shrugged that thought off and looked at the white double oven with the gold door handles, watching as he pulled the pizza out.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You cook for me often enough.”

“I do, it’s true.”

One of them did, every night. They were never alone. They went out together; they spent their downtime together.

It was a lot.

And never enough.

This was so perfect. It was even more perfect when they sat at his dining table with pizza. And they’d do it again tomorrow, and the day after that and the day after that and they would never, ever change.

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” she said, setting her uneaten pizza crust down on her plate—she didn’t like crust.

He picked her crust up and started to eat it like a breadstick. “Oh yeah?”

She looked at those blue eyes, and emotion expanded in her chest, so big and bright it couldn’t be contained. Carson Wilder was the love of her life.

And that was precisely why she had to leave him.

She let out a long, slow breath. “Carson . . . I’m moving.”

Outlaw Lake

Also In this Series:

Rustler Mountain

Excerpt

Buy Now

Print:

eBook:

Browse

Series

Type

Latest News

Newsletter

Connect with Maisey