Diana Palmer Christmas Collection: The Rancher / Christmas Cowboy / A Man of Means / True Blue / Carrera's Bride / Will of Steel / Winter Roses

She laughed. “I guess so. But just a suggestion, if you stick your neck out with Cort,” she added very seriously. “Make him mad. Make him really mad, someplace where you can get help if you need to. Don’t wait and find out when it’s too late if he can’t control his temper.”

“I remember that boy in high school,” Maddie reminded her. “He didn’t stop. Cort frightened me, yes, but when he saw I was afraid, he started apologizing. If he couldn’t control his temper, he’d never have been able to stop.”

Sadie looked calmer. “No. I don’t think he would.”

“He’s still apologizing for it, in fact,” Maddie added.

Sadie smiled and her eyes were kind. “All right, then. I won’t harp on it. He’s a lot like his father, and his dad is a good man.”

“They’re all nice people. Morie was wonderful to me in school. She stuck up for me when Odalie and her girlfriend were making my life a daily purgatory.”

“Pity Odalie never really gets paid back for the things she does,” Sadie muttered.”

Maddie hugged her. “That mill grinds slowly but relentlessly,” she reminded her. She grinned. “One day…”

Sadie laughed. “One day.”

Maddie let her go with a sigh. “I hope I can learn enough of this stuff not to sink dad’s cattle operation,” she moaned. “I wasn’t really faced with having to deal with the breeding aspect until now, with roundup ahead and fall breeding standing on the line in front of me. Which bull do I put on which cows? Gosh! It’s enough to drive you nuts!”

“Getting a lot of help in that, though, aren’t you?” Sadie teased. “Did you tell Cort that John had been coaching you, too?”

“Yes.” She sighed. “Cort wasn’t overjoyed about it, either. But John makes it understandable.” She threw up her hands. “I’m just slow. I don’t understand cattle. I love to paint and sculpt. But Dad never expected to go so soon and have to leave me in charge of things. We’re going in the hole because I don’t know what I’m doing.” She glanced at the older woman. “In about two years, we’re going to start losing customers. It terrifies me. I don’t want to lose the ranch, but it’s going to go downhill without dad to run it.” She toyed with a bag on the counter. “I’ve been thinking about that developer…”

“Don’t you dare,” Sadie said firmly. “Darlin’, do you realize what he’d do to this place if he got his hands on it?” she exclaimed. “He’d sell off all the livestock to anybody who wanted it, even for slaughter, and he’d rip the land to pieces. All that prime farmland, gone, all the native grasses your dad planted and nurtured, gone. This house—” she indicated it “—where your father and your grandfather and I were born! Gone!”

Maddie felt sick. “Oh, dear.”

“You’re not going to run the ranch into the ground. Not when you have people, like King Brannt, who want to help you get it going again,” she said firmly. “If you ever want to sell up, you talk to him. I’ll bet he’d offer for it and put in a manager. We could probably even stay on and pay rent.”

“With what?” Maddie asked reasonably. “Your social security check and my egg money?” She sighed. “I can’t sell enough paintings or enough eggs to pay for lunch in town,” she added miserably. “I should have gone to school and learned a trade or something.” She grimaced. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Give it a little time,” the older woman said gently. “I know it’s overwhelming, but you can learn. Ask John to make you a chart and have Ben in on the conversation. Your dad trusted Ben with everything, even the finances. I daresay he knows as much as you do about things.”

“That’s an idea.” She smiled sadly. “I don’t really want to sell that developer anything. He’s got a shady look about him.”

“You’re telling me.”

“I guess I’ll wait a bit.”

“Meanwhile, you might look in that bag I brought home yesterday.”

“Isn’t it groceries…dry goods?”

“Look.”

She peered in the big brown bag and caught her breath. “Sculpting material. Paint! Great-Aunt Sadie!” she exclaimed, and ran and hugged the other woman. “That’s so sweet of you!”

“Looking out for you, darling,” she teased. “I want you to be famous so those big TV people will want to interview me on account of we’re related!” She stood up and struck a pose. “Don’t you think I’d be a hit?”

Maddie hugged her even tighter. “I think you’re already a hit. Okay. I can take a hint. I’ll get to work right now!”

Sadie chortled as she rushed from the room.

Cort came in several days later while she was retouching one of the four new fairies she’d created, working where the light was best, in a corner of her father’s old office. She looked up, startled, when Great-Aunt Sadie let him in.

She froze. “Pumpkin came after you again?” she asked, worried.

“What?” He looked around, as if expecting the big red rooster to appear. “Oh, Pumpkin.” He chuckled. “No. He was in the hen yard giving me mean looks, but he seems to be well contained.”

“Thank goodness!”

He moved to the table and looked at her handiwork. “What a group,” he mused, smiling. “They’re all beautiful.”

“Thanks.” She wished she didn’t sound so breathless, and that she didn’t have paint dabbed all over her face from her days’ efforts. She probably looked like a painting herself.

“Going to sell them?”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said hesitantly. “I mean, I…well, I just couldn’t.”

“Can’t you imagine what joy they’d bring to other people?” he asked, thinking out loud. “Why do you think doll collectors pay so much for one-of-a-kind creations like those? They build special cabinets for them, take them out and talk to them…”

“You’re kidding!” she exclaimed, laughing. “Really?”

“This one guy I met at the conference said he had about ten really rare dolls. He sat them around the dining room table every night and talked to them while he ate. He was very rich and very eccentric, but you get the idea. He loved his dolls. He goes to all the doll collector conventions. In fact, there’s one coming up in Denver, where they’re holding a cattlemen’s workshop.” He smiled. “Anyway, your fairies wouldn’t be sitting on a shelf collecting dust on the shelf of a collector like that. They’d be loved.”

“Wow.” She looked back at the little statuettes. “I never thought of it like that.”

“Maybe you should.”

She managed a shy smile. He looked delicious in a pair of beige slacks and a yellow, very expensive pullover shirt with an emblem on the pocket. Thick black hair peeked out where the top buttons were undone. She wondered how his bare chest would feel against her hands. She blushed. “What can I do for you?” she asked quickly, trying to hide her interest.

Her reaction to him was amusing. He found it really touching. Flattering. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind since he’d kissed her so hungrily in her kitchen. He’d wanted to come back sooner than this, but business had overwhelmed him.

“I have to drive down to Jacobsville, Texas, to see a rancher about some livestock,” he said. “I thought you might like to ride with me.”

She stared at him as if she’d won the lottery. “Me?”

“You.” He smiled. “I’ll buy you lunch on the way. I know this little tearoom off the beaten path. We can have high tea and buttermilk pie.”

She caught her breath. “I used to hear my mother talk about that one. I’ve never had high tea. I’m not even sure what it is, exactly.”

“Come with me and find out.”

She grinned. “Okay! Just let me wash up first.”

“Take your time. I’m not in any hurry.”

“I’ll just be a few minutes.”