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

He shrugged. “I’m nice enough. From time to time.” He glanced at her pointedly. “When women aren’t driving me to drink.”

“What? I didn’t drive you to drink!”

“The hell you didn’t,” he mused, his eyes on the road so that he missed her blush. “Dancing with John Everett. Fancy dancing. Latin dancing.” He sighed. “I can’t even do a waltz.”

“Oh, but that doesn’t matter,” she faltered, trying to deal with the fact that he was jealous. Was he? That was how it sounded! “I mean, I think you dance very nicely.”

“I said some crude things to you,” he said heavily. “I’m really sorry. I don’t drink, you see. When I do…” He let the sentence trail off. “Anyway, I apologize.”

“You already apologized.”

“Yes, but it weighs on my conscience.” He stopped at a traffic light. He glanced at her with dark, soft eyes. “John’s my friend. I think a lot of him. But I don’t like him taking you out on dates and hanging around you.”

She went beet-red. She didn’t even know what to say.

“I thought it might come as a shock,” he said softly. He reached a big hand across the console and caught hers in it. He linked her fingers with his and looked into her eyes while he waited for the lights to change. “I thought we might take in a movie Friday night. There’s that new Batman one.”

“There’s that new Ice Age one,” she said at the same time.

He gave her a long, amused look. “You like cartoon movies?”

She flushed. “Well…”

He burst out laughing. “So do I. Dad thinks I’m nuts.”

“Oh, I don’t!”

His fingers contracted around hers. “Well, in that case, we’ll see the Ice Age one.”

“Great!”

The light changed and he drove on. But he didn’t let go of her hand.

High tea was amazing! There were several kinds of tea, china cups and saucers to contain it, and little cucumber sandwiches, chicken salad sandwiches, little cakes and other nibbles. Maddie had never seen anything like it. The tearoom was full, too, with tourists almost overflowing out of the building, which also housed an antique shop.

“This is awesome!” she exclaimed as she sampled one thing after another.

“Why, thank you.” The owner laughed, pausing by their table. “We hoped it would be a success.” She shook her head. “Everybody thought we were crazy. We’re from Charleston, South Carolina. We came out here when my husband was stationed in the air force base at San Antonio, and stayed. We’d seen another tearoom, way north, almost in Dallas, and we were so impressed with it that we thought we might try one of our own. Neither of us knew a thing about restaurants, but we learned, with help from our staff.” She shook her head. “Never dreamed we’d have this kind of success,” she added, looking around. “It’s quite a dream come true.”

“That cameo,” Maddie said hesitantly, nodding toward a display case close by. “Does it have a story?”

“A sad one. The lady who owned it said it was handed down in her family for five generations. Finally there was nobody to leave it to. She fell on hard times and asked me to sell it for her.” She sighed. “She died a month ago.” She opened the case with a key and pulled out the cameo, handing it to Maddie. It was black lacquer with a beautiful black-haired Spanish lady painted on it. She had laughing black eyes and a sweet smile. “She was so beautiful.”

“It was the great-great-grandmother of the owner. They said a visiting artist made it and gave it to her. She and her husband owned a huge ranch, from one of those Spanish land grants. Pity there’s nobody to keep the legend going.”

“Oh, but there is.” Cort took it from the woman and handed it to Maddie. “Put it on the tab, if you will,” he told the owner. “I can’t think of anyone who’ll take better care of her.”

“No, you can’t,” Maddie protested, because she saw the price tag.

“I can,” Cort said firmly. “It was a family legacy. It still is.” His dark eyes stared meaningfully into hers. “It can be handed down, to your own children. You might have a daughter who’d love it one day.”

Maddie’s heart ran wild. She looked into Cort’s dark eyes and couldn’t turn away.

“I’ll put the ticket with lunch,” the owner said with a soft laugh. “I’m glad she’ll have a home,” she added gently.

“Can you write down the woman’s name who sold it to you?” Maddie asked. “I want to remember her, too.”

“That I can. How about some buttermilk pie? It’s the house specialty,” she added with a grin.

“I’d love some.”

“Me, too,” Cort said.

Maddie touched the beautiful cheek of the cameo’s subject. “I should sculpt a fairy who looks like her.”

“Yes, you should,” Cort agreed at once. “And show it with the cameo.”

She nodded. “How sad,” she said, “to be the last of your family.”

“I can almost guarantee that you won’t be the last of yours,” he said in a breathlessly tender tone.

She looked up into his face and her whole heart was in her eyes.

He had to fight his first impulse, which was to drag her across the table into his arms and kiss the breath out of her.

She saw that hunger in him and was fascinated that she seemed to have inspired it. He’d said that she was plain and uninteresting. But he was looking at her as if he thought her the most beautiful woman on earth.

“Dangerous,” he teased softly, “looking at me like that in a public place.”

“Huh?” She caught her breath as she realized what he was saying. She laughed nervously, put the beautiful cameo beside her plate and smiled at him. “Thank you, for the cameo.”

“My pleasure. Eat up. We’ve still got a long drive ahead of us!”

Jacobsville, Texas, was a place Maddie had heard of all her life, but she’d never seen it before. In the town square, there was a towering statue of Big John Jacobs, the founder of Jacobsville, for whom Jacobs County was named. Legend had it that he came to Texas from Georgia after the Civil War, with a wagonload of black sharecroppers. He also had a couple of Comanche men who helped him on the ranch. It was a fascinating story, how he’d married the spunky but not so pretty daughter of a multimillionaire and started a dynasty in Texas.

Maddie shared the history with Cort as they drove down a long dirt road to the ranch, which was owned by Cy Parks. He was an odd sort of person, very reticent, with jet-black hair sprinkled with silver and piercing green eyes. He favored one of his arms, and Maddie could tell that it had been badly burned at some point. His wife was a plain little blonde woman who wore glasses and obviously adored her husband. The feeling seemed to be mutual. They had two sons who were in school, Lisa explained shyly. She was sorry she couldn’t introduce them to the visitors.

Cy Parks showed them around his ranch in a huge SUV. He stopped at one pasture and then another, grimacing at the dry grass.

“We’re having to use up our winter hay to feed them,” he said with a sigh. “It’s going to make it a very hard winter if we have to buy extra feed to carry us through.” He glanced at Cort and laughed. “You’ll make my situation a bit easier if you want to carry a couple of my young bulls home with you.”

Cort grinned, too. “I think I might manage that. Although we’re in the same situation you are. Even my sister’s husband, who runs purebred cattle in Wyoming, is having it rough. This drought is out of anybody’s experience. People are likening it to the famous Dust Bowl of the thirties.”

“There was another bad drought in the fifties,” Parks added. “When we live on the land, we always have issues with weather, even in good years. This one has been a disaster, though. It will put a lot of the family farms and ranches out of business.” He made a face. “They’ll be bought up by those damned great combines, corporate ranching, I call it. Animals pumped up with drugs, genetically altered—damned shame. Pardon the language,” he added, smiling apologetically at Maddie.

“She’s lived around cattlemen all her life,” Cort said affectionately, smiling over the back of the seat at her.

“Yes, I have.” Maddie laughed. She looked into Cort’s dark eyes and blushed. He grinned.