Christmas Cowboy: Will of Steel / Winter Roses

“Why don’t you go to work?” she asked, irritated.

“I’ve been trying to, but you won’t stop flirting with me.”

She gasped, but for real. “I am not flirting with you!”

He grinned. His black eyes were warm and sensuous as they met hers. “Yes, you are.” He moved a step closer. “We could do an experiment. To see if we were chemically suited to each other.”

She looked at him, puzzled, for a few seconds, until it dawned on her what he was suggesting. She moved back two steps, deliberately, and her high cheekbones flushed again. “I don’t want to do any experiments with you!”

He sighed. “Okay. But it’s going to be a very lonely marriage if you keep thinking that way, Jake.”

“Don’t call me Jake! My name is Jillian.”

He shrugged. “You’re a Jake.” He gave her a long look, taking in her ragged jeans and bulky gray sweatshirt and boots with curled-up toes from use. Her long blond hair was pinned up firmly into a topknot, and she wore no makeup. “Tomboy,” he added accusingly.

She averted her eyes. There were reasons she didn’t accentuate her feminine attributes, and she didn’t want to discuss the past with him. It wasn’t the sort of thing she felt comfortable talking about with anyone. It made Uncle John look bad, and he was dead. He’d cried about his lack of judgment in hiring Davy Harris. But it was too late by then.

Ted was getting some sort of vibrations from her. She was keeping something from him. He didn’t know what, but he was almost certain of it.

His teasing manner went into eclipse. He became a policeman again. “Is there something you want to talk to me about, Jake?” he asked in the soft tone he used with children.

She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “It wouldn’t help.”

“It might.”

She grimaced. “I don’t know you well enough to tell you some things.”

“If you marry me, you will.”

“We’ve had this discussion,” she pointed out.

“Poor Sammy.”

“Stop that!” she muttered. “I’ll find her a home. I could always ask John Callister if he and his wife, Sassy, would let her live with them.”

“On their ranch where they raise purebred cattle.”

“Sammy has purebred bloodlines on both sides,” she muttered. “Her mother was a purebred Hereford cow and her father was a purebred Angus bull.”

“And Sammy is a ‘black baldy,’” he agreed, giving it the hybrid name. “But that doesn’t make her a purebred cow.”

“Semantics!” she shot back.

He grinned. “There you go, throwing those one-dollar words at me again.”

“Don’t pretend to be dumb, if you please. I happen to know that you got a degree in physics during your stint with the army.”

He raised both thick black eyebrows. “Should I be flattered?”

“Why?”

“That you take an interest in my background.”

“Everybody knows. It isn’t just me.”

He shrugged.

“Why are you a small-town police chief, with that sort of education?” she asked suddenly.

“Because I don’t have the temperament for scientific research,” he said simply. “Besides, you don’t get to play with guns in a laboratory.”

“I hate guns.”

“You said.”

“I really mean it.” She shivered dramatically. “You could shoot somebody by accident. Didn’t one of your patrolmen drop his pistol in a grocery store and it went off?”

He looked grim. “Yes, he did. He was off duty and carrying his little .32 wheel gun in his pants pocket. He reached for change and it fell out and discharged.”

He pursed his lips. “A mistake I can guarantee he will never make again.”

“So his wife said. You are one mean man when you lose your temper, do you know that?”

“The pistol discharged into a display of cans, fortunately for him, and we only had to pay damages to the store. But it could have discharged into a child, or a grown-up, with tragic results. There are reasons why they make holsters for guns.”

She looked at his pointedly. “That one sure is fancy,” she noted, indicating the scrollwork on the soft tan leather. It also sported silver conchos and fringe.

“My cousin made it for me.”

“Tanika?” she asked, because she knew his cousin, a full-blooded Cheyenne who lived down near Hardin.

“Yes.” He smiled. “She thinks practical gear should have beauty.”

“She’s very gifted.” She smiled. “She makes some gorgeous parfleche bags. I’ve seen them at the trading post in Hardin, near the Little Bighorn Battlefield.” They were rawhide bags with beaded trim and fringe, incredibly beautiful and useful for transporting items in the old days for native people.

“Thank you,” he said abruptly.

She lifted her eyebrows. “For what?”

“For not calling it the Custer Battlefield.”

A lot of people did. He had nothing against Custer, but his ancestry was Cheyenne. He had relatives who had died in the Little Bighorn Battle and, later, at Wounded Knee. Custer was a sore spot with him. Some tourists didn’t seem to realize that Native Americans considered that people other than Custer’s troops were killed in the battle.

She smiled. “I think I had a Sioux ancestor.”

“You look like it,” he drawled, noting her fair coloring.

“My cousin Rabby is half and half, and he has blond hair and gray eyes,” she reminded him.