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

Caught off guard, Dorie nodded. “I’m so alone,” she confessed. “I have bolts and chains on my door and I live like a prisoner when I’m not at work. I rarely ever go outside. I miss trees and green grass.”

“There’s always Central Park.”

“You can’t plant flowers there,” she said, “or have a dog or cat in a tiny apartment like mine. I want to sit out in the rain and watch the stars at night. I’ve dreamed of coming home.”

“Why haven’t you?”

“Because of the way I left,” she confessed. “I didn’t want any more trouble than I’d already had. It was bad enough that Dad had to come and see me, that I couldn’t come home.”

“Because of Corrigan?”

“What?” For an instant, Dorie’s eyes were frightened. Then they seemed to calm. “No, it was for another reason altogether, those first few years. I couldn’t risk coming here, where it’s so easy to find people…” She closed up when she realized what she was saying. “It was a problem I had, in New York. That’s all I can tell you. And it’s over now. There’s no more danger from that direction. I’m safe.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to know,” Dorie said gently. “It wouldn’t help matters to talk about it now. But I would like to come back home. I seem to have spent most of my life on the run.”

What an odd turn of phrase, Abby thought, but she didn’t question it. She just smiled. “Well, if you decide to come back, I’ll introduce you to Clarisse. Just let me know.”

Dorie brightened. “All right. Let me think about it for a day or two, and I’ll be in touch with you.”

“Good. I’ll hold you to that.”

For the next two days, Dorie thought about nothing else except coming back to her hometown. While she thought, she wandered around the small yard, looking at the empty bird feeders and the squirrel feeder nearby. She saw the discarded watering pot, the weed-bound flower beds. Her father’s long absence had made its mark on the little property. It needed a loving hand to restore it.

She stood very still as an idea formed in her mind. She didn’t have to sell the property. She could keep it. She could live here. With her math skills, and the bookkeeping training she’d had in business school, she could open a small bookkeeping service of her own. Clarisse could be a client. She could have others. She could support herself. She could leave New York.

The idea took wing. She was so excited about it that she called Abby the next morning when she was sure that the boys would be in school.

She outlined the idea to her friend. “Well, what do you think?” she asked enthusiastically.

“I think it’s a great idea!” Abby exclaimed. “And the perfect solution. When are you going to start?”

“Next week,” she said with absolute certainty. “I’ll use the Christmas vacation I would have had as my notice. It will only take a couple of days to pack up the few things I have. I’ll have to pay the rent, because I signed a lease, but if things work out as I hope they will, that won’t be a problem. Oh, Abby, it’s like a dream!”

“Now you sound more like the Dorothy I used to know,” Abby told her. “I’m so glad you’re coming home.”

“So am I,” Dorie replied, and even as she said it, she tried not to think of the complications that could arise. Corrigan was still around. But he’d made her a promise of sorts, and perhaps he’d keep it. Anyway, she’d worry about that situation later.

A week later, Dorie was settled into her father’s house, with all her bittersweet memories of him to keep her company. She’d shipped her few big things, like her piano, home by a moving service. Boxes still cluttered the den, but she was beginning to get her house into some sort of order.

It needed a new roof, and some paint, as well as some plumbing work on the leaky bathtub faucet. But those were minor inconveniences. She had a good little nest egg in her savings account and it would tide her over, if she was careful, until she could be self-supporting in her business again.

She had some cards and stationery printed and put an ad in the Jacobsville weekly newspaper. Then she settled in and began to work in the yard, despite the cold weather. She was finding that grief had to be worked through. It didn’t end at the funeral. And the house was a constant reminder of the old days when she and her father had been happy.

So it was a shock to find Corrigan Hart on her doorstep the first Saturday she was in residence.

She just stared at him at first, as if she’d been stunned. In fact, she was. He was the last person she’d have expected to find on her doorstep.

He had a bouquet of flowers in the hand that wasn’t holding the cane and his hat. He proferred them brusquely.

“Housewarming present,” he said.

She took the pretty bouquet and belatedly stood aside. “Would you like to come in? I could make coffee.”

He accepted the invitation, placing his hat on the rack by the door. He kept the cane and she noticed that he leaned on it heavily as he made his way to the nearest easy chair and sat down in it.

“They say damp weather is hard on injured joints,” she remarked.

His pale eyes speared into her face, with an equal mixture of curiosity and irritation. “They’re right,” he drawled. “Walking hurts. Does it help to have me admit it?”

“I wasn’t trying to score points,” she replied quietly. “I didn’t get to say so in the café, but I’m sorry you got hurt.”

His own eyes were pointed on the scar that ran the length of her cheek. “I’m sorry you did,” he said gruffly. “You mentioned coffee?”

There it was again, that bluntness that had frightened her so much at eighteen. Despite the eight years in between, he still intimidated her.

She moved into the small kitchen, visible from the living room, and filled the pot with water and a premeasured coffee packet. After she’d started it dripping, and had laid a tray with cups, saucers and the condiments, she rejoined him.

“Are you settling in?” he asked a minute after she’d dropped down onto the sofa.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s strange, after being away for so many years. And I miss Dad. But I always loved this house. Eventually it will be comforting to live here. Once I get over the worst of the grieving.”

He nodded. “We lost both our parents at once, in a flood,” he said tersely. “I remember how we felt.”

He looked around at the high ceilings and marked walls, and the open fireplace. He nodded toward it. “That isn’t efficient. You need a stove in here.”

“I need a lot of things in here, but I have to eat, too,” she said with a faint smile. She pushed back her short, wavy platinum hair and curled up on the sofa in her jeans and gray sweatshirt and socks. Her shoes were under the sofa. Even in cold weather, she hated wearing shoes around the house.

He seemed to notice that and found it amusing, judging by the twinkle in his pale eyes.

“I hate shoes,” she said.

“I remember.”

That was surprising. She hardly remembered the girl she’d been eight years ago. It seemed like a lifetime.

“You had a dog, that damned little spaniel, and you were out in the front yard washing him one day when I drove by,” he recalled. “He didn’t like a bath, and you were soaked, bare feet, cutoffs, tank top and all.” His eyes darkened as he looked at her. “I told you to go in the house, do you remember?”

“Yes.” The short command had always puzzled her, because he’d seemed angry, not amused as he did now.

“I never said why,” he continued. His face tautened as he looked at her. “You weren’t wearing anything under that tank top and it was plastered to you,” he added quietly. “You can’t imagine what it did to me… And there was that damned Bobby Harris standing on the sidewalk gawking at you.”

Bobby had asked her out later that day, and she’d refused, because she didn’t like him. He was an older boy; her father never had liked him.

“I didn’t realize,” she said, amazed that the memory should be so tame now, when his odd behavior had actually hurt in the past. She actually flushed at the thought that he’d seen her that way so early in their relationship.

“I know that, now, eight years too late,” he said abruptly.