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

“Pity about his leg, but he’s elegant on a horse, just the same.”

“I think he gets around very well.”

“Better than he used to.” He pulled up in front of the house, turned off the engine and went around to help her out.

“It’s right in here.”

He led her in through the front door and down a carpeted hall to a pine-paneled office. “Mrs. Culbertson will be along any minute to get you some coffee or tea or a soft drink. The brothers had to get to work or they’d have been here to meet you. No worry, though, Corrigan’s home. He’ll be here shortly and show you the books. He’s trying to doctor a colt, down in the barn.”

“Thank you, Joey.”

He tipped his hat. “My pleasure, ma’am.” He gave her a cursory appraisal, nodded and went back out again.

He’d no sooner gone than a short, plump little woman with twinkling blue eyes and gray hair came in, rubbing her hands dry on her apron. “You’d be Miss Wayne. I’m Betty Culbertson,” she introduced herself. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“Oh, yes, please.”

“Cream, sugar?”

“I like it black,” she said.

The older woman grinned. “So do the boys. They don’t like sweets, either. Hard to get fat around here, except on gravy and biscuits. They’d have those every meal if I’d cook them.”

The questions the brothers had asked about her cooking came back to haunt her.

“None of them believe in marriage, do they?” she asked.

Mrs. Culbertson shook her head. “They’ve been bachelors too long now. They’re set in their ways and none of them have much to do with women. Not that they aren’t targeted by local belles,” she added with a chuckle. “But nobody has much luck. Corrigan, now, he’s mellowed. I hear it’s because of you.”

While Dorie flushed and tried to find the right words to answer her, a deep voice did it for her.

“Yes, it is,” Corrigan said from the doorway. “But she isn’t supposed to know it.”

“Oops,” Mrs. Culbertson said with a wicked chuckle. “Sorry.”

He shrugged. “No harm done. I’ll have coffee. So will she. And if you see Leopold…”

“I’ll smash his skull for him, if I do,” the elderly woman said abruptly, and her whole demeanor changed. Her blue eyes let off sparks. “That devil!”

“He did it again, I guess?”

She made an angry noise through her nose. “I’ve told him and told him…”

“You’d think he’d get tired of having that broomstick thrown at him, wouldn’t you?” Corrigan asked pleasantly.

“One of these days he won’t be quick enough,” Mrs. Culbertson said with an evil smile.

“I’ll talk to him.”

“Everybody’s already talked to him. It does no good.”

“What does he do?” Dorie asked curiously.

Mrs. Culbertson looked at Corrigan, who’d started to answer, with eyes that promised culinary retribution.

“Sorry,” he said abruptly. “I can’t say.”

Mrs. Culbertson nodded curtly and smiled at Dorie. “I’ll just get that coffee. Be back in a jiffy.”

She left and Corrigan’s dark eyes slid over Dorie’s pretty figure.

“You look very nice,” he said. His eyes lifted to her wavy hair and he smiled appreciatively. “I always loved your hair. That was a first for me. Usually I like a woman’s hair long. Yours suits you just as it is.”

Her slender hand went to the platinum waves selfconsciously. “It’s easy to keep like this.” She shifted to the other foot. “Your brothers came to the house yesterday and asked me to come out here and look at the household accounts. They say they’re starving.”

“They look like it, too, don’t they?” he asked disgustedly. “Good God, starving!”

“They were very nice,” she continued. “They talked to Turkey Sanders and he’s repairing my car.”

“His mechanic’s repairing your car,” he told her. “Turkey’s having a tooth fixed.”

She knew she shouldn’t ask. But she had to. “Why?”

“He made a remark that Cag didn’t like.”

“Cag. Oh, yes, he’s the eldest.”

He brightened when he realized that she remembered that. “He’s thirty-eight, if you call that old.” Anticipating her next question, he added blithely, “Leo’s thirty-four. I’m thirty-six. Rey’s thirty-two.”

“So Cag hit Turkey Sanders?”

He shook his head.

“Then who broke his tooth?”

“Leo.”

“Cag got mad, but Leo hit Turkey Sanders?” she asked, fascinated.

He nodded. “He did that to save him from Cag.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Cag was in the Special Forces,” he explained. “He was a captain when they sent him to the Middle East some years back.” He shrugged. “He knows too much about hand-to-hand combat to be let loose in a temper. So we try to shield people from him.” He grinned. “Leo figured that if he hit Turkey first, Cag wouldn’t. And he didn’t.”

She just shook her head. “Your brothers are…unique,” she said finally, having failed to find a good word to describe them.

He chuckled. “You don’t know the half of it.”