Christmas Cowboy: Will of Steel / Winter Roses

She laughed, too. “I just expressed the thought that he wouldn’t marry John Callister for a truck.” She cocked her head. “He really is a catch, you know. Theodore Graves is the stuff of legends around here. He’s honest and kindhearted and a very mean man to make an enemy of. He’d take care of you.”

“Well, he needs more taking care of than I do,” came the droll reply. “At least I can cook.”

“Didn’t you apply for the cook’s job at the restaurant?”

“I did. I got it, too, but you can’t tell Theodore.”

“I won’t. But why can’t I?”

Jillian sighed. “In case things don’t work out, I want to have a means of supporting myself. He’ll take it personally if he thinks I got a job before he even proposed.”

“He’s old-fashioned.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Jillian replied with a smile.

“Of course not. It’s just that some men have to be hit over the head so they’ll accept that modern women can have outside interests without giving up family. Come over here.”

She took Jillian’s arm and pulled her to one side. “Everything in here is a three-hundred-percent markup,” she said under her breath. “I love Jessie, but she’s overpriced. You’re coming home with me. We’re the same size and I’ve got a closet full of stuff you can wear. You can borrow anything you like. Heck, you can have what you like. I’ll never wear all of it anyway.”

Jillian flushed red and stammered, “No, I couldn’t …!”

“You could and you’re going to. Now come on!”

Jillian was transported to the Callister ranch in a Jaguar. She was so fascinated with it that she didn’t hear half of what her friend was saying.

“Look at all these gadgets!” she exclaimed. “And this is real wood on the dash!”

“Yes,” Sassy laughed. “I acted the same as you, the first time I rode in it. My old battered truck seemed so pitiful afterward.”

“I like my old car. But this is amazing,” she replied, touching the silky wood.

“I know.”

“It’s so nice of you to do this,” Jillian replied. “Theodore wanted me to wear a skirt. I don’t even own one.”

Sassy looked at her briefly. “You should tell him, Jilly.”

She flushed and averted her eyes. “Nobody knows but you and your mother. And I know you won’t say anything.”

“Not unless you said I could,” Sassy replied. “But it could cause you some problems later on. Especially after you’re married.”

Jillian clenched her teeth. “I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it. I may not marry Theodore. We may be able to find a way to break the will.”

“One, maybe. Two, never.”

That was true. Both old men had left ironclad wills with clauses about the disposition of the property if Theodore and Jillian refused to get married.

“The old buzzards!” Jillian burst out. “Why did they have to complicate things like that? Theodore and I could have found a way to deal with the problem on our own!”

“I don’t know. Neither of you is well-off, and that California developer has tons of money. I’ll bet he’s already trying to find a way to get to one of you about buying the ranch outright once you inherit.”

“He’ll never get it,” she said stubbornly.

Sassy was going to comment that rich people with intent sometimes knew shady ways to make people do what they wanted them to. But the developer wasn’t local and he didn’t have any information he could use to blackmail either Theodore or Jillian, so he probably couldn’t force them to sell to him. He’d just sit and wait and hope they couldn’t afford to keep it. Fat chance, Sassy thought solemly. She and John would bail them out if they had to. No way was some out-of-state fat cat taking over Jillian’s land. Not after all she’d gone through in her young life.

Maybe it was a good thing Theodore didn’t know everything about his future potential wife. But Jillian was setting herself up for some real heartbreak if she didn’t level with him. After all, he was in law enforcement. He could dig into court records and find things that most people didn’t have access to. He hadn’t been in town when Jillian faced her problems, he’d been away at the FBI Academy on a training mission. And since only Sassy and her mother, Mrs. Peale, had been involved, nobody else except the prosecuting attorney and the judge and the public defender had knowledge about the case. Not that any of them would disclose it.

She was probably worrying unnecessarily. She smiled at Jillian. “You are right. He’ll never get the ranch,” she agreed.

They pulled up at the house. It had been given a makeover and it looked glorious.

“You’ve done a lot of work on this place,” Jillian commented. “I remember what it looked like before.”

“So do I. John wanted to go totally green here, so we have solar power and wind generators. And the electricity in the barn runs on methane from the cattle refuse.”

“It’s just fantastic,” Jillian commented. “Expensive, too, I’ll bet.”

“That’s true, but the initial capital outlay was the highest. It will pay for itself over the years.”

“And you’ll have lower utility bills than the rest of us,” Jillian sighed, thinking about her upcoming one. It had been a colder than usual winter. Heating oil was expensive.

“Stop worrying,” Sassy told her. “Things work out.”

“You think?”

They walked down the hall toward the master bedroom. “How’s your mother?” Jillian asked.

“Doing great. She got glowing reports from her last checkup,” Sassy said. The cancer had been contained and her mother hadn’t had a recurrence, thanks to John’s interference at a critical time. “She always asks about you.”

“Your mother is the nicest person I know, next to you. How about Selene?”

The little girl was one Mrs. Peale had adopted. She was in grammar school, very intelligent and with definite goals. “She’s reading books about the Air Force,” Sassy laughed. “She wants to be a fighter pilot.”

“Wow!”

“That’s what we said, but she’s very focused. She’s good at math and science, too. We think she may end up being an engineer.”

“She’s smart.”

“Very.”

Sassy opened the closet and started pulling out dresses and skirts and blouses in every color under the sun.

Jillian just stared at them, stunned. “I’ve never seen so many clothes outside a department store,” she stammered.

Sassy chuckled. “Neither did I before I married John. He spoils me rotten. Every birthday and holiday I get presents from him. Pick something out.”

“You must have favorites that you don’t want to loan,” Jillian began.