Christmas On His Ranch: Maggie's Dad / Cattleman's Choice. Diana Palmer

little period.” He eyed her. “You wouldn’t consider…?”

      “I like Tucson,” she said firmly.

      “The hell you do,” he muttered. “It’s Powell, isn’t it? Damn fool, listening to that scatterbrained woman in the first place! Well, he paid for it. She made his life hell.”

      “Would you like some coffee?” she asked, changing the subject.

      “Oh, I suppose so. And some soup. There’s some canned that Mrs. Harper made for me.”

      “Does she still live next door?”

      “She does,” he murmured with a wicked smile, “and she’s a widow herself. No need to ask why she brought the soup, is there?”

      “I like Mrs. Harper,” she said with a grin. “She and Mother were good friends, and she’s like family already. Just in case you wondered what I thought,” she added.

      “It’s only been a year, girl,” he said, and his eyes were sad.

      “Mother loved you too much to want you to go through life alone,” she said. “She wouldn’t want you to grieve forever.”

      He shrugged. “I’ll grieve as long as I please.”

      “Suit yourself. I’ll change clothes and then I’ll see about the soup and coffee.”

      “How’s Barrie?” her father asked when Antonia came out of her bedroom dressed in jeans and a white sweatshirt with golden sequined bells and red ribbon on it.

      “She’s just fine. Spunky as ever.”

      “Why didn’t you bring her with you?”

      “Because she’s juggling four boyfriends,” she said, chuckling as she went about warming soup.

      “Dawson won’t wait forever.”

      She glanced at him. “Is that what you think, too? She won’t talk about him.”

      “He won’t talk about her, either.”

      “What’s this rumor about him and the widow Holton?”

      He sat down in a chair at the table with a painful breath. “The widow Holton is redheaded and vivacious and a man-killer,” he said. “She’s after Dawson. And Powell Long. And any other man with money and a passable face.”

      “I see.”

      “You don’t remember her, do you? Came here before you went off to college, but she and her husband traveled a lot. She was some sort of actress. She’s been home more since he died.”

      “What does she do?”

      “For a living, you mean?” He chuckled and had to fight back a cough. “She’s living on her inheritance. Doesn’t have to do anything, lucky girl.”

      “I wouldn’t want to do nothing,” Antonia remarked thoughtfully. “I like teaching. It’s more than just a job.”

      “Some women aren’t made for purposeful employment.”

      “I guess not.”

      She finished heating the soup and poured the coffee she’d made. They ate in silence.

      “I wish your mother was here,” he said.

      She smiled sadly. “So do I.”

      “Well, we’ll make the most of what we have and thank God for it.”

      She nodded. “We have more than some people do.”

      He smiled, seeing her mother’s face in her own. “And a lot more than most,” he added. “I’m glad you came home for Christmas.”

      “So am I. Eat your soup.” She poured him some more, and thought that she was going to make this Christmas as happy for him as she could.

       Chapter Two

      Dawson Rutherford was tall, lean and drop-dead gorgeous with blond, wavy hair and eyes that seemed to pierce skin. Even if he hadn’t been so handsome, his physical presence was more than enough to make him attractive, added to a deep voice that had the smoothness of velvet, even in anger. But he was as icy a man as she’d ever known, especially with women. At his father’s funeral, she’d actually seen him back away from a beautiful woman to avoid being touched. Odd, that, when she knew for a fact that he’d been quite a rounder with women in his checkered past.

      If Antonia hadn’t given her heart to Powell Long so many years before, she wouldn’t have minded setting her cap at Dawson, intimidating though he was. But he was plainly meant for another type of woman altogether. Barrie, perhaps.

      It was Christmas Eve, and he’d stopped by with a pipe for her father. Antonia walked him out a few minutes later.

      “Shame on you,” she muttered, pausing on the porch.

      Dawson’s green eyes twinkled. “He’ll get over the bronchitis. Besides, you know he won’t quit smoking, whether or not I give him a new pipe. You’ve tried and I’ve tried for years to break him. The best we can do is make him smoke it outdoors.”

      “I know that,” she agreed, and smiled. “Well, it was a nice gesture.”

      “Want to see what he gave me?” he asked, and produced a smooth silver lighter with inlaid turquoise.

      “I didn’t know you smoked,” she observed.

      “I don’t.”

      Her eyes widened.

      “I did, just briefly, smoke cigars.” He corrected himself. “I gave it up months ago. He doesn’t know, so don’t tell him.”

      “I won’t. But good for you!” she said approvingly.

      He shrugged. “I don’t know any smokers who don’t want to quit.” His eyes narrowed, and he watched her without blinking. “Except one, maybe.”

      She knew he was talking about Powell, who always had smoked cigars, and presumably still did. Her face began to close up. “Don’t say it.”

      “I won’t. You look tortured.”

      “It was nine years ago.”

      “Somebody should have shot him for the way he treated you,” he replied. “I’ve never liked him, but that didn’t win him any points with me. I loved my father. It was a low thing, for Sally to make him out a foolish old man with a lust for young girls.”

      “She wanted Powell.”

      His eyes narrowed. “She got him. But he made her pay for it, let me tell you. She took to alcohol because he left her alone so much, and from all accounts, he hated their daughter.”

      “But why?” Antonia asked, shocked. “Powell loved children, surely…!”

      “Sally trapped him with the child,” he replied. “Except for that, he’d have left her. Don’t you think he knew what a stupid thing he’d done? He knew the truth, almost from the day he married Sally.”

      “But he stayed with her.”

      “He had to. He was trying to build a ranch out of nothing, and this is a small town. How would it look for a man to walk out on a pregnant woman, or on his own newborn daughter?” He pursed his lips. “He hates you, you know,” he added surprisingly. “He hates you for not making him listen, for running. He blames his misery on you.”

      “He’s your worst enemy, so how do you know so much?” she retorted.

      “I have spies.” He sighed. “He can’t admit that the worst mistake was his own, that he wouldn’t believe Sally capable of such underhanded lies. It wasn’t until he