The Rancher's Best Gift. Stella Bagwell

bobby pins holding her bun. “Hmm. I wouldn’t mind trying it someday. Just to see what it was like to live in a house that wasn’t filled with dust and to smell like a woman instead of burnt coffee and cooking grease.”

      “Who cares about dust?” Camille retorted. “And if men were honest, most of them would say they’d rather have a woman who smelled like food instead of flowers.”

      “And who around here wants a man?” Peggy asked with a cynical laugh. “I certainly don’t! And even if I did, the single male population around here is darned scarce.”

      Camille thoughtfully regarded her friend. If Peggy took more pains with her appearance, she’d be a knockout. But makeup or a hairdo wouldn’t take the jaded shadows from her eyes. Only deep-down happiness could do that.

      “So it is, but that doesn’t mean you should stop looking. You’ve told me before how much you’d like a child of your own,” Camille reasoned. “You can’t very well make one without a man.”

      Peggy slanted her a tired look. “There’s always a fertility clinic.”

      Camille couldn’t believe her friend would actually go to that length to have a baby on her own. “Are you saying you’re ready to do that?”

      Peggy shrugged. “Wouldn’t that be better than putting up with a creep who spouts words of love, then cheats every chance he gets?”

      From what Peggy had told her, she’d been engaged once, but the guy had turned out to be a verbal abuser and she’d dumped him before the wedding plans could get started. After that misjudgment, she’d married a car salesman from Tucson, but a week after they’d gotten back from their honeymoon, he’d cheated on her. Given the briefness of the marriage, she’d gotten an annulment. Now she looked at men as though they all had horns and a forked tongue.

      “Peggy, there’s a good man out there just waiting for you to find him.”

      Peggy’s short laugh was mocking. “Coming from you, Camille, that’s very funny. A beauty like you, hiding yourself away.” She pushed away from the work counter and started out of the kitchen, only to pause at the swinging doors. “By the way, what are you doing tonight? I thought I’d drive over to Benson and try to find something to wear to Gideon’s Halloween party. Wanta come?”

      “Gideon is having a party?”

      Gideon was a seventy-five year old war veteran and widower who bussed the tables here at the diner. He was a happy-go-lucky guy, but Camille couldn’t picture him throwing a Halloween party.

      “His grandchildren are coming to visit and he wants to do something special for them, so I’ve offered to lend him a hand.”

      Any other time, Camille would have given her friend a quick yes. But she hated to think of Matthew dragging himself in tonight, exhausted and hungry, and her not being there to take care of him.

       What the heck are you thinking, Camille? Matthew isn’t your man. He’s a grown man who’s lived alone for years. He doesn’t need you or anyone to take care of him!

      The sardonic voice going off in her head couldn’t have been more right, Camille thought. She’d be more than stupid to start planning her life around Matthew. In two weeks he’d be gone back to Three Rivers and she wouldn’t see him again until next year. On the other hand, if she did want to spend any time with the foreman, she needed to make the most of the next fourteen days while he and the roundup crew were at Red Bluff.

      Rising from the stool, she picked up a spatula. As she scraped grease and meat particles from the flat grill, she said, “Thanks for asking, Peggy, but the crew from Three Rivers is at Red Bluff now and I feel like I need to be there.”

      Peggy frowned. “Be there for what? I’ve never known of you doing ranch work.”

      Normally, the woman’s remark would have rolled off Camille’s back, but for some reason it stung today. “Well, I have been known to ride a horse and herd cows. I just haven’t done that sort of thing in a long time. Anyway, I just meant they might need me to run errands or something.”

      The waitress shrugged. “Okay, you go ahead and play cowgirl. I’ve got to find something spooky to wear.”

      Peggy disappeared through the swinging doors, and Camille dropped the spatula and swiped a hand across her forehead. She honestly didn’t know what was coming over her.

      Ever since Matthew had shown up at her door last night, she’d been thrown into a strange state of mind. All of a sudden she’d forgotten about keeping a cool distance from the man. Seeing him had evoked all sorts of poignant memories. Seeing him had been like a sweet homecoming, and his company had filled her with a sense of belonging. Which didn’t make any sense. She’d never been close to the Three Rivers foreman before. So why did she want to be close to him now?

      The cowbell over the door to the diner clanged, breaking into Camille’s thoughts, and moments later, Peggy was pinning up two orders for chicken-fried steak.

      Glad for the distraction, Camille went to work. But it wasn’t enough to make her forget about seeing Matthew again.

       Chapter Three

      The five ranch hands working with Matthew on Red Bluff were a good, dependable crew ranging in ages from twenty to sixty. Curly, the designated cook for the bunch, was the oldest, and Pate, a tall lanky cowboy with a shock of black hair and a lazy grin, was the youngest. In between, there was Scott, in his midthirties and a wizard with a lariat. Abel, a redhead with a face full of freckles and a boisterous personality to match, was 25, but already experienced in ranch work. TooTall was a Native American from the Yavapai tribe and a skilled horseman, who often worked alongside Holt. A quiet loner, TooTall had never told anyone his age. Just by looking, Matthew guessed him to be thirty, but he wouldn’t be surprised to learn he was much older.

      This morning Matthew had ordered Curly and Abel to remain behind at the ranch yard to tend to the penned cattle, while the others rode with him to hunt for steers. The sky was cloudless, and by midday the Arizona sun was blazing down on the jagged hills and piers of red rock that made up the southern range of the ranch.

      For the past few hours, Matthew and the men had been rounding up steers from the thick patches of chaparral and prickly pear. So far they’d gathered twenty head and penned them in a wooden corral built next to a tall rock bluff. It had been a productive morning, but Matthew knew for certain there were at least ten more steers somewhere on this section of range. It wouldn’t necessarily hurt to turn the cows and calves in with those last ten, but Blake wanted them back at Three Rivers and Matthew wasn’t the kind of man to leave anything undone.

      “My arms feel like a pair of pincushions,” Pate said. “I’ll bet I’ve been stuck fifty times with thorns and pear spines.”

      Matthew looked over at the young cowhand sitting next to him beneath the meager shade of a Joshua tree. A half hour ago, the group had stopped for lunch, and now the horses stood dozing and resting in the shade while the men finished the food they’d pulled from their saddlebags.

      “Make sure you get all those thorns out tonight,” Matthew told him. “They’ll fester if you don’t.”

      “I should’ve worn my jacket, but it’s too damned hot.” Pate turned his head and squinted at the western horizon. “If you ask me, it’s going to take another day or two to find the other steers. There’s too many arroyos and rock bluffs where they can hide. And we’ve not spotted hide nor hair of them.”

      Pate was a good worker, but he still had lots to learn. The same way Matthew had all those years ago when Joel had taken him under his wing. “Whether it takes a week or ten days, we’ll get them,” he told the young cowboy.

      Pate whistled under his breath. “At that rate it’ll be Thanksgiving before we get back to Three Rivers!”

      Matthew’s grunt