Callaghan's Bride. Diana Palmer

spot on the counter with a cloth. “Callaghan’s the oldest, isn’t he?”

      “Simon,” he corrected. “Cag’s going to be thirty-eight on Saturday.”

      She averted her eyes, as if she didn’t want him to see whatever was in them. “He took a long time to get engaged.”

      “Herman doesn’t exactly make for lasting relationships,” he told her with a grin.

      She understood that. Tess always had Cag put a cover over the albino python’s tank before she cleaned his room. That had been the first of many strikes against her. She had a mortal terror of snakes from childhood, having been almost bitten by rattlesnakes several times before her father realized she couldn’t see three feet in front of her. Glasses had followed, but the minute she was old enough to protest, she insisted on getting contact lenses.

      “Love me, love my enormous terrifying snake, hmm?” she commented. “Well, at least he found someone who was willing to, at first.”

      “She didn’t like Herman, either,” he replied. “She told Cag that she wasn’t sharing him with a snake. When they got married, he was going to give him to a man who breeds albinos.”

      “I see.” It was telling that Cag would give in to a woman. She’d never seen him give in to anyone in the months she and her father had been at the ranch.

      “He gives with both hands,” he said quietly. “If he didn’t come across as a holy terror, he wouldn’t have a shirt left. Nobody sees him as the soft touch he really is.”

      “He’s the last man in the world I’d think of as a giver.”

      “You don’t know him,” Leo said.

      “No, of course I don’t,” she returned.

      “He’s another generation from you,” he mused, watching her color. “Now, I’m young and handsome and rich and I know how to show a girl a good time without making an issue of it.”

      Her eyebrows rose. “You’re modest, too!”

      He grinned. “You bet I am! It’s my middle name.” He leaned against the counter, looking rakish. He was really the handsomest of the brothers, tall and big with blond-streaked brown hair and dark eyes. He didn’t date a lot, but there were always hopeful women hanging around. Tess thought privately that he was probably something of a rake. But she was out of the running. Or so she thought. It came as a shock when he added, “So how about dinner and a movie Friday night?”

      She didn’t accept at once. She looked worried. “Look, I’m the hired help,” she said. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable.”

      Both eyebrows went up in an arch. “Are we despots?”

      She smiled. “Of course not. I just don’t think it’s a good idea, that’s all.”

      “You have your own quarters over the garage,” he said pointedly. “You aren’t living under the roof with us in sin, and nobody’s going to talk if you go out with one of us.”

      “I know.”

      “But you still don’t want to go.”

      She smiled worriedly. “You’re very nice.”

      He looked perplexed. “I am?”

      “Yes.”

      He took a slow breath and smiled wistfully. “Well, I’m glad you think so.” Accepting defeat, he moved away from the counter. “Dinner was excellent, by the way. You’re a terrific cook.”

      “Thanks. I enjoy it.”

      “How about making another pot of coffee? I’ve got to help Cag with the books and I hate it. I’ll need a jolt of caffeine to get me through the night.”

      “He’s going to come home and work through Christmas Eve, too?” she exclaimed.

      “Cag always works, as you’ll find out. In a way it substitutes for all that he hasn’t got. He doesn’t think of it as work, though. He likes business.”

      “To each his own,” she murmured.

      “Amen.” He tweaked her curly red-gold hair. “Don’t spend the night in the kitchen. You can watch one of the new movies on pay-per-view in the living room, if you like. Rey’s going to visit one of his friends who’s in town for the holidays, and Cag and I won’t hear the television from the study.”

      “Have the others gone?”

      “Leo wouldn’t say where he was going, but Corrigan’s taken Dorie home for their own celebration.” He smiled. “I never thought I’d see my big brother happily married. It’s nice.”

      “So are they.”

      He hesitated at the door and glanced back at her. “Is Cag nice?”

      She shifted. “I don’t know.”

      A light flickered in his eyes and went out. She wasn’t all that young, but she was innocent. She didn’t realize that she’d classed him with the married brother. No woman who found him attractive was going to refer to him as “nice.” It killed his hopes, but it started him thinking in other directions. Cag was openly hostile to Tess, and she backed away whenever she saw him coming. It was unusual for Cag to be that antagonistic, especially to someone like Tess, who was sensitive and sweet.

      Cag was locked tight inside himself. The defection of his fiancée had left Cag wounded and twice shy of women, even of little Tess who didn’t have a sophisticated repertoire to try on him. His bad humor had started just about the time she’d come into the house to work, and it hadn’t stopped. He had moods during the months that reminded him of when he went off to war and when his engagement had been broken. But they didn’t usually last more than a day. This one was lasting all too long. For Tess’s sake, he hoped it didn’t go on indefinitely.

      Christmas Day was quiet. Not surprisingly, Cag worked through it, too, and the rest of the week that followed. Simon and Tira married, a delightful event.

      Callaghan’s birthday was the one they didn’t celebrate. The brothers said that he hated parties, cakes and surprises, in that order. But Tess couldn’t believe that the big man wanted people to forget such a special occasion. So Saturday morning after breakfast, she baked a birthday cake, a chocolate one because she’d noticed him having a slice of one that Dorie had baked a few weeks ago. None of the Hart boys were keen on sweets, which they rarely ate. She’d heard from the former cook, Mrs. Culbertson, that it was probably because their own mother never baked. She’d left the boys with their father. It gave Tess something in common with them, because her mother had deserted her, too.

      She iced the cake and put Happy Birthday on the top. She put on just one candle instead of thirty-eight. She left it on the table and went out to the mailbox, with the cat trailing behind her, to put a few letters that the brothers’ male secretary had left on the hall table in the morning mail.

      She hadn’t thought any of the brothers would be in until the evening meal, because a sudden arctic wave had come south to promote an unseasonal freeze. All the hands were out checking on pregnant cows and examining water heaters in the cattle troughs to make sure they were working. Rey had said they probably wouldn’t stop for lunch.

      But when she got back to the kitchen, her new leather coat tight around her body, she found Callaghan in the kitchen and the remains of her cake, her beautiful cake, on the floor below a huge chocolate spot on the kitchen wall.

      He turned, outraged beyond all proportion, looking broader than usual in his shepherd’s coat. His black eyes glittered at her from under his wide-brimmed Stetson. “I don’t need reminding that I’m thirty-eight,” he said in a soft, dangerous tone. “And I don’t want a cake, or a party, or presents. I want nothing from you! Do you understand?”

      The very softness of his voice was frightening. She noticed that, of all the brothers, he was the one who never yelled