A Coulter's Christmas Proposal. Lois Dyer Faye

he thought with frustration. He’d known returning to the Triple C wouldn’t be easy but he hadn’t expected trouble to come from a pretty stranger. He’d been back on the ranch for less than an hour.

      She’d caught him off guard. He hadn’t felt such an instant, powerful attraction to a woman in months. He frowned, considering.… Maybe it was longer than months. Maybe it was years.

      Just his luck, she was writing a book about his mother.

      No way in hell did he want somebody poking into life on the Triple C after his mother died. That bad chunk of time was better left forgotten.

      But if she dug around, asked questions, she was certain to find out more than he wanted her to know about Joseph Coulter and his sons. And what she didn’t piece together from what folks told her, she could probably guess.

      And wouldn’t that make sensational fodder for selling a book? Eli rubbed his eyes and bit off a curse, weary from more than the long journey from Spain to Montana. He lowered his hand and frowned blackly at the gleaming tiled island centered in the big room.

      “Can I help you with something, Mr. Coulter?”

      The clear, polite female question brought his head up.

      A woman stood at the stove, her slender body wrapped in a white chef’s jacket and black slacks. Dark blue embroidered letters on the jacket’s pocket spelled out J. Howard. Her fair skin, reddish-blond hair and slim curves added up to a very attractive package, but he realized with annoyance that he was still too focused on Amanda Blake to care.

      “You’re the chef,” Eli said. It wasn’t a question. He inhaled deeply and nearly groaned aloud when the rich aromas of grilled beef and subtle spices filled his senses.

      “Yes, I am.” Her level gaze assessed him. “And you must be Zach’s brother Eli. We heard you were expected. If you didn’t see anything on the buffet table that appealed to you, I’m happy to prepare something else.”

      “I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” Eli said. The words had barely left his mouth before his stomach growled—loudly.

      The chef smiled. “It’s no trouble at all. And I can recommend the steaks. They’re from Triple C’s own beef.”

      “I think I’d kill for a steak,” Eli said fervently.

      Jane shot him a sympathetic glance. “Baked potato? Salad?”

      “Yes to both.”

      Eli crossed to the deep sink to wash up. By the time he’d dried his hands and taken a seat at the island, the steak was sizzling and filling the air with a tantalizing aroma. His stomach rumbled in anticipation.

      While he waited for his meal, he brooded over his conversation with Amanda. He didn’t want a reporter digging into his mother’s life. He was convinced Amanda would inevitably ask questions about what happened to Melanie’s family after her sudden death. Neither he nor his brothers wanted the story of their father’s alcoholic rages and the unraveling of their childhood exposed in a book. His gut told him it would be like ripping open a barely healed wound when the inevitable publicity meant they’d all have to revisit bad memories. Life after their mother died had been a nightmare. He’d prefer to never again have to think about those years.

      And if Amanda Blake was hell bent on conducting research for the story of his mother’s life, she’d stir up all the old stories in Indian Springs.

      Too bad she can’t just focus her work on the good days prior to Mom’s accident, he thought morosely as he watched the chef remove a thick steak from the grill.

      “I appreciate this,” he told Jane when she slid a plate onto the counter in front of him a moment later.

      “Not a problem,” she assured him. The door to the hallway pushed inward and crowd noise from the lobby was suddenly much louder. “Just stay out of the way of the servers,” she warned him with a smile as three women and two men hurried in, carrying empty trays.

      Eli ignored their curious glances and focused on the food. Two of the servers left with loaded trays, and by the time another two exited, the first two had returned with more empty trays.

      When Eli finished eating, he carried his plate and utensils to the sink, rinsed and stacked them, and waited to catch Jane’s eye to nod his thanks before leaving the room. He paused in the hallway, considering for a moment whether to return to the lobby. Did he want to avoid Amanda—or was he hoping to run into her again? He frowned, wondering why it mattered, before he pushed the question aside. He was too tired to figure out the answer. Instead of returning to the lobby, where the decrease in the level of noise told him the party must be winding down, he turned right down the hallway and entered the office.

      Just as he’d hoped, a leather sofa stood along one wall, and he stretched out on the cushions, crossing his booted feet at the ankle. But each time he closed his eyes, the image of Amanda Blake’s hazel eyes and lush pink lips, parted in surprise as she’d turned to look up at him, flashed in vivid color on the inside of his eyelids.

      Exhausted, he managed to doze fitfully as the sounds of the party became gradually muted outside the closed door.

      With Eli’s departure, Amanda no longer found the Lodge so intriguing and she located her friends, said good-night and left the crowded lobby.

      As she drove back to Indian Springs and parked outside her old-fashioned, two-story hotel, the memory of those moments spent talking with Eli Coulter dominated her thoughts. The instant he’d learned she was researching his mother’s life story, his green eyes had cooled, his expression suddenly remote.

      His reaction matched that of his brothers Cade and Zach when she’d approached them with a request for an interview.

      And look how well that ended, she thought wryly as she climbed the stairway and entered her quiet hotel room.

      Apparently, none of the Coulters were willing to discuss their mother.

      Sighing, Amanda stripped off her clothes, hanging her little black dress in the closet and tucking underwear and hose neatly into a laundry bag before turning on the shower.

      Twenty minutes later, her face scrubbed free of makeup, the ends of her hair damp, she folded back the sheets, propped fat pillows against the headboard and settled into bed with her laptop and a mug of hot green tea.

      She opened the file with notes on Melanie Coulter and spent several moments jotting down her impressions of the Lodge.

      Try as she might, she couldn’t seem to stay focused on details of the Lodge. As she paused to sip her tea, her thoughts once again drifted to Eli. The brothers looked very much alike with their black hair, green eyes, powerful bodies and frames over six feet tall. All of them were unquestionably handsome and aggressively male.

      But only Eli had made her pulse pound and her heart race.

      The intense physical reaction she’d felt had surprised her. She’d never felt anything quite like it before. Even now, with time and distance separating her from him, her pulse beat slightly faster at the thought of him.

      She’d met good-looking, charming men before, but there was something unique about the alert intelligence in Eli’s green eyes and the way he seemed to listen intently when she spoke, as if she were the only person in the room. He’d had an easy, unforced patience while he waited for her to choose as they’d filled their plates at the buffet table. In fact, everything about him had intrigued her and made her want to learn more about the man behind the handsome face and sexy body.

      Clearly, however, nothing would come of her interest, since he’d obviously put her on the don’t-speak-to list.

      She sighed, considering her options. She had four months left of a six-month leave of absence from her job as an editor and occasional reporter for the Artist, a glossy monthly periodical with offices in New York City. She’d spent the first two months researching Melanie Coulter’s art. It wasn’t necessary to leave her Village apartment in New