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

he seems to have learned to control that hot temper, at least. A year ago, he’d have been in here, right through the window,” Ben Hayes remarked coldly. “I hope you crippled him.”

      She managed a wan smile. “No such luck. You can’t wound something that ornery.”

      Powell had started back down the street, his back stiff with outrage.

      “I hope Sally asks him how he hurt his leg,” Antonia said under her breath.

      “Here, girl, the bus is coming.” He shepherded her outside, grateful that the ticket agent hadn’t been paying attention and that none of the other passengers seemed interested in the byplay out the window. All they needed was some more gossip.

      Antonia hugged her father before she climbed aboard. She wanted to look down the street, to see if Powell was limping. But even though the windows were dark, she wouldn’t risk having him catch her watching him. She closed her eyes as the bus pulled away from the depot and spent the rest of the journey trying to forget the pain of seeing Powell Long again.

       Chapter One

      “That’s very good, Martin, but you’ve left out something, haven’t you?” Antonia prompted gently. She smiled, too, because Martin was very shy even for a nine-year-old and she didn’t want to embarrass him in front of her other fourth graders. “The secret weapon the Greeks used in battle…a military formation?”

      “Secret weapon,” he murmured to himself. Then his dark eyes lit up and he grinned. “The phalanx!” he said at once.

      “Yes,” she replied. “Very good!”

      He beamed, glancing smugly at his worst enemy in the second row over, who was hoping Martin would miss the question and looked very depressed indeed that he hadn’t.

      Antonia glanced at her watch. It was almost time to dismiss class for the day, and the week. Odd, she thought, how loose that watch was on her wrist.

      “It’s time to start putting things away,” she told her students. “Jack, will you erase the board for me, please? And, Mary, please close the windows.”

      They rushed to obey, because they liked Miss Hayes. Mary glanced at her with a smile. Miss Hayes smiled back. She wasn’t as pretty as Miss Bell down the hall, and she dressed in a very backward sort of way, always wearing suits or pantsuits, not miniskirts and frilly blouses. She had pretty long blond hair, though, when she took it out of that awful bun, and her gray eyes were like the December sky. It would be Christmas soon, and in a week they could all go home for the holidays. Mary wondered what Miss Hayes would do. She never went anywhere exciting for holidays. She never talked about her family, either. Maybe she didn’t have one.

      The bell rang and Antonia smiled and waved as her students marched out to waiting buses and cars. She tidied her desk with steady hands and wondered if her father would come for Christmas this year. It was very lonely for both of them since her mother’s death last year. It had been hard, coping with the loss. It had been harder having to go home for the funeral. He was there. He, and his daughter. Antonia shivered just remembering the look on his dark, hard face. Powell hadn’t softened even then, even when her mother was being buried. He still hated Antonia after nine years. She’d barely glanced at the sullen, dark-haired little girl by his side. The child was like a knife through her heart, a reminder that Powell had been sleeping with Sally even while he and Antonia were engaged to be married; because the little girl had been born only seven months after Powell married Sally. Antonia had glanced at them once, only once, to meet Powell’s hateful stare. She hadn’t looked toward the pew where they sat again.

      Incredible how he could hate Antonia after marriage and a child, when everyone must have told him the truth ten times over in the years between. He was rich now. He had money and power and a fine home. His wife had died only three years after their wedding, and he hadn’t remarried. Antonia imagined it was because he missed Sally so much. She didn’t. She hated even the memory of her one-time best friend. Sally had cost her everything she loved, even her home, and she’d done it with deliberate lies. Of course, Powell had believed the lies. That was what had hurt most.

      Antonia was over it now. It had been nine years. It hardly hurt at all, in fact, to remember him.

      She blinked as someone knocked at the door, interrupting her train of thought. It was Barrie, her good friend and the Miss Bell of the miniskirt who taught math, grinning at her. Barrie was gorgeous. She was slender and had beautiful long legs. Her hair was almost black, like a wavy curtain down her back. She had green eyes with mischief in them, and a ready smile.

      “You could stay with me at Christmas,” Barrie invited merrily, her green eyes twinkling.

      “In Sheridan?” she asked idly, because that was where Barrie’s stepfather’s home was, where George Rutherford and her stepbrother Dawson Rutherford, and Barrie and her late mother had lived before she left home and began teaching with Antonia in Tucson.

      “No,” Barrie said tightly. “Not ever there. In my apartment here in Tucson,” she added, forcing a smile to her face. “I have four boyfriends. We can split them, two each. We’ll have a merry whirl!”

      Antonia only smiled. “I’m twenty-seven, too old for merry whirls, and my father will probably come here for Christmas. But thanks anyway.”

      “Honestly, Annie, you’re not old, even if you do dress like someone’s maiden aunt!” she said explosively. “Look at you!” she added, sweeping her hand toward the gray suit and white blouse that was indicative of the kind of clothes Antonia favored. “And your hair in that infernal bun…you look like a holdover from the Victorians! You need to loose that glorious blond hair and put on a miniskirt and some makeup and look for a man before you get too old! And you need to eat! You’re so thin that you’re beginning to look like skin and bones.”

      Antonia knew that. She’d lost ten pounds in the past month or so and she’d finally gotten worried enough to make an appointment with her doctor. It was probably nothing, she thought, but it wouldn’t hurt to check. Her iron might be low. She said as much to Barrie.

      “That’s true. You’ve had a hard year, what with losing your mother and then that awful scare with the student who brought his dad’s pistol to school and held everybody at bay for an hour last month.”

      “Teaching is becoming the world’s most dangerous profession,” Antonia agreed. She smiled sadly at Barrie. “Perhaps if we advertised it that way, we’d attract more brave souls to boost our numbers.”

      “That’s an idea,” came the dry agreement. “Want adventure? Try teaching! I can see the slogan now—”

      “I’m going home,” Antonia interrupted her.

      “Ah, well, I suppose I will, too. I have a date tonight.”

      “Who is it this time?”

      “Bob. He’s nice and we get along well. But sometimes I think I’m not cut out for a conventional sort of man. I need a wild-eyed artist or a composer or a drag racer.”

      Antonia chuckled. “I hope you find one.”

      “If I did, he’d probably have two wives hidden in another country or something. I do have the worst luck with men.”

      “It’s your liberated image,” Antonia said in a conspiratorial tone. “You’re devil-may-care and outrageous. You scare off the most secure bachelors.”

      “Bunkum. If they were secure enough, they’d rush to my door,” Barrie informed her. “I’m sure there’s a man like that somewhere, just waiting for me.”

      “I’m sure there is, too,” her friend said kindly, and didn’t for a minute let on that she thought there was already one waiting in Sheridan.

      Beneath Barrie’s outrageous persona, there