The Texas Cowboy's Quadruplets. Cathy Thacker Gillen

side of him, he murmured, “Your father had a passion for saddle making.”

      “I know that.”

      He knew this would hurt. Still, it had to be said. “And you don’t.”

      She gasped, indignant. Hands balled into fists at her sides, she bounded to her feet and swung on him once again. “I don’t need to have that same passion. All I need to do is keep everything exactly the way it was when he was alive, and honor him by carrying on his legacy. And we—the company and all its employees—will be fine!”

      Taking charge of a business was a lot more complicated than that. Clearly, though, she wasn’t ready to hear that.

      Help my daughter make it through the holidays, Gus Martin had said. The first, after my death, will be the most difficult.

      And with Thanksgiving almost upon them...

      Chase could see Mitzy was struggling. Even if she wouldn’t admit it. He tried again, even more gently this time. “The point is, darlin’, I’m interested in doing that, too.”

      Abruptly, Mitzy looked like she wanted to deck him. “Like you did when you worked for my dad? Before he was forced to fire you?”

      Of course she would bring up the business crisis that had precipitated the end of their engagement. Their breakup had ripped him up inside. Chase shrugged regretfully. “I admit, I was overly ambitious.”

      An even rosier hue flooded her high, sculpted cheeks. “You insulted him and everything he stood for with your plans to turn his artistry into a mass-manufacturing business.”

      Chase squinted. “I’m not sure your dad saw it that way.”

      You’re meant for bigger things, Chase. You’ll never be happy here...was what Gus had said, when he’d cut him loose.

      And Mitzy’s father had been right.

      Then.

      Chase had since had time to reevaluate and reconfigure his earlier career plan to something much more laudable and practical. But, sensing Mitzy was in no mood to hear that now, if ever, he slowly rolled to his feet. “Regardless of the way I left MCS, I learned a lot from your dad when I worked for him, Mitzy. I also built my own company, McCabe Leather Goods.”

      Her expression both contemptuous and resentful, she scoffed, “Yes, I know. It’s the premier provider in the entire Southwest of all sorts of leather products. Everything from boots to saddles to leather interiors on pickup trucks and automobiles. And you did it by buying up lots of little entities and folding them into the one bearing your name!”

      So she had been following his rise in the business world, Chase noted in satisfaction. He met her level gaze. “Every one of those business units is better off, their employees happier and more financially secure.”

      Her expression guarded, she raked her teeth across her lower lip. “So what does that have to do with me?”

      “If your family business is in even half as much trouble as is rumored, you’re going to need help getting it back on track.”

      She rolled her eyes skeptically. “You’re volunteering?”

      Yes, although first I was drafted. “Your dad was always good to me, even after I stopped working for him,” Chase admitted, acutely aware of how much he missed Gus. And Gus’s beautiful, intractable daughter.

      Missed the extended family they might have been. “I’d like to repay his kindness.”

      Mitzy tilted her head at him, thinking. Seeming to know instinctively there was more to this than what he was letting on. Not about to tell her about the deathbed promises he had made, however, Chase waited for her to make a decision.

      Finally, she swallowed, let out a soft little sigh. Wearily, she asked, “Don’t you think it would be a little awkward under the circumstances?”

      He could handle awkward. Hell, he could handle anything if it got him back into her life, and her into his. Because actually getting to have a sit-down with her, brief as it might be, had shown him certain things had not changed.

      The sparks were still there.

      His need to protect her was stronger than ever.

      And as for the rest? Well, he guessed time would tell.

      Although he couldn’t imagine either of them ever being content to be just friends. Not after what they had once shared...

      From the first time he’d laid eyes on her when they were kids, he’d known she was something special. Not just because she was smart and pretty or kinder and more inherently compassionate than anyone he’d ever met. From the very beginning, she just “got” him the way no one else ever had.

      She hadn’t wanted to date him. She’d preferred to be friends. So, they started there, but by the time they were in college there was no denying their sexual chemistry. One thing led to another. Before they knew it they were a couple and then engaged. He’d expected to spend his entire life with her.

      Would have, if his need to tell it like it was, in business and in life, and her wariness of lasting love, hadn’t gotten in the way. But both had, so...

      Aware she was waiting, he shrugged with a great deal more carelessness than he felt. “We’re both adults, Mitzy,” he reminded her gruffly. “We can handle it.” He pulled out a business card, wrote his cell phone number on the back and pressed it into her hand. “So if there is anything I can do,” he said sincerely, resolved to keep his promise to Gus as well as atone for any and all mistakes he had made in the past. He paused to give her a long, steady look. “Anything at all, just pick up the phone and call.”

      * * *

      Two days later, Chase still hadn’t heard from Mitzy. So he did what he always did when he was trying to understand a woman. He went to see his little sister, Lulu, hoping she’d have the insight he lacked.

      She listened to the recap of his visit while making her own special brand of honey iced tea for the McCabe family Thanksgiving celebration they were having later in the day. “You didn’t even see the quadruplets?”

      Funny how disappointed he was about that. He’d never been what one would call a baby person, but he’d been hoping to lay eyes on the four infants the stalwartly independent Mitzy’d had via an anonymous donor and a fertility clinic, nevertheless. Keeping his feelings to himself, he shrugged. “Kind of hard to do when she didn’t even let me in the door.”

      His cell phone buzzed. Chase looked at the screen. Speak of the devil... Smiling, he strode a distance away. “Hey, Mitzy. What’s up?”

      “Are you busy?”

      She sounded stressed.

      “Not at all,” Chase said.

      Lulu grinned and shook her head, then sauntered out of the kitchen to give him privacy.

      “I’m headed over to Martin Custom Saddle,” Mitzy continued in the too-casual voice he knew so well. “Want to meet me there?”

      Luckily, his sister’s honeybee ranch was closer to town than his. “Be there in ten.”

      When Chase arrived, he expected her to already be inside the ten-thousand-square-foot production facility.

      Instead, she was sitting in the new custom eight-passenger luxury SUV she’d been driving around town, staring at the front of the one-story rectangular terra-cotta brick building emblazoned with her father’s name like she had never seen it before.

      Noticing his pickup truck parking next to hers, she shook herself out of her reverie and emerged from the driver’s seat. Her hair was swept up in a neat twist on the back of her head and she was wearing a burnished gold wool dress and heels that seemed more appropriate for a formal afternoon tea.

      As she neared him, he saw the diamond earrings she’d received for her college