A Husband For Christmas. Diana Palmer

the world.

      She smiled faintly, a smile that didn’t quite reach her pale brown eyes, and she clenched her hands around the beige purse in the lap of her shapeless dress. She didn’t feel like a successful fashion model when she was on the McLaren ranch. She felt like the young girl who’d grown up in this part of rural southern Montana, on the ranch that had been absorbed by Cade’s growing empire after her father’s death three years earlier.

      At least Melly was still there. Abby’s younger sister had an enviable job as Cade’s private secretary. It meant that she could be near her fiancé, Cade’s ranch foreman, while she supported herself. Cade had never approved of Jesse Shane’s decision to allow his eldest daughter to go to New York, and he had made no secret of it. Now Abby couldn’t help wishing she’d listened. Her brief taste of fame hadn’t been worth the cost.

      She felt bitter. It was impossible to go back, to relive those innocent days of her youth when Cade McLaren had been the sun and moon. But she mourned for the teenager she’d been that long-ago night when he’d carried her to bed. It was a memory she’d treasured, but now it was a part of the nightmare she’d brought home from New York. She wondered with a mind numbed by pain if she’d ever be able to let any man touch her again.

      She sighed, gripping the purse tighter as Hank took one rise a little fast and caused the pickup to lurch to one side. She clutched the edge of the seat as the vehicle all but rocked onto its side.

      “Sorry about that,” Hank muttered, bending over the steering wheel with his thin face set into rigid lines. “Damned trucks—give me a horse any day.”

      She laughed softly—once she would have thrown back her head and given out a roar of hearty laughter. She might have been a willowy ghost of the girl who left Painted Ridge at eighteen, come back to haunt old familiar surroundings. This poised, sophisticated woman of twenty-two was as out of place in the battered pickup as Cade would be in a tuxedo at the Met.

      “I guess you’ve all got your hands full,” Abby remarked as they approached the sprawling ranch house.

      “Damned straight,” Hank said without preamble as he slowed at a gate. “Storm warnings out and calving in full swing.”

      “Snow?” she gasped, looking around at the lush greenery. But it was April, after all, and snow was still very possible in Montana. Worse—probable.

      But Hank was already out of the truck, leaving the engine idling while he opened the gate.

      “Drive the truck through!” he called for what seemed the tenth time in as many minutes, and Abby obediently climbed behind the wheel and put the truck in gear.

      She couldn’t help smiling when she remembered her childhood. Ranch children learned to drive early, out of necessity. She’d been driving a truck since her eleventh birthday, and many was the time she’d done it for Cade while he opened the endless gates that enclosed the thousands of acres he ranched.

      She drove through the gate and slid back into her seat while Hank secured it and ambled back to the truck. He’d been part of Cade’s outfit as long as she could remember, and there was no more experienced cowboy on the place.

      “New York,” Hank scoffed, giving her a disapproving glance. He chewed on the wad of tobacco in his cheek and gave a gruff snort. “Should have stayed home where you belonged. Been married by now, with a passel of younguns.”

      She shuddered at the thought, and her eyes clouded. “Is Cade at the ranch?” she asked, searching for something to say.

      “Up in the Piper, hunting strays,” he told her. “Figured he’d better find those damned cows before the snow hits. As it is, we’ll have to fan out and bring them into the barn. We lost over a hundred calves in the snow last spring.”

      Her pale eyes clouded at the thought of those tiny calves freezing to death. Cade had come home one winter night, carrying a little white-faced Hereford across his saddle, and Abby had helped him get it into the barn to warm it. He’d been tired and snappy and badly in need of a shave. Abby had fetched him a cup of coffee, and they’d stayed hours in the barn until the calf was thawed and on the mend. Cade was so much a part of her life, despite their quarrels. He was the only person she’d ever felt truly at home with.

      “Are you listening?” Hank grumbled. “Honest to God, Abby!”

      “Sorry, Hank,” she apologized quickly as the elderly man glared at her. “What did you say?”

      “I asked you if you wanted to stow your gear at the house or go on down to the homestead.”

      The “house” was Cade’s—the main ranch house. The “homestead” had been her father’s and was now Melly’s. Soon, it would belong to Melly and her new husband.

      “Where’s Melly?”

      “At the house.”

      “Then just drop me off there, please, Hank,” she said with a pacifying smile.

      He grunted and gunned the engine. A minute later, she was outside under the spreading branches of the budding trees and Hank was roaring away in a cloud of dust. Just like old times, she thought with a laugh. Hank impatient, dumping her at the nearest opportunity, while he rushed on to his chores.

      Of course, it was nearing roundup, and that always made him irritable. It was late April now—by June, the ranch would be alive and teeming with activity as new calves were branded and separated and the men worked twenty-four-hour days and wondered why they had ever wanted to be cowboys.

      She turned toward the house with a sigh. It was just as well that Cade wasn’t home, she told herself. Seeing him now was going to be an ordeal. All she wanted was her sister.

      She knocked at the door hesitantly, and seconds later, it was thrown open by a smaller girl with short golden hair and sea-green eyes.

      “Abby!” the younger girl burst out, tears appearing in her eyes. She threw open the door and held out her arms.

      Abby ran straight into them and held on for dear life, oblivious to the suitcase falling onto the cleanly swept front porch. She clutched her sister and cried like a lost child. She was home. She was safe.

       2

      “I was so glad when you decided to come.” Melly sighed over coffee while she and Abby sat in the sprawling living room. It had changed quite a bit since Cade’s mother died. The delicate antiques and pastel curtains had given way to leather-covered couches and chairs, handsome coffee tables and a luxurious, thick-piled gray rug. Now it looked like Cade—big and untamed and unchangeable.

      “Sorry,” Abby murmured when she realized she hadn’t responded. “I had my mind on this room. It’s changed.”

      Melly looked concerned. “A lot of things have. Cade included.”

      “Cade never changes,” came the quiet reply. The taller girl got to her feet with her coffee cup in hand and wandered to the mantel to stare at a portrait of Donavan McLaren that overwhelmed the room.

      Cade was a younger version of the tall, imposing man in the painting, except that Donavan had white hair and a mustache and a permanent scowl. Cade’s hair was still black and thick over a broad forehead and deep-set dark eyes. He was taller than his late father, all muscle. He was darkly tanned and he rarely smiled, but he could be funny in a dry sort of way. He was thirty-six now, fourteen years Abby’s senior, although he seemed twice that judging by the way he treated her. Cade was always the patronizing adult to Abby’s wayward child. Except for that one magic night when he’d been every woman’s dream—when he’d shown her a taste of intimacy that had colored her life ever since, and had rejected her with such tenderness that she’d never been ashamed of offering herself to him.

      Offering herself... She shuddered delicately, lifting the coffee to her lips. As if that would ever be possible again, now.

      “How