Christmas On The Range. Diana Palmer

life. She didn’t want to tell her best friend that her brother terrified her. Merrie would have asked why. There were secrets in Ivy’s past that she shared with no one.

      “I’m going to see my father this weekend.” Lita, dark-haired and eyed, smiled at the younger woman. “How about you?”

      Ivy smiled. “If Merrie remembers, we’ll probably go window-shopping.” She sighed, smiling lazily. “I might see something I can daydream about owning,” she chuckled.

      “One day some nice man is going to come along and treat you the way you deserve to be treated,” Lita said kindly. “You wait and see.”

      Ivy knew better, but she only smiled. She wasn’t anxious to offer any man control of her life. She was through living in fear.

      She went in the side door, glancing over to see if Mrs. Brown was home. The landlady must be grocery shopping, she decided. It was a Friday ritual. Ivy got to eat with Mrs. Brown and Lita Dawson, the other tenant, on the weekends. She and Lita took turns cooking and cleaning up the kitchen, to help elderly Mrs. Brown manage the extra work. It was nice, not having to drive into town to get a sandwich. The pizza place delivered, but Ivy was sick of pizza. She liked her small boardinghouse, and Lita was nice, if a little older than Ivy. Lita was newly divorced and missing her ex-husband to a terrible degree. She fell back on her degree and taught computer technology at the vocational college, and let Ivy ride back and forth with her for help with the gas money.

      She’d no sooner put down her purse than the cell phone rang.

      “It’s the weekend!” came a jolly, laughing voice. It was Merrie York, her best friend from high school.

      “I noticed,” Ivy chuckled. “How’d you do on your tests?”

      “I’m sure I passed something, but I’m not sure what. My biology final is approaching and lab work is killing me. I can’t make the microscope work!”

      “You’re training to be a nurse, not a lab assistant,” Ivy pointed out.

      “Come up here and tell that to my biology professor,” Merrie dared her. “Never mind, I’ll graduate even if I have to take every course three times.”

      “That’s the spirit.”

      “Come over and spend the weekend with me,” Merrie invited.

      Ivy’s heart flipped over. “Thanks, but I have some things to do around here...”

      “He’s in Oklahoma, settling a new group of cattle with a sale barn,” Merrie coaxed wryly.

      Ivy hesitated. “Can you put that in writing and get it notarized?”

      “He really likes you, deep inside.”

      “He’s made an art of hiding his fondness for me,” Ivy shot back. “I love you, Merrie, but I don’t fancy being cannon fodder. It’s been a long week. Rachel and I had another argument today.”

      “Long distance?”

      “Exactly.”

      “And over Sir Lancelot the drug lord.”

      “You know me too well.”

      Merrie laughed. “We’ve been friends since middle school,” she reminded Ivy.

      “Yes, the debutante and the tomboy. What a pair we made.”

      “You’re not quite the tomboy you used to be,” Merrie said.

      “We conform when we have to. Why do you want me there this weekend?”

      “For selfish reasons,” the other woman said mischievously. “I need a study partner and everybody else in my class has a social life.”

      “I don’t want a social life,” Ivy said. “I want to make good grades and graduate and get a job that pays at least minimum wage.”

      “Your folks left you a savings account and some stocks,” Merrie pointed out.

      That was true, but Rachel had walked away with most of the money and all of the stocks.

      “Your folks left you Stuart,” Ivy replied dryly.

      “Don’t remind me!”

      “Actually, I suppose it was the other way around, wasn’t it?” Ivy thought aloud. “Your folks left you to Stuart.”

      “He’s a really great brother,” Merrie said gently. “And he likes most women...”

      “He likes all women, except me,” Ivy countered. “I really couldn’t handle a weekend with Stuart right now. Not on top of being harassed by Rachel and final exams.”

      “You’re a whiz at math,” her friend countered. “You hardly ever have to study.”

      “Translation—I work math problems every day for four hours after class so that I can appear to be smart.”

      Merrie laughed. “Come on over. Mrs. Rhodes is making homemade yeast rolls for supper, and we have all the pay per view channels. We can study and then watch that new adventure movie.”

      Ivy was weakening. On weekends, it was mostly takeout at the boardinghouse. Ivy’s stomach rebelled at the thought of pizza or more sweet and sour chicken or tacos. “I could really use an edible meal that didn’t come in a box, I guess.”

      “If I tell Mrs. Rhodes you’re coming, she’ll make you a cherry pie.”

      “That does it. I’ll pack a nightgown and see you in thirty minutes, or as soon as I can get a cab.”

      “I could come and get you.”

      “No. Cabs are cheap in town. I’m not destitute,” she added proudly, although she practically was. The cab fare would have to come out of her snack money for the next week. She really did have to budget to the bone. But her pride wouldn’t let her accept Merrie’s offer.

      “All right, Miss Independence. I’ll have Jack leave the gate open.”

      It was a subtle and not arrogant reminder that the two women lived in different social strata. Merrie’s home was a sprawling brick mansion with a wrought-iron gate running up a bricked driveway. There was an armed guard, Jack, at the front gate, miles of electrified fence and two killer Dobermans who had the run of the property at night. If that didn’t deter trespassers, there were the ranch hands, half of whom were ex-military. Stuart was particular about the people who worked for him, because his home contained priceless inherited antiques. He also owned four herd sires who commanded incredible stud fees; straws of their semen sold for thousands of dollars each and were shipped all over the world.

      “Should I wear body armor, or will Chayce recognize me?”

      Chayce McLeod was the chief of security for York Properties, which Stuart headed. He’d worked for J.B. Hammock, but Stuart had offered him a bigger salary and fringe benefits. Chayce was worth it. He had a degree in management and he was a past master at handling men. There were plenty of them to handle on a spread this size. Most people didn’t know that Chayce was also an ex-federal agent. He was dishy, too, but Ivy was immune to him.

      Stuart’s ranch, all twenty thousand acres of it, was only a part of an empire that spanned three states and included real estate, investments, feedlots and a ranching equipment company. Stuart and Merrie were very rich. But neither of them led a frantic social life. Stuart worked on the ranch, just as he had when he was in his teens—just as his father had until he died of a heart attack when Merrie was thirteen. Now, Stuart was thirty. Merrie, like Ivy, was only eighteen, almost nineteen. There were no other relatives. Their mother had died giving birth to Merrie.

      Merrie sighed at the long pause. “Of course Chayce will recognize you. Ivy, you’re not in one of your moods again, are you?”

      “My dad was a mechanic, Merrie,” she reminded her friend, “and my mother was a C.P.A. in a firm.”

      “My grandfather