Christmas Kisses with My Cowboy. Kate Pearce

each other, if we have nothing else.” She said it with affection, but she didn’t touch her daughter.

      “Yes, we do,” Teddie told her mother. “Thanks for not yelling.”

      “You never teach a child anything by yelling,” Katy said softly. “Or by hitting.”

      Parker glanced at her and saw things she didn’t realize. He put the palomino in a stall in the stable and closed the gate.

      “We have to lock it,” Katy said. She drew a chain around the metal gate and hitched it to the post with a metal lock. “He’s an escape artist,” she added. “Which is how he happened to be hightailing it past your place. I guess he learned to run away when his owner started brutalizing him with that whip.”

      “I’d love to have five minutes with that gentleman, and the whip,” Parker murmured as he looked around the barn. “This place is in bad shape,” he remarked.

      “One step at a time,” she said with quiet dignity.

      He turned and looked down at her and smiled. He almost never smiled, but she made him feel like he had as a boy when he got his first horse, when he dived into deep water for the first time, when he tracked his first deer. It was a feeling of extreme exhilaration that lifted him out of his routine. And shocked him.

      She laughed. “It’s what my mother always said,” she explained. “Especially when Dad got sick and had to go to the hospital. He had a bad heart. She knew it when they married. He had two open-heart surgeries to put in an artificial valve, and he had a host of other health problems,” she added, not mentioning the worst of those, alcoholism. “They’d been married for twenty-five years when he died in a car crash. She said she got through life by living just for the day she was in, never looking ahead. It’s not a bad philosophy.”

      “Not bad at all,” Teddie agreed.

      “Is this his saddle?” Parker asked suddenly, noting the worn but serviceable saddle resting on a nearby gate. The stable was empty except for the palomino, tack on the walls, and some hay in square bales in a corner.

      “Yes,” Katy said. “It was my grandfather’s. I’ve had it for years. I brought it with us when we moved. It’s been a lot of places with me, since my teens.” She joined him and ran her hand over the worn, smooth pommel. “Granddaddy competed in bulldogging for many years with a partner, his first cousin, up in Montana. He was very good. But he lost a thumb to a too-tight rope and ended up keeping books for my husband’s father. They lived near Dan’s folks in Montana, but they had a relative who owned the ranch here. When Dan’s father died, his mother sold the Montana ranch and moved back here, to her family ranch. Dan inherited it.” Her expression was wistful. “His grandfather, who founded the ranch, raised some of the finest Red Brangus around,” she added. “He was active in the local cattleman’s association as well. So was Dan’s mother.”

      “My boss is, too. He and the Mrs. are pregnant with their first child. She writes for Warriors and Warlocks, that hit drama on cable TV.”

      “Oh, my gosh!” Katy exclaimed. “It’s my favorite show! And she actually writes for it?! And lives here?”

      “Her husband’s got a private jet,” he explained with twinkling eyes. “He has the pilot fly her to and from Manhattan for meetings with the other writers and the show’s director and producer.”

      “That must be nice,” Katy said.

      “Mom won’t let me watch that show,” Teddie said with a faint pout.

      “When you’re older,” Katy told her.

      “You always say that, about everything,” the little girl complained.

      “Wait until you’re grown and you have kids,” Katy teased. “You’ll understand it a whole lot better.”

      “This place needs a lot of work,” Parker said when they were back outside again. “Especially that fence, and those steps.” He indicated a board missing in the front ones.

      “It really does,” Katy agreed. “We’re trying to take it one thing at a time.”

      “Fence first, steps second. Got any tools? How about extra boards for the fence, or at least wire?”

      Katy was shocked, but only for a minute. She went inside and came back out with a toolbox. “It was my husband’s, but I have no idea what’s in it,” she apologized.

      “No problem. Boards? Wire?”

      “I think there’s a bale of wire out in the big shed behind the house,” she returned.

      “Yes, that big one there,” Teddie said, indicating a metal building that had seen better days.

      “My mother-in-law used it mostly for storage,” Katy explained. “She kept some of the Red Brangus, just the breeding stock, and hired a man to manage it for her. He still works for us. . . .”

      “Yes, that would be Jerry Miller,” he said, smiling. “I know him. Honest as the day is long, and a hard worker.”

      “He has two full-time cowboys and four part-time ones.” She shook her head. “It takes so many people to work cattle. We’ll have our first sale in the spring. I’m hoping we’ll do well at it. I’ve forgotten most of what I know about ranching. But that’s what we have Jerry for,” she added with a smile. And it was just plain good luck that the last cattle sale had left her with a windfall that took care of all the salaries. Wintering the cows and heifers, and their few bulls, would be expensive, due to loss of forage from all the flooding in the West and Midwest, but she knew they’d manage somehow. They always did.

      “At least we got the plumbing repaired and a new roof put on,” she said, waving her hand to indicate some rough idea of where the work had been done.

      “Expensive stuff,” he commented, looking through the toolbox.

      “Tell me about it,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.

      He took out a hammer. “Nails?” he asked as he got to his feet gracefully.

      “Nails. Right.” She looked around the building until her eyes came to a workbench. “I think he kept them in a coffee can over here.”

      She produced it. There was a supply of assorted nails. He picked out some to do the job. He got wire cutters from the tool kit and proceeded to heft the heavy bale of wire over his shoulder.

      “Can I help?” Teddie asked.

      He chuckled. “Sure. You can carry the hammer and nails.”

      She took them from him and followed along behind him to the pasture that fronted the stable.

      “I could find someone to do it. . . .” Katy began.

      “Not before the horse went through it again.” He frowned and glanced at them as he put down the wire and pulled out a measuring tape. “Why did he run?” he asked belatedly.

      Teddie sighed. “Well, there was this plastic bag that had been on the porch. The wind came up and sent it flying toward the corral. Bartholomew panicked.”

      Chapter Two

      Parker burst out laughing. “A plastic bag.” He shook his head. “Horses are nervous creatures, to be sure.”

      “You said they were prey animals,” Teddie reminded him shyly.

      “They are.”

      “How do you tell that?” the little girl wanted to know.

      “Prey animals have eyes on the sides of their heads, not on the front like humans do,” he replied. He went on to explain about the evolution that produced such a trait.

      Katy was watching him curiously.

      He gave her a dry look. “Oh, I get it. A horse wrangler shouldn’t know scientific things like that, huh? I minored