Diana Palmer - Christmas with the Rancher - The Rancher / Christmas Cowboy / A Man of Means

Two bedraggled parents were trying to put out food in plastic containers on a picnic table, fighting the wind, which was blowing like crazy in the sweltering heat. They glanced at the couple and grinned.

Cort grinned back. There were three children, all under school age, one in his father’s arms. They looked happy, even though they were driving a car that looked as if it wouldn’t make it out of the parking lot.

“Nice day for a picnic,” Cort remarked.

The father made a face. “Not so much, but we’ve got a long drive ahead of us and it’s hard to sit in a fast-food joint with this company.” He indicated the leaping, running toddlers. He laughed. “Tomorrow, they’ll be hijacking my car,” he added with an ear-to-ear smile, “so we’re enjoying it while we can.”

“Nothing like kids to make a home a home,” the mother commented.

“Nice looking kids, too,” Cort said.

“Very nice,” Maddie said, finally finding her voice.

“Thanks,” the mother said. “They’re a handful, but we don’t mind.”

She went back to her food containers, and the father went running after the toddlers, who were about to climb down the bank.

“Nice family,” Cort remarked as they reached his car.

“Yes. They seemed so happy.”

He glanced down at her as he stopped to open the passenger door. He was thoughtful. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes were soft and full of secrets. “In you go.”

She got in, fastened her seat belt without any prompting and smiled all the way back home.

Things were going great, until they got out of the car in front of Maddie’s house. Pumpkin had found a way out of the hen enclosure. He spotted Cort and broke into a halting run, with his head down and his feathers ruffled.

“No!” Maddie yelled. “Pumpkin, no!”

She tried to head him off, but he jumped at her and she turned away just in time to avoid spurs in her face. “Cort, run! It’s okay, just run!” she called when he hesitated.

He threw his hands up and darted toward his car. “You have to do something about that damned rooster, Maddie!” he called back.

“I know,” she wailed. “I will, honest! I had fun. Thanks so much!”

He threw up his hands and dived into the car. He started it and drove off just before Pumpkin reached him.

“You stupid chicken! I’m going to let Ben eat you, I swear I am!” she raged.

But when he started toward her, she ran up the steps, into the house and slammed the door.

She opened her cell phone and called her foreman.

“Ben, can you please get Pumpkin back into the hen lot and try to see where he got out? Be sure to wear your chaps and carry a shield,” she added.

“Need to eat that rooster, Maddie,” he drawled.

“I know.” She groaned. “Please?”

There was a long sigh. “All right. One more time…” He hung up.

Great-Aunt Sadie gave her a long look. “Pumpkin got out again?”

“Yes. There must be a hole in the fence or something,” she moaned. “I don’t know how in the world he does it!”

“Ben will find a way to shut him in, don’t worry. But you are going to have to do something, you know. He’s dangerous.”

“I love him,” Maddie said miserably.

“Well, sometimes things we love don’t love us back and should be made into chicken and dumplings,” Sadie mused with pursed lips.

Maddie made a face at her. She opened her shoulder bag and pulled out a box. “I want to show you something. Cort bought it for me.”

“Cort’s buying you presents?” Sadie exclaimed.

“It’s some present, too,” Maddie said with a flushed smile.

She opened the box. There, inside, was the hand-painted cameo of the little Spanish lady, with a card that gave all the information about the woman, now deceased, who left it with the antiques dealer.

“She’s lovely,” Sadie said, tracing the face with a forefinger very gently.

“Read the card.” Maddie showed it to her.

When Sadie finished reading it, she was almost in tears. “How sad, to be the last one in your family.”

“Yes. But this will be handed down someday.” She was remembering the family at the picnic tables and Cort’s strange smile, holding hands with him, kissing him. “Someday,” she said again, and she sounded as breathless as she felt.

Sadie didn’t ask any questions. But she didn’t have to. Maddie’s bemused expression told her everything she needed to know. Apparently Maddie and Cort were getting along very well, all of a sudden.

Cort walked into the house muttering about the rooster.

“Trouble again?” Shelby asked. She was curled up on the sofa watching the news, but she turned off the television when she saw her son. She smiled, dark-eyed and still beautiful.

“The rooster,” he sighed. He tossed his hat into a chair and dropped down into his father’s big recliner. “I bought us a bull. He’s very nice.”

“From Cy Parks?”

He nodded. “He’s quite a character.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“I bought Maddie a cameo,” he added. “In that tearoom halfway between here and Jacobsville. It’s got an antiques store in with it.” He shook his head. “Beautiful thing. It’s hand-painted…a pretty Spanish lady with a fan, enameled. She had a fit over it. The seller died recently and had no family.”

“Sad. But it was nice of you to buy it for Maddie.”

He pursed his lips. “When you met Dad, you said you didn’t get along.”

She shivered dramatically. “That’s putting it mildly. He hated me. Or he seemed to. But when my mother, your grandmother, died, I was alone in a media circus. They think she committed suicide and she was a big-name movie star, you see. So there was a lot of publicity. I was almost in hysterics when your father showed up out of nowhere and managed everything.”

“Well!”

“I was shocked. He’d sent me home, told me he had a girlfriend and broke me up with Danny. Not that I needed breaking-up, Danny was only pretending to be engaged to me to make King face how he really felt. But it was fireworks from the start.” She peered at him through her thick black eyelashes. “Sort of the way it was with you and Maddie, I think.”

“It’s fireworks, now, too. But of a different sort,” he added very slowly.

“Oh?” She didn’t want to pry, but she was curious.

“I’m confused. Maddie isn’t pretty. She can’t sing or play anything. But she can paint and sculpt and she’s sharp about people.” He grimaced. “Odalie is beautiful, like the rising sun, and she can play any instrument and sing like an angel.”

“Accomplishments and education don’t matter as much as personality and character,” his mother replied quietly. “I’m not an educated person, although I’ve taken online courses. I made my living modeling. Do you think I’m less valuable to your father than a woman with a college degree and greater beauty?”

“Goodness, no!” he exclaimed at once.

She smiled gently. “See what I mean?”

“I think I’m beginning to.” He leaned back. “It was a good day.”

“I’m glad.”

“Except for that damned rooster,” he muttered. “One of these days…!”

She laughed.

He was about to call Maddie, just to talk, when his cell phone rang.

He didn’t recognize the number. He put it up to his ear. “Hello?”

“Hello, Cort,” Odalie’s voice purred in his ear. “Guess what, I’m home! Want to come over for supper tonight?”

He hesitated. Things had just gotten complicated.

Maddie half expected Cort to phone her, after their lovely day together, but he didn’t. The next morning, she heard a car pull up in the driveway and went running out. But it wasn’t Cort. It was John Everett.