Christmas Cowboy

by Diana Palmer

  The sound of the man’s name was enough to make Dorie’s heart race, even after so many years. But she steeled herself not to let it show. She had nothing left to offer Corrigan, even if he was still interested in her. And that was a laugh. If he’d cared even a little, he’d have come to New York looking for her all those years ago.

  “Fired him?” Abby glanced at the man and scowled. “But that’s Buck Wyley,” she protested. “He’s the Harts’ foreman. He’s been with them since they came here.”

  “He made a remark Corrigan didn’t like. He got knocked on his pants for his trouble and summarily fired.” Barbara shrugged. “The Harts are all high-tempered, but until now I always thought Corrigan was fair. What sort of boss fires a man with Christmas only three weeks away?”

  “Ebenezer Scrooge?” Abby ventured dryly.

  “Buck said he cut another cowboy’s wages to the bone for leaving a gate open.” She shook her head. “Funny, we’ve heard almost nothing about Corrigan for years, and all of a sudden he comes back into the light like a smoldering madman.”

  “So I noticed,” Abby said.

  Barbara wiped her hands on a dishcloth. “I don’t know what happened to set him off after so many years. The other brothers have been more visible lately, but not Corrigan. I’d wondered if he’d moved away for a while. Nobody even spoke of him.” She glanced at Dorie with curious eyes. “You’re Dorothy Wayne, aren’t you?” she asked then, smiling. “I thought I recognized you. Sorry about your pa.”

  “Thanks,” Dorie said automatically. She noticed how Barbara’s eyes went to the thin scar on her cheek and flitted quickly away.

  “I’ll get your order.”

  Barbara went back behind the counter and Abby’s puzzled gaze went to the corner.

  “Having a bad day, Buck?” she called.

  He sipped black coffee. “It couldn’t get much worse, Mrs. Ballenger,” he replied in a deep, pleasant tone. “I don’t suppose Calhoun and Justin are hiring out at the feedlot?”

  “They’d hire you in a minute, and you know it,” Abby told him. She smiled. “Why don’t you go out there and…”

  “Oh, the devil!” Buck muttered, his black eyes flashing. He got to his feet and stood there, vibrating, as a tall, lean figure came through the open door.

  Dorie actually caught her breath. The tall man was familiar to her, even after all those years. Dressed in tight jeans, with hand-tooled boots and a chambray shirt and a neat, spotless white Stetson atop his black hair, he looked formidable, even with the cane he was using for support.

  He didn’t look at the table where Dorie was sitting, which was on the other side of the café from Buck.

  “You fired me,” Buck snapped at him. “What do you want, another punch at me? This time, you’ll get it back in spades, gimpy leg or not!”

  Corrigan Hart just stared at the man, his pale eyes like chrome sparkling in sunlight.

  “Those purebred Angus we got from Montana are coming in by truck this morning,” he said. “You’re the only one who knows how to use the master program for the computerized herd records.”

  “And you need me,” Buck agreed with a cold smile. “For how long?”

  “Two weeks,” came the curt reply. “You’ll work that long for your severance pay. If you’re still of a mind to quit.”

  “Quit, hell!” Buck shot back, astonished. “You fired me!”

  “I did not!” the older man replied curtly. “I said you could mind your own damned business or get out.”

  Buck’s head turned and he stared at the other man for a minute. “If I come back, you’d better keep your fists to yourself from now on,” he said shortly.

  The other man didn’t blink. “You know why you got hit.”

  Buck glanced warily toward Dorie and a ruddy color ran along his high cheekbones. “I never meant it the way you took it,” he retorted.

  “You’ll think twice before you presume to make such remarks to me again, then, won’t you?”

  Buck made a movement that his employer took for assent.

  “And your Christmas bonus is now history!” he added.

  Buck let out an angry breath, almost spoke, but crushed his lips together finally in furious submission.

  “Go home!” the older man said abruptly.

  Buck pulled his hat over his eyes, tossed a dollar bill on the table with his coffee cup and strode out with barely a tip of the hat to the women present, muttering under his breath as he went.

  The door closed with a snap. Corrigan Hart didn’t move. He stood very still for a moment, as if steeling himself.

  Then he turned, and his pale eyes stared right into Dorie’s. But the anger in them eclipsed into a look of such shock that Dorie blinked.

  “What happened to you?” he asked shortly.

  She knew what he meant without asking. She put a hand self-consciously to her cheek. “An accident,” she said stiffly.

  His chin lifted. The tension in the café was so thick that Abby shifted uncomfortably at the table.

  “You don’t model now,” he continued.

  The certainty in the statement made her miserable. “No. Of course I don’t.”

  He leaned heavily on the cane. “Sorry about your father,” he said curtly.

  She nodded.

  His face seemed pinched as he stared at her. Even across the room, the heat in the look was tangible to Dorie. Her hands holding the mug of hot chocolate went white at the knuckles from the pressure of them around it.

  He glanced at Abby. “How are things at the feed-lot?”

  “Much as usual,” she replied pleasantly. “Calhoun and Justin are still turning away business. Nice, in the flat cattle market this fall.”

  “I agree. We’ve culled as many head as possible and we’re venturing into new areas of crossbreeding. Nothing but purebreds now. We’re hoping to pioneer a new breed.”

  “Good for you,” Abby replied.

  His eyes went back to Dorie. They lingered on her wan face, her lack of spirit. “How long are you going to stay?” he asked.

  The question was voiced in such a way it seemed like a challenge. Her shoulders rose and fell. “Until I tie up all the loose ends, I suppose. They’ve given me two weeks off at the law firm where I work.”

  “As an attorney?”

  She shook her head. “A stenographer.”

  He scowled. “With your head for figures?” he asked shortly.

  Her gaze was puzzled. She hadn’t realized that he was aware of her aptitude for math.

  “It’s a waste,” he persisted. “You’d have been a natural at bookkeeping and marketing.”

  She’d often thought so, too, but she hadn’t pursued her interest in that field. Especially after her first attempt at modeling.

  He gave her a calculating stare. “Clarisse Marston has opened a boutique in town. She designs women’s clothes and has them made up at a local textile plant. She sells all over the state.”

  “Yes,” Abby added. “In fact, she’s now doing a lot of designing for Todd Burke’s wife, Jane—you know, her signature rodeo line of sportswear.”

  “I’ve heard of it, even in New York,” Dorie admitted.

  “The thing Clarisse doesn’t have is someone to help her with marketing and bookkeeping.” He shook his head. “It amazes me that she hasn’t gone belly-up already.”

  Abby started to speak, but the look on Corrigan’s face silenced her. She only smiled at Dorie.

  “This is your home,” Corrigan persisted quietly. “You were born and raised in Jacobsville. Surely having a good job here would be preferable to being a stenographer in New York. Unless,” he added slowly, “there’s some reason you want to stay there.”

  His eyes were flashing. Dorie looked into the film on her cooling hot chocolate. “I don’t have anyone in New York.” She shifted her legs. “I don’t have anyone here, either, now.”

  “But you do,” Abby protested. “All your friends.”

  “Of course, she may
miss the bright lights and excitement,” Corrigan drawled.

  She looked at him curiously. He was trying to goad her. Why?

  “Is Jacobsville too small for you now, city girl?” he persisted with a mocking smile.

  “No, it isn’t that at all,” she said. She cleared her throat.

  “Come home,” Abby coaxed.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Still afraid of me?” Corrigan asked with a harsh laugh when her head jerked up. “That’s why you left. Is it why you won’t come back?”

  She colored furiously, the first trace of color that had shown in her face since the strange conversation began.

  “I’m not…afraid of you!” she faltered.

  But she was, and he knew it. His silver eyes narrowed and that familiar, mocking smile turned up his thin upper lip. “Prove it.”

  “Maybe Miss Marston doesn’t want a book-keeper.”

  “She does,” he returned.

  She hesitated. “She might not like me.”

  “She will.”

  She let out an exasperated sigh. “I can’t make a decision that important in a few seconds,” she told him. “I have to think about it.”

  “Take your time,” he replied. “Nobody’s rushing you.”

  “It would be lovely if you came back, though,” Abby said with a smile. “No matter how many friends we have, we can always use one more.”

  “Exactly,” Corrigan told her. His eyes narrowed. “Of course, you needn’t consider me in your decision. I’m not trying to get you to come back for my sake. But I’m sure there are plenty of other bachelors left around here who’d be delighted to give you a whirl, if you needed an incentive.”

  His lean face was so hard and closed that not one flicker of emotion got away from it.

  Abby was eyeing him curiously, but she didn’t say a word, not even when her gaze fell to his hand on the silver knob of the cane and saw it go white from the pressure.

  He eased up on the handle, just the same. “Well?”

  “I’d like to,” Dorie said quietly. She didn’t look at him. Odd, how his statement had hurt, after all those years. She looked back on the past with desperation these days, wondering how her life would have been if she hadn’t resisted him that night he’d tried to carry her to bed.

  She hadn’t wanted an affair, but he was an honorable man, in his fashion. Perhaps he would have followed up with a proposal, despite his obvious distaste for the married state. Or perhaps he wouldn’t have. There might have been a child…

  She grimaced and lifted the cup of chocolate to her lips. It was tepid and vaguely distasteful.

  “Go see Clarisse, why don’t you?” he added. “You’ve nothing to lose, and a lot to gain. She’s a sweet woman. You’ll like her.”

  Did he? She didn’t dare wonder about that, or voice her curiosity. “I might do that,” she replied.

  The tap of the cane seemed unusually loud as he turned back to the door. “Give the brothers my best,” Corrigan told Abby. He nodded and was gone.

  Only then did Dorie look up, her eyes on his tall, muscular body as he walked carefully back to the big double-cabbed black ranch pickup truck he drove.

  “What happened to him?” Dorie asked.

  Abby sipped her own hot chocolate before she answered. “It happened the week after you left town. He went on a hunting trip in Montana with some other men. During a heavy, late spring snow, Corrigan and another man went off on their own in a four-wheel-drive utility vehicle to scout another section of the hunting range.”

  “And?” Dorie prompted.

  “The truck went over a steep incline and over-turned. The other man was killed outright. Corrigan was pinned and couldn’t get free. He lay there most of the night and into the next day before the party came looking for them and found him. By that time, he was unconscious. The impact broke his leg in two places, and he had frostbite as well. He almost died.”

  Dorie caught her breath. “How horrible!”

  “They wanted to amputate the leg, but…” she shrugged. “He refused them permission to operate, so they did the best they could. The leg is usable, just, but it will always be stiff. They said later that it was a miracle he didn’t lose any toes. He had just enough sense left to wrap himself in one of those thin thermal sheets the men had carried on the trip. It saved him from a dangerous frostbite.”

  “Poor man.”

  “Oh, don’t make that mistake,” Abby mused. “Nobody is allowed to pity Corrigan Hart. Just ask his brothers.”

  “All the same, he never seemed the sort of man to lose control of anything, not even a truck.”

  “He wasn’t himself but he didn’t lose control, either.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Abby grimaced. “He and the other man, the one who was driving, had been drinking. He blamed himself not only for the wreck, but for the other man’s death. He knew the man wasn’t fit to drive but he didn’t try to stop him. They say he’s been punishing himself ever since. That’s why he never comes into town, or has any social life. He’s withdrawn into himself and nobody can drag him back out. He’s become a hermit.”

  “But, why?”

  “Why was he drinking, you mean?” Abby said, and Dorie nodded. Still, Abby hesitated to put it into words.

  “Tell me,” came the persistent nudge from Dorie.

  Abby’s eyes were apologetic. “Nobody knows, really. But the gossip was that he was trying to get over losing you.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “But he wanted to lose me,” Dorie exclaimed, shocked. “He couldn’t get out of my house fast enough when I refused…refused him,” she blurted. She clasped her hands together. “He accused me of being frigid and a tease…”

  “Corrigan was a rounder, Dorie,” Abby said gently. “In this modern age, even in Jacobsville, a lot of girls are pretty sophisticated at eighteen. He wouldn’t have known about your father being a minister, because he’d retired from the church before the Harts came to take over their grandfather’s ranch. He was probably surprised to find you less accommodating than other girls.”

  “Surprised wasn’t the word,” Dorie said miserably. “He was furious.”

  “He did go to the bus depot when you left.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Everybody talked about it,” Abby admitted. “It was generally thought that he went there to stop you.”

  “He didn’t say a word,” came the quiet reply. “Not one word.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know what to say. He was probably embarrassed and upset about the way he’d treated you. A man like that might not know what to do with an innocent girl.”

  Dorie laughed bitterly. “Sure he did. You see her off and hope she won’t come back. He told me that he had no intention of marrying.”

  “He could have changed his mind.”

  Dorie shook her head. “Not a chance. He never talked about us being a couple. He kept reminding me that I was young and that he liked variety. He said that we shouldn’t think of each other in any serious way, but just enjoy each other while it lasted.”

  “That sounds like a Hart, all right,” Abby had to admit. “They’re all like Corrigan. Apparently they have a collective bad attitude toward women and think of them as minor amusements.”

  “He picked on the wrong girl,” Dorie said. She finished her hot chocolate. “I’d never even had a real boyfriend when he came along. He was so forceful and demanding and inflexible, so devoid of tenderness when he was with me.” She huddled closer into her sweater. “He came at me like a rocket. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t hide, he just kept coming.” Her eyes closed on a long sigh. “Oh, Abby, he scared me to death. I’d been raised in a such a way that I couldn’t have an affair, and I knew that was all he wanted. I ran, and kept running. Now I can’t stop.”

  “You could, if you wanted to.”

  “The only way I’d come back is with a written guarantee that he wanted nothing more to do with me,” she said with a
cold laugh. “Otherwise, I’d never feel safe here.”

  “He just told you himself that he had no designs on you,” Abby reminded her. “He has other interests.”

  “Does he? Other…women interests?”

  Abby clasped her fingers together on the table. “He goes out with a rich divorcée when he’s in need of company,” she said. “That’s been going on for a long time now. He probably was telling the truth when he said that he wouldn’t bother you. After all, it’s been eight years.” She studied the other woman. “You want to come home, don’t you?”

  Caught off guard, Dorie nodded. “I’m so alone,” she confessed. “I have bolts and chains on my door and I live like a prisoner when I’m not at work. I rarely ever go outside. I miss trees and green grass.”

  “There’s always Central Park.”

  “You can’t plant flowers there,” she said, “or have a dog or cat in a tiny apartment like mine. I want to sit out in the rain and watch the stars at night. I’ve dreamed of coming home.”

  “Why haven’t you?”

  “Because of the way I left,” she confessed. “I didn’t want any more trouble than I’d already had. It was bad enough that Dad had to come and see me, that I couldn’t come home.”

  “Because of Corrigan?”

  “What?” For an instant, Dorie’s eyes were frightened. Then they seemed to calm. “No, it was for another reason altogether, those first few years. I couldn’t risk coming here, where it’s so easy to find people…” She closed up when she realized what she was saying. “It was a problem I had, in New York. That’s all I can tell you. And it’s over now. There’s no more danger from that direction. I’m safe.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to know,” Dorie said gently. “It wouldn’t help matters to talk about it now. But I would like to come back home. I seem to have spent most of my life on the run.”

  What an odd turn of phrase, Abby thought, but she didn’t question it. She just smiled. “Well, if you decide to come back, I’ll introduce you to Clarisse. Just let me know.”

  Dorie brightened. “All right. Let me think about it for a day or two, and I’ll be in touch with you.”