Wyoming Winter--A Small-Town Christmas Romance

by Diana Palmer

  He cursed under his breath. “Didn’t you talk to anyone else about sex?”

  “It wasn’t something I could discuss with my father, and Mary was the only friend I had,” she told him. “She said that all the things they write about are just fiction, and that the reality is just like her mother once said—a woman deals with it for the pleasure of children.”

  He leaned forward on his hands, shaking his head. “I wish you’d told me this eight years ago.”

  “You’d have laughed,” she replied. “You didn’t believe I was innocent, anyway.”

  He looked up into her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said heavily. “Life teaches hard lessons.”

  She thought about her own experience with modeling. “Yes, it does.”

  He got to his feet and looked down at her with a worried scowl. “Don’t you watch hot movies?”

  “Those women aren’t virgins,” she returned.

  “No. I don’t guess they are.” His eyes narrowed as he searched her face. “And I don’t know what to tell you. I’d never touched an innocent woman until you came along. Maybe it does hurt. But I promise you, it would only be one time. I know enough to make it good for you. And I would.”

  “It isn’t going to be that way,” she reminded him tersely, denying herself the dreams of marriage and children that she’d always connected with him. “We’re going to be friends.”

  He didn’t speak. His gaze didn’t falter. “I’ll check back with you later about the books,” he said quietly.

  “Okay.”

  He started to turn, thought better of it and leaned down again with his weight balanced on the chair arms. “Do you remember what happened when I started to suckle you?”

  She went scarlet. “Please...”

  “It will be like that,” he said evenly. “Just like that. You won’t think about pain. You may not even notice any. You go in headfirst when I touch you. And I wasn’t even taking my time with you today. Think about that. It might help.”

  He pushed away from her again and went to the desk to pick up his hat. He placed it on his head and smiled at her without mockery.

  “Don’t let my brothers walk over you,” he said. “If one of them gives you any trouble, lay into him with the first hard object you can get your hands on.”

  “They seem very nice,” she said.

  “They like you,” he replied. “But they have plans.”

  “Plans?”

  “Not to hurt you,” he assured her. “You should never have told them you could cook.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Mrs. Culbertson wants to quit. They can’t make biscuits. It’s what they live for, a plateful of homemade buttered biscuits with half a dozen jars of jam and jelly.”

  “How does that concern me?”

  “Don’t you know?” He perched himself against the desk. “They’ve decided that we should marry you.”

  “We?”

  “We’re a family. Mostly we share things. Not women, but we do share cooks.” He cocked his head and grinned at her shocked face. “If I marry you, they don’t have to worry about where their next fresh biscuit is coming from.”

  “You don’t want to marry me.”

  “Well, they’ll probably find some way around that,” he said pointedly.

  “They can’t force you to marry me.”

  “I wouldn’t make any bets on that,” he said. “You don’t know them yet.”

  “You’re their brother. They’d want you to be happy.”

  “They think you’ll make me happy.”

  She lowered her eyes. “You should talk to them.”

  “And say what? That I don’t want you? I don’t think they’d believe me.”

  “I meant, you should tell them that you don’t want to get married.”

  “They’ve already had a meeting and decided that I do. They’ve picked out a minister and a dress that they think you’ll look lovely in. They’ve done a rough draft of a wedding invitation...”

  “You’re out of your mind!”

  “No, I’m not.” He went to the middle desk drawer, fumbled through it, pulled it farther out and reached for something pushed to the very back of the desk. He produced it, scanned it, nodded and handed it to her. “Read that.”

  It was a wedding invitation. Her middle name was misspelled. “It’s Ellen, not Ellis.”

  He reached behind him for a pen, took the invitation back, made the change and handed it back to her.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked curiously.

  “Oh, they like everything neat and correct.”

  “Don’t correct it! Tear it up!”

  “They’ll just do another one. The papers will print what’s on there, too. You don’t want your middle name misspelled several thousand times, do you?”

  She was all but gasping for breath. “I don’t understand.”

  “I know. Don’t worry about it right now. There’s plenty of time. They haven’t decided on a definite date yet, anyway.”

  She stood up, wild-eyed. “You can’t let your brothers decide when and who you’re going to marry!”

  “Well, you go stop them, then,” he said easily. “But don’t say I didn’t tell you so.”

  He pulled his hat over his eyes and walked out the door, whistling softly to himself.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FIRST SHE DID the accounts. Her mind was still reeling from Corrigan’s ardor, and she had to be collected when she spoke to his brothers. She deciphered his scribbled numbers, balanced the books, checked her figures and put down a total.

  They certainly weren’t broke, and there was enough money in the account to feed Patton’s Third Army. She left them a note saying so, amused at the pathetic picture they’d painted of their finances. Probably, the reason for that was part of their master plan.

  She went outside to look for them after she’d done the books. They were all four in the barn, standing close together. They stopped talking the minute she came into view, and she knew for certain that they’d been talking about her.

  “I’m not marrying him,” she told them clearly, and pointed at Corrigan.

  “Okay,” Leo said easily.

  “The thought never crossed my mind,” Rey remarked.

  Cag just shrugged.

  Corrigan grinned.

  “I’m through with the books,” she said uneasily. “I want to go home now.”

  “You haven’t eaten lunch,” Rey said.

  “It’s only eleven o’clock,” she said pointedly.

  “We have an early lunch, because we work until dark,” Cag volunteered.

  “Mrs. Culbertson just left,” Rey said. He sighed. “She put some beef and gravy in the oven to warm. But she didn’t make us any biscuits.”

  “We don’t have anything to put gravy on,” Leo agreed.

  “Can’t work all afternoon without a biscuit,” Cag said, nodding.

  Corrigan grinned.

  Dorie had thought that Corrigan was making up that story about the brothers’ mania for biscuits. Apparently it was the gospel truth.

  “Just one pan full,” Leo coaxed. “It wouldn’t take five minutes.” He eyed her warily. “If you can really make them. Maybe you can’t. Maybe you were just saying you could, to impress us.”

  “That’s right,” Rey added.

  “I can make biscuits,” she said, needled. “You just point me to the kitchen and I’ll show you.”

  Leo grinned. “Right this way!”

  * * *

  HALF AN HOUR LATER, the pan of biscuits were gone so fast that they might have disintegrated. Leo and Corrigan were actually fighting over the last one, pulled it apart in their rush, and ended up splitting it while the other t
wo sat there gloating. They’d had more than their share because they had faster hands.

  “Next time, you’ve got to make two pans,” Corrigan told her. “One doesn’t fill Leo’s hollow tooth.”

  “I noticed,” she said, surprisingly touched by the way they’d eaten her biscuits with such enjoyment. “I’ll make you a pan of rolls to go with them next time.”

  “Rolls?” Leo looked faint. “You can make homemade rolls?”

  “I’ll see about the wedding rings right now,” Rey said, wiping his mouth and pushing away from the table.

  “I’ve got the corrected invitation in my pocket,” Cag murmured as he got up, too.

  Leo joined the other two at the door. “They said they can get the dress here from Paris in two weeks,” Leo said.

  Dorie gaped at them. But before she could say a word, all three of them had rushed out the door and closed it, talking animatedly among themselves.

  “But, I didn’t say...!” she exclaimed.

  “There, there,” Corrigan said, deftly adding another spoonful of gravy to his own remaining half of a biscuit. “It’s all right. They forgot to call the minister and book him.”

  Just at that moment, the door opened and Leo stuck his head in. “Are you Methodist, Baptist or Presbyterian?” he asked her.

  “I’m...Presbyterian,” she faltered.

  He scowled. “Nearest Presbyterian minister is in Victoria,” he murmured thoughtfully, “but don’t worry, I’ll get him here.” He closed the door.

  “Just a minute!” she called.

  The doors of the pickup closed three times. The engine roared. “Too late,” Corrigan said imperturbably.

  “But didn’t you hear him?” she burst out. “For heaven’s sake, they’re going to get a minister!”

  “Hard to get married in church without one,” he insisted. He gestured toward her plate with a fork to the remaining chunk of beef. “Don’t waste that. It’s one of our own steers. Corn fed, no hormones, no antibiotics, no insecticides. We run a clean, environmentally safe operation here.”

  She was diverted. “Really?”

  “We’re renegades,” he told her. “They groan when they see us coming at cattle conventions. Usually we go with Donavan. He’s just like us about cattle. He and the Ballenger brothers have gone several rounds over cattle prods and feed additives. He’s mellowed a bit since his nephew came to live with him and he got married. But he likes the way we do things.”

  “I guess so.” She savored the last of the beef. “It’s really good.”

  “Beats eating pigs,” he remarked, and grinned.

  She burst out laughing. “Your brother Cag had plenty to say on that subject.”

  “He only eats beef or fish. He won’t touch anything that comes from a pig. He says it’s because he doesn’t like the taste.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “But I say it’s because of that movie he went to see. He used to love a nice ham.”

  “What movie?”

  “The one with the talking pig.”

  “Cag went to see that?”

  “He likes cartoons and sentimental movies.” He shrugged. “Odd, isn’t it? He’s the most staid of us. To look at him, you’d never know he had a sense of humor or that he was sentimental. He’s like the others in his lack of conventional good looks, though. Most women can’t get past that big nose and those eyes.”

  “A cobra with a rabbit,” she said without thinking.

  He chuckled. “Exactly.”

  “Does he hate women as much as the rest of you?”

  “Hard to tell. You haven’t seen him in a tuxedo at a social bash. Women, really beautiful women, followed him around all night dropping their room keys at his feet.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Kept walking.”

  She put down her fork. “What do you do?”

  He smiled mockingly. “They don’t drop room keys at my feet anymore. The limp puts them off.”

  “Baloney,” she said. “You’re the handsomest of the four, and it isn’t just looks.”

  He leaned back in his chair to look at her. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Does the limp bother you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, lifting her gaze. “Why should it?”

  “I can’t dance very well anymore.”

  She smiled. “I don’t ever go to dances.”

  “Why not?”

  She sipped coffee. “I don’t like men touching me.”

  His eyes changed. “You like me touching you.”

  “You aren’t a stranger,” she said simply.

  “Maybe I am,” he murmured quietly. “What do you know about me?”

  She stared at him. “Well, you’re thirty-six, you’re a rancher, you’ve never married, you come from San Antonio.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know any more than that,” she said slowly.

  “We were a couple for several weeks before you left town. Is that all you learned?”

  “You were always such a private person,” she reminded him. “You never talked about yourself or your brothers. And we never really talked that much when we were together.”

  “We spent more time kissing,” he recalled. “I was too wrapped up in trying to get you into bed to care how well we knew each other,” he said with self-contempt. “I wasted a lot of time.”

  “You said that we shouldn’t look back.”

  “I’m trying not to. It’s hard, sometimes.” He moved forward to take her hands under his on the table. “I like classical music, but I’m just as happy with country or pop. I like a good chess game. I enjoy science fiction movies and old Westerns, the silent kind. I’m an early riser, I work hard and I don’t cheat on my tax returns. I went to college to learn animal husbandry, but I never graduated.”

  She smiled. “Do you like fried liver?”

  He made a horrible face. “Do you?”

  She made the same face. “But I don’t like sweets very much, either,” she said, remembering that he didn’t.

  “Good thing. Nobody around here eats them.”

  “I remember.” She looked around at the comfortably big kitchen. There was a new electric stove and a huge refrigerator, flanked by an upright freezer. The sink was a double stainless-steel one, with a window above it overlooking the pasture where the colts were kept. Next to that was a dishwasher. There was plenty of cabinet space, too.

  “Like it?” he asked.

  She smiled. “It’s a dream of a kitchen. I’ll bet Mrs. Culbertson loves working in here.”

  “Would you?”

  She met his eyes and felt her own flickering at the intensity of his stare.

  “If you can make homemade bread, you have to be an accomplished cook,” he continued. “There’s a high-tech mixer in the cabinet, and every gourmet tool known to man. Or woman.”

  “It’s very modern.”

  “It’s going to be very deserted in about three weeks,” he informed.

  “Why is Mrs. Culbertson quitting?”

  “Her husband has cancer, and she wants to retire and stay at home with him, for as long as he’s got,” he said abruptly. He toyed with his coffee cup. “They’ve been married for fifty years.” He took a sharp breath, and his eyes were very dark as they met hers. “I’ve believed all my life that no marriage could possibly last longer than a few years. People change. Situations change. Jobs conflict.” He shrugged. “Then Mrs. Culbertson came here to work, with her husband. And I had to eat my words.” He lowered his eyes back to the cup. “They were forever holding hands, helping each other, walking in the early morning together and talking. She smiled at him, and she was beautiful. He smiled back. Nobody had to say that they loved each other. It was obvious.”

  “My parents w
ere like that,” she recalled. “Dad and Mom loved each other terribly. When she died, I almost lost him, too. He lived for me. But the last thing he said on his deathbed—” she swallowed, fighting tears “—was her name.”

  He got up from the table abruptly and went to the window over the sink. He leaned against it, breathing heavily, as if what she’d said had affected him powerfully. And, in fact, it had.

  She watched him through tears. “You don’t like hearing about happy marriages. Why?”

  “Because I had that same chance once,” he said in a low, dull tone. “And I threw it away.”

  She wondered who the woman had been. Nobody had said that any of the Hart brothers had ever been engaged. But there could have been someone she hadn’t heard about.

  “You’re the one who keeps saying we can’t look back,” she remarked, dabbing her eyes with her napkin.

  “It’s impossible not to. The past makes us the people we are.” He sighed wearily. “My parents had five of us in ten years. My mother hadn’t wanted the first child. She didn’t have a choice. He took away her checkbook and kept her pregnant. She hated him and us in equal measure. When she left it was almost a relief.” He turned and looked across the room at her. “I’ve never been held with tenderness. None of us have. It’s why we’re the way we are, it’s why we don’t have women around. The only thing we know about women is that they’re treacherous and cold and cruel.”

  “Oh, Corrigan,” she said softly, wincing.

  His eyes narrowed. “Desire is a hot and unmanageable thing. Sex can be pleasant enough. But I’d gladly be impotent to have a woman hold me the way you did in my office and kiss my eyes.” His face went as hard as stone. “You can’t imagine how it felt.”

  “But I can,” she replied. She smiled. “You kissed my eyes.”

  “Yes.”

  He looked so lost, so lonely. She got up from the table and went to him, paused in front of him. Her hands pressed gently against his broad chest as she looked up into his eyes.

  “You know more about me than I’ve ever told anyone else,” he said quietly. “Now don’t you think it’s time you told me what happened to you in New York?”