Christmas with My Cowboy

by Diana Palmer

  “A spotless one,” she told him. “I have a girlfriend who dated Meadow’s boss in St. Louis. He said that Meadow rarely dated anyone, and she never slept around.”

  “Maybe she was pining for me.” He laughed coldly.

  “For you?”

  “She’s got a case on me, didn’t you notice?” he asked, his eyes going angrily to the woman in the red dress, moving so elegantly on the dance floor. “She’s been stuck on me since she was seventeen.”

  Dana didn’t know what to say. She just stared at him.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, she’s just a kid,” he said when he saw the expression. “I don’t seduce children!”

  “She’s twenty-five,” she said, confused.

  “She’s still seventeen,” he said, half under his breath, watching Meadow dance like a fairy to the Latin beat, graceful and skillful. “She fell into the coal bin, in a red dress. I laughed.” He recalled Meadow’s expression back then, the wounding he could see in her eyes. He’d done it deliberately, trying to ward her off. Even at seventeen, he wanted her. He’d always wanted her, always denied it, fought it. He wasn’t giving in. He didn’t do forever.

  “If you say so,” Dana replied. She smiled to herself. At least Dal wasn’t stuck on the younger woman. That meant she still had a chance. “Want to dance?” she asked.

  “No. I can’t do Latin dances,” he said resentfully as he watched Gil spin Meadow around on the dance floor.

  “Gil can,” Dana sighed. “He always was light on his feet.”

  He looked down at her, astonished. “Dancing isn’t a skill!”

  “Well, actually, it is,” she replied. “Most men can’t dance. Heavens, didn’t you see Jeff on the dance floor? He can barely shuffle his feet.”

  Dal could dance. He didn’t do it much. No Latin dances at all. But he could do a masterful waltz. Not that he had much of a chance to show off that skill tonight. This wasn’t a waltzing crowd. Most of the music they played was western or country. The Latin music was just for Gil. He’d seen the man approach the bandleader earlier so he could dance with Meadow.

  Dal didn’t like her dancing with the younger man. He had another sip of his drink. His head was starting to feel like an overfull balloon.

  “We’re going to have to go soon,” he told Dana. “I’m sorry. I’ve had too much to drink,” he confessed.

  “I’ll drive,” she informed him.

  He shrugged.

  Meadow and Gil came off the dance floor, panting and laughing. Her face was flushed. She looked . . . beautiful. Dal could hardly take his eyes off her. The red dress was elegant, at that. He was sorry for the remarks he’d made.

  Meadow saw him watching her. The look she gave him was sizzling, and not in a sexy way. She looked as if she’d like to see him frying on a grill. There was hurt in it, too. He’d made her feel cheap, when that was the last thing she was.

  He would have apologized, but very quickly she said something to Jeff. He gave a wistful glance at Dana, nodded, and dug for his car keys. They retrieved Meadow’s coat and walked out the door. Dal felt as if he’d been thrown headfirst into a snowbank. He felt guilty.

  He turned to Dana. “How about driving me home?” he asked in a hollow voice.

  She saw his expression and felt her hopes dwindling. The light went out of him when Meadow left the building. It was a revelation. Dal was crazy about the other woman, and he didn’t even seem to know it.

  “I’ll just get my coat,” Dana said with a quiet smile. Oh, well, she was thinking. Jeff had been very attentive and morose that she was with another man. They’d been quite an item around town until they’d argued. She couldn’t even remember what they’d argued about. Jeff wasn’t as rich as Dal, but he had that huge ranch and he was a respected member of the community. She could do worse.

  Sooner or later, Dal was going to give in to his feelings for Meadow, or Meadow would leave and go back to St. Louis. Either way, Dana would survive. She had prospects. That was all she needed.

  * * *

  Meadow smiled as Jeff kissed her lightly on the cheek.

  “Thanks,” she said, trying to hide the pain Dal had given her. “It was a nice dance.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Jeff said on a sigh.

  “You’re still hung up on Dana,” she guessed aloud.

  He shrugged. “I’m a one-woman man, but I lost the woman to someone richer,” he said bitterly.

  “She was glaring at us on the dance floor,” she commented helpfully.

  He perked up. “She was?”

  She smiled. “Yes, she was.”

  He chuckled. “Maybe there’s hope.”

  “Maybe there is. Thanks for taking me.”

  “Thanks for going with me. See you first thing Monday morning.”

  “You bet. Good night.”

  “Good night,” he called as he went back to his car, started it, and roared off with a wave of his hand.

  Meadow went into her house. It was quiet and dark. That was how her heart felt. Dal had said terrible things to her, hurtful things. He’d meant them. He thought she looked like a hooker. She laughed coldly to herself. She’d seen hookers on the street. She should get him in the car and drive him to Denver, let him see for himself how little she resembled the real thing in her elegant dress. But it wouldn’t make any difference. He hated her. He’d made it apparent tonight.

  She wondered why he’d kissed her so hungrily. Dana was his girl, everybody knew it. Had he mistaken her for Dana? He’d been drinking a lot. That was unusual. Everybody knew he rarely drank hard liquor at all. Someone in his family had been an alcoholic, his grandfather, she recalled. It must have been hard for his father. He’d been an only child. Dal would have grown up with bad memories of men who went over the edge on booze.

  But he’d been drinking tonight. Why? She gave up wondering and went to bed.

  * * *

  Her dreams were wild and erotic. Dal figured heavily in them. Just before she woke up, he’d been kissing her again, devouring her as he had outside the building the night before. It was so sweet. He’d whispered something. She was trying so hard to hear it when Snow started howling in her ear.

  She came awake at once. The white muzzle was sneaking under the covers, cold and insistent on her cheek.

  She laughed and hugged Snow close. “Got to go, huh? Okay. Just a minute, sweetie. I have to go with you so you don’t sneak off.”

  After the things Dal had said, she wasn’t about to let Snow wander up to his ranch. Not again. Never again.

  She threw on her snow boots and a coat, got the lead, and went outside with her dog.

  * * *

  She’d thought that it would be a long time before she saw Dal again, but he was sitting on the edge of Jeff’s desk when she walked into his office in the courthouse.

  He gave her a disapproving glance, his eyes going to the pistol on her belt, next to her badge. “You walk around with that gun all the time?” he asked.

  “It goes with the job,” she returned calmly, refusing to be baited. “Hi, boss,” she added, with a smile for Jeff.

  “Hi, kid,” he said with a grin. “I’ve got a job for you.”

  “You have?” she asked warily.

  “I have to be away from my house tonight,” Dal said curtly. “I need someone to stay there and keep an eye on my antique writing desk. I had an attempted break-in the night I took Dana to the dance. I’m sure he’ll try again, and tonight’s his best chance. Everybody knows I’m going to Denver to buy a new lot of purebreds. I won’t get home until near midnight.”

  “That would be private security,” she said coolly.

  “Yes, it would,” he replied, “and it’s a paying job. You don’t work nights. There isn’t anybody else,” he added, with just enough acid to let her know that this wasn’t his own idea.

  “I sort of volunteered you,” Jeff said apologetically. “If you don’t want to do it, nobody’s going to insist.”

  Dal cocked his head. �
��You can bring Snow with you,” he said sarcastically, “since she thinks she lives at my ranch, anyway.”

  She bowed up like a spitting cat. “Look here . . .” she began.

  “Here.” Dal put a key in her hand. “One of my men’s watching the house right now, but he has to leave at five. That’s when you’ll need to relieve him. The other men will all be out with the pregnant heifers. Another snow storm’s headed our way.”

  She wanted to protest, but she couldn’t find a way out that didn’t involve slapping that smirk off Dal’s sensuous mouth.

  “All right,” she said shortly.

  “I’ll leave the check on the telephone table,” Dal added. “Thanks, Jeff.”

  He walked out without another glance at Meadow.

  Nice, she thought, thanking her boss and without a single word of approval for her. That was Dal.

  “Sorry about that,” Jeff said when his friend was gone. “I tried to ward him off, but he’s in our jurisdiction. And he’s my friend . . .”

  “Not to worry, I don’t mind,” she added. She frowned. “That was the table that one of the major surrenders was signed on when the Civil War ended, wasn’t it?” she asked.

  “Yes, it was. It’s worth a fortune. It was handed down in Dal’s family. His grandfather sold it on one of his drunken binges,” he added. “Took Dal’s father a year to make enough to buy it back. Sad story. It’s sort of a family heirloom.”

  “Like the pipe organ and the Victorian lamp that belonged to former presidents.” She was thinking aloud.

  “I had the same thought,” Jeff replied. “Our thief is very selective about what he takes. If it’s the same man—I’m assuming it’s a man, because we’ve never had a female thief do break-ins locally—then it was probably him who tried to get into Dal’s house while we were all at the dance. Good thing his foreman was in the house getting a bill of lading at the time and heard the noise in the back of the house. Chased the thief, but lost him in the woods.”

  “Nobody called us,” she complained.

  “Dal would have, but he was,” he hesitated, “incapacitated at the time.”

  “He was with his girlfriend,” she said, trying to hide her irritation.

  “He was stinking drunk,” Jeff corrected. “Dana had to drive him home and get him to bed. She said he slept the whole way home. One of his cowboys helped her when they got to the ranch.” He shook his head. “Never saw Dal drunk in my life. He hates liquor. His grandfather beat him when he was little, when his daddy went away on cattle sales. He never got over it. Said he’d die before he’d turn into a lush.”

  She gritted her teeth. “Poor man,” she said reluctantly.

  “We get a lot of deputies who come from homes like that,” he mentioned. “They go into law enforcement trying to save other kids from what they went through. Sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes we don’t.”

  “That’s true,” she confessed. “We’ve all been there, where you try to arrest a drunken husband for beating his wife, and the wife either refuses to testify or attacks you when you try to arrest him.” She laughed. “One threw a whole gallon of milk on one of our officers in St. Louis. Soaked him to the skin. We called him ‘the milkman.’” She laughed at the memory. “He was a good sport.”

  “Don’t get me started,” he said. “I’ve got some stories of my own.”

  She grinned. “Okay. I’ll get to work.”

  “Plenty of opportunities for that. There are several new files on your desk,” he added apologetically.

  “No sweat. It’s what I get paid for.”

  He glanced at her. “It stung you, what Dal said about your gun.”

  She shifted restlessly. “He hates me. He said I looked like a call girl in my red dress.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean it.” He defended his friend. “You looked very elegant, I thought.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  “Dal says things he doesn’t mean. He’s always sorry, and he tries to make amends. I don’t know why he’s so hard on you,” he added, frowning. “It’s not like him. He loves women. He goes out of his way to make sure the ranch wives who work for him have anything they need and a lot of things they just want.”

  “It’s a long story,” she replied, recalling the first incident, her red dress that met a terrible fate in the coal. “I know he doesn’t like me. It doesn’t matter. In this business, you get used to being disliked.” She chuckled. “I’ll just go do my job.”

  “Good idea. I’ll go earn my paycheck, too.”

  “The county commission will love you for it.”

  “On my deathbed, maybe.” He laughed.

  She sat down at her desk and went to work. At least it kept her mind off Dal for most of the day.

  Chapter Nine

  Meadow went home and changed clothes. She wore jeans and boots and a long-sleeved blue checked shirt with a fringed vest under her shepherd’s coat. She looked very Western, especially when she brought out her treasured feather-brimmed cowgirl hat to go with it. She looked in the mirror and heard Dal’s harsh voice ridiculing her when he saw how she was dressed.

  She went back to her wardrobe and took out a navy blue pantsuit and a modest white camisole. She thought about leaving her gun at home. Like most people in law enforcement, she knew hand-to-hand combat and how to take down an opponent, even if she’d been sadly unprepared for the one assault when she’d needed to use it. She’d been trained by a veteran of wars in the Middle East, a combat veteran who was a master trainer for their department in St. Louis. He’d been a dish, but he had a lovely wife and two sweet little boys. He didn’t wander, either, not even when beautiful women flirted with him. He was quite a guy. Loved his wife.

  She could just see Dal being faithful if he ever married. It was hilarious. He’d be sneaking out the back door to some other woman’s house while his wife was busy in the kitchen. He’d never be able to limit himself to just one woman.

  There had been plenty of women in his life. If she hadn’t heard that from other people in Raven Springs, she’d have known by the masterful way he kissed her at the dance. In just a few heated minutes, she was almost far gone enough to go home with him. He’d kissed her as if he was dying, as if she was the last woman he’d ever hold in his arms. It was an odd thing. He was dating Dana, who was rumored to be experienced herself. Why was he kissing Meadow that hungrily, if he was getting what he needed from Dana? It was a question she really didn’t want to answer. Dal hated her. That wasn’t going to change. If it wasn’t Dana, it would be some other woman. It would always be some other woman, never Meadow. Once she got that through her thick skull, maybe she could force him out of it. Memories of his ardor haunted her.

  She left her blond hair long around her shoulders, hating herself for that one concession. He loved long hair. Angrily, she found a pretty elastic hair tie and looped it around her hair, making it into a ponytail.

  She looked at her waist, which was bare. The gun was part of her working gear. Most burglars weren’t armed; most wouldn’t harm anyone in the commission of a theft. But there was always the exception. This thief had struck twice already and apparently had no compunction about breaking in. She could be in danger if he did carry. Her mind went back to the prison interrogation room and the beating she’d taken from the inmate she’d been interviewing. She swallowed hard. Dal didn’t like the gun, but he didn’t have her past. And he had no right to make her feel guilty about the tools of her trade.

  She got her duty belt with her badge on it and whipped it around her waist. She took her Glock out of the locked drawer in the living room, loaded the clip and chambered a round, put on the safety, and stuck it in her belt. She was going armed, even if Dal made harsh comments and laughed at her. Not that he’d be there, she assured herself. He’d be gone. That was why she had the key to his house, after all. Sad, how that depressed her.

  She threw on her thick Berber coat and drew an equally thick wool cap over her head. The snow was coming down in bu
ckets.

  * * *

  Dal’s house was quiet. Snow settled in front of the dying fire in the fireplace with Jarvis, the huge red Maine coon cat, who’d laced himself around Meadow’s pants legs and purred up a storm.

  “Sweet boy,” she said softly, petting him.

  She patted Snow on the head and put a few more pieces of wood on the fire. It seemed to be the only source of heat in the very cold room. It was comfy, though, with overstuffed chairs and a long sofa in the same earth tones. There was a Navajo blanket over the chair. Meadow had seen one just like it at an exhibit she’d gone to with her father in Denver. Dal had been there. Meadow had enthused over the beautiful jagged pattern and the bright colors. Dal had made fun of her enthusiasm and embarrassed her into silence. Then, apparently, he’d purchased that very blanket and brought it home with him. She was surprised.

  She touched it, curious. She’d never been in his home before, not even with her father, who visited him frequently. She tried to stay as far away from him as she could. He always had something cutting to say to her.

  Why had he bought the blanket she’d wanted? To keep her from getting it? That was a laugh. The beautiful thing had cost almost a thousand dollars. It was functional, but still a work of art. Meadow, much less her father, could never have afforded something so very extravagant. Not that it wasn’t worth every penny. It was meant for a house like this, for furnishings like this. Everything around her was elegant, not like the secondhand or on-sale things that graced Meadow’s apartment and her father’s house.

  She sat down on the couch and turned the television to a game show she liked. She settled back with a bottle of Perrier water she’d found in the kitchen and made herself comfortable.

  * * *

  She’d gone through the movies, couldn’t find one she liked, found nothing to tempt her on the local stations. So she settled down with the Weather Channel and watched the progress of the storm that was plowing into Raven Springs. It had already overcome the ranches. She’d phoned her foreman to ask about the progress of their pregnant heifers and been assured that the nighthawks were on the job.