His eyes were bold on her body, as if he knew exactly what was under her clothing.

The thought of Callaghan Hart’s mouth on her lips made Tess’s breath catch in her throat.

She’d always been a little afraid of her big, brooding boss. But lately at night she lay wondering how it would feel if he kissed her. She’d thought about it a lot, to her shame.

Callaghan was mature, experienced, confident—all the things Tess wasn’t. She knew she couldn’t handle an affair with him. She was equally sure he wouldn’t have any amorous interest in a novice like her.

She’d been sure, Tess amended.

Because Callaghan was looking at her now in a way he’d never looked at her before….

Callaghan’S Bride
Diana Palmer

MILLS & BOON

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Dear Reader,

It was a privilege for me to participate in the VIRGIN BRIDES series for Silhouette Romance. Marriage is the greatest adventure of all, and to embark upon it with innocence is almost an act of bravery these days. As our society has grown in technology and sophistication, it seems to me that we have sacrificed idealism somewhere along the way. This should not be. Virtue, purity, honor, self-sacrifice and duty are beautiful, enduring ideals. They make life worthwhile; they give us a purpose, a place in the world regardless of our social or financial standing. They define us as individuals and give us higher goals to strive for. They illuminate us spiritually.

One of my favorite characters in fiction is Don Quixote, who struggled in his endearing way to restore honor and morality to a tarnished, weary world. I have always tried to emphasize these virtues in what I write. The VIRGIN BRIDES series brings idealism as well as romantic magic to the Silhouette Romance line, and I am proud to participate in it. Happy Anniversary to the VIRGIN BRIDES. Long may they endure.

Love,

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter One

T he kitchen cat twirled around Tess’s legs and almost tripped her on her way to the oven. She smiled at it ruefully and made time to pour it a bowl of cat food. The cat was always hungry, it seemed. Probably it was still afraid of starving, because it had been a stray when Tess took it in.

It was the bane of Tess Brady’s existence that she couldn’t resist stray or hurt animals. Most of her young life had been spent around rodeos with her father, twice the world champion calf roper. She hadn’t had a lot to do with animals, which might have explained why she loved them. Now that her father was gone, and she was truly on her own, she enjoyed having little things to take care of. Her charges ranged from birds with broken wings to sick calves. There was an unbroken procession.

This cat was her latest acquisition. It had come to the back door as a kitten just after Thanksgiving, squalling in the dark, rainy night. Tess had taken it in, despite the grumbling from two of her three bosses. The big boss, the one who didn’t like her, had been her only ally in letting the cat stay.

That surprised her. Callaghan Hart was one tough hombre. He’d been a captain in the Green Berets and had seen action in Operation Desert Storm. He was the next-to-eldest of the five Hart brothers who owned the sweeping Hart Ranch Properties, a conglomerate of ranches and feedlots located in several western states. The headquarter ranch was in Jacobsville, Texas. Simon, the eldest brother, was an attorney in San Antonio. Corrigan, who was four years younger than Simon, had married over a year and a half ago. He and his wife Dorie had a new baby son. There were three other Hart bachelors left in Jacobsville: Reynard, the youngest, Leopold, the second youngest, and Callaghan who was just two years younger than Simon. They all lived on the Jacobsville property.

Tess’s father had worked for the Hart brothers for a little over six months when he dropped dead in the corral of a heart attack. It had been devastating for Tess, whose mother had run out on them when she was little. Cray Brady, her father, was an only child. There wasn’t any other family that she knew of. The Harts had also known that. When their housekeeper had expressed a desire to retire, Tess had seemed the perfect replacement because she could cook and keep house. She could also ride like a cowboy and shoot like an expert and curse in fluent Spanish, but the Hart boys didn’t know about those skills because she’d never had occasion to display them. Her talents these days were confined to making the fluffy biscuits the brothers couldn’t live without and producing basic but hearty meals. Everything except sweets because none of the brothers seemed to like them.

It would have been the perfect job, even with Leopold’s endless pranks, except that she was afraid of Callaghan. It showed, which made things even worse.

He watched her all the time, from her curly red-gold hair and pale blue eyes to her small feet, as if he was just waiting for her to make a mistake so that he could fire her. Over breakfast, those black Spanish eyes would cut into her averted face like a diamond. They were set in a lean, dark face with a broad forehead and a heavy, jutting brow. He had a big nose and big ears and big feet, but his long, chiseled mouth was perfect and he had thick, straight hair as black as a raven. He wasn’t handsome, but he was commanding and arrogant and frightening even to other men. Leopold had once told her that the brothers tried to step in if Cag ever lost his temper enough to get physical. He had an extensive background in combat, but even his size alone made him dangerous. It was fortunate that he rarely let his temper get the best of him.

Tess had never been able to understand why Cag disliked her so much. He hadn’t said a word of protest when the others decided to offer her the job of housekeeper and cook after her father’s sudden death. And he was the one who made Leopold apologize after a particularly unpleasant prank at a party. But he never stopped cutting at Tess or finding ways to get at her.

Like this morning. She’d always put strawberry preserves on the table for breakfast, because the brothers preferred them. But this morning Cag had wanted apple butter and she couldn’t find any. He’d been scathing about her lack of organization and stomped off without a second biscuit or another cup of coffee.

“His birthday is a week from Saturday,” Leopold had explained ruefully. “He hates getting older.”

Reynard agreed. “Last year, he went away for a week around this time of the year. Nobody knew where he was, either.” He shook his head. “Poor old Cag.”

“Why do you call him that?” Tess asked curiously.

“I don’t know,” Rey said, smiling thoughtfully. “I guess because, of all of us, he’s the most alone.”

She hadn’t thought of it that way, but Rey was right. Cag was alone. He didn’t date, and he didn’t go out “with the boys,” as many other men did. He kept to himself. When he wasn’t working—which was rarely—he was reading history books. It had surprised Tess during her first weeks as housekeeper to find that he read Spanish colonial history, in Spanish. She hadn’t known that he was bilingual, although she found it out later when two of the Hispanic cowboys got into a no-holds-barred fight with a Texas cowboy who’d been deliberately baiting them. The Texas cowboy had been fired and the two Latinos had been quietly and efficiently cursed within an inch of their lives in the coldest, most bitingly perfect Spanish Tess had ever heard. She herself was bilingual, having spent most of her youth in the Southwest.

Cag didn’t know she spoke Spanish. It was one of many accomplishments she was too shy to share with him. She kept to herself most of the time, except when Dorie came with Corrigan to the ranch to visit. They lived in a house of their own several miles away—although it was still on the Hart ranch. Dorie was sweet and kind, and Tess adored her. Now that the baby was here, Tess looked forward to the visits even more. She adored children.

What she didn’t adore was Herman. Although she was truly an animal lover, her affection didn’t extend to snakes. The great albino python with his yellow-patterned white skin and red eyes terrified her. He lived in an enormous aquarium against one wall of Cag’s room, and he had a nasty habit of escaping. Tess had found him in a variety of unlikely spots, including the washing machine. He wasn’t dangerous because Cag kept him well-fed, and he was always closely watched for a day or so after he ate—which wasn’t very often. Eventually she learned not to scream. Like measles and colds, Herman was a force of nature that simply had to be accepted. Cag loved the vile reptile. It seemed to be the only thing that he really cared about.

Well, maybe he liked the cat, too. She’d seen him playing with it once, with a long piece of string. He didn’t know that. When he wasn’t aware anyone was watching, he seemed to be a different person. And nobody had forgotten about what happened after he saw what was subsequently referred to as the “pig” movie. Rey had sworn that his older brother was all but in tears during one of the scenes in the touching, funny motion picture. Cag saw it three times in the theater and later bought a copy of his own.

Since the movie, Cag didn’t eat pork anymore, not ham nor sausage nor bacon. And he made everyone who did feel uncomfortable. It was one of many paradoxes about this complicated man. He wasn’t afraid of anything on this earth, but apparently he had a soft heart hidden deep inside. Tess had never been privileged to see it, because Cag didn’t like her. She wished that she wasn’t so uneasy around him. But then, most people were.

Christmas Eve came later in the week, and Tess served an evening meal fit for royalty, complete with all the trimmings. The married Harts were starting their own tradition for Christmas Day, so the family celebration was on Christmas Eve.

Tess ate with them, because all four brothers had looked outraged when she started to set a place for herself in the kitchen with widowed Mrs. Lewis, who came almost every day to do the mopping and waxing and general cleaning that Tess didn’t have time for. It was very democratic of them, she supposed, and it did feel nice to at least appear to be part of a family—even if it wasn’t her own. Mrs. Lewis went home to her visiting children, anyway, so Tess would have been in the kitchen alone.

She was wearing the best dress she had—a nice red plaid one, but it was cheap and it looked it when compared to the dress that Dorie Hart was wearing. They went out of their way to make her feel secure, though, and by the time they started on the pumpkin and pecan pies and the huge dark fruitcake, she wasn’t worried about her dress anymore. Everyone included her in the conversation. Except for Cag’s silence, it would have been perfect. But he didn’t even look at her. She tried not to care.

She got presents, another unexpected treat, in return for her homemade gifts. She’d crocheted elegant trim for two pillowcases that she’d embroidered for the Harts, matching them to the color schemes in their individual bedrooms—something she’d asked Dorie to conspire with her about. She did elegant crochet work. She was making things for Dorie’s baby boy in her spare time, a labor of love.

The gifts she received weren’t handmade, but she loved them just the same. The brothers chipped in to buy her a winter coat. It was a black leather one with big cuffs and a sash. She’d never seen anything so beautiful in all her life, and she cried over it. The women gave her presents, too. She had a delicious floral perfume from Dorie and a designer scarf in just the right shades of blue from Mrs. Lewis. She felt on top of the world as she cleared away the dinner dishes and got to work in the kitchen.

Leo paused by the counter and tugged at her apron strings with a mischievous grin.

“Don’t you dare,” she warned him. She smiled, though, before she turned her attention back to the dishes.

“Cag didn’t say a word,” he remarked. “He’s gone off to ride the fence line near the river with Mack before it gets dark.” Mack was the cattle foreman, a man even more silent than Cag. The ranch was so big that there were foremen over every aspect of it: the cattle, the horses, the mechanical crew, the office crew, the salesmen—there was even a veterinarian on retainer. Tess’s father had been the livestock foreman for the brief time he spent at the Hart ranch before his untimely death. Tess’s mother had left them when Tess was still a little girl, sick of the nomadic life that her husband loved. In recent years Tess hadn’t heard a word from her. She was glad. She hoped she never had to see her mother again.

“Oh.” She put a plate in the dishwasher. “Because of me?” she added quietly.

He hesitated. “I don’t know.” He toyed with a knife on the counter. “He hasn’t been himself lately. Well,” he amended with a wry smile, “he has, but he’s been worse than usual.”

“I haven’t done anything, have I?” she asked, and turned worried eyes up to his.

She was so young, he mused, watching all the uncertainties rush across her smooth, lightly freckled face. She wasn’t pretty, but she wasn’t plain, either. She had an inner light that seemed to radiate from her when she was happy. He liked hearing her sing when she mopped and swept, when she went out to feed the few chickens they kept for egg production. Despite the fairly recent tragedy in her life, she was a happy person.

“No,” he said belatedly. “You haven’t done a thing. You’ll get used to Cag’s moods. He doesn’t have them too often. Just at Christmas, his birthday and sometimes in the summer.”

“Why?” she asked.

He hesitated, then shrugged. “He went overseas in Operation Desert Storm,” he said. “He never talks about it. Whatever he did was classified. But he was in some tight corners and he came home wounded. While he was recuperating in West Germany, his fiancée married somebody else. Christmas and July remind him, and he gets broody.”

She grimaced. “He doesn’t seem the sort of man who would ask a woman to marry him unless he was serious.”

“He isn’t. It hurt him, really bad. He hasn’t had much time for women since.” He smiled gently. “It gets sort of funny when we go to conventions. There’s Cag in black tie, standing out like a beacon, and women just follow him around like pet calves. He never seems to notice.”

“I guess he’s still healing,” she said, and relaxed a little. At least it wasn’t just her that set him off.

“I don’t know that he ever will,” he replied. He pursed his lips, watching her work. “You’re very domestic, aren’t you?”

She poured detergent into the dishwasher with a smile and turned it on. “I’ve always had to be. My mother left us when I was little, although she came back to visit just once, when I was sixteen. We never saw her again.” She shivered inwardly at the memory. “Anyway, I learned to cook and clean for Daddy at an early age.”

“No brothers or sisters?”

She shook her head. “Just us. I wanted to get a job or go on to college after high school, to help out. But he needed me, and I just kept putting it off. I’m glad I did, now.” Her eyes clouded a little. “I loved him to death. I kept thinking though, what if we’d known about his heart in time, could anything have been done?”

“You can’t do that to yourself,” he stated. “Things happen. Bad things, sometimes. You have to realize that you can’t control life.”

“That’s a hard lesson.”

He nodded. “But it’s one we all have to learn.” He frowned slightly. “Just how old are you—twenty or so?”

She looked taken aback. “I’m twenty-one. I’ll be twenty-two in March.”

Now he looked taken aback. “You don’t seem that old.”

She chuckled. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”

He cocked an amused eyebrow. “I suppose you’ll see it as the latter.”

She wiped an imaginary spot on the counter with a cloth. “Callaghan’s the oldest, isn’t he?”

“Simon,” he corrected. “Cag’s going to be thirty-eight on Saturday.”

She averted her eyes, as if she didn’t want him to see whatever was in them. “He took a long time to get engaged.”

“Herman doesn’t exactly make for lasting relationships,” he told her with a grin.

She understood that. Tess always had Cag put a cover over the albino python’s tank before she cleaned his room. That had been the first of many strikes against her. She had a mortal terror of snakes from childhood, having been almost bitten by rattlesnakes several times before her father realized she couldn’t see three feet in front of her. Glasses had followed, but the minute she was old enough to protest, she insisted on getting contact lenses.

“Love me, love my enormous terrifying snake, hmm?” she commented. “Well, at least he found someone who was willing to, at first.”

“She didn’t like Herman, either,” he replied. “She told Cag that she wasn’t sharing him with a snake. When they got married, he was going to give him to a man who breeds albinos.”

“I see.” It was telling that Cag would give in to a woman. She’d never seen him give in to anyone in the months she and her father had been at the ranch.

“He gives with both hands,” he said quietly. “If he didn’t come across as a holy terror, he wouldn’t have a shirt left. Nobody sees him as the soft touch he really is.”

“He’s the last man in the world I’d think of as a giver.”

“You don’t know him,” Leo said.

“No, of course I don’t,” she returned.

“He’s another generation from you,” he mused, watching her color. “Now, I’m young and handsome and rich and I know how to show a girl a good time without making an issue of it.”

Her eyebrows rose. “You’re modest, too!”

He grinned. “You bet I am! It’s my middle name.” He leaned against the counter, looking rakish. He was really the handsomest of the brothers, tall and big with blond-streaked brown hair and dark eyes. He didn’t date a lot, but there were always hopeful women hanging around. Tess thought privately that he was probably something of a rake. But she was out of the running. Or so she thought. It came as a shock when he added, “So how about dinner and a movie Friday night?”

She didn’t accept at once. She looked worried. “Look, I’m the hired help,” she said. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable.”

Both eyebrows went up in an arch. “Are we despots?”

She smiled. “Of course not. I just don’t think it’s a good idea, that’s all.”

“You have your own quarters over the garage,” he said pointedly. “You aren’t living under the roof with us in sin, and nobody’s going to talk if you go out with one of us.”

“I know.”

“But you still don’t want to go.”

She smiled worriedly. “You’re very nice.”

He looked perplexed. “I am?”

“Yes.”

He took a slow breath and smiled wistfully. “Well, I’m glad you think so.” Accepting defeat, he moved away from the counter. “Dinner was excellent, by the way. You’re a terrific cook.”

“Thanks. I enjoy it.”

“How about making another pot of coffee? I’ve got to help Cag with the books and I hate it. I’ll need a jolt of caffeine to get me through the night.”

“He’s going to come home and work through Christmas Eve, too?” she exclaimed.

“Cag always works, as you’ll find out. In a way it substitutes for all that he hasn’t got. He doesn’t think of it as work, though. He likes business.”

“To each his own,” she murmured.

“Amen.” He tweaked her curly red-gold hair. “Don’t spend the night in the kitchen. You can watch one of the new movies on pay-per-view in the living room, if you like. Rey’s going to visit one of his friends who’s in town for the holidays, and Cag and I won’t hear the television from the study.”

“Have the others gone?”

“Leo wouldn’t say where he was going, but Corrigan’s taken Dorie home for their own celebration.” He smiled. “I never thought I’d see my big brother happily married. It’s nice.”

“So are they.”

He hesitated at the door and glanced back at her. “Is Cag nice?”

She shifted. “I don’t know.”

A light flickered in his eyes and went out. She wasn’t all that young, but she was innocent. She didn’t realize that she’d classed him with the married brother. No woman who found him attractive was going to refer to him as “nice.” It killed his hopes, but it started him thinking in other directions. Cag was openly hostile to Tess, and she backed away whenever she saw him coming. It was unusual for Cag to be that antagonistic, especially to someone like Tess, who was sensitive and sweet.

Cag was locked tight inside himself. The defection of his fiancée had left Cag wounded and twice shy of women, even of little Tess who didn’t have a sophisticated repertoire to try on him. His bad humor had started just about the time she’d come into the house to work, and it hadn’t stopped. He had moods during the months that reminded him of when he went off to war and when his engagement had been broken. But they didn’t usually last more than a day. This one was lasting all too long. For Tess’s sake, he hoped it didn’t go on indefinitely.

Christmas Day was quiet. Not surprisingly, Cag worked through it, too, and the rest of the week that followed. Simon and Tira married, a delightful event.

Callaghan’s birthday was the one they didn’t celebrate. The brothers said that he hated parties, cakes and surprises, in that order. But Tess couldn’t believe that the big man wanted people to forget such a special occasion. So Saturday morning after breakfast, she baked a birthday cake, a chocolate one because she’d noticed him having a slice of one that Dorie had baked a few weeks ago. None of the Hart boys were keen on sweets, which they rarely ate. She’d heard from the former cook, Mrs. Culbertson, that it was probably because their own mother never baked. She’d left the boys with their father. It gave Tess something in common with them, because her mother had deserted her, too.

She iced the cake and put Happy Birthday on the top. She put on just one candle instead of thirty-eight. She left it on the table and went out to the mailbox, with the cat trailing behind her, to put a few letters that the brothers’ male secretary had left on the hall table in the morning mail.

She hadn’t thought any of the brothers would be in until the evening meal, because a sudden arctic wave had come south to promote an unseasonal freeze. All the hands were out checking on pregnant cows and examining water heaters in the cattle troughs to make sure they were working. Rey had said they probably wouldn’t stop for lunch.

But when she got back to the kitchen, her new leather coat tight around her body, she found Callaghan in the kitchen and the remains of her cake, her beautiful cake, on the floor below a huge chocolate spot on the kitchen wall.

He turned, outraged beyond all proportion, looking broader than usual in his shepherd’s coat. His black eyes glittered at her from under his wide-brimmed Stetson. “I don’t need reminding that I’m thirty-eight,” he said in a soft, dangerous tone. “And I don’t want a cake, or a party, or presents. I want nothing from you! Do you understand?”

The very softness of his voice was frightening. She noticed that, of all the brothers, he was the one who never yelled or shouted. But his eyes were even more intimidating than his cold tone.

“Sorry,” she said in a choked whisper.

“You can’t find a damned jar of apple butter for the biscuits, but you’ve got time to waste on things like…that!” he snapped, jerking his head toward the ruin of her cake lying shattered on the pale yellow linoleum.

She bit her lower lip and stood just looking at him, her blue eyes huge in her white face, where freckles stood out like flecks of butter in churned milk.

“What the hell possessed you? Didn’t they tell you I hate birthdays, damn it?”

His voice cut her like a whip. His eyes alone were enough to make her knees wobble, burning into her like black flames. She swallowed. Her mouth was so dry she wondered why her tongue didn’t stick to the roof of it. “Sorry,” she said again.

Her lack of response made him wild. He glared at her as if he hated her.

He took a step toward her, a violent, quick movement, and she backed up at once, getting behind the chopping block near the wall.

Her whole posture was one of fear. He stopped in his tracks and stared at her, scowling.

Her hands gripped the edge of the block and she looked young and hunted. She bit her lower lip, waiting for the rest of the explosion that she knew was coming. She’d only wanted to do something nice for him. Maybe she’d also wanted to make friends. It had been a horrible mistake. It was blatantly obvious that he didn’t want her for a friend.

“Hey, Cag, could you—” Rey stopped dead in his tracks as he opened the kitchen door and took in the scene with a glance. Tess, white-faced, all but shivering and not from the cold. Cag, with his big hands curled into fists at his side, his black eyes blazing. The cake, shattered against a wall.

Cag seemed to jerk as if his brother’s appearance had jolted him out of the frozen rage that had held him captive.

“Here, now,” Rey said, talking quietly, because he knew his brother in these flash-fire tempers. “Don’t do this. Cag, look at her. Come on, look at her, Cag.”

He seemed to come to his senses when he caught the bright glimmer of unshed tears in those blue, blue eyes. She was shaking, visibly frightened.

He let out a breath and his fists unclenched. Tess was swallowing, as if to keep her fear hidden, and her hands were pushed deep into the pockets of her coat. She was shaking and she could barely get a breath of air.

“We have to get those culls ready to ship.” Rey was still speaking softly. “Cag, are you coming? We can’t find the manifest and the trucks are here for the cattle.”

“The manifest.” Cag took a long breath. “It’s in the second drawer of the desk, in the folder. I forgot to put it back in the file. Go ahead. I’ll be right with you.”

Rey didn’t budge. Couldn’t Cag see that the girl was terrified of him?

He eased around his brother and went to the chopping block, getting between the two of them.

“You need to get out of that coat. It’s hot in here!” Rey said, forcing a laugh that he didn’t feel. “Come on, pilgrim, shed the coat.”

He untied it and she let him remove it, her eyes going to his chest and resting there, as if she’d found refuge.

Cag hesitated, but only for an instant. He said something filthy in elegant Spanish, turned on his heel and went out, slamming the door behind him.

Tess slumped, a convulsive shudder leaving her sick. She wiped unobtrusively at her eyes.

“Thanks for saving me,” she said huskily.

“He’s funny about birthdays,” he said quietly. “I don’t guess we made it clear enough for you, but at least he didn’t throw the cake at you,” he added with a grin. “Old Charlie Greer used to bake for us before we found Mrs. Culbertson, whom you replaced. Charlie made a cake for Cag’s birthday and ended up wearing it.”

“Why?” she asked curiously.

“Nobody knows. Except maybe Simon,” he amended. “They were older than the rest of us. I guess it goes back a long way. We don’t talk about it, but I’m sure you’ve heard some of the gossip about our mother.”

She nodded jerkily.

“Simon and Corrigan got past the bad memories and made good marriages. Cag…” He shook his head. “He was like this even when he got engaged. And we all thought that it was more a physical infatuation than a need to marry. She was, if you’ll pardon the expression, the world’s best tease. A totally warped woman. Thank God she had enough rope to hang herself before he ended up with her around his neck like an albatross.”

She was still getting her breath back. She took the coat that Rey was holding. “I’ll put it up. Thanks.”

“He’ll apologize eventually,” he said slowly.

“It won’t help.” She smoothed over the surface of the leather coat. She looked up, anger beginning to replace fear and hurt. “I’m leaving. I’m sorry, but I can’t stay here and worry about any other little quirks like that. He’s scary.”

He looked shocked. “He wouldn’t have hit you,” he said softly, grimacing when he saw quick tears film her eyes. “Tess, he’d never! He has rages. None of us really understand them, because he won’t talk about what’s happened to him, ever. But he’s not a maniac.”

“No, of course not. He just doesn’t like me.”

Rey wished he could dispute that. It was true, Cag was overtly antagonistic toward her, for reasons that none of the brothers understood.

“I hope you can find someone to replace me,” she said with shaky pride. “Because I’m going as soon as I get packed.”

“Tess, not like this. Give it a few days.”

“No.” She went to hang up her coat. She’d had enough of Callaghan Hart. She wouldn’t ever get over what he’d said, the way he’d looked at her. He’d frightened her badly and she wasn’t going to work for with a man who could go berserk over a cake.

Chapter Two

R ey went out to the corral where the culls—the nonproducing second-year heifers and cows—were being held, along with the young steers fattened and ready for market. Both groups were ready to be loaded into trucks and taken away to their various buyers. A few more steers than usual had been sold because drought had limited the size of the summer corn and hay crop. Buying feed for the winter was not cost-productive. Not even an operation the size of the Harts’s could afford deadweight in these hard economic times.

Cag was staring at the milling cattle absently, his heavy brows drawn down in thought, his whole posture stiff and unapproachable.

Rey came up beside him, half a head shorter, lither and more rawboned than the bigger man.

“Well, she’s packing,” he said bluntly.

Cag’s eyes glanced off his brother’s and went back to the corral. His jaw clenched. “I hate birthdays! I know she was told.”

“Sure she was, but she didn’t realize that breaking the rule was going to be life-threatening.”

“Hell!” Cag exploded, turning with black-eyed fury. “I never raised a hand to her! I wouldn’t, no matter how mad I got.”

“Would you need to?” his brother asked solemnly. “Damn it, Cag, she was shaking like a leaf. She’s just a kid, and it’s been a rough few months for her. She hasn’t even got over losing her dad yet.”

“Lay it on,” Cag said under his breath, moving restlessly.

“Where’s she going to go?” he persisted. “She hasn’t seen her mother since she was sixteen years old. She has no family, no friends. Even cooking jobs aren’t that thick on the ground this time of year, not in Jacobsville.”

Cag took off his hat and wiped his forehead on his sleeve before he replaced it. He’d been helping run the steers down the chute into the loading corral and he was sweating, despite the cold. He didn’t say a word.

Leo came up with a rope in his hand, watching his brothers curiously.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Rey muttered, thoroughly disgusted. “Tess made him a birthday cake and he destroyed it. She’s packing.”

Leo let out a rough sigh and turned his eyes toward the house. “I can’t say I blame her. I got her into trouble at the Christmas party by spiking the holiday punch, and now this. I guess she thinks we’re all lunatics and she’s better off without us.”

“No doubt.” Rey shrugged. “Well, let’s get the cattle loaded.”

“You aren’t going to try to stop her?” Leo asked.

“What would be the point?” Rey asked solemnly. His face hardened. “If you’d seen her, you wouldn’t want to stop her.” He glared at Cag. “Nice work, pal. I hope she can pack with her hands shaking that badly!”

Rey stormed off toward the truck. Leo gave his older brother a speaking glance and followed.

Cag, feeling two inches high and sick with himself, turned reluctantly and went back toward the house.

Tess had her suitcases neatly loaded. She closed the big one, making one last sweep around the bedroom that had been hers for the past few weeks. It was a wrench to leave, but she couldn’t handle scenes like that. She’d settle for harder work in more peaceful surroundings. At least, Cag wouldn’t be around to make her life hell.

She picked up her father’s world champion gold belt buckle and smoothed her fingers over it. She took it everywhere with her, like a lucky talisman to ward off evil. It hadn’t worked today, but it usually did. She put it gently into the small suitcase and carefully closed the lid, snapping the latches shut.

A sound behind her caught her attention and she turned around, going white in the face when she saw who had opened the door.

She moved around the bed and behind the wing chair that stood near the window, her eyes wide and unblinking.

He was bareheaded. He didn’t speak. His black eyes slid over her pale features and he took a long, deep breath.

“You don’t have anywhere to go,” he began.

It wasn’t the best of opening gambits. Her chin went up. “I’ll sleep at a Salvation Army shelter,” she said coldly. “Dad and I spent a lot of nights there when we were on the road and he didn’t win any events.”

He scowled. “What?”

She hated having admitted that, to him of all people. Her face closed up. “Will you let one of the hands drive me to town? I can catch a bus up to Victoria.”

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his close-fitting jeans, straining the fabric against his powerful thighs. He stared at her broodingly.

“Never mind,” she said heavily. “I’ll walk or hitch a ride.”

She picked up her old coat, the threadbare tweed one she’d had for years, and slipped it on.

“Where’s your new coat?” he asked shortly.

“In the hall closet. Don’t worry, I’m not taking anything that doesn’t belong to me.”

She said it so matter-of-factly that he was wounded right through. “We gave it to you,” he said.

Her eyes met his squarely. “I don’t want it, or a job, or anything else you gave me out of pity.”

He was shocked. He’d never realized she thought of it like that. “You needed a job and we needed a cook,” he said flatly. “It wasn’t pity.”

She shrugged and seemed to slouch. “All right, have it any way you like. It doesn’t matter.”

She slipped her shoulder bag over her arm and picked up her worn suitcases, one big one and an overnight bag, part of a matched set of vinyl luggage that she and her father had won in a raffle.

But when she reached the door, Cag didn’t move out of the way. She couldn’t get around him, either. She stopped an arm’s length away and stared at him.

He was trying to think of a way to keep her without sacrificing his pride. Rey was right; she was just a kid and he’d been unreasonable. He shocked himself lately. He was a sucker for helpless things, for little things, but he’d been brutal to this child and he didn’t know why.

“Can I get by, please?” she asked through stiff lips.

He scowled. A muscle jumped beside his mouth. He moved closer, smiling coldly with self-contempt when she backed up. He pushed the door shut.

She backed up again, her eyes widening at the unexpected action, but he didn’t come any closer.

“When I was six,” he said with cold black eyes, “I wanted a birthday cake like the other kids had. A cake and a party. Simon had gone to town with Dad and Corrigan. It was before Rey was born. Leo was asleep and my mother and I were in the kitchen alone. She made some pert remark about spoiled brats thinking they deserved treats when they were nothing but nuisances. She had a cake on the counter, one that a neighbor had sent home with Dad. She smashed the cake into my face,” he recalled, his eyes darker than ever, “and started hitting me. I don’t think she would have stopped, except that Leo woke up and started squalling. She sent me to my room and locked me in. I don’t know what she told my father, but I got a hell of a spanking from him.” He searched her shocked eyes. “I never asked for another cake.”

She put the suitcases down slowly and shocked him by walking right up to him and touching him lightly on the chest with a shy, nervous little hand. It didn’t occur to him that he’d never confessed that particular incident to anyone, not even his brothers. She seemed to know it, just the same.

“My father couldn’t cook. He opened cans,” she said quietly. “I learned to cook when I was eleven, in self-defense. My mother wouldn’t have baked me a cake, either, even if she’d stayed with us. She didn’t want me, but Dad did, and he put her into a position where she had to marry him. She never forgave either of us for it. She left before I started school.”

“Where is she now?”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t care.”

His chest rose and fell roughly. She made him uncomfortable. He moved back, so that her disturbing hand fell away from his chest.

She didn’t question why he didn’t like her to touch him. It had been an impulse and now she knew not to do it again. She lifted her face and searched his dark eyes. “I know you don’t like me,” she said. “It’s better if I get a job somewhere else. I’m almost twenty-two. I can take care of myself.”

His eyes averted to the window. “Wait until spring,” he said stiffly. “You’ll have an easier time finding work then.”

She hesitated. She didn’t really want to go, but she couldn’t stay here with such unbridled resentment as he felt for her.

He glanced down at her with something odd glittering in his black eyes. “My brothers will drown me if I let you walk out that door,” he said curtly. “Neither of them is speaking to me.”

They both knew that he didn’t care in the least what his brothers thought of him. It was a peace initiative.

She moved restlessly. “Dorie’s had the baby. She can make biscuits again.”

“She won’t,” he said curtly. “She’s too busy worshiping the baby.”

Her gaze dropped to the floor. “It’s a sweet baby.”

A wave of heat ran through his body. He turned and started back toward the door. “Do what you please,” he said.

She still hesitated.

He opened the door and turned before he went through it, looking dark as thunder and almost as intimidating. “Too afraid of me to stay?” he drawled, hitting her right in her pride with deadly accuracy.

She drew herself up with smoldering fury. “I am not afraid of you!”

His eyebrows arched. “Sure you are. That’s why you’re running away like a scared kid.”

“I wasn’t running! I’m not a scared kid, either!”

That was more like it. He could manage if she fought back. He couldn’t live with the image of her white and shaking and backing away from him. It had hurt like the very devil.

He pulled his Stetson low over his eyes. “Suit yourself. But if you stay, you’d damned sure better not lose the apple butter again,” he said with biting sarcasm.

“Next time, you’ll get it right between the eyes,” she muttered to herself.

“I heard that.”

She glared at him. “And if you ever, ever, throw another cake at me…!”

“I didn’t throw it at you,” he said pointedly. “I threw it at the wall.”

Her face was growing redder by the second. “I spent two hours making the damned thing!”

“Lost apple butter, cursed cake, damned women…” He was still muttering as he stomped off down the hall with the faint, musical jingle of spurs following him.

Tess stood unsteadily by the bed for several seconds before she snapped out of her trance and put her suitcases back on the bed to unpack them. She needed her head read for agreeing to stay, but she didn’t really have anywhere else to go. And what he’d told her reached that part of her that was unbearably touched by small, wounded things.

She could see a little Cag with his face covered in cake, being brutally hit by an uncaring woman, trying not to cry. Amazingly it excused every harsh word, every violent action. She wondered how many other childhood scars were hiding behind that hard, expressionless face.

Cag was coldly formal with her after that, as if he regretted having shared one of his deeper secrets with her. But there weren’t any more violent outbursts. He kept out of her way and she kept out of his. The winter months passed into a routine sameness. Without the rush and excitement of the holidays, Tess found herself with plenty of time on her hands when she was finished with her chores. The brothers worked all hours, even when they weren’t bothered with birthing cattle and roundup, as they were in the warmer months of spring.

But there were fences to mend, outbuildings to repair, upkeep on the machinery that was used to process feed. There were sick animals to treat and corrals to build and vehicles to overhaul. It never seemed to end. And in between all that, there were conferences and conventions and business trips.

It was rare, Tess found, to have all three bachelor brothers at the table at the same time. More often than not, she set places only for Rey and Leo, because Cag spent more and more time away. They assured her that she wasn’t to blame, that it was just pressing business, but she wondered just the same. She knew that Cag only tolerated her for the sake of her domestic skills, that he hated the very sight of her. But the other brothers were so kind that it almost made up for Cag. And the ever-present Mrs. Lewis, doing the rough chores, was a fountain of information about the history of the Hart ranch and the surrounding area. Tess, a history buff, learned a lot about the wild old days and stored the information away almost greedily. The lazy, pleasant days indoors seemed to drag and she was grateful for any interesting tidbits that Mrs. Lewis sent her way.

Then spring arrived and the ranch became a madhouse. Tess had to learn to answer the extension phone in the living room while the two secretaries in the separate office complex started processing calving information into the brothers’ huge mainframe computer. The sheer volume of it was shocking to Tess, who’d spent her whole life on ranches.

The only modern idea, besides the computers, that the brothers had adapted to their operation was the implantation of computer chips under the skin of the individual cattle. This was not only to identify them with a handheld computer, but also to tag them in case of rustling—a sad practice that had continued unabashed into the computer age.

On the Hart ranch, there were no hormone implants, no artificial insemination, no unnecessary antibiotics or pesticides. The brothers didn’t even use pesticides on their crops, having found ways to encourage the development of superior strains of forage and the survival of good insects that kept away the bad ones. It was all very ecological and fascinating, and it was even profitable. One of the local ranchers, J. D. Langley, worked hand in glove with them on these renegade methods. They shared ideas and investment strategies and went together as a solid front to cattlemen’s meetings. Tess found J. D. “Donavan” Langley intimidating, but his wife and nephew had softened him, or so people said. She shuddered to think how he’d been before he mellowed.

The volume of business the brothers did was overwhelming. The telephone rang constantly. So did the fax machine. Tess was press-ganged into learning how to operate that, and the computer, so that she could help send and receive urgent e-mail messages to various beef producers and feedlots and buyers.

“But I’m not trained!” she wailed to Leo and Rey.

They only grinned. “There, there, you’re doing a fine job,” Leo told her encouragingly.

“But I won’t have time to cook proper meals,” she continued.

“As long as we have enough biscuits and strawberry preserves and apple butter, that’s no problem at all,” Rey assured her. “And if things get too hectic, we’ll order out.”

They did, frequently, in the coming weeks. One night two pizza delivery trucks drove up and unloaded enough pizzas for the entire secretarial and sales staff and the cowboys, not to mention the brothers. They worked long hours and they were demanding bosses, but they never forgot the loyalty and sacrifice of the people who worked for them. They paid good wages, too.

“Why don’t you ever spend any money on yourself?” Leo asked Tess one night when, bleary-eyed from the computer, she was ready to go to bed.

“What?”

“You’re wearing the same clothes you had last year,” he said pointedly. “Don’t you want some new jeans, at least, and some new tops?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” she confessed. “I’ve just been putting my wages into the bank and forgetting about them. I suppose I should go shopping.”

“Yes, you should.” He leaned down toward her. “The very minute we get caught up!”

She groaned. “We’ll never get caught up! I heard old Fred saying that he’d had to learn how to use a handheld computer so he could scan the cattle in the low pasture, and he was almost in tears.”

“We hired more help,” he stated.

“Yes, but there was more work after that! It’s never going to end,” she wailed. “If those stupid cows don’t stop having calves…!”

“Bite your tongue, woman, that’s profit you’re scoffing at!”

“I know, but—”

“We’re all tired,” he assured her. “And any day now, it’s going to slack off. We’re doing compilation figures for five ranches, you know,” he added. “It isn’t just this one. We have to record each new calf along with its history, we have to revise lists for cattle that have died or been culled, cattle that we traded, new cattle that we’ve bought. Besides that, we have to have birth weights, weight gain ratios, average daily weight gain and feeding data. All that information has to be kept current or it’s no use to us.”

“I know. But we’ll all get sick of pizzas and I’ll forget how to make biscuits!”

“God forbid,” he said, taking off his hat and holding it to his heart.

She was too tired to laugh, but she did smile. She worked her way down the long hall toward her room over the garage, feeling as drained as she looked.

She met Cag coming from the general direction of the garage, dressed in a neat gray suit with a subdued burgundy tie and a cream-colored Stetson. He was just back from a trustee meeting in Dallas, and he looked expensive and sophisticated and unapproachable.

She nodded in a cool greeting, and averted her eyes as she passed him.

He stepped in front of her, blocking her path. One big, lean hand tilted her chin up. He looked at her without smiling, his dark eyes glittering with disapproval.

“What have they been doing to you?” he asked curtly.

The comment shocked her, but she didn’t read anything into it. Cag would never be concerned about her and she knew it. “We’re all putting herd records into the computer, even old Fred,” she said wearily. “We’re tired.”

“Yes, I know. It’s a nightmare every year about this time. Are you getting enough sleep?”

She nodded. “I don’t know much about computers and it’s hard, that’s all. I don’t mind the work.”

His hand hesitated for just an instant before he dropped it. He looked tougher than ever. “You’ll be back to your old duties in no time. God forbid that we should drag you kicking and screaming out of the kitchen and into the twentieth century.”

That was sarcastic, and she wished she had enough energy to hit him. He was always mocking her, picking at her.

“You haven’t complained about the biscuits yet,” she reminded him curtly.

His black eyes swept over her disparagingly. “You look about ten,” he chided. “All big eyes. And you wear that damned rig or those black jeans and that pink shirt all the time. Don’t you have any clothes?”

She couldn’t believe her ears. First the brothers had talked about her lack of new clothes, and now he was going to harp on it! “Now, look here, you can’t tell me what to wear!”

“If you want to get married, you’ll never manage it like that,” he scoffed. “No man is going to look twice at a woman who can’t be bothered to even brush her hair!”

She actually gasped. She hadn’t expected a frontal attack when he’d just walked in the door. “Well, excuse me!” she snapped, well aware that her curly head was untidy. She put a hand to it defensively. “I haven’t had time to brush my hair. I’ve been too busy listing what bull sired what calf!”

He searched over her wan face and he relented, just a little. “Go to bed,” he said stiffly. “You look like the walking dead.”

“What a nice compliment,” she muttered. “Thanks awfully.”

She started to walk away, but he caught her arm and pulled her back around. He reached into his pocket, took something out, and handed it to her.

It was a jewelry box, square and velvet-covered. She looked at him and he nodded toward the box, indicating that he wanted her to open it.

She began to, with shaking hands. It was unexpected that he should buy her anything. She lifted the lid to find that there, nestled on a bed of gray satin, was a beautiful faceted sapphire pendant surrounded by tiny diamonds on a thin gold chain. She’d never seen anything so beautiful in her life. It was like a piece of summer sky caught in stone. It sparkled even in the dim shine of the security lights around the house and garage.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, shocked and touched by the unexpected gift. Then she looked up, warily, wondering if she’d been presumtuous and it wasn’t a gift at all. She held it out to him. “Oh, I see. You just wanted to show it to me…”

He closed her fingers around the box. His big hands were warm and strong. They felt nice.

“I bought it for you,” he said, and looked briefly uncomfortable.

She was totally at sea, and looked it. She glanced down at the pretty thing in her hand and back up at him with a perplexed expression.

“Belated birthday present,” he said gruffly, not meeting her eyes.

“But…my birthday was the first of March,” she said, her voice terse, “and I never mentioned it.”

“Never mentioned it,” he agreed, searching her tired face intently. “Never had a cake, a present, even a card.”

She averted her eyes.

“Hell!”

The curse, and the look on his face, surprised her.

He couldn’t tell her that he felt guilty about her birthday. He hadn’t even known that it had gone by until Leo told him two weeks ago. She could have had a cake and little presents, and cards. But she’d kept it to herself because of the way he’d acted about the cake she’d made for him. He knew without a word being spoken that he’d spoiled birthdays for her just as his mother had spoiled them for him. His conscience beat him to death over it. It was why he’d spent so much time away, that guilt, and it was why he’d gone into a jewelers, impulsively, when he never did anything on impulse, and bought the little necklace for her.

“Thanks,” she murmured, curling her fingers around the box. But she wouldn’t look at him.

There was something else, he thought, watching her posture stiffen. Something…

“What is it?” he asked abruptly.

She took a slow breath. “When do you want me to leave?” she asked bravely.

He scowled. “When do I what?”

“You said, that day I baked the cake, that I could go in the spring,” she reminded him, because she’d never been able to forget. “It’s spring.”

He scowled more and stuck one hand into his pocket, thinking fast. “How could we do without you during roundup?” he asked reasonably. “Stay until summer.”

She felt the box against her palms, warm from his body where it had lain in his pocket. It was sort of like a link between them, even if he hadn’t meant it that way. She’d never had a present from a man before, except the coat the brothers had given her. But that hadn’t been personal like this. She wasn’t sure how it was intended, as a sort of conscience-reliever or a genuinely warm gesture.

“We’ll talk about it another time,” he said after a minute. “I’m tired and I’ve still got things to do.”

He turned and walked past her without looking back. She found herself watching him helplessly with the jewelery box held like a priceless treasure in her two hands.

As if he felt her eyes he stopped suddenly, at the back door, and only his head pivoted. His black eyes met hers in the distance between them, and it was suddenly as if lightning had struck. She felt her knees quivering under her, her heart racing. He was only looking, but she couldn’t get her breath at all.

He didn’t glance away, and neither did she. In that instant, she lost her heart. She felt him fight to break the contact of their eyes, and win. He moved away quickly, into the house, and she ground her teeth together at this unexpected complication.

Of all the men in the world to become infatuated with, Cag Hart was the very last she should have picked. But knowing it didn’t stop the way she felt. With a weary sigh, she turned and went back toward her room. She knew she wouldn’t sleep, no matter how tired she was. She linked the necklace around her neck and admired it in the mirror, worrying briefly about the expense, because she’d seen on the clasp that it was 14K gold—not a trifle at all. But it would have been equally precious to her if it had been gold-tone metal, and she was sure Cag knew it. She went to sleep, wearing it.

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