Diana Palmer Christmas Collection: The Rancher / Christmas Cowboy / A Man of Means / True Blue / Carrera's Bride / Will of Steel / Winter Roses

“Thanks. That’s sweet of you.” She wiped her eyes. “Well, at least I’ve lost all my illusions. Now I can just deal with my ranch and stop mooning over a man who thinks he’s too good for me.”

“No man is too good for you, sweetheart,” Great-Aunt Sadie said gently. “You’re pure gold. Don’t you ever let anyone tell you different.”

She smiled.

When she went out late in the afternoon to put her hens in their henhouse to protect them from overnight predators, Pumpkin was right where he should be—back in the yard.

“You’re going to get me sued, you red-feathered problem child,” she muttered. She was carrying a small tree branch and a metal garbage can lid as she herded her hens into the large chicken house. Pumpkin lowered his head and charged her, but he bounced off the lid.

“Get in there, you fowl assassin,” she said, evading and turning on him.

He ran into the henhouse. She closed the door behind him and latched it, leaned back against it with a sigh.

“Need to get rid of that rooster, Miss Maddie,” Ben murmured as he walked by. “Be delicious with some dumplings.”

“I’m not eating Pumpkin!”

He shrugged. “That’s okay. I’ll eat him for you.”

“I’m not feeding him to you, either, Ben.”

He made a face and kept walking.

She went inside to wash her hands and put antibiotic cream on the places where her knuckles were scraped from using the garbage can lid. She looked at her hands under the running water. They weren’t elegant hands. They had short nails and they were functional, not pretty. She remembered Odalie Everett’s long, beautiful white fingers on the keyboard at church, because Odalie could play as well as she sang. The woman was gorgeous, except for her snobbish attitude. No wonder Cort was in love with her.

Maddie looked in the mirror on the medicine cabinet above the sink and winced. She really was plain, she thought. Of course, she never used makeup or perfume, because she worked from dawn to dusk on the ranch. Not that makeup would make her beautiful, or give her bigger breasts or anything like that. She was basically just pleasant to look at, and Cort wanted beauty, brains and talent.

“I guess you’ll end up an old spinster with a rooster who terrorizes the countryside.”

The thought made her laugh. She thought of photographing Pumpkin and making a giant Wanted poster, with the legend, Wanted: Dead or Alive. She could hardly contain herself at the image that presented itself if she offered some outlandish reward. Men would wander the land with shotguns, looking for a small red rooster.

“Now you’re getting silly,” she told her image, and went back to work.

Cort Brannt slammed out of his pickup truck and into the ranch house, flushed with anger and self-contempt.

His mother, beautiful Shelby Brannt, glanced up as he passed the living room.

“Wow,” she murmured. “Cloudy and looking like rain.”

He paused and glanced at her. He grimaced, retraced his steps, tossed his hat onto the sofa and sat down beside her. “Yeah.”

“That rooster again, huh?” she teased.

His dark eyes widened. “How did you guess?”

She tried to suppress laughter and lost. “Your father came in here bent over double, laughing his head off. He said half the cowboys were ready to load rifles and go rooster-hunting about the time you drove off. He wondered if we might need to find legal representation for you…?”

“I didn’t shoot her,” he said. He shrugged his powerful shoulders and let out a long sigh, his hands dangling between his splayed legs as he stared at the carpet. “But I said some really terrible things to her.”

Shelby put down the European fashion magazine she’d been reading. In her younger days, she had been a world-class model before she married King Brannt. “Want to talk about it, Matt?” she asked gently.

“Cort,” he corrected with a grin.

She sighed. “Cort. Listen, your dad and I were calling you Matt until you were teenager, so it’s hard…”

“Yes, well, you were calling Morie ‘Dana,’ too, weren’t you?”

Shelby laughed. “It was an inside-joke. I’ll tell it to you one day.” She smiled. “Come on. Talk to me.”

His mother could always take the weight off his shoulders. He’d never been able to speak so comfortably about personal things to his father, although he loved the older man dearly. He and his mother were on the same wavelength. She could almost read his mind.

“I was pretty mad,” he confessed. “And she was cracking jokes about that stupid rooster. Then she made a crack about Odalie and I just, well, I just lost it.”

Odalie, she knew, was a sore spot with her son. “I’m sorry about the way things worked out, Cort,” she said gently. “But there’s always hope. Never lose sight of that.”

“I sent her roses. Serenaded her. Called her just to talk. Listened to her problems.” He looked up. “None of that mattered. That Italian voice trainer gave her an invitation and she got on the next plane to Rome.”

“She wants to sing. You know that. You’ve always known it. Her mother has the voice of an angel, too.”

“Yes, but Heather never wanted fame. She wanted Cole Everett,” he pointed out with a faint smile.

“That was one hard case of a man,” Shelby pointed out. “Like your father.” She shook her head. “We had a very, very rocky road to the altar. And so did Heather and Cole.”

She continued pensively. “You and Odalie’s brother, John Everett, were good friends for a while. What happened there?”

“His sister happened,” Cort replied. “She got tired of having me at their place all the time playing video games with John and was very vocal about it, so he stopped inviting me over. I invited him here, but he got into rodeo and then I never saw him much. We’re still friends, in spite of everything.”

“He’s a good fellow.”

“Yeah.”

Shelby got up, ruffled his hair and grinned. “You’re a good fellow, too.”

He laughed softly. “Thanks.”

“Try not to dwell so much on things,” she advised. “Sit back and just let life happen for a while. You’re so intense, Cort. Like your dad,” she said affectionately, her dark eyes soft on his face. “One day Odalie may discover that you’re the sun in her sky and come home. But you have to let her try her wings. She’s traveled, but only with her parents. This is her first real taste of freedom. Let her enjoy it.”

“Even if she messes up her life with that Italian guy?”

“Even then. It’s her life,” she reminded him gently. “You don’t like people telling you what to do, even if it’s for your own good, right?”

He glowered at her. “If you’re going to mention that time you told me not to climb up the barn roof and I didn’t listen…”

“Your first broken arm,” she recalled, and pursed her lips. “And I didn’t even say I told you so,” she reminded him.

“No. You didn’t.” He stared at his linked fingers. “Maddie Lane sets me off. But I should never have said she was ugly and no man would want her.”

“You said that?” she exclaimed, wincing. “Cort…!”