LITMIR.BIZ

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cost her father his job here if she went too far. She was going to have to rethink her strategy, once again.

      So she puzzled on it for a couple of days and decided to try something a little different. She curled her hair, put on her best Sunday dress and sat down in the living room to watch a recording of The Sound of Music when she knew Grange was due in from riding fence lines.

      He walked in, hesitated when he saw her sitting in his place on the sofa and paused beside her.

      “That’s a very old film,” he remarked.

      She smiled demurely. “Oh, yes. But the music is wonderful and besides, it’s about a nun who has a fairy-tale romance with a titled gentleman who marries her.”

      He lifted an eyebrow. “Isn’t that a little tame for your taste?” he asked, and in a rather sarcastic manner.

      She looked up at him with wide green eyes. “Why, whatever do you mean?”

      “Whatever happened to balls of anacondas and birth control?” he asked.

      She gasped. “You think that anacondas should use birth control?” she asked, aghast. “Good heavens, however in the world would a male anaconda use a prophylactic … Hello?”

      He left the room so quickly that she imagined a trail of flame behind him. But just as he went out the door, she could have sworn she heard a deep, soft chuckle.

      1

      “I don’t want to go to the Cattleman’s Ball.” Winslow Grange was emphatic about it. He glared at the other man. His dark eyes were hostile. Of course, they were usually hostile.

      His boss just smiled. Jason Pendleton knew his foreman very well. “You’ll have a good time,” he said. “You need the break.”

      “Break!” Grange threw his big hands up in the air and turned away. “I’m going to a South American country with a group of covert ops specialists to retake a country under a bloodthirsty dictator …”

      “Exactly,” Jason said blandly. “That’s why you need the break.”

      Grange turned back to him, with his hands deep in his jeans pockets. He grimaced. “Listen, I don’t like people much. I don’t mix well.”

      “And you think I do?” Jason asked reasonably. “I have to hobnob with heads of corporations, government regulators, federal auditors … but I cope. You’ll be able to deal with it, too.”

      “I guess so.” He drew in a long breath. “It’s been a while since I led men into battle.”

      Jason lifted an eyebrow. “You went into Mexico to liberate my wife when she was kidnapped by your current boss.”

      “An incursion. We’re talking about a war.” He turned back to the fence, leaned his arms on it and stared blindly at the purebred cattle munching at a rolled-up hay bale. “I lost men in Iraq.”

      “Mostly due to your C.O.’s idiotic orders, as I recall, not to your own competence.”

      Grange said grimly, “I loved his court-martial.”

      “Served him right.” Jason leaned against the fence beside him. “Point is, you lead well. That’s a valuable ability to a deposed head-of-state who’s fighting to restore democracy to his country. If you succeed, and I believe you will, they’ll erect a statue of you somewhere.”

      Grange burst out laughing.

      “But the ball is a local tradition. We all go, and donate to important regional causes at the same time. We get together and dance and talk and have fun. You remember what that is, Grange, don’t you? Fun?”

      Grange made a face.

      “You ex-military guys, honest to God—” Jason sighed.

      “Don’t start with me,” Grange told him. “You just remember that my military experience is why Gracie isn’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”

      Jason shook his head. “I think about it every day.” He didn’t like remembering it. Gracie had almost died. Their courtship had been rocky and difficult. They were married now, and expecting their first child. Gracie had thought she was pregnant soon after their marriage, only she’d been mistaken. She wasn’t this time. She was six months pregnant and beaming. They were happy together. But it hadn’t been an easy path to the altar.

      “I was going to ask her out, just before you married Gracie,” Grange said to irritate the other man. “I even bought a new suit.”

      “It wasn’t wasted. It’s still in style. You can wear it to the Cattleman’s Ball. Besides,” Jason added with a grin, “you have no cause for complaint. I gave you a tract of land and a seed herd of purebred Santa Gertrudis.”

      “You really shouldn’t have done that,” Grange told him firmly. “It was overkill.”

      “It wasn’t. You’re the most valuable employee I’ve got here. It was a bonus. Well deserved.”

      Grange smiled. “Thanks.” He made another face. “But you didn’t have to throw in Ed Larson and his daughter.”

      “Peg’s sweet, and she cooks like an angel.”

      The dark eyes glared. “She’s after me. All the time. She says things …”

      “She’s barely nineteen—of course she says things …”

      “She’s trying to seduce me, for God’s sake!” he burst out, and his high cheekbones flushed.

      Jason’s eyebrows lifted. “You do know that the Victorian Age is over and done with?”

      “I am not about to start playing games with a nineteen-year-old,” came the curt reply. “I go to church, pay my taxes and give to charity. I don’t even drink!”

      Jason shook his head. “I give up. You’re a lost cause.”

      “You want to see a lost cause, look around you,” Grange began. “We have the highest divorce rate, the ugliest economy and the greediest corporate entities on earth….”

      Jason held up a hand. “I’m sorry, but I’m due in New York the week after Thanksgiving,” he said drolly.

      “I wasn’t going to take that long to get my point across.”

      “You’ll have to plant your soapbox someplace else. As to the ball, if you don’t take Peg, who will you take?”

      Grange looked hunted. “I’m going alone.”

      “Oh, that’s going to put you on everybody’s front page for a month.”

      His sensual lips made a straight line. “I’m not taking Peg! Her father works for me! So does she, while we’re on the subject!”

      “I can list all the people who took employees to past balls, if you like,” Jason mused.

      Grange knew already what a list that would be, and many of those couples ended up married. He didn’t want to open that can of worms.

      “It’s only for about three hours,” Jason continued. “What’s the harm? And aren’t you leaving the country two days later?”

      “Yes.”

      “Think of it as a happy memory to take with you.”

      He shifted and averted his eyes. He ran a hand through his thick, black hair. “Peg won’t have the money for a party dress.”

      “We have a new boutique in town. The designer, Bess Truman, is trying to drum up business, so she’s outfitted half the town’s eligible women with her stock. Remember Nancy, our pharmacist? She’s got a green gown that she wore for an event that was filmed on the local television station. Bonnie, her assistant, has a red one that stopped traffic. Literally. Even Holly, who works with them, got a gold one. So Bess,

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