LITMIR.BIZ

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and beautiful, at least when she wasn’t covered head-to-toe in filth from a rough day on the range. Of course, that wouldn’t be a problem once they were married and she was living with him in Houston. She’d have endless hours to pamper herself.

      With her glowing skin, her hair the color of wheat in sunlight, and her unexpected brown eyes, she would knock the socks off of Houston society. With her warmth, she would be an asset as a hostess for the kinds of functions that were required of a corporate president. His friends and associates would find her tales of running her own ranch intriguing, if something of an oddity for a woman alone.

      Well, not alone, exactly, he reminded himself. There was Danielle. The preschooler was the by-product of Kelly’s unfortunate marriage to Paul Flint, a philanderer of the first order, a man who had taken Kelly’s tender, trusting heart and broken it into pieces.

      Hands clenched and temper barely contained, Jordan had witnessed most of that particular debacle. He’d provided the shoulder for Kelly to cry on when she’d finally decided to end the marriage and take her daughter home to Los Pinos, the tiny west Texas town where they’d grown up on neighboring ranches.

      Danielle was a bit of a complication, he had to admit. He was lousy with kids. He had no idea what to say to them. In all of his plans for settling down, he rarely considered the next step—kids.

      He thought back to the previous Christmas. When his sister-in-law had shown up at the family ranch with his infant niece, he’d been completely stymied about what to do with that fragile little baby. Even the prospect of holding her had made his palms sweat. He’d tried not to let his reaction show, but he had known that he had negotiated multimillion-dollar business deals with less display of nerves.

      Danielle was equally perplexing to him, even though in a fit of sentiment he’d allowed himself to be persuaded to be her godfather.

      The child was barely three feet tall, he reminded himself. At five, she already had an astonishing and precocious vocabulary. Surely he could find a way to communicate with her. If nothing else, he could always buy her half the stock at Toys Unlimited. She’d be so busy with all those new playthings, she wouldn’t require any attention at all from him.

      Satisfied that he’d dealt with that potential problem in his usual decisive way, he drew in a deep breath and rehearsed what he would say to Kelly to persuade her to marry him. For all of his planning, this part had never quite solidified the way it should have. He kept envisioning her laughing in his face, amused by his out-of-the-blue proposal after all these years of platonic friendship.

      Perhaps he should simply tell her that she was the answer to his prayers, someone he liked, someone he trusted.

      Someone who could keep him out of the clutches of the wrong women. Even as the words formed, he groaned. Telling her that would certainly go a long way toward charming her. No matter how unemotional she might be, even a woman who’d been chosen as the solution to a problem of sorts wanted to be wooed a little. As a practical matter, he knew Kelly would see the sense of his proposal, but he would definitely have to dress it up with a little romance.

      Damn, how was he going to pull this off? Kelly was the most fiercely independent woman he’d ever met, especially since her divorce. She might not want to marry anyone after her experience with Paul, especially not a man who, at one time or another, had been pictured on the society pages with half of Houston’s eligible female population. His track record, though certainly not immoral, might be a too vivid reminder of her ex’s habits.

      Since the divorce, Kelly had taken charge of her life. She had returned to the falling down ranch her family had left her and tackled the task of making it work with the kind of gritty determination he couldn’t help but admire.

      For the past two years she had worn herself ragged, working from before dawn until well after dark, seven days a week. The ranch hardly had a look of prosperity about it, but there was no mistaking that her efforts were paying off. There was fresh paint on the old house, inside and out, and her herd of longhorns was growing. Even now the livestock was visible in the distance, grazing on newly acquired pastureland she had bought with every penny of her divorce settlement.

      The hard work should have taken its toll, but, he was forced to admit, in recent months Kelly had never looked healthier or happier. She no longer had the haggard, tight-lipped, stricken look of a woman who’d been betrayed by the man she’d loved. In fact, she glowed, radiating a sense of serenity and bone-deep satisfaction that had made visiting her the highlight of his trips home.

      Whenever the weighty sense of family that Harlan Adams imposed on all of his sons grew too burdensome, Jordan slipped away from White Pines and spent time in Kelly’s kitchen, sipping the herbal tea she preferred and talking of inconsequential things that somehow all added up to a kind of tranquility he found nowhere else in his life. The thought of spending the rest of his days around a woman capable of creating such a peaceful atmosphere soothed him.

      Okay, so they wouldn’t be marrying for love. Neither of them had had much luck with messy emotions anyway. An old-style marriage of convenience struck him as the sensible way to go. Kelly would never have to worry about money for herself or her daughter again and he would never have to deal with another female barracuda.

      As he walked toward the front porch of the ranch house, a porch that sagged and dipped from years of use and sloppy construction, he noted the huge pots of bright flowers she tended with such care in the evenings. They were thriving, the blossoms providing vivid splashes of color against the front of the white house.

      Already anticipating their life together, he sighed with contentment. Kelly was a nurturer. Like those flowers, he and any children they ultimately might have would thrive in her care. Assuming he got over this uneasiness he felt with these pint-size enigmas, that is.

      He fingered the small jewelry box in his pocket and smiled, pleased with his decision. Kelly’s fat gray-and-white cat wound between his legs, purring and shedding on his navy pants. Jordan glanced down, felt a momentary touch of annoyance, then sighed. The old tomcat was part of the package and at least he seemed delighted by Jordan’s presence.

      With a rare twinge of trepidation, he knocked on the screen door and called out, “Hey, darlin’, it’s me.”

      He heard the thunder of tiny feet as Dani came careering around a corner and raced down the hallway. She skidded to a halt, her blond curls bouncing.

      “Hi, Jordan,” she said, swinging the screen door wide and coming out to join him. “Mommy’s in the barn. Francie’s having kittens. A lot of kittens.”

      Jordan cringed. “Really?”

      “Want to come see?”

      He would rather eat dirt, but the sparkle of anticipation in Dani’s eyes was too powerful to resist. “Sure.”

      To his astonishment, Dani tucked her hand trustingly in his and tugged him around the side of the house toward the barn. “You could have one, if you wanted,” she told him.

      “I work very long hours. I’m not sure what I’d do with a kitten in Houston,” he said, trying to sound as if he regretted it when the truth was he couldn’t have been more relieved.

      “Cats don’t mind if you’re not home very much. They’re very independent,” she informed him. “We hardly ever see Francie, except when she’s going to have kittens.”

      Old Francie reminded him of certain types of people who only turned up when they were in trouble. He hoped Kelly wasn’t going to view his visit that way.

      Dani stopped on the path in front of him, her face turned up, her brow knitted with concern. “Mommy says we have to give all of them away,” she told him.

      Her eyes suddenly and, Jordan thought, rather suspiciously filled with tears.

      “What if we can’t find homes for them?” she asked, sounding pathetic. “Will we have to drown them in the creek?”

      The little minx was pulling out all the stops. Jordan choked back a chuckle at the preposterous notion that Kelly

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