Courageous. Diana Palmer

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      Grange was digging into his own cake. He hesitated at the red candied cherries, though, and nudged two of them to one side on the saucer while he finished the last bite of cake.

      Peg looked at him with wide, innocent eyes. “Don’t you like … cherries?” she asked, with her lips pursed suggestively.

      He let out a word that caused Ed’s eyebrows to reach for the ceiling.

      Then he flushed, threw down his napkin and got up, his sensuous lips making a thin line. “Sorry,” he bit off. “Excuse me.”

      Ed gaped at his daughter. “What in the world is wrong with him lately?” he asked half under his breath. “I swear, I’ve never seen a man so edgy.” He finished his own cake, oblivious to Peg’s expression. “I guess it’s this Barrera thing. Bound to make a man worry. He’s having to plan and carry out an involved military campaign against a sitting dictator, with a small force and out of sight of most government letter agencies,” he added. “I’d be uptight, too.”

      Peg hoped Grange was uptight, but not for those reasons. She blushed when she remembered what she’d said to Winslow. It had been a crude comment, not worthy of her at all. She’d have to be less blatant. She didn’t want to drive him away by being too coarse. She cursed her own tongue for its lack of skill. She was making him madder by the day. That brought to mind another possible complication. She could 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 СКАЧАТЬ