Courageous. Diana Palmer

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      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, she’s the designer, she gave Peg one to wear also.”

      “Going to tell me what color it is?” Grange drawled sarcastically.

      “You’ll have to wait and see.” Jason grinned. “Gracie said it’s the most gorgeous of the lot.”

      Grange still hesitated.

      “Ask her,” Jason said, and he was solemn. “You’ve been walking around alone for a long time. You don’t date anybody. It’s time you remembered why men like women.”

      His eyes narrowed. “Gracie put you up to this. Didn’t she?”

      Jason shrugged and pursed his lips. “Pregnant women have cravings. Strawberry ice cream with pickle topping, crushed ice with mango, their friends getting asked to holiday balls …” He glanced at Grange with twinkling eyes. “You wouldn’t want to upset Gracie?”

      “Yeah, hit me in my weak spot, why don’t you?” Grange muttered.

      Jason grinned wider.

      He shrugged. “Okay. I should be testing weapons and drilling men. But I’ll take the evening off and escort Peg to a ball I don’t want to attend. Why not?”

      “And be nice, could you?” Jason groaned. “Just once?”

      He snarled. “I hate nice. I’m not nice. I was a major in a forward company in Iraq.”

      “It will be good practice for when you have to charm insurgents to surrender to your boss, the general.”

      Grange smiled coldly. “I won’t need charm. I have several retooled automatic weapons and a few grenades.”

      Jason just shook his head.

      Peg was in the kitchen when Grange walked through the door of his ranch house. Jason had given him the house with the property, against his protests. Grange was still, technically, Jason’s foreman on the huge Pendleton Comanche Wells property. But when he had free time, he could build up his own herd and renovate the huge white elephant of a house. Jason was paying Ed’s salary. Grange was paying Peg’s.

      He never failed to appreciate Jason’s generosity. The older man was a fanatic about repaying debts, and he felt that he owed Grange a lot for saving Gracie. Grange refused money, so Jason had found another way to repay him: the land, the house and the seed herd. It was worth a small fortune, but it was impossible to get around Jason when he was determined. Gracie had also been determined. In the end, Grange gave up and accepted with whatever grace he could manage. It was a hell of a reward. But it had been a desperate and dangerous mission. He could have died, so could his men. He’d managed the rescue in short time, and with no serious casualties. He hoped, he prayed, he’d be able to do the same with Emilio Machado’s invasion force the week after Thanksgiving, when they went to South America to liberate Barrera from a merciless dictator who had led a coup against Machado.

      Peg was nineteen, vivacious, with long blond hair and green eyes and a wicked smile. She and her father had been alone for five years, since the death of her mother from an aggressive, vicious cancer. The two of them had ended up working for Jason Pendleton, but his obligation to Grange had settled them here, in this old house.

      Neither of them minded. Ed loved being foreman of Grange’s small operation. He got the same salary he’d drawn from Jason at the Pendleton ranch property, but the duties were less rigorous and he had more free time. Peg, on the other hand, only had to cook for the three of them, and she was good at it. Not that the bunkhouse cook at Jason’s place didn’t stop by frequently to beg pies and cakes from her, because he couldn’t do those. Peg never minded. She loved to cook.

      “You should be in college,” Grange said without preamble when he walked into the kitchen where she was just putting a meatloaf into the oven.

      She glanced at him, laughed and stirred her potatoes, which were boiling. “Sure. I’ll go to Harvard next semester. Remind me to ask Dad for the tuition.”

      He glared at her. “There are scholarships.”

      “I was a straight-C student.”

      “Work-study.”

      She turned around and looked up at him. It was a long way. She only came up to his chin. Her long, light blond hair was in two pigtails and her sweatshirt was spotted with grease. So were her jeans. She never wore an apron. She pointed the spoon at him. “And what would I study, exactly?”

      “Home economics?”

      She glowered at him. “Do you really want me to go to college and live in a coed dorm?”

      “Excuse me?”

      “A dorm that has men and women living in the same rooms, when they don’t even know each other? Do you think I’m undressing in an apartment with a man I don’t know?”

      He gaped at her. “You have to be kidding.”

      “I am not. They have dorms for married couples. The rest have no choice about whether their dorm mates are male or female.” She glared harder. “I СКАЧАТЬ