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She threw her arms around him. “Yes. Yes! Yes!”
“I think that means she will,” Gil translated.
Jeff and Gil laughed. Meadow fought tears. She’d loved the silly man half her life, and here he was, offering her the one thing in the world she wanted most. She wondered if she could die of happiness. But she didn’t want to find out!
* * *
So they were married, at Christmas. Snow came home, with some lingering neurological issues that eventually resolved themselves. She and Jarvis the cat curled up together to sleep and never had a single argument that drew blood.
Gary did get first offender status. The items he’d stolen were recovered, including Dal’s writing desk, and returned to their rightful owners. Gary got his act together, went back to school, and became an asset to the community, to the delight of his father.
Dal and Meadow found they had more in common than they’d ever dreamed. Tangled together in Dal’s big king-sized bed, Meadow fought to catch her breath after a first time that exceeded her wildest dreams.
“Gosh!” was all she could manage.
He chuckled. “Now you see why I had to practice so much in my younger days,” he teased, looming over her. “I was getting ready for you.”
“Awww,” she drawled. “That’s so sweet.”
He moved down against her, his mouth moving lovingly against hers. “And that’s what I love most about you, Mrs. Blake,” he whispered.
“What?”
“That you never throw my past up to me,” he said solemnly. He lifted his head. “I’ll make you a solemn promise, too, Meadow,” he added. “I’ll never cheat on you. Not if we’re married for fifty years.”
She smiled and kissed him. “Okay.”
“But you’re going to see a doctor and find out why you keep falling,” he said sternly.
She curled back into his arms and slid one long leg around his. “It’s nice that you care about me,” she whispered.
“It’s nice that you care about me, too,” he said, and kissed her again. He rolled her onto her back, slid between her legs with a husky chuckle, and proceeded to coach her in the art of mutual pleasure. It took a long time. And eventually, it produced a sweet result: their first son.
The doctors discovered a minor lesion in Meadow’s brain that accounted for her clumsiness. There actually was a physical reason for it, and a treatment. Knowing that it wasn’t a brain tumor or something likely to kill her made it bearable. It stemmed from the concussion she’d had in her teens, an accident that she’d never realized would have such far-reaching repercussions.
Dal worried about her job in law enforcement. He never asked her to quit, but she knew him very well. Her clumsiness could lead, so easily, to tragedy under the wrong circumstances. So she had a long talk with the sheriff and the district attorney. And soon afterward, she had a new job.
By the time their son, Teddy, was a toddler, Meadow was comfortably working as an assistant district attorney, having put away her badge and gun for a future less dangerous and more satisfying than the law enforcement career she gave up. The following year, she gave birth to a second son, whom they named Seth. Their ranches combined to form one huge conglomerate, with Dal at the helm. So she and Dal lived happily ever after on a ranch in Colorado, with their sons, and Snow and Jarvis—and a few thousand head of cattle. And celebrated many wedding anniversaries at Christmas. Meadow finally had her snow man . . .
Mistletoe Cowboy
To my editor and friend of
many, many years,
Tara Gavin, with love.
Chapter 1
He had a first name, but they all called him by his last name: Parker. He was part Crow. In fact, he had an aunt and uncle who still lived on the reservation. His parents had divorced when he was young. His mother was long dead, even before he went overseas in the military. He didn’t know, or care, where his father was.
He worked on a huge ranch owned by J.L. Denton, near Benton, Colorado. He was the world’s best horse wrangler, to hear J.L. tell it. Of course, J.L. had been known to exaggerate.
It was autumn and the last lot of yearlings had gone to market. The bulls were in winter pasture. The cows were in pastures close to the ranch so that they could be taken care of when snow started falling. That would be pretty soon, in the Colorado mountains, because it was late October, almost Halloween.
All the hands had to do checks on the cattle at least two or three times a day; more on the pregnant cows, especially on the pregnant heifers, the first-time mothers. Calves dropped in April. The pregnant cows and heifers had been bred the last of July for an April birthing date, and there were a lot of pregnant female cattle on the ranch.
Calves were the soul of the operation. J.L. ran purebred Black Angus, and he made good money when he sold off the calf crop every year. Not that he needed money so much. He was a multimillionaire, mostly from gas and oil and mining. The ranch was just cream on top of his other investments. He loved cattle. So did his new wife, who wrote for a famous sword and sorcery television series calledWarriors and Warlocksthat even Parker watched on pay-per-view. It was fun trying to wheedle details out of the new Mrs. Denton. However, even though she was a kind, sweet woman, she never gave away a single bit of information about the series. Never.
