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Christmas with the Rancher: The Rancher / Christmas Cowboy / A Man of Means
Diana Palmer
The RancherCort Brannt, the handsome heir to the Skylance Ranch empire, has women throwing themselves at him, but this eligible bachelor sends them on their way, until a pretty, vivacious neighbour catches his attention. – Christmas Cowboy – Eight years ago, Corrigan Hart wasn’t the marrying kind, but he’d desired innocent Dorie Wayne. He was too much for her to handle and she’d fled to New York. Now Dorie is back, older, wiser, and the sparks still fly…A Man of MeansFrom the moment rancher Rey Hart first set eyes on Meredith Johns, he was mesmerised. She came to work on the ranch as a cook and soon the hot-tempered cattleman just didn’t want to let her go!
Praise for Diana Palmer (#uceb3b13e-a3e3-5888-a59d-6f77a8e8bb42)
‘Nobody does it better.’
—New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard
‘Ms Palmer masterfully weaves a tale that entices on many levels, blending adventure and strong human emotion into a great read.’
—RT Book Reviews
‘Nobody tops Diana Palmer when it comes to delivering pure, undiluted romance. I love her stories.’
—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz
‘A compelling tale…[that packs] an emotional wallop.’
—Publishers Weekly on Renegade
‘This story is a thrill a minute—one of Palmer’s best.’
—Rendezvous on Lord of the Desert
The prolific author of over one hundred books, DIANA PALMER got her start as a newspaper reporter. A multi-New York Times bestselling author and one of the top ten romance writers in America, she has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humour. Diana lives with her family in Georgia.
Dear Reader,
You probably think this story is about Cort Brannt, the brother of my heroine, Morie Brannt, in Wyoming Tough. Well, it’s not. It’s actually about the rooster who belongs to Cort’s neighbour. A red rooster came into my yard several weeks ago. I tried to run him off, but he kept coming back. I discovered that roosters can fly, because he jumped a seven-foot-high solid wooden fence to keep coming into my yard. I have lots of grass and a garden, which means bugs and worms and nice edibles. He wouldn’t leave.
Over the weeks, people who work for me in the yard tried to catch him. Some of the neighbours got into the act. I especially wanted him gone because every time I went out to feed the birds or look at my garden, he would attack me. I was spurred three times, and I have the scars to prove it. So the rooster had to go. That presented a problem. I didn’t want him killed or eaten, which left his fate up to me, since his owner apparently moved away and left him behind. (I don’t blame him. If you knew this rooster, you wouldn’t blame him, either!)
Our nice Mr Martin, who looks after the koi and goldfish ponds for us, had a friend who knew how to catch chickens. He also kept chickens. So he just walked into the backyard, picked the rooster up and carried him off. My jaw is still dropping. Anyway, the rooster is very happy, has many hens to court, and I am happy because I can walk to my pumpkin patch without being mauled on the way.
Cort Brannt is going to have the same problem. His nice little frumpy neighbour has a pet rooster named Pumpkin and she loves him. She loves Cort, too, but Cort loves Odalie Everett, who wants to train as a soprano and sing in the great opera houses of the world. Ah, the eternal triangle. It will all end well, I promise. And Pumpkin will have a happy future. Just like my unwanted red rooster visitor.
Hope you like the book. It has roots in Branntville, Texas, and King Brannt is Cort’s dad.
Your greatest fan,
Diana Palmer
Christmas with the Rancher
The Rancher
Christmas Cowboy
A Man of Means
Diana Palmer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u1251441a-9d6b-5760-a9a0-01e27eb9b807)
Praise for Diana Palmer
About the Author (#uf0a7a775-2fad-5d90-837e-f37a02dbc7cb)
Title Page (#u31ae8ac6-fcbf-5dcc-81c3-919e20db2acf)
The Rancher
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Christmas Cowboy
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
A Man of Means
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
The Rancher (#uceb3b13e-a3e3-5888-a59d-6f77a8e8bb42)
Chapter One (#uceb3b13e-a3e3-5888-a59d-6f77a8e8bb42)
Maddie Lane was worried. She was standing in her big yard, looking at her chickens, and all she saw was a mixture of hens. There were red ones and white ones and gray speckled ones. But they were all hens. Someone was missing: her big Rhode Island Red rooster, Pumpkin.
She knew where he likely was. It made her grind her teeth together. There was going to be trouble, again, and she was going to be on the receiving end of it.
She pushed back her short, wavy blond hair and grimaced. Her wide gray eyes searched the yard, hoping against hope that she was mistaken, that Pumpkin had only gone in search of bugs, not cowboys.
“Pumpkin?” she called loudly.
Great-Aunt Sadie came to the door. She was slight and a little dumpy, with short, thin gray hair, wearing glasses and a worried look.
“I saw him go over toward the Brannt place, Maddie,” she said as she moved out onto the porch. “I’m sorry.”
Maddie groaned aloud. “I’ll have to go after him. Cort will kill me!”
“Well, he hasn’t so far,” Sadie replied gently. “And he could have shot Pumpkin, but he didn’t…”
“Only because he missed!” Maddie huffed. She sighed and put her hands on her slim hips. She had a boyish figure. She wasn’t tall or short, just sort of in the middle. But she was graceful, for all that. And she could work on a ranch, which she did. Her father had taught her how to raise cattle, how to market them, how to plan and how to budget. Her little ranch wasn’t anything big or special, but she made a little money. Things had been going fine until she decided she wanted to branch out her organic egg-laying business and bought Pumpkin after her other rooster was killed by a coyote, along with several hens. But now things weren’t so great financially.
Maddie had worried about getting a new rooster. Her other one wasn’t really vicious, but she did have to carry a tree branch around with her to keep from getting spurred. She didn’t want another aggressive one.
“Oh, he’s gentle as a lamb,” the former owner assured her. “Great bloodlines, good breeder, you’ll get along just fine with him!”
Sure, she thought when she put him in the chicken yard and his first act was to jump on her foreman, old Ben Harrison, when he started to gather eggs.
“Better get rid of him now,” Ben had warned as she doctored the cuts on his arms the rooster had made even through the fabric.
“He’ll settle down, he’s just excited about being in a new place,” Maddie assured him.
Looking back at that conversation now, she laughed. Ben had been right. She should have sent the rooster back to the vendor in a shoebox. But she’d gotten attached to the feathered assassin. Sadly, Cort Brannt hadn’t.
Cort Matthew Brannt was every woman’s dream of the perfect man. He was tall, muscular without making it obvious, cultured, and he could play a guitar like a professional. He had jet-black hair with a slight wave, large dark brown eyes and a sensuous mouth that Maddie often dreamed of kissing.
The problem was that Cort was in love with their other neighbor, Odalie Everett. Odalie was the daughter of big-time rancher Cole Everett and his wife, Heather, who was a former singer and songwriter. She had two brothers, John and Tanner. John still lived at home, but Tanner lived in Europe. Nobody talked about him.
Odalie loved grand opera. She had her mother’s clear, beautiful voice and she wanted to be a professional soprano. That meant specialized training.
Cort wanted to marry Odalie, who couldn’t see him for dust. She’d gone off to Italy to study with some famous voice trainer. Cort was distraught and it didn’t help that Maddie’s rooster kept showing up in his yard and attacking him without warning.
“I can’t understand why he wants to go all the way over there to attack Cort,” Maddie said aloud. “I mean, we’ve got cowboys here!”
“Cort threw a rake at him the last time he came over here to look at one of your yearling bulls,” Sadie reminded her.
“I throw things at him all the time,” Maddie pointed out.
“Yes, but Cort chased him around the yard, picked him up by his feet, and carried him out to the hen yard to show him to the hens. Hurt his pride,” Sadie continued. “He’s getting even.”
“You think so?”
“Roosters are unpredictable. That particular one,” she added with a bite in her voice that was very out of character, “should have been chicken soup!”
“Great-Aunt Sadie!”
“Just telling you the way it is,” Sadie huffed. “My brother—your granddaddy—would have killed him the first time he spurred you.”
Maddie smiled. “I guess he would. I don’t like killing things. Not even mean roosters.”
“Cort would kill him for You if he could shoot straight,” Sadie said with veiled contempt. “You load that .28 gauge shotgun in the closet for me, and I’ll do it.”
“Great-Aunt Sadie!”
She made a face. “Stupid thing. I wanted to pet the hens and he ran me all the way into the house. Pitiful, when a chicken can terrorize a whole ranch. You go ask Ben how he feels about that red rooster. I dare you. If you’d let him, he’d run a truck over it!”
Maddie sighed. “I guess Pumpkin is a terror. Well, maybe Cort will deal with him once and for all and I can go get us a nice rooster.”
“In my experience, no such thing,” the older woman said. “And about Cort dealing with him…” She nodded toward the highway.
