Free The Rancher & Heart of Stone by Diana Palmer Page B

when they were calving. It was especially important to do that in winter, just before the spring calves were due.
    She looked over the gate at the little calf in the stall and smiled. “Pretty boy,” she teased.
    He was a purebred Santa Gertrudis bull. Some were culled and castrated and became steers, if they had poor conformation or were less than robust. But the best ones were treated like cattle royalty, spoiled rotten and watched over. This little guy would one day bring a handsome price as a breeding bull.
    She heard a car door slam and turned just as Cort came into the barn.
    She felt her heartbeat shoot off like a rocket.
    He tilted his hat back and moved to the stall, peering over it. “That’s a nice young one,” he remarked.
    “His mother was killed, so we’re nursing him,” she faltered.
    He frowned. “Killed?”
    “Predators, we think,” she replied. “She was pretty torn up. We found her almost at the highway, out near your line cabin. Odd, that she wandered so far.”
    “Very odd,” he agreed.
    Ben came walking in with a bottle. “‘Day, Cort,” he said pleasantly.
    “How’s it going, Ben?” the younger man replied.
    “So far so good.”
    Maddie smiled as Ben settled down in the hay and fed the bottle to the hungry calf.
    “Poor little guy,” Maddie said.
    “He’ll make it,” Ben promised, smiling up at her.
    “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Maddie said. She was reluctant to be alone with Cort after the night before, but she couldn’t see any way around it.
    “You’re up early,” she said, fishing for a safe topic.
    “I didn’t sleep.” He stuck his hands into his pockets as he strolled along with her toward the house.
    “Oh?”
    He stopped, so that she had to. His eyes were bloodshot and they had dark circles under them. “I drank too much,” he said. “I wanted to apologize for the way I behaved with you.”
    “Oh.” She looked around for anything more than one syllable that she could reply with. “That’s...that’s okay.”
    He stared down at her with curiously intent eyes. “You’re incredibly naive.”
    She averted her eyes and her jaw clenched. “Yes, well, with my background, you’d probably be the same way. I haven’t been anxious to repeat the mistakes of the past with some other man who wasn’t what he seemed to be.”
    “I’m sorry. About what happened to you.”
    “Everybody was sorry,” she replied heavily. “But nobody else has to live with the emotional baggage I’m carrying around.”
    “How did you end up at the party with John?”
    She blinked. “Well, he came over to show me some things about animal husbandry, and he asked me to go with him. It was sort of surprising, really. He doesn’t date anybody.”
    “He’s had a few bad experiences with women. So have I.”
    She’d heard about Cort’s, but she wasn’t opening that topic with him. “Would you like coffee?” she asked. “Great-Aunt Sadie went shopping, but she left a nice coffee cake baking in the oven. It should be about ready.”
    “Thanks. I could use a second cup,” he added with a smile.
    But the smile faded when he saw the fancy European coffee machine on the counter. “Where the hell did you buy that?” he asked.
    She flushed. “I didn’t. John likes European coffee, so he brought the machine and the pods over with him.”
    He lifted his chin. “Did he, now? I gather he thinks he’ll be having coffee here often, then?”
    She frowned. “He didn’t say anything about that.”
    He made a huffing sound in his throat, just as the stove timer rang. Maddie went to take the coffee cake out of the oven. She was feeling so rattled, it was a good thing she’d remembered that it was baking. She placed it on a trivet. It smelled of cinnamon and butter.
    “My great-aunt can really cook,” she remarked as she took off the oven mitts she’d used to lift it out.
    “She can, can’t she?”
    She turned and walked right into Cort. She hadn’t realized he was so close.