gave him a quelling look.
He lifted an exaggeratedly apologetic hand. “I know. Even some of us big, dumb cowpokes who passed on Ivy League educations know a few big words.”
She’d heard Chance had been just as much of a problem to his wealthy parents growing up as he was to her now. “How about ‘aggravate’?” She looked him square in the eye. “Do you know what that means?”
He grinned. “I think that’s what I do to you, on a daily, hourly, basis?”
So true. Molly drew a calming breath. She started the ignition, then motioned for him to step away. When he did, she put her window down. “I’m going to be at the Circle H this afternoon, meeting with your mother about the proposed kitchen renovation.”
“Well, what do you know,” he rumbled with a maddeningly affable shrug. “I will be, too.”
She ignored the fact that their two contracting companies were competing for the renovation job. “Braden will be with me. It’s your chance to make things right with my son. Please, Chance.” She paused to let her words sink in. “Don’t let us down.”
* * *
IF MOLLY HADN’T framed it quite like that, maybe he could have bailed. But she had, so at five past three Chance found himself driving up the lane to the Circle H ranch house.
Molly’s SUV was already on-site. She and her son, Braden, were by the pasture, where a one-week-old Black Angus was pastured with his momma. Little arms on the middle rung of the fence, Braden was staring, mesmerized, at the sight of the nursing bull.
“Can I pet him?” Braden asked as Chance strolled up to join them.
Her pretty face pinched with tension, Molly shook her head.
Chance hunkered down beside Braden. The little tyke had the same curly red hair, cute-as-a-button features and amber eyes as his mother. “Petting the bull would scare it, buddy, and we don’t want that, do we?”
Balking, Braden bartered, “I know gentle. Mommy showed me.” Realizing Chance didn’t quite understand what he was saying, Braden continued with a demonstration of easy petting. “Kitty cat—gentle. Puppy—gentle. Babies—gentle.”
“Ah. You’re very gentle with all of those things,” Chance concluded.
Braden nodded importantly. “Mommy showed me.”
“Well, listen, buckaroo,” Chance continued, still hunkered down so he and Braden were eye to eye. “It’s always good to be gentle,” he said kindly. “And it’s great to be able to see a real baby bull.”
Braden beamed. “I like bulls!”
“The thing is, Santa doesn’t really have any bulls to bring to little boys,” Chance told him, quashing the kid’s dreams against his better judgment.
“Uh-huh! At the North Pole,” Braden said. “Santa has everything!”
“No.” Chance shook his head sadly but firmly. He looked the little boy in the eye. “There aren’t any bulls at the North Pole.”
Mutinously, Braden folded his little arms across his chest. “Santa bring me one,” he reiterated stubbornly.
Out of the corner of Chance’s eye, he saw Molly’s stricken expression. Yeah. She pretty much wanted to let him have it. Given the unforeseen way things were developing, he could hardly blame her.
“For Christmas,” Braden added for good measure, in case either Molly or Chance didn’t understand him. He pointed to the pasture. “Want mommy bull. And baby bull.”
Okay, this was not going according to plan, Chance thought uncomfortably.
“Baby needs mommy,” Braden added plaintively, just in case they still weren’t getting it.
Molly lifted a brow and sent Chance an even more withering glare.
Fortunately, at that moment, his mother walked out of the recently renovated Circle H bunkhouse, where she was currently living, her part-time cook and housekeeper, Maria Gonzales, at her side. The young woman often brought her own three-year-old daughter, Tessie, to work with her. The little lass peeked at Braden from behind her mother’s skirt.
“Braden, Maria and Tessie were just about to make some Thanksgiving tarts. Would you like to help them?” Lucille asked.
He looked at his mother for permission.
Molly gave it with a nod, then pointed to the ranch house on the other side of the barns. “Miss Lucille, Chance and I are going to walk over there and have a meeting. Then I’ll come back to get you. Okay?”
Braden took Maria’s outstretched hand. “’Kay, Mommy.”
Maria and her two young charges set off.
In the past, the sixty-eight-year-old Lucille had ignored interpersonal tensions for the sake of peace. However, a recent series of life-changing events had caused Chance’s mother to rethink the idea of sugarcoating anything. And now, to everyone’s surprise, it turned out she could be as blunt as Chance’s older brother, Garrett.
“What’s going on between you two?” Lucille demanded as she looked from Molly to Chance and back again. “And don’t tell me nothing, because I can feel the mutual aggravation simmering between you a mile away!”
Chance would have preferred to keep their tiff private. Unfortunately, Molly had other ideas. “Chance told Braden that he could ask Santa to bring him a real live baby bull for Christmas!” she sputtered.
Lucille turned to him, formidable as always in an ultrasuede sheath, cashmere cardigan and heels.
“I was trying not to quash his dreams,” Chance insisted hotly.
“So, instead, you lit fire to impossible ones, and now he wants not just a baby bull but a bovine mama to go with it, too,” Molly accused him, looking furious enough to burst into tears.
“Look, I—” Even as the words came out of his mouth, Chance had to wonder how Molly had managed to put him on the defensive.
She stomped closer and waved a finger beneath his nose. “If you hadn’t brought that baby bull over with his momma to pasture at the Circle H—”
“If you hadn’t brought your son with you to discuss making a bid,” he volleyed right back.
Molly planted both her hands on her slender hips. “I had no choice!”
He mocked her by doing the same. “Well, neither did I!”
Completely exasperated, Lucille stopped worrying the pearls around her neck and stepped in between them. “Enough, you two!” she chastised. “You are acting like ornery children. It’s five weeks until Christmas...we will figure out a way to work this out.”
Chance and Molly separated once again.
Satisfied things were calmer, at least for the moment, Lucille walked up the
