Christmas Cowboy: Will of Steel / Winter Roses. Diana Palmer

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

       Will of Steel

      To the readers, all of you, many of whom are my friends

      on my Facebook page. You make this job wonderful and worthwhile. Thank you for your kindness and your support and your affection through all the long years. I am still your biggest fan.

      One

      He never liked coming here. The stupid calf followed him around, everywhere he went. He couldn’t get the animal to leave him alone. Once, he’d whacked the calf with a soft fir tree branch, but that had led to repercussions. Its owner had a lot to say about animal cruelty and quoted the law to him. He didn’t need her to quote the law. He was, after all, the chief of police in the small Montana town where they both lived.

      Technically, of course, this wasn’t town. It was about two miles outside the Medicine Ridge city limits. A small ranch in Hollister, Montana, that included two clear, cold trout streams and half a mountain. Her uncle and his uncle had owned it jointly during their lifetimes. The two of them, best friends forever, had recently died, his uncle from a heart attack and hers, about a month later, in an airplane crash en route to a cattleman’s convention. The property was set to go up on the auction block, and a California real estate developer was skulking in the wings, waiting to put in the winning bid. He was going to build a rich man’s resort here, banking on those pure trout streams to bring in the business.

      If Hollister Police Chief Theodore Graves had his way, the man would never set foot on the property. She felt that way, too. But the wily old men had placed a clause in both their wills pertaining to ownership of the land in question. The clause in her uncle’s will had been a source of shock to Graves and the girl when the amused attorney read it out to them. It had provoked a war of words every time he walked in the door.

      “I’m not marrying you,” Jillian Sanders told him firmly the minute he stepped on the porch. “I don’t care if I have to live in the barn with Sammy.”

      Sammy was the calf.

      He looked down at her from his far superior height with faint arrogance. “No problem. I don’t think the grammar school would give you a hall pass to marry me anyway.”

      Her pert nose wrinkled. “Well, you’d have to get permission from the old folks’ home, and I’ll bet you wouldn’t get it, either!”

      It was a standing joke. He was thirty-one to her almost twenty-one. They were completely mismatched. She was small and blonde and blue-eyed, he was tall and dark and black-eyed. He liked guns and working on his old truck when he wasn’t performing his duties as chief of police in the small Montana community where they lived. She liked making up recipes for new sweets and he couldn’t stand anything sweet except pound cake. She also hated guns and noise.

      “If you don’t marry me, Sammy will be featured on the menu in the local café, and you’ll have to live in the woods in a cave,” he pointed out.

      That didn’t help her disposition. She glared at him. It wasn’t her fault that she had no family left alive. Her parents had died not long after she was born of an influenza outbreak. Her uncle had taken her in and raised her, but he was not in good health and had heart problems. Jillian had taken care of him as long as he was alive, fussing over his diet and trying to concoct special dishes to make him comfortable. But he’d died not of ill health, but in a light airplane crash on his way to a cattle convention. He didn’t keep many cattle anymore, but he’d loved seeing friends at the conferences, and he loved to attend them. She missed him. It was lonely on the ranch. Of course, if she had to marry Rambo, here, it would be less lonely.

      She glared at him, as if everything bad in her life could be laid at his door. “I’d almost rather live in the cave. I hate guns!” she added vehemently, noting the one he wore, old-fashioned style, on his hip in a holster. “You could blow a hole through a concrete wall with that thing!”

      “Probably,” he agreed.

      “Why can’t you carry something small, like your officers do?”

      “I like to make an impression,” he returned, tongue-in-cheek.

      It took her a minute to get the insinuation. She glared at him even more.

      He sighed. “I haven’t had lunch,” he said, and managed to look as if he were starving.

      “There’s a good café right downtown.”

      “Which will be closing soon because they can’t get a cook,” he said with disgust. “Damnedest thing, we live in a town where every woman cooks, but nobody wants to do it for the public. I guess I’ll starve. I burn water.”

      It was the truth. He lived on takeout from the local café and frozen dinners. He glowered at her. “I guess marrying you would save my life. At least you can cook.”

      She gave him a smug look. “Yes, I can. And the local café isn’t closing. They hired a cook just this morning.”

      “They did?” he exclaimed. “Who did they get?”

      She averted her eyes. “I didn’t catch her name, but they say she’s talented. So you won’t starve, I guess.”

      “Yes, but that doesn’t help our situation here,” he pointed out. His sensual lips made a thin line. “I don’t want to get married.”

      “Neither do I,” she shot back. “I’ve hardly even dated anybody!”

      His

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