surrounded by tiny diamonds on a thin gold chain. She’d never seen anything so beautiful in her life. It was like a piece of summer sky caught in stone. It sparkled even in the dim shine of the security lights around the house and garage.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, shocked and touched by the unexpected gift. Then she looked up, warily, wondering if she’d been presumtuous and it wasn’t a gift at all. She held it out to him. “Oh, I see. You just wanted to show it to me…”
He closed her fingers around the box. His big hands were warm and strong. They felt nice.
“I bought it for you,” he said, and looked briefly uncomfortable.
She was totally at sea, and looked it. She glanced down at the pretty thing in her hand and back up at him with a perplexed expression.
“Belated birthday present,” he said gruffly, not meeting her eyes.
“But…my birthday was the first of March,” she said, her voice terse, “and I never mentioned it.”
“Never mentioned it,” he agreed, searching her tired face intently. “Never had a cake, a present, even a card.”
She averted her eyes.
“Hell!”
The curse, and the look on his face, surprised her.
He couldn’t tell her that he felt guilty about her birthday. He hadn’t even known that it had gone by until Leo told him two weeks ago. She could have had a cake and little presents, and cards. But she’d kept it to herself because of the way he’d acted about the cake she’d made for him. He knew without a word being spoken that he’d spoiled birthdays for her just as his mother had spoiled them for him. His conscience beat him to death over it. It was why he’d spent so much time away, that guilt, and it was why he’d gone into a jewelers, impulsively, when he never did anything on impulse, and bought the little necklace for her.
“Thanks,” she murmured, curling her fingers around the box. But she wouldn’t look at him.
There was something else, he thought, watching her posture stiffen. Something…
“What is it?” he asked abruptly.
She took a slow breath. “When do you want me to leave?” she asked bravely.
He scowled. “When do I what?”
“You said, that day I baked the cake, that I could go in the spring,” she reminded him, because she’d never been able to forget. “It’s spring.”
He scowled more and stuck one hand into his pocket, thinking fast. “How could we do without you during roundup?” he asked reasonably. “Stay until summer.”
She felt the box against her palms, warm from his body where it had lain in his pocket. It was sort of like a link between them, even if he hadn’t meant it that way. She’d never had a present from a man before, except the coat the brothers had given her. But that hadn’t been personal like this. She wasn’t sure how it was intended, as a sort of conscience-reliever or a genuinely warm gesture.
“We’ll talk about it another time,” he said after a minute. “I’m tired and I’ve still got things to do.”
He turned and walked past her without looking back. She found herself watching him helplessly with the jewelery box held like a priceless treasure in her two hands.
As if he felt her eyes he stopped suddenly, at the back door, and only his head pivoted. His black eyes met hers in the distance between them, and it was suddenly as if lightning had struck. She felt her knees quivering under her, her heart racing. He was only looking, but she couldn’t get her breath at all.
He didn’t glance away, and neither did she. In that instant, she lost her heart. She felt him fight to break the contact of their eyes, and win. He moved away quickly, into the house, and she ground her teeth together at this unexpected complication.
Of all the men in the world to become infatuated with, Cag Hart was the very last she should have picked. But knowing it didn’t stop the way she felt. With a weary sigh, she turned and went back toward her room. She knew she wouldn’t sleep, no matter how tired she was. She linked the necklace around her neck and admired it in the mirror, worrying briefly about the expense, because she’d seen on the clasp that it was 14K gold—not a trifle at all. But it would have been equally precious to her if it had been gold-tone metal, and she was sure Cag knew it. She went to sleep, wearing it.
Chapter Three
E verything would have been absolutely fine, except that she forgot to take the necklace off the next morning and the brothers gave her a hard time over breakfast. That, in turn, embarrassed Cag, who stomped out without his second cup of coffee, glaring at Tess as if she’d been responsible for the whole thing.
They apologized when they realized that they’d just made a bad situation worse. But as the day wore on, she wondered if she shouldn’t have left the necklace in its box in her chest of drawers. It had seemed to irritate Cag that she wanted to wear it. The beautiful thing was so special that she could hardly get past mirrors. She loved just looking at it.
Her mind was so preoccupied with her present that she didn’t pay close attention to the big aquarium in Cag’s room when she went to make the bed. And that was a mistake. She was bending over to pull up the multicolored Navajo patterned comforter on the big four-postered bed when she heard a faint noise. The next thing she knew, she was wearing Herman the python around her neck.
The weight of the huge reptile buckled her knees. Herman weighed more than she did by about ten pounds. She screamed and wrestled, and the harder she struggled the harder an equally frightened Herman held on, certain that he was going to hit the floor bouncing if he relaxed his clinch one bit!
Leo came running, but he stopped at the doorway. No snake-lover, he hadn’t the faintest idea how to extricate their housekeeper from the scaly embrace she was being subjected to.
“Get Cag!” she squeaked, pulling at Herman’s coils. “Hurry, before he eats me!”
“He won’t eat you,” Leo promised from a pale face. “He only eats freeze-dried dead things with fur, honest! Cag’s at the corral. We were just going to ride out to the line camp. Back in a jiffy!”
Stomping feet ran down the hall. Torturous minutes later, heavier stomping feet ran back again.
Tess was kneeling with the huge reptile wrapped around her, his head arched over hers so that she looked as if she might be wearing a snaky headdress.
“Herman, for Pete’s sake!” Cag raged. “How did you get out this time?”
“Could you possibly question him later, after you’ve got him off me?” she urged. “He weighs a ton!”
“There, there,” he said gently, because he knew how frightened she was of Herman. He approached them slowly, careful not to spook his pet. He smoothed his big hand under the snake’s chin and stroked him gently, soothing him as he spoke softly, all the time gently unwinding him from Tess’s stooped shoulders.
When he had him completely free, he walked back to the aquarium and scowled as he peered at the lid, which was ajar.
“Maybe
