His for the Taking - By Ann Major Page 0,18

to be proud of.”

When his cell phone rang, he pulled it out and frowned. Instead of answering it, he said, “I’m turning this off. Damn thing rings all the time.”

“Who was it?”

“My mother.”

“Go ahead. Talk to her. I don’t care,” she lied.

“Later.” He punched a button or two and slid it back into his pocket. “There—for now it’s off.”

Maddie couldn’t help grinning a little triumphantly at his mother’s stern picture before she began a study of the formal photographs and the painted portraits of his ancestors that filled his den. These were Noah’s ancestors, too. She felt a pang of guilt that her son would never know about them.

Pushing Noah to the back of her mind, she imagined Cole spending his free time in this masculine room with its dark carpets and huge reddish-brown leather sofas and matching armchairs. How often had he brought other women here? Women he’d respected? Women he’d introduced to his mother?

He joined her, telling her again what she already knew, that the ranch had been put together shortly after Texas had won its independence from Mexico, and that during the Civil War, Yankees had burned the first house.

“This second, much grander structure was built after the family recovered. It faces due south just like our state capitol in Austin—for the same reason, to spurn the north and the ‘damn’ Yankees.”

She managed to laugh lightly. “I hadn’t heard that before.”

“Like most Texans, we’re a stubborn, proud bunch,” Cole said, not bothering to hide his pride in his family and his state.

Cole’s ranch house was lovely, classy. Once when she’d lain in his arms she’d foolishly dreamed of living here, of being accepted because she was his wife.

But the town and his mother would never have approved, so he’d turned his back on Maddie and had married Lizzie. As proof of his brief, joyous union with his wife, he kept several informal photographs of her on the tables and shelves. And in every one of them, sweet, blonde Lizzie was looking up at Cole’s rugged, tanned face with adoring blue eyes.

Maddie lifted one of the photographs. “She looks so happy and in love.”

Without a word, he took the picture from her and placed it facedown.

“She’s gone now.”

Maddie winced at the rejection she felt in his icy tone. She couldn’t help remembering Miss Jennie telling her how worried the whole town had been because Cole had stayed drunk for six months straight after Lizzie’s death.

“His mother says he’ll never get over her,” Miss Jennie had said. “They were high school sweethearts, you know.”

Until a stolen kiss in a barn had temporarily awakened his lust for the town’s bad girl.

In spite of everything, Maddie had felt genuine sympathy for him in his time of loss.

“She always loved you so much,” Maddie said gently, knowing now that all he’d ever felt for her was lust. “Since she was a little girl.”

“Yes,” he muttered coldly.

“The whole town wanted you to marry her and give them their happy ending. And you did.”

“Can we talk about something else?” Again his expression was grimly forbidding. “Look, I didn’t bring you here to talk about Lizzie.” A nerve jerked in his cheek. “All that’s over now.” He took her arm and led her toward the open door of what was obviously his office. “You haven’t seen the rest of the house yet.”

Forgetting his promise not to touch her, he took her hand and led her inside the room. Her quick shiver brought a wicked glint to his eyes, but he let her go without teasing her.

“This is where I work. Sloppily, as you can see.”

Stacks of papers littered the top of his massive mahogany desk and spilled out of its drawers.

Her mind on the letters now, she gazed at the drawers, barely listening as he explained his various businesses to her.

There was the ranching operation to run, he told her, the other heirs who didn’t live on the ranch to satisfy, several farms to deal with, his mother to cater to, his ongoing oil and gas business, which was booming and kept him away from the ranch, his beloved horses, and several other income streams to keep track of. Ranching, he said, was a difficult business due to the unpredictable nature of so many important variables such as the weather and the price of feed and cattle. His father had been on the brink of bankruptcy when Cole had taken over. He was still in the process of streamlining the cattle operation and diversifying into