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  “I know she would. But, I think she knows, Dad,” Antonia said gently. And she smiled.

  That night, Antonia phoned Barrie to tell her the news. Her best friend was overjoyed.

  “You have to let me know when he’s born, so that I can fly up and see him.”

  “Him?”

  “Boys are nice. You should have at least one. Then you’ll have a matched set. Maggie and a boy.”

  “Well, I’ll do my best.” There was a pause. “Heard from Dawson?”

  There was a cold silence. “No.”

  “I met the widow Holton not so long ago,” Antonia remarked.

  Barrie cleared her throat. “Is she old?”

  “About six years older than I am,” Antonia said. “Slender, redheaded, green-eyed and very glamorous.”

  “Dawson should be ecstatic to have her visiting every weekend.”

  “Barrie, Dawson really could use a little support where that woman is concerned,” she said slowly. “She’s hard and cold and very devious, from what I hear. You never know what she might do.”

  “He invited her up there,” Barrie muttered. “And then had the audacity to try and get me to come play chaperone, so that people wouldn’t think there was anything going on between them. As if I want to watch her paw him and fawn all over him and help him pretend it’s all innocent!”

  “Maybe it is innocent. Dawson doesn’t like women, Barrie,” she added. “They say he’s, well, sexually cold.”

  “Dawson?”

  “Dawson.”

  Barrie hesitated. She couldn’t very well say what she was thinking, or what she was remembering.

  “Are you still there?” Antonia asked.

  “Yes.” Barrie sighed. “It’s his own fault, he wants that land so badly that he’ll do anything to get it.”

  “I don’t think he’d go this far. I think he just invited Mrs. Holton up there to talk to her, and now she thinks he had amorous intentions instead of business ones and he can’t get rid of her. She strikes me as the sort who’d be hard to dissuade. She’s a very pushy woman, and Dawson’s very rich. It may be that she’s chasing him, instead of the reverse.”

  “He never said that.”

  “Did you give him a chance to say anything?” Antonia asked.

  “It’s safer if I don’t,” Barrie muttered. “I don’t know if I want to risk giving Dawson a whole weekend to spend giving me hell.”

  “You could try. He might have had a change of heart.”

  “Not likely.” There was a harsh laugh. “Well, I’ll call him, and if he asks me again, I’ll go, but only if there are plenty of people around, not just the widow.”

  “Call him up and tell him that.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “He’s not an ogre. He’s just a man.”

  “Sure.” She sounded unconvinced.

  “Barrie, you’re not a coward. Save him.”

  “Imagine, the iceman needing saving.” She hesitated. “Who told you they called him that?”

  “Just about everybody I know. He doesn’t date. The widow is the first woman he’s been seen with in years.” Antonia’s voice softened. “Curious, isn’t it?”

  It was, but Barrie didn’t dare mention why. She had some ideas about it, and she wondered if she had enough courage to go to Sheridan and find out the truth.

  “Maybe I’ll go,” Barrie said.

  “Maybe you should,” Antonia agreed, and shortly afterward, she hung up, giving Barrie plenty to think about.

  Powell came to find her after she’d gotten off the phone, smiling at her warmly. “You look pretty in pink,” he remarked.

  She smiled back. “Thanks.”

  He sat down beside her on the sofa and pulled her close. “What’s wrong?”

  “The widow Holton is giving Dawson a hard time.”

  “Good,” Powell said.

  She glared at him. “You might have the decency to feel sorry for the poor man. You were her target once, I believe.”

  “Until you stepped in and saved me, you sweet woman,” he replied, and bent to kiss her warmly.

  “There isn’t anybody to save Dawson unless Barrie will.”

  “He can fight his own dragons. Or should I say dragonettes?” he mused thoughtfully.

  “Aren’t you still after that strip of land, too?”

  “Oh, I gave up on it when we got married,” he said easily. “I had an idea that she wanted more than money for it, and you were jealous enough of her already.”

  “I like that!” she muttered.

  “You never had anything to worry about,” he said. “She wasn’t my type. But, I had an idea she’d make mischief if I kept trying to get those few acres, so I let the idea go. And I’ll tell you something else,” he added with a chuckle. “I don’t think Dawson Rutherford’s going to get that strip, either. She may string him along to see if she can get him interested in a more permanent arrangement, but unless he wants to propose…”

  “Maybe he does,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I don’t like him,” he said, “but he’s not a fool. She isn’t his type of woman. She likes to give orders, not take them. He’s too strong willed to suit her for long. More than likely, it’s because she can’t get him that she wants him.”

  “I hope so,” she replied. “I’d hate to see him trapped into marriage. I think Barrie cares a lot more for him than she’ll admit.”

  He drew her close. “They’ll work out their own problems. Do you realize how this household has changed since you married me?”

  She smiled. “Yes. Maggie is a whole new person.”

  “So am I. So are you. So is your father and Mrs. Bates,” he added. “And now we’ve got a baby on the way as well, and Maggie’s actually looking forward to it. I tell you, we’ve got the world.”

  She nestled close to him and closed her eyes. “The whole world,” she agreed huskily.

  Seven months later, Nelson Charles Long was born in the Bighorn community hospital. It had been a quick, easy birth, and Powell had been with Antonia every step of the way. Maggie was allowed in with her dad to see the baby while Antonia fed him.

  “He looks like you, Dad,” Maggie said.

  “He looks like Antonia,” he protested. “You look like me,” he added.

  Maggie beamed. There was a whole new relationship between Maggie and her father. She wasn’t threatened by the baby at all, not when she was so well loved by both parents. The cold, empty past was truly behind her now, just as it had finally been laid to rest by her parents.

  Antonia had asked Powell finally what Sally had written in the letter she’d sent back, so many years ago. Sally had told him very little about it, he recalled, except he recalled one line she’d quoted from some author he couldn’t quite remember: Take what you want, says God, and pay for it. The letter was to the effect that Sally had discovered the painful truth of that old proverb, and she was sorry.

  Too late, of course. Much too late.

  Sally had been forgiven, and the joy Antonia felt with Powell and Maggie grew by the day. She, too, had learned a hard lesson from the experience, that one had to stand and fight sometimes. She would teach that lesson to Maggie, she thought as she looked adoringly up at her proud husband; and to the child she held in her arms.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0880-3

  MAGGIE’S DAD

  Copyright © 1995 by Diana Palmer

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