Grange still hesitated.
“Ask her,” Jason said, and he was solemn. “You’ve been walking around alone for a long time. You don’t date anybody. It’s time you remembered why men like women.”
His eyes narrowed. “Gracie put you up to this. Didn’t she?”
Jason shrugged and pursed his lips. “Pregnant women have cravings. Strawberry ice cream with pickle topping, crushed ice with mango, their friends getting asked to holiday balls …” He glanced at Grange with twinkling eyes. “You wouldn’t want to upset Gracie?”
“Yeah, hit me in my weak spot, why don’t you?” Grange muttered.
Jason grinned wider.
He shrugged. “Okay. I should be testing weapons and drilling men. But I’ll take the evening off and escort Peg to a ball I don’t want to attend. Why not?”
“And be nice, could you?” Jason groaned. “Just once?”
He snarled. “I hate nice. I’m not nice. I was a major in a forward company in Iraq.”
“It will be good practice for when you have to charm insurgents to surrender to your boss, the general.”
Grange smiled coldly. “I won’t need charm. I have several retooled automatic weapons and a few grenades.”
Jason just shook his head.
Peg was in the kitchen when Grange walked through the door of his ranch house. Jason had given him the house with the property, against his protests. Grange was still, technically, Jason’s foreman on the huge Pendleton Comanche Wells property. But when he had free time, he could build up his own herd and renovate the huge white elephant of a house. Jason was paying Ed’s salary. Grange was paying Peg’s.
He never failed to appreciate Jason’s generosity. The older man was a fanatic about repaying debts, and he felt that he owed Grange a lot for saving Gracie. Grange refused money, so Jason had found another way to repay him: the land, the house and the seed herd. It was worth a small fortune, but it was impossible to get around Jason when he was determined. Gracie had also been determined. In the end, Grange gave up and accepted with whatever grace he could manage. It was a hell of a reward. But it had been a desperate and dangerous mission. He could have died, so could his men. He’d managed the rescue in short time, and with no serious casualties. He hoped, he prayed, he’d be able to do the same with Emilio Machado’s invasion force the week after Thanksgiving, when they went to South America to liberate Barrera from a merciless dictator who had led a coup against Machado.
Peg was nineteen, vivacious, with long blond hair and green eyes and a wicked smile. She and her father had been alone for five years, since the death of her mother from an aggressive, vicious cancer. The two of them had ended up working for Jason Pendleton, but his obligation to Grange had settled them here, in this old house.
Neither of them minded. Ed loved being foreman of Grange’s small operation. He got the same salary he’d drawn from Jason at the Pendleton ranch property, but the duties were less rigorous and he had more free time. Peg, on the other hand, only had to cook for the three of them, and she was good at it. Not that the bunkhouse cook at Jason’s place didn’t stop by frequently to beg pies and cakes from her, because he couldn’t do those. Peg never minded. She loved to cook.
“You should be in college,” Grange said without preamble when he walked into the kitchen where she was just putting a meatloaf into the oven.
She glanced at him, laughed and stirred her potatoes, which were boiling. “Sure. I’ll go to Harvard next semester. Remind me to ask Dad for the tuition.”
He glared at her. “There are scholarships.”
“I was a straight-C student.”
“Work-study.”
She turned around and looked up at him. It was a long way. She only came up to his chin. Her long, light blond hair was in two pigtails and her sweatshirt was spotted with grease. So were her jeans. She never wore an apron. She pointed the spoon at him. “And what would I study, exactly?”
“Home economics?”
She glowered at him. “Do you really want me to go to college and live in a coed dorm?”
“Excuse me?”
“A dorm that has men and women living in the same rooms, when they don’t even know each other? Do you think I’m undressing in an apartment with a man I don’t know?”
He gaped at her. “You have to be kidding.”
“I am not. They have dorms for married couples. The rest have no choice about whether their dorm mates are male or female.” She glared harder. “I was raised to believe that things work in a certain way. That’s why I live in a place where people think like I do.” She shrugged. “I read this old book by a guy named Toffler. Thirty years ago, he predicted that there would be people out of step with society and who couldn’t fit in.” She turned to him. “That’s me. Out of step. Can’t fit in. Doesn’t belong anywhere. Well, anywhere except Jacobsville. Or Comanche Wells.”
He had to admit, he didn’t like the idea of her living in a dorm with male students she didn’t know. On the other hand, he wouldn’t like being forced to live with some woman he didn’t know. How the world had changed in a decade or so!
He leaned against the wall. “Okay. I guess you’re right. But you could commute to a college, or through the internet.”
“I’ve thought about that.”
He studied her pretty bow of a mouth, her rounded chin, her elegant neck. Her eyes were her finest feature, but the pigtails and lack of makeup did nothing for her.
She saw where he was staring and grinned. “Deterrents.”
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
“My pigtails and my lack of makeup. They keep suitors away. If you don’t care about fancy clothes and makeup, you’re smart, right? So men don’t like smart women.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “If I wanted a relationship, I’d like a smart woman. I have a degree in political science with a double major in that and Arabic language studies.”
The fork she was testing her potatoes with was suspended in midair. “You speak Arabic?”
He nodded. “Several dialects.”
Her eyes fell. “Oh.” She hadn’t realized that he was college educated. She felt suddenly inadequate. He’d said that she needed to go to college herself. Did he find her unattractive because her mind wasn’t developed like his? Or did he want her to leave?
He frowned. She looked worried. He recalled what Jason had said about that designer gown she’d been loaned. He grimaced. Well, he didn’t really have any plans to take another woman …
“How about going to the Cattleman’s Ball with me?” he asked bluntly.
She went from doubt and misery to euphoria in five seconds flat. She gaped at him. “Me?”
“Well, I don’t think your Dad would look very good in a ball gown,” he replied.
“The ball,” she said, confused.
He nodded. “I hate parties,” he said flatly. “But I guess I can stand it for a couple of hours.”
She nodded. She looked blank.
“If you want to go?” he asked, because she looked … He wasn’t sure how she looked.
“Yes!”
He laughed. The fork had flown out of her hand in her excitement. It landed, oddly, right in the sink. He laughed harder. “Nice toss. You might consider the NBA.”
“Oh, I don’t play football.”
He