The Cowboy and the Lady by Diana Palmer

Mandy, in any way, I will,” he said suddenly.
    His kindness, coming on the heels of Jace’s antagonism, was her undoing. Hot tears swelled up in her eyes and overflowed onto her cheeks in a silent flood.
    “Mandy,” he said sympathetically, and drew her gently against him, rocking her softly while she cried. “Poor little mite, it’s been rough, hasn’t it? I should have been keeping in touch. You need looking after.”
    She shook her head. “I can take care of myself,” she mumbled.
    “Sure you can, darling.” He laughed gently, patting her shoulder.
    “It’s just…if I could will Mama to somebody with tremendous assets,” she laughed.
    “Some rich man will come along and save you eventually,” he told her. “After all, your mama is still a beautiful woman. Sweet, intelligent…”
    “…addlepated and selfish,” she finished with a wry grin, drawing back to pull a handkerchief from her purse and dab at her wet eyes with it. “I don’t usually give in to self-pity. Sorry. It gets to be a heavy load sometimes, having all the responsibility.”
    “Which you shouldn’t, at your age,” he said tautly. “You haven’t been able to do anything but support her since it all happened. I know you don’t mind, but the fact is, you’re not being allowed a life of your own. All you’re doing is working to keep Bea up. There’s nothing left for you to enjoy after you pay the bills, and it isn’t fair, Amanda.”
    “Duncan, if I don’t do it, who will?” she asked gently. “Mother can’t work. She’s never had to. What would she do?”
    “People could rent her, an hour at a time, to stand in the corner and look beautiful while holding a lamp or something,” he suggested.
    She burst out laughing at the idea. “You’re horrible.”
    “That’s why you like me,” he returned. “Amanda, remember the summer we tied bows on Jace’s sale bulls just before that auction?”
    She whistled softly. “Do I ever! We’d never have outrun him if you hadn’t got that brilliant idea to turn out all his brood mares as we went through the barn.”
    “That made him even madder,” he recalled. “I went to spend a week with my aunt that very evening, before Jace got back from the sale. And you, if I remember rightly, went away immediately to boarding school.”
    “I felt it would be safer living in Switzerland at that point in my life.” She grinned. “He was furious!”
    He sighed. “They were good days, weren’t they, Amanda?”
    She nodded. “What a shame that we have to grow up and become dignified.”

Chapter Six
    T hey were homeward bound when some unfamiliar sound woke her. She sat straight up in the seat to find Duncan struggling with the controls, his face more somber than she’d seen it in years.
    “What’s the matter?” she asked with a worried frown.
    He was bending slightly forward, one hand on the wheel, the other on the instrument panel. “I think it’s the left mag, but I can’t tell yet.”
    “Mag?” she echoed.
    “Magneto.” He reached for the ignition switch and turned it momentarily left and then right. The plane was literally doing a hula in midair. Duncan gritted his teeth. “I’m going to try different power settings and ease in on the mixture, then I’ll know if we can risk going on,” he mumbled to himself.
    She just stared, the language he was speaking vaguely incomprehensible to her. But whatever he was doing, it didn’t seem to help. The vibration in the plane was terrible.
    He cursed under his breath. “Well, that’s it. We’ll have to put it down at Seven Bridges and have it fixed. I won’t risk going any farther like this.”
    Duncan nosed the Cessna down where the string of runway lights stretched like a double strand of glowing pearls through a low-lying mist.
    “God, I hope there’s not a cow on the landing strip,” he mumbled as he held the vibrating airplane on course.
    “You’re such a comfort to me, Duncan,” she said, biting back her