A Fortune's Children's Christmas by Barbara Boswell, Lisa Jackson, Linda Turner Page A

then I might be interested in buying you out. I know how much the mortgage is, and I’d give you enough above that so as you’d have yourself a tidy little profit. You could rent the house back from me or buy a place in town.”
    Lesley was stunned at his offer. “I—I’m not interested in selling.”
    “I know, honey, I know,” he said, and reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. “But there are timesin a man’s life—well, a woman’s, too, I suppose—where he has to do something he doesn’t like much.” His gaze fell onto Angela’s dark crown. “Sometimes we have to think about what’s best for those who depend on us.”
    Lesley felt a lump clog her throat.
    “When Aaron died, I told myself I’d look after you, and even though it didn’t turn out quite the way I thought, I’ll make good on my offer.” His smile was benign. “Maybe it’s time you faced the fact that this place is too much for you.”
    Never, she thought foolishly, her pride wounded as he lit his cigarette and headed to his truck. Though his offer seemed to come from his heart, she couldn’t just give up her home, Angela’s home. Or could she? Wouldn’t financial security be worth something? A house in town, paid for, with no worries about water rights, the fluctuating price of oats, harsh weather or complicated foaling. She could get a teaching job, have a steady income, and even if she wasn’t home all day, she’d have security and summer vacations at home with Angela. She bit her lip and considered Ray’s offer. Though she felt an ocean of relief when he climbed into his truck and rolled out the drive, she couldn’t dismiss his opinion.
    She didn’t really trust Ray, especially when he’d hinted that she and he could get together. She shuddered at the thought. He was the kind of man who thought he was doing a woman a favor by raining attention her way. Some women ate it up, Lesley supposed, but not she. She wasn’t that desperate. At leastnot yet. She’d tutor more kids, take in a boarder, rent out part of her land, do just about anything rather than become some man’s paid trinket.
    Or she could sell the ranch. Her gaze swept the outbuildings and rolling acres, the small yard and garden, the sagging fences and sturdy horses, to finally land on the pump house that was absolutely useless when the water table lowered in late summer. This place had once been Chase’s home, his safe little corner of the world, until everything he’d trusted fell apart. He’d had to give it up once, she supposed she could, as well, though she’d come to love it here. She’d grown up moving from town to town until she settled here with Aaron. Despite her loveless marriage, she loved the land.
    She held on to her baby more firmly, and Angela cooed softly. Lesley had to think of her child first. Before anything else. This wouldn’t beat her down. She wouldn’t let it. Stiffening her spine, she looked to the horizon and noticed the way the fields sloped ever upward into the forested foothills of the mountains.
    Maybe she should sell out.
    Maybe she had no choice.
     
    “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Kate said as she sat behind her large, neat-as-a-proverbial-pin desk. “I know it’s a hideous old expression but it’s true, Chase.”
    He was seated in a chair in her office, one booted foot resting on his opposing knee. He’d come to Minnesota at his great-aunt’s request and left her a printed update on his ranch’s profitability.
    “You don’t like my idea.”
    “No matter how noble it is for you to give Lesley and her child your interest in the Waterman place, to sign over water rights, I think it’s premature. Don’t you want a place of your own?”
    He glowered at his great-aunt. She knew what his own ranch meant to him. “Of course I do. But some things are more important than owning a scrap of land.”
    Instead of being furious with him for throwing in the towel on the operation, Kate smiled,