Heart of Ice by Diana Palmer

the wording and then let it go. Why start trouble?
    “No comeback?” Egan chided. “No remarks about my tyrannical personality?”
    “Why, Mr. Winthrop, I’m the very soul of tact,” she said haughtily.
    “Especially when you’re telling me to go to hell,” was the lightning comeback.
    She flushed, noticing Ramey’s puzzled look.
    “We, uh, sometimes have our, uh, little differences,” she tried to explain.
    “Yes, ma’am, I recall,” Ramey murmured, and she remembered that he’d been nearby when she had walked furiously off the ranch that summer.
    She cleared her throat. “Well, you do have the Tetons at your back door, don’t you?” she asked Egan, who seemed to be enjoying her discomfort.
    He followed her gaze to the high peaks rising behind the house. “Indeed we do. And the river within sight of the front door,” he added, indicating the winding silver ribbon of the Snake that cut through the valley far below the house.
    “Elk and moose and antelope graze out there during the winter,” he told her. “And buffalo used to, in frontier days.”
    “I’ve never seen a moose,” she said.
    “Maybe this time,” he told her.
    She watched as Egan’s elderly housekeeper waddled onto the front porch, shading her eyes against the blinding white of the snow. Egan left thetruck idling for Ramey and lifted Kati off the seat and into his hard arms. The sheepskin coat he wore made him seem twice as broad across the chest and shoulders.
    “You’re hardly equipped for walking in the snow,” he murmured, indicating her high heels. “I hope you packed some sensible things.”
    “Hiking boots, jeans and sweaters,” she said smartly.
    “Good girl. Hold on.”
    She clung as he strode easily through the high blanket of snow and up onto the steps, his boots echoing even through the snow against the hard wood. Dessie Teal was watching with a grin, her broad face all smiles under her brown eyes and salt-and-pepper hair.
    “I never would have believed it,” she muttered as Egan set Kati back on her feet. “And I don’t see a bruise on either one of you.”
    “We don’t fight all the time,” Egan said coolly.
    “Well, neither do them Arabs, Egan,” Dessie returned, “but I was just remarking how nice it was that you and Miss James seemed to be in a state of temporary truce, that’s all.”
    “She came to research a book about Wyoming in the old days,” Egan told the old woman gruffly, his eyes daring her to make anything else of it.
    Dessie shrugged. “Whatever you want to call it. A book about frontier days, huh?” she asked, leading Kati into the house. “Well, you just go talk to Gig,he’ll tell you more than any book will. His daddy fought in the Johnson County range war.”
    Kati asked what that had been about and was treated to fifteen minutes of Wyoming history, including references to the range wars between cattlemen and sheepmen, and the ferocity of Wyoming winters.
    “My brother froze to death working cattle one winter,” Dessie added later, when Kati had changed into jeans, boots and a sweater and was drinking coffee with the housekeeper in the kitchen. “He fell and broke his leg and couldn’t get up again. He was solid ice when one of the men found him.” She shivered delicately. “This ain’t the place for tenderfeet, I’ll tell you.” She paused in the act of putting a big roast into the oven. “How come you and Egan ain’t fighting?”
    “He’s trying to get me into bed,” Kati returned bluntly and grinned wickedly at the housekeeper’s blush.
    “I deserved that,” Dessie muttered and burst into laughter. “I sure did. Ask a foolish question…Well, I might as well make it worse. Is he going to?”
    Kati shook her head slowly. “Not my kind of life,” she said. “I’m too old-fashioned.”
    “Good for you,” Dessie said vehemently. “Honest to God, I don’t know what’s got into girls these days. Why, we used to go two or three dates before we’d hold