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silence.
    â€œI wish your mother was here,” he said.
    She smiled sadly. “So do I.”
    â€œWell, we’ll make the most of what we have and thank God for it.”
    She nodded. “We have more than some people do.”
    He smiled, seeing her mother’s face in her own. “And a lot more than most,” he added. “I’m glad you came home for Christmas.”
    â€œSo am I. Eat your soup.” She poured him some more, and thought that she was going to make this Christmas as happy for him as she could.

Chapter Two
    D awson Rutherford was tall, lean and drop-dead gorgeous with blond, wavy hair and eyes that seemed to pierce skin. Even if he hadn’t been so handsome, his physical presence was more than enough to make him attractive, added to a deep voice that had the smoothness of velvet, even in anger. But he was as icy a man as she’d ever known, especially with women. At his father’s funeral, she’d actually seen him back away from a beautiful woman to avoid being touched. Odd, that, when she knew for a fact that he’d been quite a rounder with women in his checkered past.
    If Antonia hadn’t given her heart to Powell Long so many years before, she wouldn’t have minded setting her cap at Dawson, intimidating though hewas. But he was plainly meant for another type of woman altogether. Barrie, perhaps.
    It was Christmas Eve, and he’d stopped by with a pipe for her father. Antonia walked him out a few minutes later.
    â€œShame on you,” she muttered, pausing on the porch.
    Dawson’s green eyes twinkled. “He’ll get over the bronchitis. Besides, you know he won’t quit smoking, whether or not I give him a new pipe. You’ve tried and I’ve tried for years to break him. The best we can do is make him smoke it outdoors.”
    â€œI know that,” she agreed, and smiled. “Well, it was a nice gesture.”
    â€œWant to see what he gave me?” he asked, and produced a smooth silver lighter with inlaid turquoise.
    â€œI didn’t know you smoked,” she observed.
    â€œI don’t.”
    Her eyes widened.
    â€œI did, just briefly, smoke cigars.” He corrected himself. “I gave it up months ago. He doesn’t know, so don’t tell him.”
    â€œI won’t. But good for you!” she said approvingly.
    He shrugged. “I don’t know any smokers who don’t want to quit.” His eyes narrowed, and he watched her without blinking. “Except one, maybe.”
    She knew he was talking about Powell, who alwayshad smoked cigars, and presumably still did. Her face began to close up. “Don’t say it.”
    â€œI won’t. You look tortured.”
    â€œIt was nine years ago.”
    â€œSomebody should have shot him for the way he treated you,” he replied. “I’ve never liked him, but that didn’t win him any points with me. I loved my father. It was a low thing, for Sally to make him out a foolish old man with a lust for young girls.”
    â€œShe wanted Powell.”
    His eyes narrowed. “She got him. But he made her pay for it, let me tell you. She took to alcohol because he left her alone so much, and from all accounts, he hated their daughter.”
    â€œBut why?” Antonia asked, shocked. “Powell loved children, surely…!”
    â€œSally trapped him with the child,” he replied. “Except for that, he’d have left her. Don’t you think he knew what a stupid thing he’d done? He knew the truth, almost from the day he married Sally.”
    â€œBut he stayed with her.”
    â€œHe had to. He was trying to build a ranch out of nothing, and this is a small town. How would it look for a man to walk out on a pregnant woman, or on his own newborn daughter?” He pursed his lips. “He hates you, you know,” he added surprisingly. “He hates you for not making him listen, for running. He