"Easy!" she scoffed after she'd stumbled into him three times and almost upset a waiter with a tray of drinks headed for the restaurant at the other end of the club. No alcohol was allowed near the dance floor itself.

He chuckled. "You're rusty, kid," he teased. "You've been spending too much time around cattle and not enough around attractive, dashing men like me."

She looked up at his good looks and twinkling dark eyes and burst out laughing. "And so modest!"

"I'm modest. After all, I have so much to be modest about," he assured her.

She leaned against him with a breathless laugh. "Daryl, you're a wonder."

He hugged her close. "Sure I am. You really need to marry me," he added with a smile. "Your father says so every time he sees me."

She grimaced. "I like you a lot, but my dad is looking at mergers, not relationships. It's a flat economy and he's diversifying his investments. Like your folks," she added drily.

He shrugged. "I haven't met anybody I really want to marry," he said honestly. "You're pretty and sweet, and you won't be marrying me for my money," he added in a cold tone.

She stopped dancing and looked up. "Somebody did want to marry you for it," she guessed.

He nodded. "She was sweet and pretty, too. I went nuts over her. Then, just before I was getting ready to propose, I saw her at a party sneaking into a bedroom with the host. They came back out a few minutes later, disheveled and laughing, and when I asked, she said sure she slept with him. He'd given her a diamond dinner ring and she wanted to pay him back for it." His face hardened. "She said everybody did it, why was I so uptight? It was just sex."

Morie searched his black eyes quietly. "That's the attitude most people have today. Everything is okay now. Multiple lovers are the rule. Funny, isn't it, that fifty years ago men and women alike were held to a higher standard of morality and families stayed together. Isn't the divorce rate something like fifty percent?"

"Probably higher." He sighed. "I'm so old-fashioned that I don't fit in anywhere."

"So am I, sweet man," she replied, and pressed close to him, closing her eyes. "Maybe I should marry you, Daryl. We're alike in a lot of ways. I really do like you."

He hugged her close. "I like you, too, honey. I guess there are worse reasons to base a marriage on."

She kept her eyes closed as they danced and tried not to think about how it had felt when Mallory held her close and kissed her in that incredibly sexy way and made her head spin. Maybe it would be safer to marry a man she only liked. Passionate love surely made life more complicated.

He kissed her hair. "What kind of ring would you like?" he asked matter-of-factly.

She drew in a long breath. "I don't know. Maybe a ruby. I like rubies."

"Coincidentally, my family has investments in a jewelry chain," he teased. "So you can have whatever stone you fancy, and we'll have a designer make it into your dream wedding set."

Her dream wedding set would have included Mallory as the groom, but she couldn't say that. She was falling into her father's net headfirst, letting him rule her life. She'd tried rebellion, however, and it had ended badly. Very badly. It might be time to listen to her father's advice and do something sensible. After all, Daryl was highly eligible and quite good-looking, and they'd known each other for a long time. It wouldn't be a passionate relationship. But it would be a lasting one, she was certain.

Now all she had to do was stop thinking about Mallory Kirk. That wasn't going to be easy.

MALLORY WAS HAVING PROBLEMS of his own. His brothers refused to be in the same room with Gelly, and when she came to the ranch, they made their disapproval known by walking away the minute her small used car pulled up at the front porch.

"Do you have to make it so obvious that you don't like her?" Mallory raged to Cane.

Cane gave him a cold look. "She framed Morie."

"Damn it, she did not! Gelly just happened to be riding with Bates when he mentioned what he'd seen."

"Like she just happened to know about the stolen drill in our former employee's suitcase," Cane retorted. "Anybody who makes Gelly mad gets fired."

Mallory averted his dark eyes. "Coincidence."

Cane stuck his hand in his pocket and went to the picture window to look out over the acres of green pasture just starting to stick up through the latest snow. "And I won't agree to let her friend buy that so-called scrubland, in case you were going to ask."

"Neither will I," Tank added curtly as he joined them.

Mallory didn't reply. He'd had Gelly harping on it for days. He was almost ready to sell it just to get her off his back. When she wasn't being obnoxious, she was sweeter than she'd ever been. She caressed him and kissed him and told him how handsome he was, and how happy she was that he'd been saved from that money-grubbing girl he'd had to fire.

For a man whose lack of conventional good looks was imposing, it was an ego trip of the finest kind. It blinded him to her other faults. He wouldn't concede that he was vulnerable because he was guilt-ridden over firing Morie on flimsy circumstantial evidence.

"Did that key to the display case ever show up?" Cane asked suddenly and with narrowed eyes.

Mallory joined him at the picture window, his hands jammed deep into his jean pockets. "Yeah," he replied. "Found it in my coat pocket. I guess I forgot and put it there instead of back in the drawer where we keep it."

"Odd," Tank commented.

And Gelly knew about the key and where it was kept, because she'd admired that egg once and Mallory had pulled out the key to open the case and let her hold it. He didn't mention that.

They moved to the display case and studied the egg.

"You know," Mallory said suddenly, frowning, "it looks funny."

"I was just noticing that," Cane replied curtly. "Open it."

Mallory brought the key out of the drawer and opened the glass doors of the ornate, wood-scrolled cabinet. He picked up the egg and frowned. "These settings look slipshod. And here-" he indicated the jewels "-they don't look... Good God, it's a fake!"

Cane's jaw tautened. "A cheap fake."

Mallory was seething. "Morie," he said flatly. "She had the real one in her rucksack."

"She handed it back to you," Tank replied angrily. "You put it back in the case. I saw you do it. Morie was gone by then!"

Mallory didn't want to admit that. It suited him to think Morie was a thief. He'd sent her packing, wounded her pride, treated her like a criminal, all on the word of a cowboy he hardly knew and a woman who harried him night and day to employ her friends and sell land to them.

His lean face was harassed. "Yes," he had to concede, his eyes stormy. "She was gone by then."

And all the joy in his life had gone with her. He was left with the emptiness in his heart and the certainty of long years ahead with Gelly to assuage the ache Morie had left behind. She couldn't do it. He liked Gelly, but she didn't stir him, not even with her most passionate kisses, except in the most basic way. Intellectually, she was a no-show. Her conversational skills revolved around popular television shows and movies and the latest fashions.

"It's time to call in private detectives," Cane said flatly. "In fact, Morie advised that some time ago, when I talked to her at the line cabin."

Mallory glared at him. "What were you doing out there?"

His brother smiled coldly. "Looking for Morie after you'd upset her."

"She was a hire. She stuck her nose into everything around here," he muttered.

"Yes, like making canapes for a party and helping cook-and she didn't even ask for extra pay or complain that she didn't get it," Tank reminded him.