The ranch was a hell of a spread: endless fields, white fences, gardens, roads, a huge low-slung house and no tumbleweed. He found the old man out back in a stone stable with the horses. “Hey, Pops,” David said.

J. Land Crockett glanced up, looking mildly offended.

David grinned. “Nice place you got here.”

“Thank you.”

“Land interests me.”

“Does it?” The old man moved away from a stall. “My father’s father had a shack on this property in the last century. When my father struck oil on Spindletop, he bought up as much land around the shack as he could.” He looked at his grandson with steely black-blue eyes. “It’s always saddened me to think this place would no longer be in the Crockett family when I die.”

“What you need, old man, is family, not money.”

Crockett looked amused, and touched. “You think so?”

“Damn right. Land and family—what the hell else is there?”

“Nothing of any meaning,” J. Land Crockett said quietly. “Is that what you came here to tell me?”

“Nope. Came here to tell you to shove your billions.”

Crockett looked stricken.

David went over to his grandfather and clapped him on the shoulder. He breathed in the musty smell of the barn and was suddenly glad he’d come. “But this place... Would you mind showing me around?”

Ashley set the Christmas tree in the window overlooking the front yard, away from the potbelly stove, and she got the old cloth suitcase of decorations down out of the attic and decorated the tree herself. David was in Texas with J. Land Crockett. Barky was in Hungary. She’d had a card from him, saying he’d stolen the Balaton jewels from her and David and was donating them to the new museum at Balaton Castle. Ashley had laughed. That, at least, had seemed right. Lately so little did.

Touchstone Communications was rolling merrily along, with or without her. The New England Oceanographic Institute had come out with a report stating that the new wing was a resounding, astounding success and they all, but especially Ashley, were to be congratulated. Since she’d missed the deadline, someone else had written her column for Currents, saying exactly what she’d wanted to say, only better.

There was a sense of completion about her life that hadn’t been there before. And also of emptiness.

Outside, snow had begun to fall. She put Mitch Miller’s Christmas carols on Barky’s old record player and sang “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” while she placed cheap ornaments on the fresh tree and watched the snow and cried.

She was getting sentimental....

She’d been invited to dozens of Christmas parties. There were literally hundreds of places to go, thousands of people who would love to have the dolphin-rescuing, hot-shit mystery daughter of Judith Land over to see them.

She thought of warmth. She thought of family and love and happiness. David had already called: he and J. Land Crockett were getting along famously, already plotting ways to improve the ranch.