by Diana Palmer
Join New York Times bestseller Diana Palmer as she revisits another unforgettable Long, Tall Texans story!
Tom Walker has never believed in true love. A difficult upbringing hardened his heart many years ago, but Elysia Craig is slowly but surely melting his tough exterior. The innocent blonde makes him want to be a different man. But can Tom change from a rough ‘n’ tumble bachelor to the forever husband Elysia deserves?
Dear Reader,
I really can’t express how flattered I am and also how grateful I am to Harlequin Books for releasing this collection of my published works. It came as a great surprise. I never think of myself as writing books that are collectible. In fact, there are days when I forget that writing is work at all. What I do for a living is so much fun that it never seems like a job. And since I reside in a small community, and my daily life is confined to such mundane things as feeding the wild birds and looking after my herb patch in the backyard, I feel rather unconnected from what many would think of as a glamorous profession.
But when I read my email, or when I get letters from readers, or when I go on signing trips to bookstores to meet all of you, I feel truly blessed. Over the past thirty years, I have made lasting friendships with many of you. And quite frankly, most of you are like part of my family. You can’t imagine how much you enrich my life. Thank you so much.
I also need to extend thanks to my family (my husband, James, son, Blayne, daughter-in-law, Christina, and granddaughter, Selena Marie), to my best friend, Ann, to my readers, booksellers and the wonderful people at Harlequin Books—from my editor of many years, Tara, to all the other fine and talented people who make up our publishing house. Thanks to all of you for making this job and my private life so worth living.
Thank you for this tribute, Harlequin, and for putting up with me for thirty long years! Love to all of you.
Diana Palmer
LONG, TALL TEXANS: TOM
DIANA PALMER
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
PROLOGUE
The christening was a delightful affair. It seemed that everyone in Jacobsville, Texas, was there to give their best wishes to Dr. Jebediah Coltrain and his wife, Dr. Louise Coltrain, on the birth of their son, John Daniel.
Afterward, at the reception, the champagne flowed like water. The beautiful day in mid-June was clear and warm.
Dr. Drew Morris was standing close to the punch bowl enjoying the company of his friends. Beside him stood Ted Regan and Ted’s foreman, Jobe Dodd, along with Ted’s sister, Sandy. Sandy was giving Jobe a black glare, which he was returning with interest. On the other side of him stood newcomer to town Tom Walker, who’d just opened an investment firm.
“I need to talk to you about some investments next week,” Drew told Tom with a grin. “I had a good year and I want to do something with my cash overflow.”
“I’ll be glad to do whatever I can for you, Dr. Morris,” Tom said with a grin on his dark, handsome face.
“By the way,” Drew added, “if you’re in the market for any computer equipment, Ted’s sister there is the lady to see.” He nodded toward Sandy. “She works for one of the big computer franchises, and she’s a whiz with electronics.”
“Sure is,” big blond Jobe Dodd said mockingly. “Pity she can’t stay on a horse.”
“The devil I can’t!” Sandy shot back, her blue eyes flaming.
“Now, now.” Ted separated them. “Go fight somewhere else. We’re here to celebrate a christening, not to start a war.”
They glared at him and went their separate ways.
“Whew!” Ted sighed. “It’s like that all the time lately! Coreen and I are about to the point of taking our baby and running for cover. I wish they’d kill each other and get it over with.”
“They do seem volatile,” Drew agreed, sipping punch.
“How’s your new employee working out?” Ted asked him.
“She can’t dress herself, she can’t walk through the office without tripping over something and she’s forever trying to work without her glasses because she thinks she looks better that way.” He threw up his hands. “It’s a pity they outlawed flogging…”
“How kinky,” Ted murmured.
Drew glared at him and stalked off.
Ted chuckled. His prematurely silver hair sparkled in the light as he glanced at Tom, the only companion left. “That just about clears away the group around the punch bowl,” he mused, and helped himself to another cup of champagne punch. “Don’t you want to glare at me and storm off, too?”
Tom grinned, his green eyes twinkling. “I don’t have any reason to, just yet. Besides, this punch is really good.”
“How’s business?”
“Going great,” Tom told him, sipping the drink. “Coming down here was one of the best moves I ever made. Matt Caldwell was right. I do have an open field here. I can’t keep up with all the work, and I’ve barely set up my office.”
“Glad to hear it.” Ted studied the younger man over his cup of punch. “Old man Gallagher said you had a dog.”
“He’s sort of a toothache with fur,” Tom murmured and then grinned at the other man. “I found him in a storm, under a city mailbox in Houston. He was just a little ball of fur and scared to death, so I took him home.” He took a swallow of champagne punch. “Now he weighs ninety pounds and he’s uncivilized. He is housebroken, in a sense, but I’d actually call him a housebreaker. I only have one ceramic thing left.” He glanced at Ted. “I don’t suppose you need a cattle dog?”
Ted chuckled. “No. Thanks. I gave Coreen a pup before we got married. He’s grown now and he’s smart enough to do what little herding I need around the place.”
“I wouldn’t really give Moose up, anyway,” Tom confessed. “I’m all alone, and he’s company.” His eyes had a sad, faraway look for an instant, before he wiped it away. “The Coltrain baby’s cute.”
“So he is,” Ted agreed, glancing at the two doctors with the baby. “I wonder if he’ll be a redhead like his dad or a blonde like his mom?”
“No telling,” Tom said. “How old is your boy?”
“Just a few months,” Ted said, sighing. “Never dreamed I’d become a father at my age. Hell, I never dreamed I’d get married.” His eyes searched the room and found Coreen’s blue ones. She had their little boy in her arms. They never left him for a minute, even with so many willing baby-sitters around. He was a treasure, like their love for each other.
Drew Morris saw that look, and poignant memories flooded through him as he rejoined the men. He’d loved his wife. After she died he’d never thought of finding someone else. He still mourned her. He glanced at Tom, who looked as alone and sad as he felt. Farther away, Jobe Dodd was glaring at Sandy Regan, who was standing near Coreen. He wondered if all that hostility had something beneath it?
He sighed and lifted his cup. Ted and Tom lifted theirs, too. The others in the room caught on, and Jobe Dodd lifted his with theirs toward the two doctors and their son. It was going to be quite a summer in Jacobsville.
“Cheers!” they all said in unison.
Three men in the privacy of their own minds stared at the child and wondered how it would be if they had families. Each of them was sure that he never would.
CHAPTER ONE
There was a muffled crash from the living room and Tom Walker let out a weary sigh as he turned from unpacking the few small kitchen appliances that had come with him from Houston.
“Moose!” he grumbled. He got up from the floor and left the box sitting to see what latest disaster his pet had caused.
It had all started with a rainstorm and a tiny, frightened little ball of fur hiding under a metal mailbox in downtown Houston. Somebody had abandoned the puppy and Tom had been unable to leave it there on the side of a busy street. But the act of compassion had repercussions. Big ones. The tiny puppy had grown into a gorgeous but enormous German shepherd mix whom he had named Shep, but who was later rechristened Moose.
As he stood watching the huge animal settle himself among the remains of a once-elegant antique bowl on the big coffee table, he reflected that the new name was appropriate. It was like having a moose in the house.
“Kate will never forgive you,” he said pointedly, remembering how happy his sister had been when, newly married, she had given him the bowl as a Christmas gift. “That was a Christmas present. It was handmade by a famous Native American potter!”
“Woof,” Moose replied in his deep dog voice, and grinned at him.
The vet had said that Moose was still going through his puppy stage.
“Will he outgrow it?” Tom had asked plaintively, having taken the big dog to the vet after Moose had gone swimming in a neighbor’s outdoor goldfish pond.
“Sure!” the vet had assured him, and just as Tom began to sigh with relief, he added with a wicked grin, “Four, five years from now, he’ll calm right down!”
Resigned, he took the big dog back home and hoped he could adapt to living among pottery shards and disemboweled furniture for the next few years of his life.
One of his neighbors had offered to buy Moose who, while a walking disaster, was absolutely beautiful, with a black coat of fur that shone like coal in sunlight, and stark white markings with medium brown eyebrows and facial markings.
Tom had replied that he liked the man too much to sell Moose to him.
He gave the coffee table one last look, shook his head and went into the kitchen to make coffee. Just as he started the coffeemaker, he heard a crunching noise and turned to find that while he’d been occupied with coffee, Moose had overturned the kitchen trash can and spread the contents all over the linoleum floor. He was munching contentedly on an apple core amidst coffee grounds, banana peels and empty TV dinner cartons.
“Oh, Lord,” Tom prayed silently. He took the apple core away, set the trash can upright and went to find a broom. What a good thing that he wasn’t entertaining thoughts of marriage. No woman in her right mind would put up with his canine companion.
He was thirty-four. He should have been long-since married, but he and his sister, Kate, had been victims of a shocking, terrible upbringing that had stunted them sexually. Their father had beaten both of them as children and raised the devil every time one of them so much as smiled at the opposite sex. In fact, sex, he lectured, was the greatest sin of all. He was a lay minister, so they believed him.
What they hadn’t known at the time was that he had a brain tumor that modified his once-loving personality and eventually killed him. Their long-missing mother had been found by Jacob Cade, his sister Kate’s husband, and presented to them both at Jacob and Kate’s wedding, over six years ago. It had been a painful reunion until they learned that far from deserting them as children, their mother had never dreamed that their father would kidnap them and spirit them away from her. But he had done just that. She’d spent half a lifetime using money from her meager salary trying to find them again. She lived in Missouri, but they both saw her frequently. Now that Kate was married and had a son, their mother often visited her.
Tom wondered if he could ever marry. Kate had, but then Jacob Cade had been the love of her life since her early teens. Presumably Kate’s fear of the physical side of marriage had been overcome. She and Cade had a son, who was five years old. And although they’d tried to have a second child, they hadn’t been able to just yet.
He’d have liked children. But his one sexual experience had left him sick with guilt. Kate’s wedding had pointed out, as nothing else ever had, how very alone he was. He’d gone back to his job with an advertising firm in New York City and that weekend, to a local bar to drown his sorrows.
She’d been there at a going-away party for one of the girls in the office. Elysia Craig had been his secretary for two years. She was a pretty blonde with gray eyes and a neat little figure who was teased by her coworkers for being so prim and prudish. Tom thought it was a joke. He never realized that she was as inexperienced as he was. Not until it was far too late. His most vivid memory of Elysia was of her crouching in the full-size bed in his apartment with a white sheet clutched to her breasts, weeping like a widow. He’d hurt her without meaning to, and the tears had been the last straw. He couldn’t remember saying a single word to her as she dressed and got into the cab he called for her. He’d been far too inebriated and sick to drive by then.
He hadn’t known how to apologize, or explain. His behavior had shamed him. He couldn’t even meet her eyes the next morning, or speak to her. Most of the women in the office where he worked were sophisticated and savvy, but Elysia wasn’t. His inability to communicate with her provoked her into quitting her job that very day and going back home to Texas. To his shame, he hadn’t even looked for her. He’d still been fighting feelings of shame and guilt, holdovers from his brutal childhood, despite the aching hunger he’d felt for Elysia.
Her gentle, kind nature was what had attracted him to her in the first place, but except for his excessive drinking he would never have approached her. His feelings for her he’d kept secret, never dreaming that he might one day end up in bed with her. It had been the most exquisite experience of his life, but the guilt had made him sick, so he pushed it to the back of his mind and tried to forget it.
Not long afterward, he’d given up his advertising job and studied the investment business. His first job had been as an assistant advisor with a well-known national company. Then he’d moved to Houston, Texas, to open his own office in the building with a friend, Logan Deverell. But he’d gotten wanderlust again when Logan had married his long-suffering secretary.
He’d arrived in Jacobsville three weeks ago, thanks to another mutual friend, Matt Caldwell, who owned a stud farm out of town. Matt was friends with the Ballenger brothers, Calhoun and Justin, who owned a huge feedlot and liked to invest their earnings. They were all mutual friends of the Tremayne brothers, who owned properties all over Texas. Before he’d even had time to unpack, Tom had all the business he could handle.
A real-estate agent in town had dabbled in the properties market, but since she’d remarried her ex-husband, a pilot, they’d moved house to Atlanta. The nearest investment counselor now was in Victoria. Tom had no competition at all, for the moment, in Jacobsville. It seemed like a dream come true.
Then, yesterday, out of the blue, a new client had walked in the door—Luke Craig—and the bottom had fallen out of Tom’s life. Luke had a sister, recently widowed with a small daughter. Her first name was Elysia.
Tom poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down on the sofa. Moose jumped up beside him to rest his chin on his master’s leg.
He petted the big dog absently. “Don’t think I’m forgetting the broken pot or the garbage,” he murmured.
Moose sighed and gave him a baleful look.
Tom sipped coffee and wondered what he was going to do. Of all the quirks of fate, to land himself in the one town in America where he couldn’t bear to live. No wonder it had all seemed too good to be true. Fate was playing a monstrous joke on him. The woman he’d seduced lived right here. Apparently she’d married and had a child after she’d come home. He wondered if she remembered him, and then chided himself for his own stupidity. Of course she did. He’d been her first experience, just as she’d been his. She didn’t know that. She’d still think that he’d seduced and abandoned her, like some big city playboy without a conscience. What a joke.
He put the coffee cup down. Moose was snoring softly. He stroked the huge head and thought how nice it was to have a companion, even such a one as this.
He didn’t know how
he was going to cope, but he knew he would. Jacobsville was a small town, but not all that small. He might never run into Elysia. Worry at this stage was premature. He had all this unpacking to do that he’d put off for almost a month. He’d do better to go to work and stop tormenting himself with things that might never happen. He probably wouldn’t recognize the woman, anyway. It had been years ago, after all.
* * *
Fate must have been howling the next morning when he drove to work, parked his car and started into the office. Next door to his office was an insurance agency. And heading toward it was a blond woman in jeans, boots, a T-shirt under a flannel shirt and a neat French braid.
Elysia.
She stopped dead when she was close enough to recognize him. Gone were the big-rimmed spectacles she’d worn when she worked for him. Gone was the racehorse thinness. She’d filled out. She still wasn’t pretty, but she was very attractive. He couldn’t help staring at her.
She moved closer, not shy or reticent as she had been. She looked right at him. “I heard you’d moved here to open an investment office. My brother said you looked strange when he mentioned my name. I told him I used to work for you, nothing else.” She laughed bitterly. “So you don’t have to worry about being lynched. Feel better, Mr. Walker?”
The unexpected assault had tied his tongue. She wasn’t the same girl he’d known at all.
His dark green eyes lanced down into hers. “You’ve changed, Miss Craig.”
“Mrs. Nash.” She corrected him.
His eyebrow jerked. “Mrs. Nash,” he said.
She seemed less assertive all at once. “My husband died last year. He had cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He was sick for a long time,” she murmured. “It’s trite to say it, but he really is better off.”
“I see.”