Tess hugged her warmly. "Now, now," she said soothingly. "It's all right."
"I'm not going to fire you," Dane said. "If Logan wants to refuse to pay, that's his affair. The agency won't lose that much. But he will," he added curtly. "The next time Tansy takes a powder, he can damned well track her down himself."
"Not on my account," Kit pleaded. "I don't want any of you in trouble because of me."
"You're our employee," Dane said curtly. "That makes you family. Nobody, but nobody, threatens family around here."
Kit forced a smile. "You're very kind."
"It's easy to be kind to nice people. You go back to work and get your mind on another case. Consider this one closed."
"Okay. Thanks," she added.
"We're going shopping tonight," Tess reminded her. "It will cheer you up."
"I could really use that now," Kit replied.
She went back to her desk. Adams paused beside it, frowning. "You okay?" he asked. "I heard Deverell took a bite out of you. Don't let it get you down. We all catch hell sometimes, you know." He grinned sheepishly. "Want me to go bash his nose in for you?"
She laughed, her blue eyes twinkling. "Would you do that for me?"
He blushed. "Sure. If you want me to."
She reached out and took his big, hammy hand in hers. "Adams, you're the nicest man in the world."
He only smiled, looking even more sheepish.
"How about supper?" he began. "Doris and I know this place that makes great Irish stew," he added, glancing at Doris, who smiled and nodded. "You could have supper with us..."
The sound of the front door opening caught their attention. The person entering had full view of Adams holding Kit's hand and smiling at her.
Logan Deverell stared at them from a face that would have done justice at a murder trial.
Kit's eyes sparkled with anger. Her injured dignity sat up and growled. "Yes, Mr. Deverell, can we help you?" she asked. "If you'd like to speak to Mr. Lassiter, I'm sure he'll be happy to oblige you. I've already told him that you're dissatisfied with my handling of your case. Sadly for you, he doesn't feel it warrants firing me."
'This the guy you were telling me about?" Adams asked Kit, looking big and pugnacious, an expression he'd cultivated back in his homicide days on the police force.
Logan glared at Adams. "I hope your medical insurance is paid up," he said levelly, "because I'm a Tae Kwon Do blue belt."
"I don't need a bodyguard, thanks just the same, Adams," she added, gently disengaging her hand.
"Well, if you do," Adams said, glancing toward Logan, "just whistle."
He ambled away and Logan shoved his hands into his pockets as he moved to stand just in front of Kit's desk. His broad shoulders rose and fell. "Mother told me all of it." He looked uncomfortable. "I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions."
"If that's an apology, it isn't necessary," Kit began.
"Isn't it?" His dark eyes slid over her face. "You've been crying."
"Tansy was angry with me," she hedged.
He scowled. "Was that the only reason?"
She lowered her gaze to her locked fingers, lying cold on her desk top. "How is she?"
"Diabetic, apparently," he said. "They've had to put her on insulin. That explains her weight loss and the gnawing hunger and thirst and weakness. They're sure she'll be back in top form in no time."
"Did it come on suddenly?"
"Apparently not. But she didn't recognize the symptoms. She was thin for years, and then she started to gain weight. They said she was a textbook Type II diabetic who could be controlled with diet. Her penchant for sweets put her over the line." He shifted. "It may have saved her life. She very nearly went into a coma."
"Poor Tansy."
“In more ways than one. She felt guilty about you. I caught hell for what I said to you," he mused, smiling faintly.
She refused to rise to the bait. She was tired of being cut to pieces by him. She lifted a composed face. "Did you want to see Mr. Lassiter? Our receptionist is still out of the office, but I can buzz him for you."
"No, I don't need to see Dane," he replied. "He can bill me for services rendered, no argument. You found her. It's her fault I wasn't told, not yours." He searched her weary face. "You're very loyal, Kit."
She didn't react. "If that's all," she said without expression, "I have another case I need to be working on."
"A case, or Adams?" he asked with a speaking glance in the general direction of the office where Adams had disappeared.
"Adams is..."
"As Nick used to say, a tick," he said, lowering his voice. "If he attaches himself to you, you'll never get rid of him."
"That's my business, Mr. Deverell," she reminded him. "You have no right to interfere in my personal life."
He recognized the quote, and she'd meant him to. He pursed his lips. "Throwing my own words back at me?" he asked. "I suppose I don't deserve any less."
She didn't reply.
He searched her blue eyes for a long moment, and delicious sensations shot through his powerful body as he let the look linger. Kit blushed and averted her face, and his heart jumped in his chest.
Three years, he thought. He'd never really looked at her. He'd never let himself look at her. Now she was out of his office, out of his life, and he couldn't seem to stop looking at her. Betsy had been a remedy for boredom, but Kit was...everything. He looked down at her and loved her, suddenly, unbearably. He'd given her hell for something that wasn't her fault, broken their engagement. And after all that, to discover that he was in love with her...
He shrugged. His eyes slid over her body. "Tansy wants to see you."
She nodded. "I know where she is."
"I really am sorry," he said unexpectedly. "I was thinking that you'd betrayed me, that you hadn't trusted me enough to be honest with me. I...lost my temper."
"I noticed."
“Damn it, Kit, you have to marry me!" he burst out.
"Why?" she asked haughtily, aware that everyone in the office was staring at them.
He looked around at the audience and sighed furiously. "Don't you all have anything better to do?" he demanded.
"Not me," Adams said. "How about you guys?"
The other detectives and skip tracers shook their heads.
"Oh, hell," Logan muttered. He rammed his hands into his pockets and looked down at Kit with pure repressed fury.
"What does it matter to you that you broke the engagement?" Kit asked. "You never wanted to marry me in the first place. I was just a substitute for Betsy!"
Logan searched her flushed face and couldn't drag his eyes away. She was so lovely. He remembered her laughing, and crying, and he knew that nothing would fill the gap in his life if she left him.
"Actually, Kit, it was the other way around," he said finally. "Betsy was a substitute—and a very poor one, at that—for you."
Chapter Eleven
“That isn't true," Kit said quietly.
“Isn't it?" He moved to the desk and stood over her. "Did you tear up the marriage license?"
"I meant to," she returned.
“Where is it?"
She hesitated. She reached into her desk drawer and pulled it out. They'd had the blood test the same day they'd taken out the license. They could be married legally today.
"Come on," he said gently. "Let's get married."
"But, Logan," she protested.
He drew her out of her chair. "City hall, eleven o'clock," he told the office. "You're all invited!"
There were so many congratulations and well-wishes that Kit couldn't get anyone to listen when she said it was a mistake, and she wasn't marrying Logan.
It did no good to try. He put her into her coat, took her out the door and drove her down to city hall.
"But what about Tansy?" she groaned.
"We'll go and see her afterward," he replied. "She was delighted when I phoned her."
"You didn't know that I'd have anything to do with
you after this morning," she said icily.
"I knew that you loved me," he said simply. "If I've learned nothing else in life, it's that love doesn't wear out."
"Mine might have. You starved it."
"Yes. And now I'm going to feed it until it becomes overweight," he promised. “Ten minutes after you say I do I'm going to take you to our apartment and make love to you until you're too weak to walk!"
She flushed. "Hush!" she exclaimed, glancing around.
"We can make love on the carpet, like we did the first time," he said imperturbably. "Except that this time, it's going to be very, very different."
"Because you've resigned yourself to marriage?" she asked dully.
He turned her face to his and held her eyes. "Because I finally woke up and realized what was happening to me. I love you, Kit," he said with quiet wonder, searching her shocked face. "I suppose I did all along. But I didn't know it until I broke the engagement and sent you running out of Tansy's hospital room. I worried that you might have taken me at face value, that I wouldn't be able to get you back."
"You love me?" she asked, staring at him blankly.
"Oh, yes," he said huskily, putting more feeling into the words than she'd dreamed anyone could. "Can't you see it? Feel it?"
She could. Her heart ran wild. "I thought it was because you wanted me."
"I do, desperately," he said.
"You were so angry with me, Logan," she began.
"I know. I'm sorry." He drew her hand to his mouth. "I love Tansy, too, you see."
"I knew that. I was trying to protect you," she said miserably. “I thought if I waited, as Tansy wanted me to, until we knew the truth, it would be easier for you."
“You can't protect me from life," he said quietly. "I'm a grown man. I have the right to know what I'm up against. I've never run from anything."
“Except me," she murmured with an attempt at humor.
“You caught me, didn't you?" he mused.
"Well..."
"Tansy will be all right," he said. "She's sorry for what she thought, and I'm sorry for what I said. We'll both make it up to you somehow."
"There's no need for that."
"Yes, there is. Want me to tell you how I'm going to make it up to you?" he teased softly.
"No," she said, dropping her eyes to his chest. "You can wait... and show me."
He did. It took hours and hours, while he caressed her in the silence of their apartment, sprawled in loving abandon with her on the big king-size bed with all the lights blazing away.
He laughed at her shock, delighted in her hungry response, loved her from one side of the bed to the other and, finally, onto the floor with his inexhaustible ardor. It was dark before he was sated enough to rest.
They slept. When they awoke, he carried her into the bath and they lay together in the Jacuzzi, gently kissing, while they bathed. Afterward, they fixed steaks and salad in the kitchen and ate.
"Tansy was glad to see us," she said when she was curled up in his lap on the sofa, when they'd put the dishes into the dishwasher.
"And happy for us," he agreed. He bent and kissed her with soft possession. "I love you, Kit," he said huskily. It was evident in the eyes that swept over her, in the very softness of his voice. "I'll love you all my life."
"That goes double for me, Mr. Deverell," she murmured contentedly.
He leaned back with a long, happy sigh. "At least, we're free of Emmett," he said with a smile. "Tansy said he called and after the rodeo tonight, he'll be on his way to San Antonio with the kids."
"Who's keeping the kids?" Kit asked.
"A baby-sitter at the hotel." He chuckled. "I expect the poor woman will retire after tonight."
"No doubt." She linked her arms around his neck and lay her head on his broad chest. "I'm tired."
"So am I. And we both have a job to go to in the morning," he murmured. "I'm sorry I'm not a man of leisure. I'd like to stay in bed for several days."
"Me, too." She sighed. "But I guess life goes on."
"Thank God, it does." He tilted her face up to his and searched it hungrily. "I'm glad you didn't give up on me, Kit."
She smiled and drew his face down to hers. "How could I, when my life began the day I met you? Bad temper and all," she whispered against his hard mouth.
"I do not have a bad temper," he muttered.
"You do so!"
"I have never— What the hell are you doing?"
She pushed him down on the sofa and sat on him, laughing at his expression. "Showing you who's boss," she whispered. She laughed with aching delight as she eased down to his mouth and kissed him while her hands smoothed under his shirt. "Do you mind?"
"I don't know. That depends on whether you can make me like it," he whispered with ardent pleasure as her mouth settled on his. He chuckled as his hands went up to help her with his shirt. "So get busy. Show me!"
And several delightfully feverish minutes later, it was pretty evident that she'd done just that.
END
Paper Husband (09-1996)
Chapter 1
The summer sun was rising. Judging by its place in the sky, Dana Mobry figured that it was about eleven o'clock in the morning. That meant she'd been in her present predicament for over two hours, and the day was growing hotter.
She sighed with resigned misery as she glanced at her elevated right leg where her jeans were hopelessly tangled in two loose strands of barbed wire. Her booted foot was enmeshed in the strands of barbed wire that made up the fence, and her left leg was wrapped in it because she'd twisted when she fell. She'd been trying to mend the barbed-wire fence to keep cattle from getting out. She was using her father's tools to do it, but sadly, she didn't have his strength. At times like this, she missed him unbearably, and it was only a week since his funeral.
She tugged at the neck of her short-sleeved cotton shirt and brushed strands of her damp blond hair back into its neat French braid. Not so neat now, she thought, disheveled and unkempt from the fall that had landed her in this mess. Nearby, oblivious to her mistress's dilemma, her chestnut mare, Bess, grazed. Overhead, a hawk made graceful patterns against the cloudless sky. Far away could be heard the sound of traffic on the distant highway that led around Jacobsville to the small Texas ranch where Dana was tangled in the fence wire.
Nobody knew where she was. She lived alone in the little ramshackle house that she'd shared with her father. They'd lost everything after her mother deserted them seven years ago. After that terrible blow, her father, who was raised on a ranch, decided to come back and settle on the old family homeplace. There were no other relatives unless you counted a cousin in Montana.
Dana's father had stocked this place with a small herd of beef cattle and raised a truck garden. It was a meager living, compared to the mansion near Dallas that her mother's wealth had maintained. When Carla Mobry had unexpectedly divorced her husband, he'd had to find a way of making a living for himself, quickly. Dana had chosen to go with him to his boyhood home in Jacobsville, rather than endure her mother's indifferent presence. Now her father was dead and she had no one.
She'd loved her father, and he'd loved her. They'd been happy together, even without a huge income. But the strain of hard physical labor on a heart that she had not even known was bad had been too much. He'd had a heart attack a few days ago, and died in his sleep. Dana had found him the next morning when she went in to his room to call him to breakfast.
Hank had come immediately at Dana's frantic phone call. It didn't occur to her that she should have called the ambulance first instead of their nearest, and very antisocial, neighbor. It was just that Hank was so capable. He always knew what to do. That day he had, too. After a quick look at her father, he'd phoned an ambulance and herded Dana out of the room. Later he'd said that he knew immediately that it was hours too late to save her father. He'd done a stint overseas in the military, where he'd seen death too often to mistake it.
Most people avoided Hayde
n Grant as much as possible. He owned the feed and mill store locally, and he ran cattle on his huge tracts of land around Jacobsville. He'd found oil on the same land, so lack of money wasn't one of his problems. But a short temper, a legendary dislike of women and a reputation for outspokenness made him unpopular in most places.
He liked Dana, though. That had been fascinating from the very beginning, because he was a misogynist and made no secret of the fact. Perhaps he considered her safe because of the age difference. Hank was thirty-six and Dana was barely twenty-two. She was slender and of medium height, with dark blond hair and a plain little face made interesting by the huge dark blue eyes that dominated it. She had a firm, rounded chin and a straight nose and a perfect bow of a mouth that was a natural light pink, without makeup. She wasn't pretty, but her figure was exquisite, even in blue jeans and a faded checked cotton shirt with the two buttons missing, torn off when she'd fallen. She grimaced. She hadn't taken time to search for a bra in the clean wash this morning because she'd been in a hurry to fix the fence before her only bull got out into the road. She looked like a juvenile stripper, with the firm, creamy curves of her breasts very noticeable where the buttons were missing.
She shaded her eyes with her hand and glanced around. There was nothing for miles but Texas and more Texas. She should have been paying better attention to what she was doing, but her father's death had devastated her. She'd cried for three days, especially after the family attorney had told her about that humiliating clause in the will he'd left. She couldn't bear the shame of divulging it to Hank. But how could she avoid it, when it concerned him as much as it concerned her? Papa, she thought miserably, how could you do this to me? Couldn't you have spared me a little pride!
She wiped stray tears away. Crying wouldn't help. Her father was dead and the will would have to be dealt with.
A sound caught her attention. In the stillness of the field, it was very loud. There was a rhythm to it. After a minute, she knew why it sounded familiar. It was the gait of a thoroughbred stallion. And she knew exactly to whom that horse belonged.
Books By Diana Palmer Page 138
