Books By Diana Palmer

by Palmer, Diana

  She let out her breath very slowly. "I never thought of taking anything," she confessed. "I...would like another child, with you."

  His face fascinated her. It was like the sun coming out. He gathered her against him in a rough, affectionate hug and growled into her throat. "Oh, God, how I love you!" he said roughly. "Love you, with all that I am, all I know, all I feel. I'll never stop, not as long as I live."

  "Neither will I," she moaned, holding him close. "Oh, Tom, we're not married and I'm going to be pregnant again...!"

  "I've got a license in my pocket," he mur­mured huskily. "That's why you have to wake up and get dressed."

  She was confused. "What? But how, when...?"

  "I applied for it two weeks ago, and told them to get your blood test from your doctor."

  "He said I had to have a blood test because someone who'd been in my shop had menin­gitis, the wicked devil!" she gasped.

  "Dr. Morris is a good man," he murmured. "So when I mentioned this license to him, he was glad to help me out."

  "I'll have him shot," she muttered.

  He chuckled. "No, you won't, because we can be married in a couple of hours." He glanced at the clock. "We'll have to put on some clothes, though, or people will stare. Es­pecially at you," he added when he drew back. "God, what a body!"

  She chuckled, all her shyness gone. She got to her feet and stared down at him. "I could say the same," she mused.

  He got up, too, and hugged her close with a sigh. "I suppose we should call Luke and tell him where we are."

  "You can tell him where we are," she agreed. "But not exactly."

  "Coward."

  She grinned at him. "Where do we find a minister?"

  "I'm glad you asked that," he said. "Be­cause I just happen to have an appointment with one at five a.m.!"

  "That's three hours away," she reminded him, glancing at the clock. "Not two!"

  He glanced down at her body and then at his own, and he smiled wickedly. "Well, I can think of a few ways to pass the time," he mur­mured, and he reached for her. "After all, practice makes perfect..."

  She never asked how he'd managed to talk a minister into getting up at five in the morn­ing to marry them. It was enough that he had. She spoke her vows in the same black cocktail dress she'd worn to dinner, flushed from the bath they'd shared as well as the excitement of becoming a much-loved and wanted wife.

  He kissed her at the altar, and the look in his eyes made her heart run wild. It was like no other look he'd ever given her. He whis­pered her married name and kissed her with a tenderness that made her knees weak. She'd never dreamed of such happiness.

  They called Luke to tell him where they were, and then they spoke to an excited Crissy to tell her their news.

  "We'll be home in two days," Elysia prom­ised Luke, blushing even over the phone at his low laughter. "And you can stop that," she muttered.

  He cleared his throat. "Sorry. Anyway, I'll take great care of my little buddy Crissy here, and we'll see you two when you get back."

  Tom spoke to both of the people at the other end, too, and his heart swelled when Crissy called him "Daddy." He thought he'd never felt so happy in his life. And when he looked at his new wife, he was certain of it.

  They spent two days and nights in a roman­tic haze, barely taking time to eat. They talked and talked and made love and talked some more. By the time they left Houston, they were closer than ever.

  When they got back to Jacobsville, two days later, it was to find themselves guests of honor at a surprise evening wedding reception hosted by Dr. Drew Morris and Luke. Half the people in town were there to wish them well, along with Crissy in a delightful little party dress with lace trim. And the crowning surprise was Tom's sister, Kate, along with her husband, Jacob Cade, and their young son, Hunter.

  Tom embraced his sister warmly and shook hands with Jacob before he bent to lift Hunter in his arms.

  "You look just like your dad, young man," he told the boy, "except for those green eyes."

  "I have eyes like my mom," Hunter as­sured him with a somber gaze. "Yours are green, too, Uncle Tom."

  "So they are." He put Hunter down, and watched the child scowl in a perfect imitation of his father when Crissy ran up to join them.

  "Gee, you look like me, too," Crissy told Hunter. "Of course, you're a boy."

  "Of course I'm a boy," Hunter said bellig­erently. He made a subtle face at the new­comer. "I can hunt and fish just like my dad."

  "So can I," Crissy said with equal bellig­erence. "I caught a four-pound bass, didn't I, Daddy?" she asked Tom.

  His heart leaped as he looked down at her. “Yes, you did, sweetheart.” he agreed.

  Kate was looking at her brother with open curiosity.

  "Why don't you show your fishing rod to Hunter, sweetheart?" Elysia suggested.

  Crissy agreed eagerly, and motioned to Hunter to follow her. When they were out of earshot, Kate glanced from Elysia's flushed face to Tom's bland one.

  "She's the image of you," Kate said bluntly.

  "She was a reporter for years in Chicago,” Jacob told Elysia with an amused smile. "I can never keep secrets from her. You might as well just tell her what she wants to know. It's easier."

  Elysia grinned. "Well, she's Tom's daugh­ter," she confessed shyly. "He never knew," she added, so that nobody would blame her handsome husband. She clung to his hand.

  "He never even suspected," Tom added dryly with a sheepish look at his sister.

  Kate smiled at him with pure love. "It looks as though everything has worked out very well, despite the obstacles."

  "Indeed it has," Tom said, pulling his new wife close. "Better than I ever dreamed it would."

  Elysia pressed against him with a sigh. "Oh, yes," she said.

  Jacob put an arm around his own wife and grinned down at her. "Now are you going to stop worrying?" he asked. "If you can't tell a happy couple when you see one, I'm going to get Hank to give you one of his herbal po­tions to improve your little brain."

  "Hank's his dad," Kate explained to Ely­sia. "He's always poking around in my green­house with this herbal medicine book he bought, making up potions for everything from poison ivy to sore feet." She cleared her throat. "And other things."

  Jacob chuckled wickedly. "Go ahead, make fun of him, but this last one worked, didn't it?" he asked, and glanced down at her stom­ach with a mixture of pride and delight.

  Kate flushed and hit him. "Jacob!"

  "If you like, we'll get him to fix one up for you," Jacob added, tongue-in-cheek. "This one was for a girl, but since you already have one of those..."

  "I think we can manage, Jacob, but thanks just the same," Tom chuckled.

  A small commotion caught their attention.

  Crissy came plowing through the crowd of people with Hunter right behind her.

  “She's got a spinning reel,” Hunter told his parents in a wounded tone. "All you gave me was an old cane pole with corks and sinkers and hooks!"

  "It was my old pole," Jacob told him. "It's an heirloom!"

  "I want my own spinning reel," Hunter muttered. "She's a girl and she's got one!"

  "She's your cousin," Kate replied. "And you be polite, young man. Manners!"

  "Yes, ma'am," he muttered, glaring at his smug little cousin. "I could catch a four-pound bass if I had a nifty spinning reel," he hinted, looking at his father for support.

  Jacob sighed. "Okay, son, as soon as we get home we'll go right to the sporting goods store and buy one."

  Hunter grinned. "Thanks, Dad!"

  "You could have asked me to take you," Kate prompted. "I like to fish, too, you know."

  "Thanks, Mom," Hunter said, moving close to his dad's side. "But this is a man sort of thing, you know?"

  Kate had to smother laughter. She ex­changed a glance with Elysia. "He doesn't think women are the weaker sex, in case you're wondering," she explained. "But every once in a while, he plays with our neigh­bor's son Buck and Buck's
dad is a...well, how shall I put it?"

  "A throwback to our more primitive ances­tors?" Jacob said helpfully.

  She leaned against him. "Thank you, dar­ling. Yes, that's about the size of it." She looked down at Hunter. "Is Mommy the weaker sex, dear?"

  "Heck, no!" Hunter said immediately. "My mom can shoot a shotgun," he said proudly. "And you should see her on a horse!"

  Kate made a victorious gesture, and all the adults laughed.

  It was after everyone had gone, Kate and Jacob and Hunter on their way to the airport with Luke as chauffeur, that Crissy came up to Tom and gave him a loving smile. "We're a family now, aren't we, Mr. Tom?" Crissy said heartily. "Now you get to be my daddy, and I get to be your own little girl, and you can just tell me everything about Indians."

  "Everything I know, pumpkin," he agreed with a loving smile. He hugged her close with a sigh. "And I'm very happy that you'll be my very own little girl. I promise to love you just as much as I love your beautiful mommy, too."

  "Oh, I do love you...Daddy," she whis­pered, and hugged him just as hard as she could.

  His eyes closed on a mist that he had to blink away before anyone saw it. But they opened again and Elysia was there. He looked at her with fierce delight over his daughter's shoulder. And if she'd had one lingering doubt about his motives for marrying her, they were all gone in a rush of love. No man could look at a woman like that unless he loved her ob­sessively.

  Chapter 6

  Tom had managed to get a willing Luke to take Moose to be boarded at the vet's while he and Elysia were still in Houston. But when Elysia and Crissy had moved into the house with Tom, he had grave misgivings about how it was going to work out. He hadn't had time to introduce Moose to his new family, and he was going to hate having to give away the animal. He just knew that Moose was going to be too much of a headache for the other two members of his household.

  But he brought Moose home and turned him out into the backyard anyway.

  "Can I go play with him?" Crissy asked excitedly.

  Tom hesitated. Moose was a happy, playful pup, but he was an elephant compared to the little girl.

  "Go ahead," Elysia said, solving the prob­lem, "but be careful."

  "Okay, Mommy!"

  Tom watched her go out the back door. "We should watch her," he suggested. "I don't think there's a chance that he'd hurt her..."

  A sudden scream and the sound of growling made their hearts stop. Tom raced for the back door, cursing himself for not having gone right outside with the child.

  But the scene he expected to see wasn't what met his eyes. Crissy was standing beside the steps with her hands over her mouth, shiv­ering. A few yards away, Moose stood grin­ning at them with a huge dead rattlesnake in his mouth.

  Crissy ran to Tom and Elysia. "Oh, Daddy, I didn't even see it! I didn't see it and it rattled, and Moose went right over and grabbed it! He saved me!"

  Elysia hugged her little girl close, crying tears of relief. She looked toward Moose, who was playing with the snake now.

  "If you ever try to get rid of that dog," she told Tom, "it's grounds for divorce."

  He chuckled delightedly. "I'll remind you that you said that," he said, so proud of his dog and so relieved over Crissy's well-being that he was almost euphoric.

  Several weeks later, as he watched Moose drop something at Elysia's feet and then lay a guilty head on her lap in the living room and saw her wide-eyed shock, he was glad about the snake.

  "You said he was worth his weight in dog bones," Tom reminded her quickly. "You said getting rid of him was grounds for di­vorce."

  She looked up at her husband with her mouth open and then closed it, grimacing. With a sigh, she started stroking Moose's huge head.

  Beside her lay the remnants of a beautiful lacy black bra, in elegant wet tatters.

  "He likes you," Tom assured her. "He only eats clothes if he really likes the person."

  "That's right, Mommy," Crissy said enthusiastically. "He ate my old orange socks, both of them! He likes me a lot!"

  Elysia and Tom exchanged resigned glances.

  "He does kill poisonous snakes," Tom re­minded her.

  She kept staring at him.

  He raised both eyebrows. "Love me, love my dog?"

  She burst out laughing. "I guess that says it all, doesn't it? Okay." She hugged Moose and then got up and hugged her husband, pausing to kiss him warmly before she re­trieved the remnants of her lacy underwear. "But if he eats my new maternity dress, he's had it."

  "Your new...what?" Tom stammered.

  She gave him a wicked grin. "Remember those herbs Hank Cade sent us from South Da­kota?" She wiggled her eyebrows. "Guess what?"

  Moose's enthusiastic barks were drowned out by Tom's cry of delight. He whirled her in his arms high in the air and kissed her until his mouth was sore.

  Crissy petted Moose's big head and sighed as she stared at the grown-ups. "They do that all the time," she told Moose. "I think it's silly, don't you?"

  "Woof!" Moose replied.

  "Come on, Moose, I'll give you a doggie biscuit. Honestly, adults are just the silliest people..."

  Neither of the silly adults saw or heard them leave. They were in a world of their own, just for the moment, and it was too sweet for words.

  2 Drew Morris

  "O, my Luve is like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June. O, my Luve is like the melodie, That's sweetly played in tune."

  —Robert Burns

  Johnson's Musical Museum

  (1787-1796)

  A Red, Red Rose, st. 1

  Chapter 1

  How are you today?" Drew Morris asked his first patient of the day, smiling in his usual remote, but kind way. "Mr...." He glanced at the file, glanced at the patient, bit back a curse and smiled in a different way. "Excuse me just a minute, will you?"

  Before the patient could say a word, Drew was out the door and marching down the hall to his receptionist's desk. He threw the file down in front of her with curt irritation.

  "I said Bill Hayes, not William Haynie," he said shortly.

  Kitty Carson grimaced, and the green eyes behind her large wire-rimmed lenses winced.

  "Sorry, Dr. Morris," she stammered, jumping up to thumb through the files until she found the right one and handed it to him. "If Mrs. Turner was here, I wouldn't get so rattled," she defended, mentioning the office nurse who was off sick today.

  "Bad way to start off the day, Ms. Carson," he muttered and went straight back to his pa­tient.

  Kitty sat down, hard, letting out the breath she'd been holding. The former receptionist, Mrs. Alice Martin, had retired two weeks pre­viously, and Kitty had been hired through a local professional agency in Jacobsville, Tex­as, to replace her. She hadn't met Drew Morris when she applied for the job, which was a good thing. If she'd met him first, she wouldn't be working here.

  On the other hand, it was nice to be treated like a normal employee. She was asthmatic, and in at least one job, her well-meaning boss had been so wary of triggering an attack that he actually had another girl in the office ask her for pressing work. He was sweet, but her asthma wasn't brought on by emotional up­heavals; it was triggered by pollens and dust and smoke. Probably since Dr. Morris did some pediatric work, he knew more about asthma than any routine employer. An increasing number of children seemed to have the chronic illness.

  She pushed back a wisp of dark hair that had escaped the huge bun at her nape and stared blankly at the file he'd given her. She got up again to replace it, but by then the phone was ringing again—both lines.

  It wasn't that she couldn't handle the pres­sure of a busy doctor's office, but she did wish he'd take a partner. He had no life at all. He worked from dawn until dusk daily through Saturday, and on Sunday he had an afternoon clinic for children. He did minor surgery through the week, as well—tonsils and ade­noids—and he was always willing to stand in for other doctors in the local hospital's emer­gency room on weekends. No wonder
Mrs. Turner had come down with the flu, she mused. It was probably exhaustion. It didn't surprise her that Dr. Morris wasn't married, either. When would he have the time?

  He'd been married, though. Everyone talked about his eternal devotion to Eve, his wife of twelve years until her untimely death of can­cer. No woman in Jacobsville ever set her cap at Drew because of the competition. His mar­riage had been one of those rare, blissful matches. It was said that Drew would much rather have his memory of it than any new relationship.

  Not that Kitty was interested in him that way. She had her eyes on a local cowboy named Guy Fenton, who was something of a rounder but a nice man when he wasn't drink­ing. He'd broken a bone in his hand the day after Kitty started working for Drew. He'd known Kitty for years, but only then had he noticed that she'd grown up. He seemed to like her, too, because he teased and picked at her. He had a habit of stopping by the office at lunchtime to talk to her, and he'd just asked her to go to the movies with him on Saturday night. She was so flustered that she was all thumbs. Dr. Morris, she reflected, had no pa­tience with the course of true love.

  By lunchtime, she'd dealt, calmly and effi­ciently, with two emergencies that required Drew's presence at the local emergency room, and a waiting room full of angry, impatient people. Her soft voice and reassuring smile de­fused what could have been a mutiny. She was used to calming bad tempers. Her late father had been a retired colonel from the Green Be­rets, a veteran of Vietnam with a habit of run­ning right over people. Kitty, an only child, had learned quickly how to get along with him. He was difficult, but he was like Drew Morris in one respect; he never overempha­sized her asthma attacks. His very calmness helped avert many of them. But if they led her to the emergency room, he was always the soul of compassion.

  Her mother was long dead, so there had been just the two of them, until six months ago. She still missed the old man terribly. The job she'd left to come here had held just too many memories of him. Her father had known Drew, but only socially, so there were no close associations with him in this office.