Books By Diana Palmer

by Palmer, Diana

  He looked every year of his age. His powerful frame seemed to shudder. "Who told you?" he asked in a deadly quiet tone.

  "I won't tell you," she returned. "But it's true, isn't it? You could go blind again."

  His eyes closed on a weary sigh. "Yes," he said heavily. "I could go blind again."

  She moved closer, looking up at him with soft, probing eyes. "I have to know," she said quietly. "I haven't much pride left—or much sense. I have to be told. Was it because of Layn that you wanted me to break the engagement, Gannon? Was it because of my scar...?"

  He whispered something rough under his breath and his hands shot out. With an expression of pure anguish he dragged her against his big body and bent to her mouth.

  "Don't talk," he said unsteadily, brushing his lips slowly, tremblingly, over hers. "Don't talk. Kiss me. Let me show you how it's been without you, Dana!"

  She bent under the rough crush of his ardor, feeling the hurt and the heartache and the loneliness all wrapped up in his slow, fierce kisses. She clung to him with tears draining from her eyes, loving the touch of him, the feel and smell and taste of him, as the world seemed to turn to gold all around them, binding them together with skeins of pure love.

  "I missed you," he whispered brokenly, wrapping her up in his big arms to rock her slowly against him. "I've been half a man since the day I sent you away. But I couldn't let you stay, knowing what I did. I only wanted what was best for you."

  She hit his broad chest with a small, furious fist. "You stupid man," she whimpered, burying her face against him. "As if I cared about being protected. I'm a nurse, not an hysterical woman. And I love you quite desperately, in case you haven't noticed. You wouldn't even let me have a choice!"

  "How could I, knowing what the choice would be?” he ground out, holding her even closer. "Dana, you're so young, with your whole life ahead of you."

  "What kind of life am I expected to have, for heaven's sake, without you?" she asked in anguish, lifting her red eyes to his. "Don't you even know that I only go through the motions of living without you? There'll never be anyone else, not as long as I live. So please tell me how to look forward to a lifetime of loneliness and grief—because I'll mourn you every day I live from now on!"

  He tried to speak and made a helpless motion with his shoulders before he dragged her close again and bent his head over hers.

  "I could die," he whispered.

  "Yes," she managed on a sob. "So could I. A tree could fall on me while I was walking back to the house. Do you think life comes with a written guarantee?"

  "I could be paralyzed."

  "Then I'd sit with you," she whispered, lifting her head to study him with love pouring from her face. "I'd sit by your bedside and hold your hand and read to you. And I'd love you so much...."

  The tears burst from his eyes and ran unashamedly down his cheeks as she spoke, and she reached up and tenderly touched each of them, brushing them back from his hard cheeks.

  "I love you," she repeated softly, blinking away her own tears. "If we got married, I could give you children. And then, even if something dreadful did happen, we'd have all those happy years behind us; we'd have the comfort of our family around us. We'd have each other and the memory of loving."

  He bent and kissed her eyes softly, slowly. "I love you," he whispered, shaken. "So much that I'd willingly give up my life for you. But what am I offering you except the possibility of a living nightmare?"

  "If you won't marry me," she said after a minute, "I'll live with you anyway. I'll move in and sleep in your arms and shame you for not making an honest woman of me." She drew back and looked up into his darkening eyes. "I'll follow you around like a puppy from now on, and you won't be able to look behind you without seeing me. I'll crawl on my knees if I have to, but I won't leave you now. Not until I die."

  "Dana, for God's sake..."

  "It is for God's sake," she whispered softly, smiling. "For God's sake and my own. Because all I know of love I learned from you."

  His eyes closed. "Don't make it any harder for me," he pleaded.

  "But I will," she replied, snuggling closer, feeling safe and secure for the first time in weeks. "You've given me back my family. Because I loved you, I was able to forgive them and love them again. I'm part of a family again, all because of you."

  "I don't want you hurt," he whispered.

  "Then don't send me away," she whispered back. She drew his face down to hers. "Because I'll never be hurt again if I can stay where you are."

  "It's insane," he ground out against her warm, soft mouth.

  She smiled. "Yes," she murmured. "Sweet insanity. Kiss me. Then I'll propose to you again and go and ask your mother for your hand in marriage...."

  He burst out laughing in spite of himself. "Dana, you crazy woman...!"

  "Be crazy with me," she tempted. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him again. And then she felt his arms contract, and he was kissing her. It was a long time before they could find words again.

  "This isn't solving anything," he said finally, dragging himself away from her. "Here, sit down and let's try to talk reasonably."

  She joined him on the log, sitting close, companion-ably, while he took a deep breath and sat, just looking at her.

  "You look so different," he murmured.

  "From my photograph, you mean?" she replied with an impish smile.

  He shifted and looked uncomfortable for a minute. "Who told you? Lorraine?"

  • "Don't blame her," she pleaded. "I was clutching at straws. I thought you'd forgotten all about me."

  He shook his head. "That was beyond me. I've sat here day after day, remembering the sound and smell of you.'' His eyes searched her quiet face and he smiled. "You're the most beautiful thing I've seen since I regained my sight."

  She blushed and lowered her eyes. "I'm very glad you think so." She glanced up again, warily. "Gannon, the scar..."

  He bent and brushed the soft hair away from her cheek and kissed the pale white line that ran alongside her ear. "We'll think of it as a beauty mark," he whispered. "We'll tell the children that you got it fighting tigers in Malaya, just to make it sound better."

  Her eyes searched his. "You're going to let me stay?" she asked softly.

  He touched her mouth with his fingers. "How can I let you go now?" he asked quietly. "But we may both live to regret it, Dana."

  She shook her head. "Not ever."

  She said it with such conviction that he averted his eyes on a heavy, ragged sigh. He caught her hand in his and held it tightly.

  "I saw you on television," she mentioned, grinning. "You looked so handsome—my roommate said you were a dish."

  He chuckled. "I didn't feel like a dish. I was missing you and hurting in ways I hadn't dreamed I could."

  "Me and not Layn?"

  He looked haunted for an instant, and the big hand holding hers contracted roughly. "I needed something to drive you away when Dr. Shane told me the truth. I couldn't bear the thought of subjecting you to what might happen." He shrugged. "It seemed the thing to do at the time. I knew you'd never go if you knew the truth." He glanced down at her. "You're far too caring a person to desert a sinking ship."

  She nuzzled close to him, sighing. "You never really cared about her, then?"

  "No. And she knew it—she knew exactly what I was doing. I'm still not sure why she went along with it, unless she thought she might have a chance with me again." He lifted his hand and let it fall. "She found out pretty quickly that she didn't. By that time I was so much in love with you that I couldn't see her for dust."

  "There was something strange in your voice when you called me from Savannah," she confessed. "I couldn't help wondering at the time if you were really telling me the truth about being able to see again."

  "Oh, I could see all right. And not just in any visual sense," he added on a hard sigh. "I could see you living with this time bomb in my head."

  "We all carry time bombs around with us, Gannon," she
said gently. "Of one kind or another. None of us knows the hour of our own death. It's just as well too: We'd never accomplish anything. You might survive me."

  "Horrible thought," he said curtly. He looked down at her with all his heart in his eyes. "I wouldn't want to live without you."

  "But you were going to condemn me to it, weren't you?" she accused. She reached up and touched his face as she'd longed to for so many empty weeks. "I want you to come home with me and meet my father and my stepmother and my aunt I think—I hope— you'll like them."

  "You've made your peace, I see," he observed.

  She smiled. "I found that I quite like my stepmother. She's just what my father needed. I kind of like him too. We cleared up a lot of misunderstandings; we're closer now than ever before. And best of all, I've come to grips with my own guilt and my grief. I'll always miss my mother, but I realize now that she's better off."

  "God does know best," he murmured, smiling at the look on her face. "Oh, yes, I've done my bit of changing. I've realized that there's much more to life than the making and spending of money."

  She reached up and kissed him. "I've arrived at the same conclusion. When are you going to marry me?"

  "You've only just proposed," he reminded her. "A man can't be rushed into these things, after all. I have to buy a suit and have my hair done...."

  "Stop that," she muttered, hitting him lovingly.

  "Well, if you don't mind an untidy bridegroom, I suppose we could get married Monday."

  "That's only three days away!" she gasped.

  He shrugged. "Well, we can do it sooner, I suppose; I just thought..."

  "Monday is fine!" she said quickly, laughing. "Oh, Monday is just fine!"

  "Then let's go and call my minster and see about getting a license," he said. He stood up, drawing her with him. "Lovely, lovely woman. I'm the luckiest man alive."

  "You're certainly the handsomest," she murmured. "What gorgeous sons we'll have!"

  He chuckled, leading her down the beach. "Our daughters aren't going to be bad, either," he observed.

  Matt Caldwell: Texas Tycoon (01-2000)

  Chapter One

  The man on the hill sat on his horse with elegance and grace, and the young woman found herself star­ing at him. He was obviously overseeing the roundup, which the man at her side had brought her to view. This ranch was small by Texas standards, but around Jacobsville, it was big enough to put its owner in the top ten in size.

  "Dusty, isn't it?" Ed Caldwell asked with a chuckle, oblivious to the distant mounted rider, who was behind him and out of his line of sight. "I'm glad I work for the corporation and not here. I like my air cool and unpolluted."

  Leslie Murry smiled. She wasn't pretty. She had a plain, rather ordinary sort of face with blond hair that had a natural wave, and gray eyes. Her one good feature besides her slender figure was a pretty bow mouth. She had a quiet, almost reclusive demeanor these days. But she hadn't always been like that. In her early teens, Leslie had been flamboyant and out­going, a live wire of a girl whose friends had laughed at her exploits. Now, at twenty-three, she was as se­date as a matron. The change in her was shocking to people who'd once known her. She knew Ed Cald-well from college in Houston. He'd graduated in her sophomore year, and she'd quit the following se­mester to go to work as a paralegal for his father's law firm in Houston. Things had gotten too compli­cated there, and Ed had come to the rescue once again. In fact, Ed was the reason she'd just been hired as an executive assistant by the mammoth Caldwell firm. His cousin owned it.

  She'd never met Mather Gilbert Caldwell, or Matt as he was known locally. People said he was a nice, easygoing man who loved an underdog. In fact, Ed said it frequently himself. They were down here for roundup so that Ed could introduce Leslie to the head of the corporation. But so far, all they'd seen was dust and cattle and hardworking cowboys.

  "Wait here," Ed said. "I'm going to ride over and find Matt. Be right back." He urged his horse into a trot and held on for dear life. Leslie had to bite her lip to conceal a smile at the way he rode. It was painfully obvious that he was much more at home behind the wheel of a car. But she wouldn't have been so rude as to have mentioned it, because Ed was the only friend she had these days. He was, in fact, the only person around who knew about her past.

  While she was watching him, the man on horse­back on the hill behind them was watching her. She sat on a horse with style, and she had a figure that would have attracted a connoisseur of women— which the man on horseback was. Impulsively he spurred his horse into a gallop and came down the rise behind her. She didn't hear him until he reined in and the harsh sound of the horse snorting had her whirling in the saddle.

  The man was wearing working clothes, like the other cowboys, but all comparisons ended there. He wasn't ragged or missing a tooth or unshaven. He was oddly intimidating, even in the way he sat the horse, with one hand on the reins and the other on his powerful denim-clad thigh.

  Matt Caldwell met her gray eyes with his dark ones and noted that she wasn't the beauty he'd ex­pected, despite her elegance of carriage and that per­fect figure. "Ed brought you, I gather," he said curtly.

  She'd almost guessed from his appearance that his voice would be deep and gravelly, but not that it would cut like a knife. Her hands tightened on the reins. "I...yes, he...he brought me."

  The stammer was unexpected. Ed's usual sort of girl was brash and brassy, much more sophisticated than this shrinking violet here. He liked to show off Mart's ranch and impress the girls. Usually it didn't bother Matt, but he'd had a frustrating day and he was out of humor. He scowled. "Interested in cattle ranching, are you?" he drawled with ice dripping from every syllable. "We could always get you a rope and let you try your hand, if you'd like."

  She felt as if every muscle in her body had gone taut. "I...came to meet Ed's cousin," she managed. "He's rich." The man's dark eyes flashed and she flushed. She couldn't believe she'd made such a re­mark to a stranger. "I mean," she corrected, "he owns the company where Ed works. Where I work," she added. She could have bitten her tongue for her artless mangling of a straightforward subject, but the man rattled her.

  Something kindled in the man's dark eyes under the jutting brow; something not very nice at all. He leaned forward and his eyes narrowed. "Why are you really out here with Ed?" he asked.

  She swallowed. He had her hypnotized, like a co­bra with a rabbit. Those eyes...those very dark, un­yielding eyes...!

  "It's not your business, is it?" she asked finally, furious at her lack of cohesive thought and this man's assumption that he had the right to interrogate her.

  He didn't say a word. Instead, he just looked at her.

  "Please," she bit off, hunching her shoulders un­comfortably. "You're making me nervous!"

  "You came to meet the boss, didn't you?" he asked in a velvety smooth tone. "Didn't anyone tell you that he's no marshmallow?"

  She swallowed. "They say he's a very nice, pleas­ant man," she returned a little belligerently. "Some­thing I'll bet nobody in his right mind would dream of saying about you!" she added with her first burst of spirit in years.

  His eyebrows lifted. "How do you know I'm not nice and pleasant?" he asked, chuckling suddenly.

  "You're like a cobra," she said uneasily.

  He studied her for a few seconds before he nudged his horse in the side with a huge dusty boot and eased so close to her that she actually shivered. He hadn't been impressed with the young woman who stam­mered and stuttered with nerves, but a spirited woman was a totally new proposition. He liked a woman who wasn't intimidated by his bad mood.

  His hand went across her hip to catch the back of her saddle and he looked into her eyes from an un-nervingly close distance. "If I'm a cobra, then what does that make you, cupcake?" he drawled with de­liberate sensuality, so close that she caught the faint smoky scent of his breath, the hint of spicy cologne that clung to his lean, tanned face. "A soft, furry little bunny?"

  She was so sh
aken by the proximity of him that she tried desperately to get away, pulling so hard on the reins that her mount unexpectedly reared and she went down on the ground, hard, hitting her injured left hip and her shoulder as she fell into the thick grass.

  A shocked sound came from the man, who vaulted out of the saddle and was beside her as she tried to sit up. He reached for her a little roughly, shaken by her panic. Women didn't usually try to back away from him; especially ordinary ones like this. She fell far short of his usual companions.

  She fought his hands, her eyes huge and overly bright, panic in the very air around her. "No...!" she cried out helplessly.

  He froze in place, withdrawing his lean hand from her arm, and stared at her with scowling curiosity.

  "Leslie!" came a shout from a few yards away. Ed bounced up as quickly as he could manage it without being unseated. He fumbled his way off the horse and knelt beside her, holding out his arm so that she could catch it and pull herself up.

  "I'm sorry," she said, refusing to look at the man who was responsible for her tumble. "I jerked the reins. I didn't mean to."

  "Are you all right?" Ed asked, concerned.

  She nodded. "Sure." But she was shaking, and both men could see it.

  Ed glanced over her head at the taller, darker, lean­er man who stood with his horse's reins in his hand, staring at the girl.

  "Uh, have you two introduced yourselves?" he asked awkwardly.

  Matt was torn by conflicting emotions, the strongest of which was bridled fury at the woman's pan­icky attitude. She acted as if he had plans to assault her, when he'd only been trying to help her up. He was angry and it cost him his temper. "The next time you bring a certifiable lunatic to my ranch, give me some advance warning," the tall man sniped at Ed. He moved as curtly as he spoke, swinging abruptly into the saddle to glare down at them. "You'd better take her home," he told Ed. "She's a damned walk­ing liability around animals."

  "But she rides very well, usually," Ed protested. "Okay, then," he added when the other man glow­ered at him. He forced a smile. "I'll see you later."