by Diana Palmer
No one can resist a book by
DIANA PALMER
“Nobody does it better.”
—New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard
“A compelling tale…[that packs] an emotional wallop.”
—Booklist on Renegade
“Sensual and suspenseful.”
—Booklist on Lawless
“Diana Palmer is a mesmerizing storyteller who captures the essence of what a romance should be.”
—Affaire de Coeur
“Nobody tops Diana Palmer when it comes to delivering pure, undiluted romance. I love her stories.”
—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz
“The dialogue is charming, the characters likable and the sex sizzling.”
—Publishers Weekly on Once in Paris
Dear Reader,
This is a book that I’ve had in the back of my mind for over two years. I couldn’t get the premise to work at first, so I mulled it over in my spare time and streamlined it until I could get the plot just right. That happens a lot, with books I love but can’t organize in any readable manner. So I sort of work on them in my spare time until they become presentable. It wasn’t until this year that I really began to write Heart of Stone.
I was born in southwest Georgia, in Cuthbert, where my sister Dannis and my niece Maggie still live. We had lots of diamondback rattlesnakes in Randolph County, also in Calhoun County, where my grandfather and grandmother farmed. When I was a child, I had a hound dog companion my exact age named Buck who was my protector. I was nearsighted but nobody knew. It wouldn’t have mattered, because sharecroppers were very poor. There was no money for eyeglasses, no matter how necessary. One day I started down a grassy path on Granddaddy’s farm and Buck ran in front of me. There was a sound of sizzling bacon (to this day it can freeze my blood just to hear it on the stove), and Buck emerged with a dying five-foot rattler. I might add, that in my part of the country, a five-foot rattler the size of a man’s thigh was no rare thing. Buck saved my life. The old dog died when he and I were both twelve years old. I will never forget him. Without Buck, I would never have grown up to be a writer in the first place.
As I wrote this book, I was remembering not only rattlesnakes, but lazy summer nights sitting on the front porch listening to crickets and hound dogs and watching lightning bugs flash neon yellow while I ate boiled peanuts. Sweet memories.
Your biggest fan,
Diana Palmer
DIANA PALMER
HEART OF STONE
Published by Silhouette Books
America’s Publisher of Contemporary Romance
Long, Tall Texans Books by Diana Palmer
Silhouette Special Edition
Matt Caldwell:
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“Christmas Cowboy”
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Calhoun #580
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Ethan #694
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Evan #819
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Emmett #910
Regan’s Pride #1000
Coltrain’s Proposal #1103
The Princess Bride #1282
Callaghan’s Bride #1355
Lionhearted #1631
Cattleman’s Pride #1718
DIANA PALMER
has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humor. With over forty million copies of her books in print, Diana Palmer is one of North America’s most beloved authors and considered one of the top ten romance authors in the U.S.
Diana’s hobbies include gardening, archaeology, anthropology, iguanas, astronomy and music. She has been married to James Kyle for over twenty-five years, and they have one son.
To my sister, Dannis Spaeth Cole,
and my niece, Maggie, in Cuthbert, Georgia,
and to my other niece Amanda Hofstetter,
in Portland, Oregon. Love you all.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter One
Keely Welsh felt his presence before she looked up and saw him. It had been that way from the day she met Boone Sinclair, her best friend’s eldest brother. The man wasn’t movie-star handsome or gregarious. He was a recluse, a loner who hardly ever smiled, who intimidated people simply by walking into a room. For some unknown reason, Keely always knew when he was around, even if she didn’t see him.
He was tall and slender, but he had powerful legs and big hands and feet. There were rumors about him that grew more exaggerated with the telling. He’d been in Special Forces overseas five years earlier. He’d saved his unit from certain destruction. He’d won medals. He’d had lunch with the president at the White House. He’d taken a cruise with a world-famous author. He’d almost married a European princess. And on and on and on.
Nobody knew the truth. Well, maybe Winona and Clark Sinclair did. Winnie and Clark and Boone were closer than brothers and sisters usually were. But Winnie didn’t talk about her brother’s private life, not even to Keely.
There hadn’t been a day since she was thirteen when Keely hadn’t loved Boone Sinclair. She watched him from a distance, her green eyes soft and covetous. Her hands would shake when she happened on him unexpectedly. They were shaking now. He was standing at the counter, signing in. He had an appointment for his dog’s routine shots. He made one every year. He loved the old tan-and-black German shepherd, whose name was Bailey. People said it was the only thing on earth that he did love. Maybe he was fond of his siblings, but it didn’t show. His affection for Bailey did.
One of the other vet techs came out with a pad and called in Bailey, with a grin at Boone. It wasn’t returned. He led the old dog into one of the examination rooms. He walked right past Keely. He never looked at her. He didn’t speak to her. As far as he was concerned, she was invisible.
She sighed as the door closed behind him and his dog. It was that way anyplace in town that he saw her. In fact, it was like that at his huge ranch near Comanche Wells, west of Jacobsville, Texas. He never told Winnie that she couldn’t have Keely over for lunch or an occasional horseback ride. But he ignored her, just the same.
“It’s funny, you know,” Winnie had remarked one day when they were out riding. “I mean, Boone never makes any comment about you, but he does make a point of pretending he doesn’t see you. I wonder why.” She looked at Keely then, with her dark eyes mischievous in their frame of blond hair. “You wouldn’t know, I guess?”
Keely only smiled. “I haven’t got a clue,” she said. It was the truth.
“It’s only you, too,” her friend continued thoughtfully. “He’s very polite to our brother Clark’s occasional date—even to that waitress that Clark brought home one night for dinner, and you know what a snob Boone can be. But he pretends you don’t exist.”
“I may remind him of somebody he doesn’t like,” Keely replied.
“There was that girl he was engaged to,” Winnie said out of the blue.
Keely’s heart jumped. “Yes, I remember when he was engaged,” she replied. It had been when she was fourteen, almost fifteen years old, just before he came back from overseas. Keely’s young heart had been broken.
“It was just before you came back here to live with your mom,” Winnie continued as if she’d read Keely’s mind. “In fact, it was just about the time she started drinking so much more…” She hesitated. Keely’s mother was an alcoholic and it was a sensitive subject to her friend. “Anyway, Boone was mustering out of the Army at the time. His fiancée rushed to Germany where he’d been taken when he was airlifted out of combat, wounded, and then…poof. She was gone, Boone came home, and he never mentioned her name again. None of us could find out what happened.”
“Somebody said she was European royalty,” Keely ventured shyly.
“She was distantly related to some man who was knighted in England,” came the sarcastic reply. “Anyway, she ran out on Boone and he was bitter for a long time. So three weeks ago the phone rings and he gets a call from her. She’s been living with her father, who owns a private detective agency in San Antonio. She told Boone she’d made a terrible mistake and wanted to make up.”
Keely’s heart fell. A rival who had a history with Boone. It made her miserable just to think about it, despite the fact that she would never get close enough to Boone to give the other woman any competition. “Boone doesn’t forgive people,” she said, thinking aloud.
“That’s right,” Winnie replied, smiling. “But he’s mellowed a bit. He takes her out on dates occasionally now. In fact, they’re going to a Desperado concert next week.”
Keely frowned. “He likes hard rock?” she asked, surprised. He looked so staid and dignified that she couldn’t picture him at a rock concert. She said so.
Winnie laughed. “I can,” she said. “He’s not the conservative, quiet man he seems to be. Especially when he loses his temper or gets in an argument.”
“Boone doesn’t argue,” Keely mused aloud.
He didn’t. If he was angry enough, he punched. Never women, of course, but his men knew not to push him, especially if he was broody. One horse handler had found out the hard way that nobody made jokes at the boss’s expense. Boone had been kicked by a horse, which the handler thought was hilarious. Boone roped the man, tied him to a post and anointed him with a bucket of recycled hay. All without saying a word.
Keely laughed out loud.
“What?” Winnie asked.
“I was remembering that horse wrangler….”
Winnie laughed, too. “He couldn’t believe it, he said, even when it was happening. Boone really does look so straitlaced, as if he’d never stoop to dirty his hands. His cowboys used to underestimate him. Not anymore.”
“The rattlesnake episode is noteworthy, as well,” came the amused reply.
“That cook was so shocked!” Winnie blurted out. “He was a really rotten cook, but he threatened to sue Boone if he fired him, so it looked as if we were stuck with him. He’d threatened to cook Boone a rattler if he made any more remarks about the food. He added a few spicy comments about why Boone’s fiancée took a powder. Then one morning he looks in his Dutch oven to see if it’s clean enough to cook in, and a rattlesnake jumps up right into his face!”
“Lucky for the cook it didn’t have any fangs.”
“The cook didn’t know that!” Winnie laughed. “He didn’t know who did it, either. He resigned on the spot. The men actually cheered as he drove off. The next cook was talented, and the soul of politeness to my brother.”
“I am not surprised.”
She shook her head. “Boone does have these little quirks,” his sister murmured. “Like never turning on the heat in his bedroom, even in icy weather, and always going around with his shirts buttoned to the neck.”
“I’ve never seen him with his shirt off,” Keely remarked. It was unusual, because most of the cowboys worked topless in summer heat when they were branding or doctoring cattle. But Boone never did.
“He used to be less prudish,” Winnie said.
“Boone, prudish?” Keely sounded shocked.
Winnie glanced at her and chuckled. “Well, I guess that really doesn’t fit at all.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Winnie pursed her lips. “Come to think of it, he’s not the only prude around here. I’ve never even seen you in a T-shirt, Keely. You always wear long sleeves and high necklines.”
Keely had a good reason for that, one she’d never shared with anyone. It was the reason she didn’t date. It was a terrible secret. She would have died rather than tell Winnie, who might tell Boone….
“I was raised very strictly,” Keely said quietly. And she had been; for all their odd tendencies, both her parents had insisted that Keely go to Sunday School and church every single Sunday. “My father didn’t approve of clothing that was too flashy or revealing.”
Probably because Keely’s mother propositioned any man she fancied when she drank. She’d even tried to seduce Boone. Keely didn’t know that, and Winnie didn’t know how to tell her. It was one reason for Boone’s antagonism toward Keely.
Things would have been better if Keely knew where her father was. She’d told people she thought he was dead, because it was easier than admitting that he was an alcoholic, just like her mother, and linked up with a bunch of dangerous men. She’d missed her father at first. But she’d have been in more danger if she’d stayed with him.
She still loved him, in her way, despite what had happened to her.
“Come to think of it, Keely, you don’t even date.”
Keely shrugged. “I’m a vet tech. I have a busy life. I work on call, you know. If there’s an emergency at midnight on a weekend, I still go to the office.”
“That’s a lot of hogwash,” Winnie said gently as they paused to let the horses drink from one of the crystal-clear streams on the wooded property where they were riding. “I’ve even tried to set you up with nice men I know from work. You freeze when a man comes near you.”
“That’s because you work with the police, Winnie, and you bring cops home as prospective dates for me,” Keely said mischievously. It was true. Winnie worked as a clerk in the Jacobsville Police Department’s office during the day, and now she was doing a stint two nights a week as a dispatcher for the 911 center. In fact, she was hoping that job would work into something permanent, because being around Officer Kilraven all day when he was on the day shift was killing her.
“Policemen make me nervous,” Keely was saying. “For all you know, I might have a criminal past.”
Winnie wasn’t smiling. She shook her head. “You’re hiding something.”
“Nothing major. Honest.” What she suspected about her father, if true, would have shamed her. If Boone ever found out, she’d really die of shame. But she hadn’t heard from her father since she was thirteen, so it wasn’t likely that he’d just turn up someday with his new outlaw friends. She prayed that he wouldn’t. Her mother’s behavior was hard enough to live down as it was.
“There’s this really handsome policeman who’s been working with us for a few weeks. He’s just your type.”
“Kilraven,” Keely guessed.
“Yes! How did you know?”
“Because you talk about him all the time,” Keely returned. She pursed her lips. “Are you sure you aren’t interested in him? I mean, you’re single and eligible yourself.”
Winnie flushed. “He’s not my type.”
“Why not?”
Winnie shifted in the saddle uneasily. “He told me he wasn’t my type. He said I was too young to be mooning over a used-up lobo wolf like him and not to do it anymore.”
Keely gasped out loud. “He didn’t!”
The older girl nodded sadly. “He did. I didn’t realize that I was so obvious with it. I mean,
he’s drop-dead gorgeous, most women look at him. He just noticed more when I did it. Because I’m who I am, I guess,” she added darkly. “Boone might have said something to him. He’s very protective of me. He thinks I’m too naive to be let loose on the world.”
“In his defense, you have led a sheltered life,” Keely said gently. “Kilraven is street smart. And he’s dangerous.”
“I know,” Winnie muttered. “There have been times that he’s been in situations where I sweat blood until he walks back into the station. He’s noticed that, too. He didn’t like it and he said so.” She took a long, sad breath and looked at Keely. “So you can know all about my private agony, but you won’t share yours? It’s no use, Keely. I know.”
Keely laughed nervously. “Know what? I don’t keep secrets.”
“Your whole life is a secret. But your biggest one is that you’re in love with my brother.”
Keely looked as if she’d been slapped.
“I would never tell him,” Winnie said quietly. “That’s the truth. I’m sorry for the way he treats you. I know how much it hurts.”
Keely shifted her eyes, embarrassed.
“Don’t be like that,” Winnie said, her voice gentle. “I won’t tell. Ever. Honest.”
Keely relaxed. She drew in a breath, watching the creek bubble over rocks. “It doesn’t hurt anything, what I feel. He’ll never know. And it helps me to understand what it might be like to love a man—even if that love is never returned. It’s a taste of something I can never have, that’s all.”
Winnie frowned. “What do you mean? Of course you’ll be loved one day! Keely, you’re only nineteen. Your whole life is ahead of you!”
Keely looked at her friend, and her dark eyes were soft and sad. “Not that way, it isn’t. I won’t ever marry.”
“But one day…”
She shook her head. “No.”
Winnie bit her lower lip. “When you’re a little older, it might be different,” she began. “Keely, you’re nineteen. Boone is thirty. That’s a big age difference, and he thinks about things like that. His fiancée was only a year younger than he was. He said that people should never marry unless they’re the same age.”
