A Long Tall Texan Summer: Tom / Drew / Jobe. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ no great business loss. I don’t like people hassling my employees.”

      “Didn’t Elysia used to work for you, when you were working at that ad agency in New York?” Luke asked suddenly.

      Tom’s face showed no expression at all, but he felt a sinking feeling inside. “Yes, she did. I was sorry to lose her. She was a terrific secretary.”

      “She said she got tired of New York,” Luke replied easily. “I don’t blame her, what with all that noise and concrete. Anyway, it was a good thing she came home, or she’d never had married Fred and had Crissy. It’s been nice having her back here. I expect you missed her.”

      “More than she’ll ever know,” Tom replied absently, his eyes with a faraway look. He shook himself mentally. “I have to go. Nice to have met you, Miss Nash,” he told Crissy, extending a lean hand.

      She shook it warmly. “Nice to meet you, too, Mr. Walker.”

      “Great manners,” he remarked to Luke.

      “Oh, Elysia’s a stickler for them. Crissy’s much loved, but she doesn’t lack for discipline, either.”

      “What does Elysia do now?”

      “She owns an exclusive fashion boutique, actually,” he told Tom. “She enrolled in college after Crissy was born and got her degree in business and marketing. She has a backlog of designers and dressmakers and despite the small size of our town, she’s getting an international reputation for her fashion sense. She gets orders from all over. She even does a little designing as well. I knew she could draw, and she’s always been good at numbers, but I don’t think she really applied herself until she married Fred. He had contacts in the fashion world and in business and he pushed her—gently, of course. All that hidden talent came out. She’s only been in business a few years, and she already makes more on her boutique than I do on my cattle. Kills my ego.”

      “I can imagine.”

      “She and Crissy live with me. I don’t have any marriage plans and it’s our old family home—one of those big Victorian horrors. Of course, Matt Caldwell’s sweet on her. She may give in and marry him one day and move out.”

      For some reason, that casual remark played on Tom’s mind all day long, and into the night. Matt hadn’t mentioned Elysia at all when they’d talked, before he moved to Jacobsville. He wondered if the omission had been deliberate. Maybe Matt had known that Tom and Elysia were acquainted and was protecting what he thought of as his property. It was odd that he hadn’t mentioned her.

      Moose was waiting for him when he got home. The dog really was huge, he thought, as he fended off huge paws on his chest and an affectionate tongue the size of a washcloth.

      “Down, you moose,” he muttered, laughing as he patted the dog’s head. “Hungry, are you, or desperate for a fire hydrant? Come on.”

      He led the way to the back door and opened it. The backyard was fenced and reinforced on the bottom, fortunately, because Moose liked to dig. Local gardeners wouldn’t appreciate a visit from his pet.

      He waited until Moose was ready to come back in and opened the door for him. He filled the food and water dishes and left the big animal to have his supper.

      Tom went through his cabinets looking for something to tempt his appetite. He finally settled on a bowl of cold cereal. He had no appetite at all. Too many questions were plaguing him.

       Chapter 2

      Tom’s opinion of the new Elysia underwent a series of changes in the following few weeks. There was still plenty of gossip about her in Jacobsville, and he heard it all in bits and pieces of conversation when Elysia’s comings and goings were noticed by local citizens. One acquaintance thought she’d only married Fred Nash for his money, and that it was this inherited wealth that had made her exclusive fashion boutique possible. It was known that their union was one of friendship, not passion, and that there was a great age difference. And that Fred had been very, very rich.

      He didn’t believe the unpleasant remarks at first, but it was impossible not to notice how prosperous she was. She’d bought into her brother’s cattle farm and held half ownership of it. She also had investments of several kinds, including some very expensive oil stock. She had her daughter enrolled in a very well-known girls’ school in Houston for the fall term, and she drove a Mercedes convertible. Poor, she wasn’t.

      With her investments and the nearest counseling office in Victoria, it was inevitable that Luke was going to suggest that she bring her portfolio to Tom.

      “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she told her brother after supper that night.

      “Why not?” Luke asked. “He’s a whiz. Ask the Ballenger brothers.”

      “I know he’s good at picking stocks that increase in value,” Elysia replied calmly. “But he’s an intelligent man and he isn’t blind. I don’t want him around Crissy.”

      Luke sat back with a soft sigh, his blue eyes sympathetic. “She’s almost six years old,” he said pointedly. “She’s already in kindergarten. Don’t you think it’s time he knew he was a father?”

      She grimaced, leaning forward with her forearms crossed over her knees. “I don’t know how he’d react,” she said. “He was…less than encouraging when I left the office for good. I think he was relieved that I went away.” She shrugged. “I don’t think he’s lacked female company.”

      “Then isn’t it interesting that he doesn’t date?” he asked shrewdly. “That was the case in Houston, too. And since I haven’t heard any gossip about Mr. Walker liking men, I gather that he’s amazingly selective about his dates. One woman in over six years, I believe…?”

      She flushed red. “He was drinking. I told you.”

      He leaned forward, too, his face serious. “Jacob Cade and I became fairly good friends over the years. He never came right out and said anything, but he intimated that his wife and Tom had a very brutal childhood. Their father had a brain tumor and went stark-raving mad before he died. He attacked Kate physically because she just smiled at a young man.”

      “Wh…what?”

      He nodded. “That’s right. In his distorted mind, he equated sex with evil and made his kids believe it. Neither of them had anything to do with the opposite sex, even after he died. He warped them, Ellie. Now imagine how it would be, to have a parent who browbeat you into repressing your sexuality for years and years. And then imagine how it would be if you grew older with no experience whatsoever with the opposite sex? Do you think a man, especially, would find it easy to become involved with a woman?”

      She was barely breathing. “You aren’t going to tell me that you think Tom is a…a…”

      He nodded. “That’s exactly what I think. He and Kate were very close. When she married Jacob, Tom had nobody. He was totally alone. Probably getting a snootful of liquor was the only way he could let go of those repressed desires.”

      She sat back with a rough sigh. It actually made sense. She felt her heart beating wildly in her chest as she recalled how it had been with Tom. At the office, he’d avoided the female staff. He and Elysia had become close because she didn’t make eyes at him. She wasn’t aggressive, СКАЧАТЬ