A Long Tall Texan Summer: Tom / Drew / Jobe

The phone rang. He picked it up. It was a potential client. He put on his best business manner and forced the thought of Elysia to the back of his mind for the moment. It was inevitable that he was going to run into the Craigs sooner or later. As it happened, it was Luke he saw first, and he had Elysia’s daughter with him.

Tom stopped dead at the sight of the child. There was something about her that reminded him vividly of his sister, Kate. The child had olive skin and light green eyes. Her hair was long and straight and jet black. She was almost the image of Kate. He smiled in spite of himself. What a beautiful child!

“Hi, Tom,” Luke said with his easy friendliness. He had the little girl by the hand. He drew her forward. “I’m taking my niece to a movie. Crissy, honey, this is Mr. Walker. He’s Uncle Luke’s investment counselor.”

“Hello,” the child said politely, eyeing the tall man curiously. “You look like an Indian.”

His eyebrow quirked. He smiled faintly. “I had a Sioux great-grandfather.”

“I like to wear my hair in braids. Mama took me to an Indian powwow. That’s a festival where you can learn all about their culture and history, and all sorts of crafts. I had fun.”

That interesting fact piqued Tom’s curiosity, but before he could say anything, Luke cut the child off.

“Christine, you’re babbling,” Luke chided gently, chuckling as he glanced at Tom. “She’ll talk your leg off. She’s only in kindergarten, too.”

“Uncle Luke thinks I talk too much,” the little girl muttered, glowering up at her uncle.

“No, I don’t, pet,” her relative assured her. “She wants to see the pig movie.” He sighed. “I’m not keen, but I don’t have much to do around the ranch today, so I was free. Elysia’s at home with every pot we own on the stove putting up sauce. We’re going to die of tomato poisoning. Honest to God, she’s put up enough sauce to float a small ship!” He eyed Tom. “I don’t guess you like spaghetti? I could give you twenty or thirty jars of spaghetti sauce for Christmas.”

“I love it, as it happens,” Tom admitted, amused. “Why does she put up so much of it?”

“Just between us, I think something’s upset her,” he confessed. “She’s been like this for several days. She’s cleaned the house twice and washed both cars, now she’s determined to corner the tomato sauce market.”

“Mama always works when she’s upset,” Crissy volunteered. “Last time was when Miss Henry told her I pushed Markie down the steps.”

Tom’s eyebrows both rose. “Did you?”

Her lower lip thrust out. “He called me a sissy,” she said belligerently. “Just because I made him stop throwing rocks at a little frog.” She brightened. “I told his mama what he did, and he got whipped. His mama has an aquarium with lots of little fire toads in it. She let me see them.”

“Poor Markie,” Luke said under his breath.

“Good for you,” Tom told the child.

“Do you like cows?” she asked Tom. “We’ve got lots. I’ll bet Uncle Luke would even let you pet one, if you want.”

“He can pet all I’ve got,” Luke replied, his blue eyes dancing as he glanced at the other man.

“I’m a city boy,” Tom mused, his hands in his pockets. “Lately, anyway.”

“Yes, you’re from Houston, aren’t you?” Luke asked.

“Originally, I’m from South Dakota,” he replied. “I grew up around Jacob Cade’s ranch near Blairsville. He taught Kate and me how to ride when we were young. He’s a whiz at it.”

“I know that name,” Luke replied. “He and I were at a cattle auction in Montana a couple of years back. He’s your brother-in-law? Well, well. I have to say I was impressed. He knows cattle.”

“So does Kate. I’m the odd one out.”

“You know how to invest money,” Luke said pointedly. “That’s no small talent.”

Tom smiled. “Thanks.”

Luke was frowning. “Jacob said something about you… Oh, I remember,” he added with a grin. “You threw a client out the door in Houston for making remarks to your secretary, as I recall.”

“He was a—” he glanced at the little girl “—chauvinist.” He amended the word he’d been about to use. “It was 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, as some of the women were. She was shy and reserved, and she must have been the least threatening female he knew. He’d opened up with her, just a little. And then right after Kate had married, he’d had too much to drink and Elysia had been nearby. Perhaps he’d given in to feelings he couldn’t express, and then been ashamed of what he’d done, because of his childhood teachings.

The thought made her heart race. Could it be possible that she was Tom Walker’s first, only, woman in that way? Her lips parted.

“Do you think it’s possible?” she asked hesitantly.

“That it was his first time?” He nodded. “He’s no rounder. Nobody would accuse him of being a playboy. He’s courteous to women, but there’s an icy tone to his dealings with them. He’s polite, but nothing more.” He smiled. “He was very impressed with Crissy. You’ve never seen his sister Kate, have you?”

“No.”

He chuckled softly. “Well, I have. Crissy could be her daughter. I’m sure the resemblance didn’t escape Tom, even if he hasn’t quite recognized it yet.”

“What should I do, Luke?” she asked.

“Why don’t you go and talk to him honestly?”

“It would be hard.”

“Of course. Doing the right thing usually is.”

“I can’t go today. I’m meeting with a European buyer to open a new market.”

“There’s always tomorrow.”

She sighed. “I guess I always knew that I’d have to tell him one day. He won’t like it.”

“He will.”

She smiled. “You’re a nice brother. Why don’t you get married?”

“Bite your tongue, woman,” he said. “I’m not putting my neck in that particular noose. There are too many pretty girls around who like to party,” he chuckled, rising.

“One day, you’ll run head-on into someone who doesn’t.”

“I’ll pity the poor girl, whoever she is,” he said with a grin.

“You’re hopeless.”

“At least I’m honest,” he said pointedly. “A confirmed bachelor has to protect himself any way he can against you devious females!”

She threw a small sofa pillow at him.

She’d planned to stop by Tom’s office the next day, but an unexpected meeting early that morning had unfortunate consequences.

She’d just seen her European buyer off, very early that morning, from her shop in the middle of town. He was a determined would-be suitor who had to be convinced that a young widow didn’t need a man. She’d pushed him away with a cold smile right there on the sidewalk and wished him a pleasant trip.

“Pleasant, ha!” the handsome Frenchman had called. “Without you in my bed, I shall be very lonely, cherie. I hope that the business I send you will compensate you for my loss. After all, Elysia, to you, money is much more important than a mere lover, n’est pas?”

Sadly for Elysia, this bitter remark, loudly made by her angry rejected suitor, reached Tom Walker’s ears. He was less than ten feet away and heard every word.

Before Elysia could reply angrily to the Frenchman, he climbed into his sports car and roared away. She could have the business she wanted overseas, but the cost was too high. She wasn’t going to accept the merger. Better to rest on her American sales record than have to deal with a man like that!

“Is that how you get clients?” Tom asked, pausing beside her, his dark green eyes furious in that lean, dark face. “By sleeping with them?”

She looked at him blankly. “I get clients by providing quality service.”

“Oh? Really?” His gaze went up and down her body in the simple silk suit, to her long hair twisted into a neat chignon. She looked cool and desirable and very flushed. He hated her in that moment for the way she’d twisted his heart.

His contempt was visible. It hurt her, and it also made her furiously angry, that he should misjudge her so.

She pulled herself up to her full height. “Think what you like,” she said coldly. “Your opinion and fifty cents will buy you a cup of coffee at any café in town!”

He made a rough sound and put his hands into his pockets. “How was he in bed?”

Her face went scarlet. She slapped him. It wasn’t premeditated, but it felt good afterward. She turned on her heel and stalked away to her Mercedes convertible. Several people had seen what she did, but she didn’t care. She knew that she was gossiped about—most wealthy people were. She didn’t care anymore. She’d send her daughter away to a private school where she wouldn’t have to suffer the speculation and contempt of the neighbors. As for herself, people could think whatever they liked. And that included Tom Walker!

Tom, nursing a stinging cheek, stalked back into his own office, foregoing the sweet roll he’d gone out to get for his breakfast. He’d never been slapped by a woman in his life. It was an experience he didn’t relish.

He walked past his curious middle-aged secretary and closed his office door. Elysia had never seemed spirited in the old days. Perhaps her marriage had made her bitter.

As he recalled what he’d said to her, he had to admit that he’d provoked her into the action. He hadn’t meant to say the things he had, but the thought of her with that Frenchman—a man who had probably been to bed with hundreds of women from the look of him—made him sick with jealousy. He hadn’t known that he still felt so strongly for Elysia in the first place. Apparently his feelings for her were buried so far inside him that they couldn’t be removed.

Was this how Kate had felt about Jacob Cade? His sister had been enamored with the man most of her adult life. She’d kept photos of him in the damnedest places. It wasn’t until her job as a reporter had sent her into a terrorist standoff and she’d been shot that Jacob had revealed his own violent feelings for her. Theirs had been a rocky, volatile romance that eventually ended in a happy and lasting marriage. Kate had adjusted to it with joy.

But except for Elysia, Tom had never felt a rush of joy at just the sight of a woman. He’d often wondered as he grew older what it would be like to share his life and his heart as well as his bed with a woman. He’d always been sure that no woman would accept him with his hangups and his chaste status. Elysia had, but then, she hadn’t known that she was the first. He’d been too proud to admit that he was innocent. Now, he was glad he hadn’t shared that knowledge with her. She obviously wanted no part of him in her life.

He leaned forward and began to deal with the stack of mail on his desk, his sore cheek forgotten. Elysia was in the past. He might as well keep her there.

If only it had been that easy. Jacobsville was small enough that the monied class congregated everywhere. There was an endless social round that included chamber of commerce meetings and various charity and business gatherings of all sorts. Tom, as the town’s only investment counselor, was included in all of these. So, unfortunately, was Elysia.

Their stiff courtesy with each other didn’t go unnoticed. People remembered that Elysia had worked for Tom in New York before she’d come home to marry Fred Nash. They began to wonder about these two people because of their obvious hostility toward each other.

The gossip was unavoidable.

Tom found himself seated next to Elysia at the monthly meeting of businessmen. It was a lunch affair, served in the private dining room of the largest local restaurant. Tom, in a dark suit, and Elysia, in a neat gray pantsuit, her hair in a chignon, was secretary of the group. She couldn’t avoid him at this function, or the gossip would have been even worse.

But it was obvious to the most unobservant of guests that they barely tolerated each other. When Elysia passed around the neat copies she’d made of the financial report, she made sure that her hand didn’t touch Tom’s. When she passed the cream and sugar holders to him, again, she kept her fingers from making contact.

Tom was keenly aware of her bitter avoidance of him. He understood it, but that didn’t make it any easier. He was astonished that such a mercenary woman still had feelings to hurt.

After the meeting, she went straight to her car.

Tom followed right behind her, keenly aware of eyes following his progress to his own somber Lincoln, which was parked beside her Mercedes convertible.

Elysia fumbled with her keys and dropped them in her haste to get away before he came to his car. She muttered curses, hating the door because it wouldn’t cooperate.

“Don’t worry,” he murmured coolly from across the top of her car, “whatever I seem to have probably isn’t contagious a car length away.”

She glared at him, flushed. “That works both ways, Mr. Walker!”

“Listen, if you want to sleep your way up in the fashion world, it’s none of my business,” he said with icy venom.

She bit back a curse as the president of the chamber of commerce passed them with a curious glance.

“Nice meeting, Mr. James,” she said through her teeth with a smile.

“Yes, it was. Nice to have you aboard, too, Mr. Walker,” he said, pausing to shake Tom’s hand. “You be good to him, Mrs. Nash, we need new blood in the community!” he added with a wave of his hand as he went along to his own car.

“Oh, how I’d love to show him some of yours,” Elysia said fervently, glaring at Tom.

“You need to work on that attitude problem,” he replied somberly. “You seem to have lost your knack for diplomacy.”

“Only with you,” she shot right back. “I get along fine with everyone else.”

“Especially French buyers, hmmm?”

“Damn you!”

His eyebrows arched as she pulled off a high heel shoe and threw it at him.

“Wouldn’t you know I’d miss?” she demanded of the parking lot. “Give me back my shoe.”

“Come over here and get it,” he challenged.

“You’re not my type,” she purred. “You can’t speak French!”

His eyes went cold. He threw the shoe onto the top of her car, got into his own, backed out and drove away without even looking in her direction.

“I love you, too, you sweet man!” she called after him.

“Can I print that?” the local newspaper editor whispered in her ear.

She shrieked. “John, don’t sneak up on me like that!”

He grinned wickedly. “Can’t you see the headlines? Boutique Owner Shouts Love For Financial Advisor At Top Of Lungs…”

“Do you need a shoe?” she asked, holding it over her head in a threatening manner.

He cleared his throat. “Not my size. Thanks, anyway.”

He beat a hasty retreat. She glared after him. This was getting totally out of hand.

Tom was kept busy for the rest of the week, and Elysia took a back seat in his mind as he dealt with one financial crisis after another. By Saturday, he was ready for some rest and recreation. He decided that fishing might be a nice way to relax, and a local man had a stocked private pond where he rented poles and bait for a small all-day fee.

He put on jeans and went on his way. Fortunately the fish were biting, since he did love a nice fried bass. It brought back memories of his youth in South Dakota, when he and Kate had gone fishing with Jacob Cade on the older man’s sprawling ranch.

His boots were worn, but serviceable, like the old beige Stetson he’d had for years. Dressed like that, he looked every inch a cowboy. Kate had always wondered why her only brother had chosen city life. She’d never realized that the very anonymity of a big city was kind to his ego. In a small town, his aloneness would have been so much more noticeable.

In fact, it worried him here. He hadn’t considered how curious small-town people were about strangers, or how gossip, though kind, ran rampant. It was rather like being part of a huge family, having everyone know all about you. The comforting thing about it was that, also like family, people tended to accept each other regardless of human frailty.

For instance, everyone knew that old Harry was an alcoholic, and that Jeff had been in prison for killing his wife’s lover. They also knew that a local spinster bought copies of a notorious magazine that contained vivid photos of nude men, and that a certain social worker lived with a man to whom she wasn’t married. These were open secrets, however, and not one person ridiculed these people or treated them as untouchables. They were family.

Tom began to understand that even the talk about Elysia wasn’t vicious or brutal.

In fact, as Tom spent more time around local people, and heard more gossip about her, he learned that Elysia’s marriage had been looked upon more as a charitable act on her part, despite her husband’s wealth.

“Took care of him like a nurse, she did,” old man Gallagher had said, nodding with approval as he filled Tom’s order at the office supply store the week before, when talk had turned to Elysia’s similar taste in stationery for her boutique. “Never shirked, not even at the end when he was bedridden and needed around-the-clock nursing. She had a nurse, but she stayed, too.” He smiled. “She may have inherited a lot of money, that’s true, but most people feel like she earned it with the care she took of old Fred. Never doubted that she was fond of him. And that kid doted on him.” He sighed. “She mourned him, too, and so did the kid. Nice young woman. Most folks remember her dad.” His eyes had darkened and narrowed.