A Long Tall Texan Summer: Tom Walker (8 page)

"So do I." He smiled. "So what?"

"I don't plan to give up my boutique."

His eyebrows arched. "Did I ask you to?"

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"It takes up a lot of my time," she began.

"My work takes up a lot of mine," he told her. "But we'd have weekends with each other and Crissy.

She'd have a balanced family."

"She doesn't know that you're her father," she said worriedly.

"One day, she will. We don't have to decide

anything in the next five hours, do we?"

She laughed out loud. "Tom, you make it all seem so simple."

"Generally life is simple. People complicate

it when emotions get in the way." He looked at her openly, with tender appreciation. "You're amazingly pretty."

She flushed. "I am not. I'm five pounds overweight for my height and I have wrinkles."

"I'd be getting there, myself, if I didn't spend so much time chasing Moose out of things."

"Your dog?"

"My small horse. Once you meet him, it will take a while to get used to him. It would be all right as long

as you don't have anything fragile."

She cocked her head at him. "This sounds serious."

"It is. He's still a puppy and he has no respect

for personal property, unless it's his."

"I like dogs," she said.

"That's because you haven't met Moose."

"When am I going to?"

He eyed her warily. "I was hoping to put that off until the very last minute, just in case. But if you have to, you have to. How about tomorrow? You can bring Crissy with you."

"She'd like that."

He checked his watch. "We'd better get going.

I made reservations for supper."

"This sounds like serious eating," she said as he led her to the Lincoln.

"It is. I hope you still like seafood."

Her breath caught. "I do. How did you remember

that, after all this time?"

He got in beside her and cranked the engine. "You'd be surprised at some of the things I remember about you," he replied. "You were memorable."

She averted her eyes. "So were you."

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He drove quietly for several minutes. "I hurt you."

"Inevitably," she agreed. "But, before..." She cleared her throat.

"Before?" he prompted.

She turned her purse over in her lap. "Before

... it was... wonderful.''

"For me, too," he said stiffly. "A feast of first times. I'd never touched a woman that intimately in my life."

She smiled shyly. "I know. I'm glad."

He glanced at her ruefully. "Thank God you weren't experienced," he murmured.

"Why?"

"You'd have laughed your head off at all that fumbling."

"Don't be silly," she replied. "No matter what you'd done, it would have been wonderful.

I loved you,

you know," she added huskily,

and she didn't look at him.

"Well, that's nice to know," he told her. "Because I was head over heels in love with you, too."

She gaped at him. "You were?"

He didn't look at her. "Didn't you know?" he asked softly. "Everyone else did. It was why I couldn't face

you the next morning. It had been the most exquisite experience of my life. But I had no way of knowing

for sure if you were innocent, even though I suspected it. I was afraid you'd laugh at me."

"As if I could, ever!" she exclaimed. "I worked for you for two years. Didn't that give you some clue to my character?"

"I never knew you intimately," he explained.

"And most women these days are very experienced and

they expect a lot in bed.

I wasn't sure I could measure up to those expectations.

That's one reason I shied away from being

intimate. At least, until you came along." He glanced at her. "I didn't plan it, either. I drank too much and

things just seemed to happen."

"I know. It was like that for me, too, nothing

planned." She smiled, the first time she'd been able to smile about her naivete. "You might have noticed the lack of precautions..."

He chuckled with delight. "All four feet of her," he said with a nod.

She dropped her gaze to his chest and shook her head. "I guess we were both pretty naive."

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"I'm sorry," he said gravely, and his eyes were somber when hers lifted to them. "About the way I behaved, and most especially about the way things worked out for you and Crissy. I've missed so much of her life," he added. "I have years to catch up on. If you're going to let me."

She felt startled. "Why wouldn't I?"

His broad shoulders lifted and fell. "You have every right to hold a grudge against me for the past. I couldn't really blame you for wanting me out of your life all over again."

The statement shocked and relieved her.

She'd been afraid that he might sue for full custody of his daughter, but he didn't sound vindictive at all.

He sounded as if the past left him guilty and empty.

"I won't deny you access to your daughter, Tom," she said honestly. "I wouldn't do that."

He let out the breath he'd been holding. "Thank you for that. I'd worried, you know."

"So had I," she had to confess. "I thought you might feel vengeful toward me for not contacting you when

I knew I was pregnant."

"It was bad, wasn't it, having to have her without a husband?"

"Fred Nash gave me respectability," she reminded him. "He was a good man, Tom. You'd have liked him. He was in a terrible condition, with no family to care for him, and he was dying. I needed a husband,

he needed a companion and nurse. We helped each other. He loved Crissy as if she were his own."

He grimaced at the thought of Elysia having to marry someone she didn't love in order to live in this small

community. Respectability was important in small towns. He remembered when he and Kate had gone to

live with their grandmother, and how careful she was about relating any of their past. Elysia had her brother to think of, and his business. It must have been very difficult for her. And she'd gone back to school, managing that as well as a child and a husband with cancer. His mind boggled at the stress she'd lived under.

"What a life you must have had," he murmured

out loud.

She met his searching gaze. "It was difficult at times, but I have a lot to show for my sacrifices.

I've

grown up."

"So have I," he mused. "I didn't realize it until I landed here, but I suppose you had a lot to do with the maturing process. I was a late bloomer."

"So was I," she told him. "I've learned a lot. I'm independent now. I can take care of myself and Crissy."

His eyes narrowed. Was she telling him that she had no need of him in her life?

"What I meant," she said when she saw the uncertainty in his dark face, "is that I wouldn't ever be a financial burden to any man. And that I wouldn't be left dangling if he left me or died."

"I see."

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"Not that I expect you to die anytime soon," she added quickly.

His green gaze slid over her flushed face and he smiled. “I’ll do my best not to."

She glanced at him shyly as he stopped at a traffic light. It seemed unreal to be sitting beside him in a car

after so many lonely years of nothing but memories. When she'd worked for him in New York, they'd often spent their lunch hours talking about the places they'd seen, the people they met. He always had time for those conversations. It had never occurred to her that, as busy as he usually was, he was making

the time he gave her. Now, it mattered.

His head turned toward her and he caught her searching gaze. He smiled. "I still can't quite get over it,"

he mused. "You don't look like a woman who's had a child."

“Thank you," she replied.

"Did you have her naturally?" he asked.

She shook her head. "That wasn't possible. I have a quirky little heart defect—nothing serious, except

when I have a lot of physical stress. I had an arrythmia that wouldn't stop and they had to take Crissy. I have a scar. It's faint, but noticeable."

"I should have been there," he said quietly, reproaching himself mentally. "Your husband couldn't be, could he?" he added suddenly.

She grimaced. "He'd just had chemotherapy and he was so sick...Luke drove me to the hospital and stayed with me all the time. I don't know what I'd have done without him."

He was somber, and he didn't speak again until they were almost to Houston.

"You could have died," he said.

She studied his hard face. "I didn't."

He drew in a heavy breath. "All that suffering,

all that loneliness, because I was too

ashamed to tell you the truth."

"I understand." And it was true, she did. She smiled gently at him. "A man's pride is a hard thing to give up. But I wouldn't have made fun of you if you'd told me. I think..."

"You think..." he prompted, when she didn't finish her sentence.

"I think it would made it easier," she confessed.

"I was very nervous and upset because I thought you'd had dozens of women, and I was so inexperienced. I didn't even know what to do exactly." She flushed, averting her eyes to the darkness outside the window, broken intermittently by the lights of Houston in the

distance. "I thought you wouldn't talk to me because I'd disappointed you."

"I was thinking the same thing, about myself,"

he added. He shook his head. "What a couple of prize idiots we were. At least you had your age as an excuse. All I had was an overdose of pride. I'm sorry."

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“You said yourself that we have a second chance, Tom," she replied.

His breathing was audible. "We do. And we're going to make the most of it." His eyes darted toward her face. "You won't get away from me this time, Mrs. Nash," he mused. "No matter how far or fast you run."

"I don't think I want to run anymore," she told him.

"Good. Because I'm getting too old to run."

She chuckled. "You'll get over that if you're around Crissy much more. She loves all sports. Just wait until school starts!"

"I'm rather looking forward to a real Christmas for once," he said. "I haven't had one since Kate and I left our grandmother's house. I miss decorating a tree and having presents to open."

"We'll see that you have both," she promised,

her gray eyes twinkling.

The restaurant he took her to was in the best section of Houston, an elegant one with no prices on the menu at all and a table near the window overlooking the canal that brought sea traffic into the city.

Huge

ships were visible in the distance, and she imagined that in the daylight, sea gulls dipped and soared

everywhere here.

"This is very nice," she remarked.

"Yes, it is," he agreed. "I used to come here with business clients when I worked in Houston. Never with

a woman, though, except once," he added with a cold look.

"Bad experience?" she queried softly.

"She was one of those very aggressive businesswomen who liked sex as a sideline. I wouldn't play ball and I lost a very big contract."

He glanced at her warmly. "If you could have seen the look on her face.

She was very attractive and she tried every trick in the book."

"And you wouldn't?" she asked, fascinated.

"I couldn't," he replied. He smiled softly, searching her lovely face. "I haven't ever wanted another woman. Only you."

She flushed. "Isn't that...unusual?"

"I don't know," he said honestly. "I'm not experienced." Amazing how easy it was to admit that to her.

He toyed with his fork. "I just didn't feel anything at all, not even when we danced and she plastered herself against me.

She was experienced enough to know that she wasn't having an effect. She walked out of the restaurant in a huff, without finishing her food."

"I guess her pride was hurt."

He smiled. "She called me the next week to apologize," he added.

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“I’ll bet that surprised you."

"Shocked me," he agreed. "But she was sure she'd guessed why it was like that. She said that I'd been an idiot to let the right woman get away, and that I was worth ten of the men she'd done business with. I got the contract after all."

"I hope you don't still have it," she said icily.

His eyebrows shot up with patent delight. "Yes, I do," he told her. Then he added, "Hers, and her brand-new husband's."

She flushed again. "Oh."

"Jealous?" he teased.

She glared at him. "Of course I'm jealous," she said irritably. "You're the only man I've ever known...that

way."

He stared down at the fork instead of at her. "I've wondered ever since that night how it would be if we were totally honest with each other, if we had no secrets at all." His thumb pressed the fork down absently and his jaw tautened. "I've read a lot of books since that night. I think I could make it more pleasurable...

now."

She lifted her eyes to his. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat as she met that smoldering glance.

"Tonight?"

His cheeks went ruddy. "I hadn't thought about it that soon."

She didn't drop her gaze. "But you want to."

His jaw clenched. "My God, of course I want to," he said in a harsh undertone. "It's all I think about lately."

"I'm glad," she replied. "Because it's all I've thought about since we kissed last night in my kitchen."

His hand slipped across the small table and caught hers, fingers interlacing. His skin felt as hot as her own did. His eyes were steady, unblinking.

"I love you," he said roughly.