LITMIR.BIZ

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wondered if all that hostility had something beneath it?

      He sighed and lifted his cup. Ted and Tom lifted theirs, too. The others in the room caught on, and Jobe Dodd lifted his with theirs toward the two doctors and their son. It was going to be quite a summer in Jacobsville.

      “Cheers!” they all said in unison.

      Three men in the privacy of their own minds stared at the child and wondered how it would be if they had families. Each of them was sure that he never would.

       Chapter 1

      There was a muffled crash from the living room and Tom Walker let out a weary sigh as he turned from unpacking the few small kitchen appliances that had come with him from Houston.

      “Moose!” he grumbled. He got up from the floor and left the box sitting to see what latest disaster his pet had caused.

      It had all started with a rainstorm and a tiny, frightened little ball of fur hiding under a metal mailbox in downtown Houston. Somebody had abandoned the puppy and Tom had been unable to leave it there on the side of a busy street. But the act of compassion had repercussions. Big ones. The tiny puppy had grown into a gorgeous but enormous

      German shepherd mix whom he had named Shep, but who was later rechristened Moose.

      As he stood watching the huge animal settle himself among the remains of a once-elegant antique bowl on the big coffee table, he reflected that the new name was appropriate. It was like having a moose in the house.

      “Kate will never forgive you,” he said pointedly, remembering how happy his sister had been when, newly married, she had given him the bowl as a Christmas gift. “That was a Christmas present. It was handmade by a famous Native American potter!”

      “Woof,” Moose replied in his deep dog voice, and grinned at him.

      The vet had said that Moose was still going through his puppy stage.

      “Will he outgrow it?” Tom had asked plaintively, having taken the big dog to the vet after Moose had gone swimming in a neighbor’s outdoor goldfish pond.

      “Sure!” the vet had assured him, and just as Tom began to sigh with relief, he added with a wicked grin, “Four, five years from now, he’ll calm right down!”

      Resigned, he took the big dog back home and hoped he could adapt to living among pottery shards and disemboweled furniture for the next few years of his life.

      One of his neighbors had offered to buy Moose who, while a walking disaster, was absolutely beautiful, with a black coat of fur that shone like coal in sunlight, and stark white markings with medium brown eyebrows and facial markings.

      Tom had replied that he liked the man too much to sell Moose to him.

      He gave the coffee table one last look, shook his head and went into the kitchen to make coffee. Just as he started the coffeemaker, he heard a crunching noise and turned to find that while he’d been occupied with coffee, Moose had overturned the kitchen trash can and spread the contents all over the linoleum floor. He was munching contentedly on an apple core amidst coffee grounds, banana peels and empty TV dinner cartons.

      “Oh, Lord,” Tom prayed silently. He took the apple core away, set the trash can upright and went to find a broom. What a good thing that he wasn’t entertaining thoughts of marriage. No woman in her right mind would put up with his canine companion.

      He was thirty-four. He should have been long-since married, but he and his sister, Kate, had been victims of a shocking, terrible upbringing that had stunted them sexually. Their father had beaten both of them as children and raised the devil every time one of them so much as smiled at the opposite sex. In fact, sex, he lectured, was the greatest sin of all. He was a lay minister, so they believed him.

      What they hadn’t known at the time was that he had a brain tumor that modified his once-loving personality and eventually killed him. Their long-missing mother had been found by Jacob Cade, his sister Kate’s husband, and presented to them both at Jacob and Kate’s wedding, over six years ago. It had been a painful reunion until they learned that far from deserting them as children, their mother had never dreamed that their father would kidnap them and spirit them away from her. But he had done just that. She’d spent half a lifetime using money from her meager salary trying to find them again. She lived in Missouri, but they both saw her frequently. Now that Kate was married and had a son, their mother often visited her.

      Tom wondered if he could ever marry. Kate had, but then Jacob Cade had been the love of her life since her early teens. Presumably Kate’s fear of the physical side of marriage had been overcome. She and Cade had a son, who was five years old. And although they’d tried to have a second child, they hadn’t been able to just yet.

      He’d have liked children. But his one sexual experience had left him sick with guilt. Kate’s wedding had pointed out, as nothing else ever had, how very alone he was. He’d gone back to his job with an advertising firm in New York City and that weekend, to a local bar to drown his sorrows.

      She’d been there at a going-away party for one of the girls in the office. Elysia Craig had been his secretary for two years. She was a pretty blonde with gray eyes and a neat little figure who was teased by her co-workers for being so prim and prudish. Tom thought it was a joke. He never realized that she was as inexperienced as he was. Not until it was far too late. His most vivid memory of Elysia was of her crouching in the full-sized bed in his apartment with a white sheet clutched to her breasts, weeping like a widow. He’d hurt her without meaning to, and the tears had been the last straw. He couldn’t remember saying a single word to her as she dressed and got into the cab he called for her. He’d been far too inebriated and sick to drive by then.

      He hadn’t known how to apologize, or explain. His behavior had shamed him. He couldn’t even meet her eyes the next morning, or speak to her. Most of the women in the office where he worked were sophisticated and savvy, but Elysia wasn’t. His inability to communicate with her provoked her into quitting her job that very day and going back home to Texas. To his shame, he hadn’t even looked for her. He’d still been fighting feelings of shame and guilt, holdovers from his brutal childhood, despite the aching hunger he’d felt for Elysia.

      Her gentle, kind nature was what had attracted him to her in the first place, but except for his excessive drinking he would never have approached her. His feelings for her he’d kept secret, never dreaming that he might one day end up in bed with her. It had been the most exquisite experience of his life, but the guilt had made him sick, so he pushed it to the back of his mind and tried to forget it.

      Not long afterward, he’d given up his advertising job and studied the investment business. His first job had been as an assistant advisor with a well-known national company. Then he’d moved to Houston, Texas, to open his own office in the building with a friend, Logan Deverell. But he’d gotten wanderlust again when Logan had married his long-suffering secretary.

      He’d arrived in Jacobsville three weeks ago, thanks to another mutual friend, Matt Caldwell, who owned a stud farm out of town. Matt was friends with the Ballenger brothers, Calhoun and Justin, who owned a huge feedlot and liked to invest their earnings. They were all mutual friends of the Tremayne brothers, who owned properties all over Texas. Before he’d even had time to unpack, Tom had all the business he could handle.

      A real-estate agent in town had dabbled in the properties market, but since she’d remarried her ex-husband, a pilot, they’d moved house to Atlanta. The nearest investment counselor now was in Victoria. Tom had no competition at all, for the moment, in Jacobsville. It seemed like a dream come true.

      Then, yesterday, out of the blue, a new client had walked in the door—Luke Craig—and the bottom had fallen out of Tom’s life. Luke had a sister, recently widowed with a small daughter. Her first name was Elysia.

      Tom poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down on the sofa. Moose jumped up beside him to rest his chin on his master’s leg.

      He petted the big dog absently. “Don’t think I’m forgetting the broken

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