“Doc? Has Someone Staked A Claim On You?”
Elizabeth blinked at him in confusion. “What?”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“There was,” she said quietly, then sighed and turned back to meet his gaze. “But not any longer.”
Relief washed through Woodrow in waves. Pushing off the porch, he stood and drew her up to stand opposite him. “Good. Because I sure wouldn’t want someone to come gunning for me.”
“Why would anyone come—”
Before she could finish the question, he slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her hips to him. As her gaze met his, he saw the passion that smoked her eyes, as well as the wonder. “Doc?”
“Yes?”
“Last night I slept with you. Held you. I can’t do that tonight. Not without making love with you.”
Dear Reader,
Thank you for choosing Silhouette Desire—where passion is guaranteed in every read. Things sure are heating up with our continuing series DYNASTIES: THE BARONES. Eileen Wilks’s With Private Eyes is a powerful romance that helps set the stage for the daring conclusion next month. And if it’s more continuing stories that you want—we have them. TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB: THE STOLEN BABY launches this month with Sara Orwig’s Entangled with a Texan.
The wonderful Peggy Moreland is on hand to dish up her share of Texas humor and heat with Baby, You’re Mine, the next installment of her TANNERS OF TEXAS series. Be sure to catch Peggy’s Silhouette Single Title, Tanner’s Millions, on sale January 2004. Award-winning author Jennifer Greene marks her much-anticipated return to Silhouette Desire with Wild in the Field, the first book in her series THE SCENT OF LAVENDER.
Also for your enjoyment this month, we offer Katherine Garbera’s second book in the KING OF HEARTS series. Cinderella’s Christmas Affair is a fabulous “it could happen to you” plot guaranteed to leave her fans extremely satisfied. And rounding out our selection of delectable stories is Awakening Beauty by Amy J. Fetzer, a steamy, sensational tale.
More passion to you!
Melissa Jeglinski
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
Baby, You’re Mine
Peggy Moreland
PEGGY MORELAND
published her first romance with Silhouette in 1989 and continues to delight readers with stories set in her home state of Texas. Winner of the National Readers’ Choice Award, a nominee for the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award and a two-time finalist for the prestigious RITA® Award, Peggy has frequently appeared on the USA TODAY and Waldenbooks’s bestseller lists. When not writing, you can usually find Peggy outside, tending the cattle, goats and other critters on the ranch she shares with her husband. You may write to Peggy at P.O. Box 1099, Florence, TX 76527-1099, or e-mail her at [email protected].
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Epilogue
One
Cantankerous. That’s what polite folks called Woodrow Tanner. Less courteous ones used a riper, more colorful word, one not often used in the presence of women or within hearing distance of the preacher. But Woodrow didn’t give a tinker’s damn what people called him and less what they thought of him as a person. He did as he damn well pleased and to hell with anyone who disapproved.
He owned seven hundred and fifty acres of prime ranch land southwest of Tanner’s Crossing and lived in a log house he’d built dead-center in the property. He’d placed it there for the sole purpose of putting as much distance as possible from himself and his neighbors. Other than a blue-heeler dog that insisted on sleeping at the foot of his bed, he lived alone and planned to keep it that way. His biggest beefs in life—and the ones sure to put him in a bad mood—were large crowds, big cities and traffic jams that consisted of anything more than a couple of farm trucks trapped behind a slow-moving tractor. Since he was currently crawling at a snail’s pace down Dallas, Texas’s Central Expressway, his normal cantankerous mood was registering on the dangerous side of the scale.
If his brother Ace had been within grabbing distance, he would’ve gladly blacked one of his eyes, maybe even bloodied his nose, for sending him on this wild goose chase. Not that Woodrow had willingly accepted the assignment. He’d cussed and kicked aplenty, demanding that one of the other Tanner brothers make the trip instead. But Ace had sworn that Woodrow was the only one available, claiming that Ry couldn’t spare the time from his surgical practice, and Rory was out of town, buying the next season’s goods for his chain of country western stores. Ace hadn’t offered an excuse for Whit and Woodrow hadn’t bothered to ask for one. Whit’s stepbrother status exempted him from most family obligations, an immunity that Woodrow resented more than a little.
So, in the end, it was Woodrow who was elected to travel to Dallas to take care of a little family business.
But that didn’t mean he had to like it.
Ahead, he saw his exit and bullied his dually truck into the far right lane. Once free of the expressway and the cars clogging it, he relaxed a little and checked his directions again. Two more rights and a left and he was pulling into a parking space in front of a modern, five-story building. He shuddered at all the metal and glass towering before him. Personally he preferred natural materials. Stone. Wood. Brick was all right if used to construct a commercial building, such as a post office or a bank. But anything beyond those three materials, he considered a defamation to the landscape, an eyesore, something better suited for someplace like, say…Mars.
With his mood growing darker by the minute, he climbed from his truck and headed for the building’s entrance. Once inside, he checked the directory, then took the elevator to the fifth floor. He found the door marked Elizabeth Montgomery, Pediatrician, and pushed it open. Without a glance to either side, he strode straight for the reception window and rapped his knuckles against the glass.
A woman glanced up from her work, then higher, until her gaze met his. Her eyes widened and her jaw sagged. Woodrow was accustomed to the reaction. The Tanner men were known for their size and their looks and generally created a stir with women, intended or not.
Slowly the woman stood and rolled back the window. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah. I need to see Dr. Montgomery.”
She leaned to peer around him, as if she expected to find someone hiding behind him. Someone decidedly smaller. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No. This is personal.”
Her brows drew together. “Is the doctor expecting you?”
“No.”
“If you’ll give me your name, I’ll tell her you’re here.”
“Woodrow Tanner.”
She took a step back, her wide-eyed gaze fixed on his. “Wait just a minute. I’ll be right back.”
Woodrow