Long, Tall Texans_Tom by Diana Palmer

Author:Diana Palmer [Palmer, Diana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

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 naiveté. “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.”

“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.

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