скачать книгу бесплатно
Taken By A Texan
Lass Small
THE KEEPERS OF TEXAS TANGLIN' WITH A TEXAN Ranch hand Rip Morris had quite the reputation… although what he really knew about women wouldn't add up to a pile of hay. So who would have guessed a lovely socialite like Miss Lu Parsons had requested the pleasure of his company for her first roll in the proverbial haystack?The taut-bodied Texan was all set to comply with the lady's wishes. But fate and Mother Nature seemed to be conspiring against them losing their virginity. Or maybe this was Rip's chance to lose his well-guarded heart to a woman whose body and soul were his for the taking… .THE KEEPERS OF TEXAS: Every book's a keeper in this sexy saga of untamable Texas men and the stubborn beauties who lasso their hearts.
CAST OF CHARACTERS (#u1c5110ed-43e1-5234-a225-74677327b798)Letter to Reader (#ud04237a1-9d67-5bc9-a927-5e9a9cde957c)Title Page (#u268f1862-29a0-56f3-a98b-bf1eeca1c684)About the Author (#u2341cf37-c6b3-5610-96be-0119064c12fa)Prologue (#ucbc2776b-9c98-5051-8c41-f1c7a9370705)Chapter One (#ue5a3ec6f-ce41-5b03-a34a-5064cd360035)Chapter Two (#ub8aaa7d1-25e6-5608-9e0e-4cf8c5a539fe)Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
You won’t want to miss any of the memorable characters in this newest series by bestselling author Lass Small. While each of THE KEEPERS OF TEXAS books stands on its own, the continuing saga of the Keeper family and ranch will surely keep you coming back for more!
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Rip Morris: This stubborn and seductive cowboy worked hard for the Keeper family. And though he had a reputation as a ladies’ man, he’d only reveal his true nature to one special lady. Could she be...
Lu Parsons: This innocent Texas socialite was going to learn more about the birds and the bees than she ever dreamed. And maybe she’d find a permanent home on the Keeper ranch, though she’d only come to town to take care of her brother...
Andrew Parsons: What had this greenhorn been doing, trespassing on Keeper land? And what would he remember once he awoke from his unconscious state? One person was determined to uncover the truth about the mysterious accident....
Tom Keeper: Heir to the Keeper ranch, he’d loved and lost one time too many. He claimed to have given up any thoughts of marriage, but Mrs. Right could be just around the corner!
Dear Reader,
This month Silhouette Desire brings you six brand-new, emotional and sensual novels by some of the bestselling—and most beloved—authors in the romance genre. Cait London continues her hugely popular miniseries THE TALLCHIEFS with The Seduction of Fiona Tallchief, April’s MAN OF THE MONTH. Next, Elizabeth Bevarly concludes her BLAME IT ON BOB series with The Virgin and the Vagabond. And when a socialite confesses her virginity to a cowboy, she just might be Taken by a Texan, in Lass Small’s THE KEEPERS OF TEXAS miniseries.
Plus, we have Maureen Child’s Maternity Bride, The Cowboy and the Calendar Girl, the last in the OPPOSITES ATTRACT series by Nancy Martin, and Kathryn Taylor’s tale of domesticating an office-bound hunk in Taming the Tycoon.
I hope you enjoy all six of Silhouette Desire’s selections this month—and every month!
Regards,
Senior Editor
Silhouette Books
Please address questions and book requests to
Silhouette Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave , P.O Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
Lass Small
Taken By A Texan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LASS SMALL
finds living on this planet at this tune a fascinating experience. People are amazing. She thinks that to be a teller of tales of people, places and things is absolutely marvelous.
Prologue
It all began, oddly enough, because Thomas Keeper was a restless man who had been overlooked by the female gender. Of course he was also a selective man, and had limited the opposite gender to those females who attracted him.
Tom was a TEXAS man. Which meant that he wasn’t something as simple as just male. He thought like a man. He looked like one. He was strong and could bend just about anything. But more important than his strength, was his ability to persuade.
He knew cars and understood them. Any woman knows on sight that cars are obstinate and male. Men get along with cars. Women get towed.
In chancy situations, Tom Keeper was calm. His face was stoic. He moved his glance to what was happening, but he didn’t have tunnel vision and ignore everything else. He kept the whole area under his observation without seeming to do so.
Just like his daddy.
Tom was a man in the sense we all suppose males are. He never took a hand, in anything, unless he was needed. Then he was logical. Or he was physical, if it came to that. He caught arms, stopped fists with his open hand, or just said, “Be quiet” like you would to a dog or a child or an adult male who wasn’t really in control of himself.
Women tended to go to Tom when they had problems with another man. Like Kayla Fuller had when she’d been baffled on how to regain her stupid ex-husband Tyler.
And it was Tom who took over the dogs from Kayla when she bought them at an illegal dog pit and didn’t know what to do with them.
The fact that Kayla had never been interested in anyone else but that budding lawyer, Tyler, was obvious to everyone but Tom. He had really thought he had another chance with Kayla.
During that time Tom had been with Kayla he’d listened to her. And after a while he’d mentioned to her that she still loved Tyler. The woman had been shocked and strongly denied it, but Tom had watched Kayla as she’d protested that she was finished with Tyler. She’d protested too emotionally. She’d cried.
It had been a sad time for Tom. He’d still felt the same way about Kayla as he had before Tyler had intruded onto the scene. Tom had always thought that when he wanted to settle down, Kayla would be available.
But she’d loved Tyler. That had been a stunning observation. A nasty realization. How could she?
Her marriage to Tyler had been a waste of a good woman. At best, Tom thought, women were a trial. It made Tom wonder why God had given men such odd companions. Such baffling, complicated solutions to a man’s needs. Women were a chore for any needy man. Women wanted men to do so much else!
The men from the distant past were probably the smartest. They protected the village, hunted and supplied the meat while the women kept the village neat and did the planting.
Theirs was a better organization. Their women had other women to ease them and listen to them. Women understood other women. Men never really did.
But at the current time, in TEXAS, with the women being snatched up by other men, Tom felt like an abandoned coyote outside the corral. How was Tom to get his sheep? How was he to live like everybody else, here, on this land? He was of the age when he needed to be paired off and responsible.
Why was his family named Keeper? What had somebody, back long ago, been keeper...of? Did the long ago Keepers raid other places and not give anything back?
Tom’s eyes narrowed and he thought how he’d like to raid Tyler’s house, snatch Kayla and keep—her. His ancestors very probably raided other places and stole women. His name wasn’t keep-im or keep-it. It was keep-er.
Tom tilted his head and considered raiding. It was attractive to him. The urge was probably genetic. Since the Keepers had so much land and money, Tom finally wondered just how the devil they’d gotten all that land and all that money.
So the next time he saw his daddy, he asked him. They were out on the Keeper place, looking around, seeing what was going on. They’d come to a small stream with a large oak for shade.
The two were resting their horses. So they had stepped down and stood talking, letting the horses look around without the human weight on their backs.
There were three big dogs with them. The dogs were watching around and probably exchanging comments about where they were and what the humans were up to. The dogs were probably glad not to be horses. No saddles, no bridles, they went around almost free.
They listened as Tom asked his daddy, “How come we’ve got all this land and all this money?”
For the dogs it was not an interesting subject, so they went off a ways and looked around.
But Tom’s father looked at his son and replied soberly and with a tad of puzzlement, “The reason we got this place is that we worked our tails off.”
“How’d you go about getting the land?”
“I asked my daddy that same question when I was just a tad.” He then commented in an aside, “It’s interesting it took you so long to inquire about that.” Then he looked afar as he instructed his twenty-eight-year-old son, “When our family wanted to come here, back then, just by the strangest chance, our ancestor learned the Indian chief of the tribe that lived on this land then could speak English. Your seven greats grandfather heard a conversation by the purest accident. The chief not only spoke English, he’d been to Europe!”
“Now why had he gone there?”
Tom’s daddy said, “He was curious how come all us strange, pale people were invading their lands. He did sell us this plot and charged us a tad more than anybody else around here paid.”
“Where’d the tribe go from here?”
And his daddy told him, “North to Canada. They didn’t have the European rifles. Just their bows and arrows. They saw the future.”
Tom considered as he looked around. Then he said, “It must have been tough for them to leave here.”
“Apparently not. Other tribes were vicious in defending their land, but the small tribe we contacted was ready to leave here. They didn’t much cotton to us newcomers and went off on their own to another place.”
Tom said, “I’ve had it pretty easy.”
His daddy agreed, “Just saying that shows you’re getting ready to share the load. You’re through school five years, now. You’ve traveled. That part’s important. You got so’s you realize how lucky we are to have this spread, and you understand you need to pull your share. About time you settled down.”
Tom said sadly, “I thought I had the woman I wanted, but she went back to her husband.”
His daddy nodded as he named them. “Kayla Davie went back to Tyler Fuller. Sometimes that happens. Women aren’t at all predictable. She probably thinks she can help Tyler be a really great lawyer, and she could be right. But don’t you fret none, you’ll find a woman for yourself. Like I found your mama.”
“How’d you find Mama?” Tom tilted his head back so that he could look at his daddy from under his Stetson brim.
His daddy gazed off across their land, remembering. “I’d really planned on being a bachelor. With seven brothers, I didn’t think it was at all vital to the family that I get married and have kids. Then your mama came along on a horse that was limping...”
Tom waited. Then he responded, “I don’t think I’ve heard this particular part of your life. What happened when Mama came up on a limping horse?”
“I was out looking for a heifer that was due, and she’d gone off into the bushes and got lost or killed or something. And your mama came along up on that limping horse.” From under the oak, he looked at the horizon. Then he looked at the nearby nuisance, the lacy mesquite trees. He said softly, “She was really something.”
Tom inquired, “She push a stone under the horse’s shoe?”
“Now, I never even once thought of something like that happening! I just wonder if that could have been so!”
Tom licked his smiling lips and waited.
“She was so concerned about the horse. She asked if I’d look at it. That she was late getting back to the Sullivans’. I’d heard the Sullivans had company, and I’d been invited over for their dance that weekend. I let my unmarried brothers go. I stayed here. I had no need to meet some woman like that who was visiting.”
“So she came looking for you?”
His father snorted. “Well, I never even once thought of it thataway! Do you suppose she trapped me? She said she was just out riding. It was fretful to find her all by herself like that. I scolded her.”
“What’d she do.” Not a question but just a nudge for his daddy to go on with the story.
“She told me to hush and fix her horse’s foot. Think of a person calling a hoof a foot.”
And Tom remembered. “She wasn’t a ranch girl.”
“Naw. City.”
“So what happened?”
“She flung a leg over the horse’s neck and almost slid down. I caught her in time and pulled her away from the horse.”
Tom mused, “That horse would have been too old to be the one that was their biter.”
“It was a grandparent of that one that’s such a nuisance.” But his daddy was remembering. “Your mama was nice to hold. Women are just...different.”
“She let you hold her?”
“She wiggled and objected. She was so soft!”
“Daddy, you shock me. Now don’t tell me your hands got out of control on her.”
“Heavens to Betsy, no! I was in shock or they might have! I couldn’t think clear a-tall, boy. I was sundered right then.”
“What’d you do about the stone under the horse’s shoe?”
“I put your mama aside very carefully and told her to stand still. Of course, she didn’t do as I directed. But then, you know your mama. Nobody can direct her.”
“So you quarreled?”
“Oh, no. I went to the horse who was really peeved. How ever that stone got under his shoe, it was a chore getting it out! I asked your mama-to-be how that stone had happened? She said that she’d gone through the creek.”
“That wasn’t far from where you were, was it?”
“She never did admit to anything. She just watched me and waited. She didn’t flirt or talk or anything. She surely was a beautiful young woman.” He shook his head once. “She made me prickle.”
“So that was when she wrapped you around her little finger and just kept you thataway?”
“Yep. That about tells the whole story.”
“Did you get the stone out of the horse’s shoe? Or did you just watch her?”
And his daddy said, “So you understand what a woman can do to a man? Was that Kayla rattling you?”
“Yeah.”
His daddy sighed with some regret. “I got to tell you she’s really something. I agree to that. I just wonder why you didn’t do your chasing before she met Tyler?”
Tom explained, “I didn’t really notice.” Tom was gently turning his head, looking around. “Then there was such a choice! I thought I had the time.”
“Men are greedy.”
“Yeah.”
