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Baby, You're Mine
Peggy Moreland
The Tanner family was about to adopt a baby girl and all Woodrow Tanner had to do was tell Dr. Elizabeth Montgomery, the only other relative who could claim the precious babe. Fortunately, this rugged cowboy knew how to get what he wanted from a woman. But Woodrow hadn't counted on how much he'd want this woman….Elizabeth had always wanted a real family. But when a sexy Texan came toting news of a baby niece, she got more than she bargained for! Held hostage on the family ranch, Elizabeth succumbed to Woodrow's seductive touch. Now the pretty doctor wondered if this gruff bachelor could make her dreams come true….
“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
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
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 peggy@peggymoreland.com.
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 watched her whirl and all but run down the hall. At the end, she rapped sharply on a door, then opened it and slipped inside. Scowling, he braced his wide hands on the countertop and drummed his fingers while he waited.
Moments later, the woman reappeared. She paused to fluff her hair and tug down the hem of her uniform’s top, before starting back down the hallway toward him. He couldn’t help but notice the swing she’d added to her hips’ movement on the return trip.
When she reached the reception desk, she leaned close to the window. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice having turned sultry on the return trip, “but Dr. Montgomery’s schedule is full today.” She lifted a hand to toy with the top button of her uniform’s top and batted her eyes at him. “But if you’d like, I can make an appointment for you to see her.”
Unless he was mistaken—and he could be, since he was a little out of practice—the woman was flirting with him. Another day, another place and he might’ve flirted right back. But, as it was, nothing, not even a hand-engraved invitation for a quick roll in the hay, could persuade him to spend another minute longer than necessary in Dallas, Texas.
“What time do y’all lock up for the day?” he asked.
Her smile brightened a notch or two. “Four o’clock.”
It was obvious she thought he was asking the question to find out what time she’d be free. He didn’t bother to set her straight. He figured any misunderstanding was hers to deal with, not his.
He glanced at his watch and noted that it was half past three. “I’ll wait.”
She fluttered a hand toward the waiting room. “Just have a seat over there. Can I get you something to drink?”
Already turning away, Woodrow shook his head, sure that the offer didn’t include a shot of whiskey.
And whiskey was what he needed right now.
Wedged in a chair better suited for one of the seven dwarfs, Woodrow considered passing the time by thumbing through one of the magazines scattered across the coffee table. But a closer inspection revealed titles like Good Housekeeping, Working Mother and Ladies Home Journal, and nothing, not even the threat of a hot branding iron on the hip, could persuade him to touch a one of them. Resigned to boredom, he tilted his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. Two breaths later, he was asleep.
“You’ll need to call the lab and check on the results for the Carter baby. They promised to have it by Monday at four.”
Woodrow snapped up his head, blinked. A woman was standing in the doorway that separated the waiting area from the examining rooms. She had her hand braced against the door to hold it open and was talking to the receptionist, giving what sounded like last-minute instructions.
Must be the doc, he decided, noting the white lab coat, the stethoscope clasped around her throat like a necklace. Fully awake now, he narrowed his eyes and studied her profile.
She didn’t look like a doctor, he decided. She looked more like somebody’s spinster aunt. The horn-rimmed glasses were his first clue. The bun she’d swept her blond hair up in was the second. But then she turned her back fully to him and exposed the nape of a long graceful neck, and he was suddenly struck by the strongest urge to have his mouth there. Little wisps of hair curled against porcelain-smooth skin shades lighter than his own. Halfway between the collar of the lab coat she wore and the base of her hair-line lay a tiny patch of pinker flesh.
A birthmark? he wondered. Nerves? A heat rash?
Whatever it was, it was on that spot that he wanted to center his mouth.
“Dr. Silsby will be taking my calls,” he heard the doc say, and made himself focus on the conversation again. “I’ve left the number where I can be reached on my desk, in the event of an emergency. And, of course, I’ll have my pager with me.”
Woodrow straightened, his gut clenching. The doc was leaving town? He glanced at the receptionist, and she shot him a surreptitious wink. Knowing he’d best slip out before the receptionist boogered up his one chance of catching the doctor, he eased to his feet and slipped out the door. At the bank of elevators, he paused, hoping to corner the doc there on her way down.
Seconds later he heard the office door open and stole a glance that way. The doc was walking toward him, her head bent as she dug through a purse that hung from a slim shoulder.
He punched the Down button and the door opened. He slapped a hand against it and stepped to the side. “Going down?” he asked.
She glanced up, startled, as if unaware of his presence until that moment. “Why…yes. Thank you.”
She pulled a key ring from her purse, then let the bag fall to swing at her side as she slipped past him. Woodrow released the door and stepped in after her. “First floor?”
“Yes, please,” she replied, then shifted her gaze to watch the panel of lights that would mark their descent.
He punched the button, then moved to stand beside her. She took a discreet step to the side, keeping a safe distance from him. Cautious, he decided. Probably wise, since she lived in a big city like Dallas. As the car slowly descended, her scent drifted his way. That clean, sterile scent associated with doctors’ offices and, beneath it, just a hint of something floral, more feminine.
When they reached the first floor, he placed a hand against the door and stepped back, permitting her to exit first.
Averting her gaze, she murmured, “Thank you,” and swept past him.
He caught up with her in two strides, then slowed and matched his step to hers. “Are you Dr. Elizabeth Montgomery?”
She tightened her fingers on her purse strap, but she didn’t look his way or slow. “Yes.”
They reached the front entrance and Woodrow held the door open for her. Again, she murmured her thanks and swept past him, without making eye contact.
Frustrated, he strode after her. “If you’ve got a minute, I’d like to talk to you.”
“I’m sorry. I’m running rather late, as it is.”
She reached a car, a Mercedes, and fumbled with the automated lock on her key ring. He noticed that her fingers were shaking.
“I’m not a mugger,” he said, hoping to put her fears at rest. “I just want to ask you a few questions.”
She managed to unlock the door and slip inside. “As I said, I’m running late. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Woodrow caught the door before she could shut it in his face. “About your sister,” he added pointedly.
She looked at him then, her blue eyes sharpening behind the horn-rimmed glasses. “You know my sister?”
He stepped around the door and braced a hand along its top. “No. Not personally.”
She gulped and turned her face away to stare through the windshield, her skin paler now, the knuckles on the hand she gripped the steering wheel with a pearly white. “I haven’t seen her in years. She—” She clamped her lips together and angled her head, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Did she send you? Is she in trouble again?”
Woodrow blew out a long breath, unsure how best to proceed. “No. Well,” he amended, frowning, “I wouldn’t call it trouble exactly.”
“If it’s money she wants,” she told him coolly, “you can tell her she can come and ask for it herself.”
“No, ma’am,” he said, growing more uncomfortable by the minute. “She doesn’t need your money.”
“Well, what does she want?” she snapped impatiently. “That’s usually why she contacts me.”
“Well…she…she…” He scowled, trying to think of a gentler way to deliver the news. Unable to think of anything, other than the bald truth, he muttered glumly, “Ma’am, your sister is dead.”
The blood drained from her face. “Dead? My sister is dead?”
His expression grim, he gave his chin a jerk. “Yeah. A little over a month ago.”
