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Matt Caldwell: Texas Tycoon
Diana Palmer
He was rich, powerful and every woman's fantasy. Although many had tried to lasso Jacobsville's sought-after bachelor, none had managed to catch Matt Caldwell's eye.However, mysterious Leslie Murry was about to change all that. For the cynical Texas tycoon's spirited new employee roused his temper like no one ever had before. And despite his fierce denials, her soft vulnerability also brought out his every protective instinct. After sampling her soul-searing kisses, Matt was sorely tempted to possess the enticing innocent who clearly ached for a man's tender touch. Still, this Long, Tall Texan wasn't about to let down HIS guard until he sweet-talked Leslie into surrendering HER heart!Long Tall Texans: Rugged heroes from Jacobsville, Texas.
Dear Reader,
It is a great pleasure for me to congratulate Silhouette Books on its 20th anniversary. I signed my first book contract with Silhouette in 1980. We go back quite a long way together, and it has been a wonderful association. All of us at Silhouette—authors, editors, artists, copy editors, salespeople, publicists and management—are a team. We work together to produce the books which our readers have so loyally purchased all these years.
Before I started writing for Silhouette Books, I was holding down a full-time job as a newspaper reporter, on call twenty-four hours a day. I did feature material for two other newspapers, as well. At night I wrote books and hoped that someday, someone would want to publish them. Sure enough, in 1980, Silhouette Books decided that I just might suit them. We entered into a partnership. Since they took me on trust, I worked very hard to earn my place as one of their authors.
Each year meant a new book, often many more than one. I can go through the titles of my books, and remember the birth of our son, Blayne, the death of both my parents, the purchase of our first and only home, my husband James’s two open-heart surgeries, our son’s school days and graduation, the wonderful years of my marriage and the trips to faraway places which I used to dream of seeing when I was a little girl growing up on a sharecropper’s farm in southwest Georgia. I can see my life through the pages of the books I wrote during those years, and revisit warm and sweet memories of people now dead who meant so much to me when I was young and bright with ambition and dreams of publication.
I have had a wonderful career and a wonderful life. God has blessed me with a loving family, many great friends (Especially you, Ann!), the best editors on earth and a way to contribute something to the world which has given me so much. I hope that my books have helped some of you through bad times in your own lives, just as the authors I collect and love have comforted me during the storms of my own life. I wish you continued success, Silhouette Books, and I hope to remain a part of your family until I die or you get tired of me—whichever comes first. Thank you for giving me a chance to do what I love best in all the world. God bless you.
Love to Silhouette and to my very special readers,
Dear Reader,
It’s going to be a wonderful year! After all, we’re celebrating Silhouette’s 20th anniversary of bringing you compelling, emotional, contemporary romances month after month.
January’s fabulous lineup starts with beloved author Diana Palmer, who returns to Special Edition with Matt Caldwell: Texas Tycoon. In the latest installment of her wildly popular LONG, TALL TEXANS series, temperatures rise and the stakes are high when a rugged tycoon meets his match in an innocent beauty—who is also his feisty employee.
Bestselling author Susan Mallery continues the next round of the series PRESCRIPTION: MARRIAGE with Their Little Princess. In this heart-tugging story, baby doctor Kelly Hall gives a suddenly single dad lessons in parenting—and learns all about romance!
Reader favorite Pamela Toth launches Special Edition’s newest series, SO MANY BABIES—in which babies and romance abound in the Buttonwood Baby Clinic. In The Baby Legacy, a sperm-bank mix-up brings two unlikely parents together temporarily—or perhaps forever….
In Peggy Webb’s passionate story, Summer Hawk, two Native Americans put aside their differences when they unite to battle a medical crisis and find that love cures all. Rounding off the month is veteran author Pat Warren’s poignant, must-read secret baby story, Daddy by Surprise, and Jean Brashear’s Lonesome No More, in which a reclusive hero finds healing for his heart when he offers a single mom and her young son a haven from harm.
I hope you enjoy these six unforgettable romances and help us celebrate Silhouette’s 20th anniversary all year long!
Best,
Karen Taylor Richman
Senior Editor
Matt Caldwell: Texas Tycoon
Diana Palmer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Eldarador and W.G. with love
Diana Palmer is legendary for her unforgettable tales about those lovable Long, Tall Texans…
The Long, Tall Texans series
Silhouette Romance
Calhoun #580
Justin #592
Tyler #604
Sutton’s Way #670
Ethan #694
Connal #741
Harden #783
Evan #819
Donavan #843
Emmett #910
Regan’s Pride #1000
Coltrain’s Proposal #1103
The Princess Bride #1282
Callaghan’s Bride #1355
Silhouette Desire
The Case of the Missing Secretary #733
That Burke Man #913
Beloved #1189
Silhouette Special Edition
Matt Caldwell: Texas Tycoon #1297
Silhouette Books
Abduction and Seduction 1995
“Redbird”
Lone Star Christmas 1997
“Christmas Cowboy”
A Long, Tall Texan Summer 1997
Love with a Long, Tall Texan 1999
Harlequin Books
Husbands on Horseback 1996
“Paper Husband”
DIANA PALMER got her start in writing as a newspaper reporter and published her first romance novel for Silhouette Books in 1982. In 1993, she celebrated the publication of her fiftieth novel for Silhouette Books. Affaire de Coeur lists her as one of the top ten romance authors in the country. Beloved by fans worldwide, Diana Palmer is the winner of numerous national Waldenbooks Romance Bestseller awards and national B. Dalton Books Bestseller awards.
Contents
Chapter One (#u9de3ae4c-9c9e-5075-8997-47baa3f8a232)
Chapter Two (#u9caa720c-b2e8-5f06-972a-98fcac6d9c43)
Chapter Three (#ua624407f-0ff0-5d37-8663-3526b4a1f71f)
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)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
The man on the hill sat on his horse with elegance and grace, and the young woman found herself staring at him. He was obviously overseeing the roundup, which the man at her side had brought her to view. This ranch was small by Texas standards, but around Jacobsville, it was big enough to put its owner in the top ten in size.
“Dusty, isn’t it?” Ed Caldwell asked with a chuckle, oblivious to the distant mounted rider, who was behind him and out of his line of sight. “I’m glad I work for the corporation and not here. I like my air cool and unpolluted.”
Leslie Murry smiled. She wasn’t pretty. She had a plain, rather ordinary sort of face with blond hair that had a natural wave, and gray eyes. Her one good feature besides her slender figure was a pretty bow mouth. She had a quiet, almost reclusive demeanor these days. But she hadn’t always been like that. In her early teens, Leslie had been flamboyant and outgoing, a live wire of a girl whose friends had laughed at her exploits. Now, at twenty-three, she was as sedate as a matron. The change in her was shocking to people who’d once known her. She knew Ed Caldwell from college in Houston. He’d graduated in her sophomore year, and she’d quit the following semester to go to work as a paralegal for his father’s law firm in Houston. Things had gotten too complicated there, and Ed had come to the rescue once again. In fact, Ed was the reason she’d just been hired as an executive assistant by the mammoth Caldwell firm. His cousin owned it.
She’d never met Mather Gilbert Caldwell, or Matt as he was known locally. People said he was a nice, easygoing man who loved an underdog. In fact, Ed said it frequently himself. They were down here for roundup so that Ed could introduce Leslie to the head of the corporation. But so far, all they’d seen was dust and cattle and hardworking cowboys.
“Wait here,” Ed said. “I’m going to ride over and find Matt. Be right back.” He urged his horse into a trot and held on for dear life. Leslie had to bite her lip to conceal a smile at the way he rode. It was painfully obvious that he was much more at home behind the wheel of a car. But she wouldn’t have been so rude as to have mentioned it, because Ed was the only friend she had these days. He was, in fact, the only person around who knew about her past.
While she was watching him, the man on horseback on the hill behind them was watching her. She sat on a horse with style, and she had a figure that would have attracted a connoisseur of women—which the man on horseback was. Impulsively he spurred his horse into a gallop and came down the rise behind her. She didn’t hear him until he reined in and the harsh sound of the horse snorting had her whirling in the saddle.
The man was wearing working clothes, like the other cowboys, but all comparisons ended there. He wasn’t ragged or missing a tooth or unshaven. He was oddly intimidating, even in the way he sat the horse, with one hand on the reins and the other on his powerful denim-clad thigh.
Matt Caldwell met her gray eyes with his dark ones and noted that she wasn’t the beauty he’d expected, despite her elegance of carriage and that perfect figure. “Ed brought you, I gather,” he said curtly.
She’d almost guessed from his appearance that his voice would be deep and gravelly, but not that it would cut like a knife. Her hands tightened on the reins. “I…yes, he…he brought me.”
The stammer was unexpected. Ed’s usual sort of girl was brash and brassy, much more sophisticated than this shrinking violet here. He liked to show off Matt’s ranch and impress the girls. Usually it didn’t bother Matt, but he’d had a frustrating day and he was out of humor. He scowled. “Interested in cattle ranching, are you?” he drawled with ice dripping from every syllable. “We could always get you a rope and let you try your hand, if you’d like.”
She felt as if every muscle in her body had gone taut. “I…came to meet Ed’s cousin,” she managed. “He’s rich.” The man’s dark eyes flashed and she flushed. She couldn’t believe she’d made such a remark to a stranger. “I mean,” she corrected, “he owns the company where Ed works. Where I work,” she added. She could have bitten her tongue for her artless mangling of a straightforward subject, but the man rattled her.
Something kindled in the man’s dark eyes under the jutting brow; something not very nice at all. He leaned forward and his eyes narrowed. “Why are you really out here with Ed?” he asked.
She swallowed. He had her hypnotized, like a cobra with a rabbit. Those eyes…those very dark, unyielding eyes…!
“It’s not your business, is it?” she asked finally, furious at her lack of cohesive thought and this man’s assumption that he had the right to interrogate her.
He didn’t say a word. Instead, he just looked at her.
“Please,” she bit off, hunching her shoulders uncomfortably. “You’re making me nervous!”
“You came to meet the boss, didn’t you?” he asked in a velvety smooth tone. “Didn’t anyone tell you that he’s no marshmallow?”
She swallowed. “They say he’s a very nice, pleasant man,” she returned a little belligerently. “Something I’ll bet nobody in his right mind would dream of saying about you!” she added with her first burst of spirit in years.
His eyebrows lifted. “How do you know I’m not nice and pleasant?” he asked, chuckling suddenly.
“You’re like a cobra,” she said uneasily.
He studied her for a few seconds before he nudged his horse in the side with a huge dusty boot and eased so close to her that she actually shivered. He hadn’t been impressed with the young woman who stammered and stuttered with nerves, but a spirited woman was a totally new proposition. He liked a woman who wasn’t intimidated by his bad mood.
His hand went across her hip to catch the back of her saddle and he looked into her eyes from an unnervingly close distance. “If I’m a cobra, then what does that make you, cupcake?” he drawled with deliberate sensuality, so close that she caught the faint smoky scent of his breath, the hint of spicy cologne that clung to his lean, tanned face. “A soft, furry little bunny?”
She was so shaken by the proximity of him that she tried desperately to get away, pulling so hard on the reins that her mount unexpectedly reared and she went down on the ground, hard, hitting her injured left hip and her shoulder as she fell into the thick grass.
A shocked sound came from the man, who vaulted out of the saddle and was beside her as she tried to sit up. He reached for her a little roughly, shaken by her panic. Women didn’t usually try to back away from him; especially ordinary ones like this. She fell far short of his usual companions.
She fought his hands, her eyes huge and overly bright, panic in the very air around her. “No…!” she cried out helplessly.
He froze in place, withdrawing his lean hand from her arm, and stared at her with scowling curiosity.
“Leslie!” came a shout from a few yards away. Ed bounced up as quickly as he could manage it without being unseated. He fumbled his way off the horse and knelt beside her, holding out his arm so that she could catch it and pull herself up.
“I’m sorry,” she said, refusing to look at the man who was responsible for her tumble. “I jerked the reins. I didn’t mean to.”
“Are you all right?” Ed asked, concerned.
