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Texas Moon
Joan Elliott Pickart
MR. FEBRUARY NAME:Tux Bishop GAME: Private Investigator AIM: Find a suitable wife and settle down DAME: Not woman-in-jeopardy Nancy Shatner! Tux can't explain how he knows trouble is stalking a beautiful stranger. He just knows . He figures he must be destined to protect the unwilling Nancy Shatner, but he can't be destined to marry her!No red-blooded Texas relies on fate to find a woman. That, Tux will do on his own. Just as soon as he can keep his mind - and his hands - off Nancy… . MAN OF THE MONTH: Born under a wild Texas moon, this man of the month is a confirmed Family Man… he just doesn't know it until Nancy rounds him up!
Forget Nancy Shatner? (#u14ca028e-c217-5483-80d9-4cc3511e4604)Letter to Reader (#u02db237a-8cae-5003-a5e0-40ca1b854900)Title Page (#u8faed32f-e5f7-5b8d-b38f-00daaaca5db9)About the Author (#uca70a74c-85e8-59b0-bcee-93c6a8e00a91)Dedication (#uf65cf33e-2e46-56e4-9fef-54a4ca6f7abe)Prologue (#u07a4002c-4983-5fd2-9601-3de80289bd1d)Chapter One (#u052b6c58-334d-5d6e-80ee-3164f0b97599)Chapter Two (#ufd822dea-59e3-5ea5-988b-692ae6021998)Chapter Three (#u3464a39f-f712-5042-ae7a-304ca40dc1ba)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)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Forget Nancy Shatner?
That was a tad tough to do, considering Tux was spending twenty-four hours a day with the lady. Oh, yeah, a really rough trip, especially when she looked the way she did now.
Her jeans were snug, accentuating her shapely legs and bottom. Her blouse clung to the lush fullness of her breasts. Her hair was shiny, the wild waves fetching in their gypsy-like tumble.
Yes, Nancy Shatner was incredibly beautiful.
Forgetting Nancy Shatner was totally impossible.
So forget forgetting. Tux would concentrate on remembering that she was an assignment. Nothing more, nothing less.
Tux, Bram Blue and Gibson are unforgettable
men with love as endless as the Texas sky—
and just waiting for women
special enough to win their hearts!
Dear Reader,
Happy Valentine’s Day! This season of love is so exciting for us here at Silhouette Desire that we decided to create a special cover treatment for each of this month’s love stories—just to show how much this very romantic holiday means to us.
And what a fabulous group of books we have for you! Let’s start with Joan Elliott Pickart’s MAN OF THE MONTH, Texas Moon. It’s romantic and wonderful—and has a terrific hero!
The romance continues with Cindy Gerard’s sensuous A Bride for Abel Greene, the next in her NORTHERN LIGHTS BRIDES series, and also with Elizabeth Bevarly’s Roxy and the Rich Man, which launches her new miniseries about siblings who were separated at birth, THE FAMILY McCORMICK.
Christine Pacheco is up next with Lovers Only, an emotional and compelling reunion story. And Metsy Hingle’s dramatic writing style shines through in her latest, Lovechild.
It’s always a special moment when a writer reaches her.25the book milestone—and that’s just what Rita Rainville has done in the humorous and delightful Western, City Girls Need Not Apply.
Silhouette Desire—where you will always find the very best love stories! Enjoy them all....
Senior Editor
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
Texas Moon
Joan Elliott Pickart
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
JOAN ELLIOTT PICKART is the author of over sixty-five novels. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys watching football, knitting, reading, gardening and attending craft shows on the town square. Joan has three daughters and a fantastic little grandson. Her three dogs and one cat allow her to live with them in a cozy cottage in a charming small town in the high pine country of Arizona.
For my fourth daughter, Autumn Joan Pickart.
Born June 21st, 1995—Nanjing, China.
Home September 27,1995.
And for Hand in Hand International Adoptions,
the miracle makers.
Prologue
“Well, now I declare, isn’t this the nicest surprise? You’ve come to visit Granny Bee. Bring yourself in and have some homemade lemonade. I still make my honey, of course. Was how I got my name Granny Bee.
“Tell you a story? Land’s sake, I’ve been spinnin’ tales as far back as I can remember.
“How would you like to hear about the Bishop boys? Now then, Tux is the oldest, then a year later along came the twins, Blue and Bram. There was so much love in that big, old shabby house, you could feel it by walkin’ in the door.
“Jana-John, the boys’ mama, has been paintin’ pictures ever since I can recall. She doesn’t give a hoot if they’re any good. She’s happy paintin’, and that’s just fine.
“The boys’ daddy is Abraham Lincoln Bishop, and I swear he truly does have the looks of Mr. Lincoln. Abe Bishop was a history professor ‘fore he retired. Now he writes long papers on history doin’s, but I’ve never heard tell of what he does with the things once he writes ’em.
“Now Tux, it was found, had psychic powers. He can see in his mind somethin’ that’s goin’ on far away. He doesn’t fancy doin’ it, ’cause those powers are embarrassin’ to him, makes him feel like folks might not accept him as the person he is, and would figure he was strange. He’d just as soon no one knew ’bout those powers.
“A while back, the boys sat ‘round the table with their folks, and the brothers decided it was time to marry and have some babies. It was as good as done, they thought, as they were used to doin’ what they set out to do. Well, findin’ the right person to love isn’t all that easy. Those boys were in for a mighty big surprise.
“Now, I told you ‘bout Tux’s powers, that he didn’t like havin’. You can just imagine how upsetting it was when those pictures started comin’ without him doin’ one thing to bring ’em. Tux didn’t like that one little bit.
“But, my stars, that’s exactly what was happenin’....”
One
Tux Bishop shot bolt upright in bed, the sound of his pounding heart echoing in his ears. He took a deep, shuddering breath, then dragged both hands down his sweat-soaked face.
“Damn it,” he said, then threw back the sheet and left the bed.
The clock on the nightstand glowed the message that it was just after two in the morning. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Tux began to pace naked around the large bedroom.
This was the third night in a row, he fumed. He’d been jolted awake, heart racing, dripping with sweat, three times now.
The dreams he’d been having were not dreams... at least not in the usual sense of the word. That fact was what had him tied in knots and mad as hell.
Tux sank onto the edge of the bed, rested his elbows on his knees and made a steeple of his fingers, tapping it against his lips.
Slow down, calm down, he ordered himself. Ranting, raving and wearing out the carpet wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He had to analyze the situation and try to determine what in the hell was going on.
Yes, okay, he had psychic powers that enabled him to glimpse events taking place anywhere in the world.
But...and that was a very big but...the only way his psychic abilities could be put into operation was by him going into deep meditation, a near-trance, that left him drained and exhausted.
He preferred not to use his detested powers, and rarely did so. He had, in fact, totally ignored them for many years.
But now?
“Damn it,” he said, shaking his head.
He knew that the dreams he’d had for three nights now were not really products of his subconscious mind.
They were not dreams.
The images were psychic messages that had come to him unbidden.
Why?
Even more, how?
He commanded his psychic powers. Outside forces did not dictate when his unwelcomed ability would be activated.
Tux stretched out in the bed again, laced his hands beneath his head and glowered at the ceiling.
He had two choices. He could ignore what was happening and hope it was a short-lived fluke and had run its course. Or he could square off against it, take a close mental look at the scenes that had come to him, and attempt to sift, sort, then dismiss them once and for all.
“Yeah,” he said. “No contest. I’m the one who’s in charge here.”
So, okay, he’d start at the beginning.
The first night he’d seen a shadowy figure with no discernible features, or a clue as to whether it was a man or woman. Swirling around the figure was a dark maze of what appeared to be beads or balls of some sort.
The second night the maze had been clearer. The dark cloud had become brightly colored beads, as well as buttons. The beads had separated into straight rows. The shadowy figure had been far from clear, but it was most definitely a woman.
Then tonight there had been even more. He’d had a glimpse of a sign that read: Buttons and Beads.
He’d also seen the woman. She had dark eyes and a wild tumble of black hair that fell to her shoulders in curly disarray. She was very lovely with a gypsylike appearance that was accentuated by a bright blue shawl she’d been wearing.
She’d been holding out her hands, as though pleading for someone to come and help her, and tears had flowed down her pale cheeks.
And on all three nights, he’d sensed the cold chill of danger.
“Lord,” he said, and pulled his hands from beneath his head and dropped his arms heavily onto the bed.
He needed a plan of action. The thought of enduring a fourth night like this held no appeal. Whatever was triggering his psychic powers had to be stopped before he went nuts.
“Buttons and Beads.” He rolled onto his stomach, punched the pillow, then lowered his head again with a weary sigh.
First thing in the morning, he thought, as sleep began to creep over his senses, he’d track down a place named Buttons and Beads. Even if it meant talking to every telephone information operator in the country, he’d find it.
Nancy Shatner finished counting the glossy red beads, then scooped them into a plastic bag. She slipped the bag through a slot in a small white machine that sat on the table, heat sealing the bag.
Next came a sticker with the name, address and telephone number of the shop, which she pressed into place in the lower right-hand corner of the bag.
After checking off the red beads on an order form, she carried the rectangular hard-plastic bin to the front of the store and set it in its designated place, returning to the rear work area with a bin of blue beads.
Settled once more at the table; she checked the order form, nodded, then lifted a handful of blue beads from the bin to a large felt mat. Using what was actually a frosting spatula, she began to quickly move beads two at a time from one side of the mat to the other.
“Two, four, six, eight,” she said aloud, then continued to count silently.
She made piles of twenty beads, which she would recount before sealing them into a bag.
After making five piles of twenty, she took a sip of tea from a ceramic mug, wrinkling her nose as she discovered it was cold. Setting the mug to one side, she stretched her arms above her head, then dropped her hands to her lap, smiling as her gaze fell on the stack of orders she was filling.
Business is booming, she thought. Her reputation for quick service and a product of superb quality was growing. Her mailorder catalog with colored photographs of the buttons and beads was worth the extra money she’d crossed her fingers and paid.
Nancy switched her gaze to the far end of the large table where she was just beginning to start the assembly of a new catalog, which would have a special sale section to mark the celebration of Buttons and Beads being officially two years old.
The walk-in trade, she mused, was increasing nicely, much to her surprised delight. The area of town where she was located wasn’t exactly a high-class shopping mecca. It wasn’t a high-class anything, for that matter.
The decision to set up the front area attractively for whatever retail business she might garner had been a good one. It was easy enough to tote the bins to the rear area to fill mail orders, and she considered every face-to-face sale a bonus.
“Life is a bowl of cherries,” she said, then laughed. “Or whatever. Get to work, Ms. Shatner.”
Over the past two years, she’d perfected the knack of being able to count with one section of her brain, and think about whatever struck her fancy with the other part of her mind.
A fact, she thought merrily, that had probably kept her from turning into a blithering idiot from spending her days counting two, four, six...
Life is a bowl of cherries? she mentally repeated, as she slid blue beads from one side of the mat to the other. Now that she really thought about it, that didn’t make much sense. What if a person didn’t like cherries?
The bottom line was that her life was in shipshape order. She was happy, fulfilled and contented. Her fledgling business was doing well, and she had marvelous friends in the store’s shabby, run-down neighborhood. She had everything she wanted and needed.
Well...
Nancy frowned slightly as she continued to count the beads.
There were moments...not often, but once in a while... when she was a tad lonely. Sitting alone in her little apartment above the store, watching a romantic movie on her minuscule television, sometimes caused her to wistfully yearn for a special man, a wonderful man, to take her into his arms.
“Hush, Nancy,” she said. “Eighteen, twenty,” she added, completing a pile of beads.
She stared into space.
It was perfectly understandable, she reasoned, that she’d have fleeting thoughts of being loved and loving in return, of having a child that was a miraculous result of that love. She was, after all, a normal, healthy twenty-five-year-old woman.
But the fleeting thoughts were just that... fleeting. She valued her hard-won independence far too much to relinquish it for any reason. To enter into a relationship with a man would require her to give away a part of her being, and to be accountable to someone other than herself.
