Free A Long Tall Texan Summer: Tom Walker by Diana Palmer

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. Elysia had her brother to think of, and his business. It must have been very difficult for her. And she'd gone back to school, managing that as well as a child and a husband with cancer. His mind boggled at the stress she'd lived under.
    "What a life you must have had," he murmured
    out loud.
    She met his searching gaze. "It was difficult at times, but I have a lot to show for my sacrifices.
    I've
    grown up."
    "So have I," he mused. "I didn't realize it until I landed here, but I suppose you had a lot to do with the maturing process. I was a late bloomer."
    "So was I," she told him. "I've learned a lot. I'm independent now. I can take care of myself and Crissy."
    His eyes narrowed. Was she telling him that she had no need of him in her life?
    "What I meant," she said when she saw the uncertainty in his dark face, "is that I wouldn't ever be a financial burden to any man. And that I wouldn't be left dangling if he left me or died."
    "I see."
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    "Not that I expect you to die anytime soon," she added quickly.
    His green gaze slid over her flushed face and he smiled. “I’ll do my best not to."
    She glanced at him shyly as he stopped at a traffic light. It seemed unreal to be sitting beside him in a car
    after so many lonely years of nothing but memories. When she'd worked for him in New York, they'd often spent their lunch hours talking about the places they'd seen, the people they met. He always had time for those conversations. It had never occurred to her that, as busy as he usually was, he was making
    the time he gave her. Now, it mattered.
    His head turned toward her and he caught her searching gaze. He smiled. "I still can't quite get over it,"
    he mused. "You don't look like a woman who's had a child."
    “Thank you," she replied.
    "Did you have her naturally?" he asked.
    She shook her head. "That wasn't possible. I have a quirky little heart defect—nothing serious, except
    when I have a lot of physical stress. I had an arrythmia that wouldn't stop and they had to take Crissy. I have a scar. It's faint, but noticeable."
    "I should have been there," he said quietly, reproaching himself mentally. "Your husband couldn't be, could he?" he added suddenly.
    She grimaced. "He'd just had chemotherapy and he was so sick...Luke drove me to the hospital and stayed with me all the time. I don't know what I'd have done without him."
    He was somber, and he didn't speak again until they were almost to Houston.
    "You could have died," he said.
    She studied his hard face. "I didn't."
    He drew in a heavy breath. "All that suffering,
    all that loneliness, because I was too
    ashamed to tell you the truth."
    "I understand." And it was true, she did. She smiled gently at him. "A man's pride is a hard thing to give up. But I wouldn't have made fun of you if you'd told me. I think..."
    "You think..." he prompted, when she didn't finish her sentence.
    "I think it would made it easier," she confessed.
    "I was very nervous and upset because I thought you'd had dozens of women, and I was so inexperienced. I didn't even know what to do exactly." She flushed, averting her eyes to the darkness outside the window, broken intermittently by the lights of Houston in the
    distance. "I thought you wouldn't talk to me because I'd disappointed you."
    "I was thinking the same thing, about myself,"
    he added. He shook his head. "What a couple of prize idiots we were. At least you had your age as an excuse. All I had was an overdose of pride. I'm