Part 1 (1/2)

Long Tall Texan.

Summer.

Diana Palmer.

Drew Morris.

”O, my Luve is like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June. O, my Luve is like the melodie, That's sweetly played in tune.”

-Robert Burns.

Johnson's Musical Museum (1787-1796).

A Red, Red Rose, st. 1

Chapter 1.

How are you today?” Drew Morris asked his first patient of the day, smiling in his usual remote, but kind way. ”Mr....” He glanced at the file, glanced at the patient, bit back a curse and smiled in a different way. ”Excuse me just a minute, will you?”

Before the patient could say a word, Drew was out the door and marching down the hall to his receptionist's desk. He threw the file down in front of her with curt irritation.

”I said Bill Hayes, not William Haynie,” he said shortly.

Kitty Carson grimaced, and the green eyes behind her large wire-rimmed lenses winced.136.137.

”Sorry, Dr. Morris,” she stammered, jumping up to thumb through the files until she found the right one and handed it to him. ”If Mrs. Turner was here, I wouldn't get so rattled,” she defended, mentioning the office nurse who was off sick today.

”Bad way to start off the day, Ms. Carson,” he muttered and went straight back to his patient.

Kitty sat down, hard, letting out the breath she'd been holding. The former receptionist, Mrs. Alice Martin, had retired two weeks previously, and Kitty had been hired through a local professional agency in Jacobsville, Texas, to replace her. She hadn't met Drew Morris when she applied for the job, which was a good thing. If she'd met him first, she wouldn't be working here.

On the other hand, it was nice to be treated like a normal employee. She was asthmatic, and in at least one job, her well-meaning boss had been so wary of triggering an attack that he actually had another girl in the office ask her for pressing work. He was sweet, but her asthma wasn't brought on by emotional upheavals; it was triggered by pollens and dust and smoke. Probably since Dr. Morris did some pediatric work, he knew more about asthma than any routine employer. An increas-ing number of children seemed to have the chronic illness.

She pushed back a wisp of dark hair that had escaped the huge bun at her nape and stared blankly at the file he'd given her. She got up again to replace it, but by then the phone was ringing again-both lines.

It wasn't that she couldn't handle the pressure of a busy doctor's office, but she did wish he'd take a partner. He had no life at all. He worked from dawn until dusk daily through Sat.u.r.day, and on Sunday he had an afternoon clinic for children. He did minor surgery through the week, as well-tonsils and adenoids-and he was always willing to stand in for other doctors in the local hospital's emergency room on weekends. No wonder Mrs. Turner had come down with the flu, she mused. It was probably exhaustion. It didn't surprise her that Dr. Morris wasn't married, either. When would he have the time?

He'd been married, though. Everyone talked about his eternal devotion to Eve, his wife of twelve years until her untimely death of cancer. No woman in Jacobsville ever set her cap at Drew because of the compet.i.tion. His marriage had been one of those rare, blissful matches. It was said that Drew would much758.139.

rather have his memory of it than any new relations.h.i.+p.

Not that Kitty was interested in him that way. She had her eyes on a local cowboy named Guy Fenton, who was something of a rounder but a nice man when he wasn't drinking. He'd broken a bone in his hand the day after Kitty started working for Drew. He'd known Kitty for years, but only then had he noticed that she'd grown up. He seemed to like her, too, because he teased and picked at her. He had a habit of stopping by the office at lunchtime to talk to her, and he'd just asked her to go to the movies with him on Sat.u.r.day night. She was so fl.u.s.tered that she was all thumbs. Dr. Morris, she reflected, had no patience with the course of true love.

By lunchtime, she'd dealt, calmly and efficiently, with two emergencies that required Drew's presence at the local emergency room, and a waiting room full of angry, impatient people. Her soft voice and rea.s.suring smile defused what could have been a mutiny. She was used to calming bad tempers. Her late father had been a retired colonel from the Green Berets, a veteran of Vietnam with a habit of running right over people. Kitty, an only child, had learned quickly how to get along with him. He was difficult, but he was like DrewMorris in one respect; he never overemphasized her asthma attacks. His very calmness helped avert many of them. But if they led her to the emergency room, he was always the soul of compa.s.sion.

Her mother was long dead, so there had been just the two of them, until six months ago. She still missed the old man terribly. The job she'd left to come here had held just too many memories of him. Her father had known Drew, but only socially, so there were no close a.s.sociations with him in this office.

”Don't daydream on my time,” a harsh voice called from the doorway.

She jumped, glancing toward Drew, whose dark eyes were filled with dislike. ”I'm...on my lunch hour, Dr. Morris,” she faltered.

”Then why the h.e.l.l are you spending it staring into s.p.a.ce? Go eat.”

As she got up, she caught her sleeve on the k.n.o.b of the middle desk drawer and was jerked back down onto the chair.

”Oh, for G.o.d's sake...!” Drew moved forward and caught her just as the swivel, rolling desk chair crashed to the floor. He stood her upright with an angry sigh and noticed at the same time that the b.u.t.tons on her bulky gray cardigan were done up wrong.

”You are an albatross,” he muttered as he140.141.

undid b.u.t.tons, to her shocked surprise, and efficiently did them up again, the right way. ”There. I'm amazed that the agency would risk sending me a receptionist-stenographer who can't even b.u.t.ton a sweater properly.”

”I usually can,” she said nervously. ”It's just that Guy asked me out. I'm a little unsettled, that's all. I'm sorry.”

His dark eyes cut into hers. They were alarming at close range, big under a jutting brow. The pupils were black-rimmed. ”Guy?” he asked curtly.

”Guy Fenton,” she said with a demure smile.

His eyes narrowed. ”Broken metacarpal, left hand,” he recalled with a frown. ”Works for the Ballenger brothers out at their feedlot. And drinks to excess on weekends,” he added firmly.

”I know that. He won't drink when he's with me, though. We're just going to a movie,” she said, and began to feel as if her father had come back.

His eyebrows lifted. ”Don't you date much?”

She flushed. It was too much work to explain that she didn't, and why. Her father, G.o.d rest his soul, had terrified most of the shy young men she'd brought home. Eventuallyshe stopped bringing them home. The thought flashed unwanted through her mind that her father would have made mincemeat of Guy Fenton. She wondered how he would have stood up to Dr. Morris, who was quite obviously the offspring of adders and scorpions.

The thought almost brought a laugh from her pretty mouth. She barely bit it back in time and transformed it into a cough.

”Watch yourself,” Drew said. ”Fenton's trouble, any way you look at it. His ex-girlfriend would eat you for breakfast.”

”Ex-girlfriend?”

He glanced impatiently at his watch. ”I have rounds to make. I don't have time... All right, his girlfriend dropped him because of the drinking, but she still feels that he's her personal property and she doesn't like him seeing other women.”

”Oh.”

”I'll be back at two,” he said, shedding his white lab coat as he headed to his office. ”How many more appointments do I have?” he asked without looking back.

She picked up her pad and followed him, almost running to keep up with his long-legged stride. She read them off. She managed to run right into him as he barreled back out into the hall, dignified in a gray vested suit and142red striped tie. He made another impatient sound and ran a hand through his thick dark hair, making it just a bit unruly.

''Do you have to walk into me every time you come down the hall?” he muttered.

”Sorry. New gla.s.ses.” She grinned gamely and pushed them back on her nose again.

He kept walking. ”If I run a little late, make the usual excuses.” He turned with the doork.n.o.b in his hand. ”And try to keep the files straight, will you? I'm all for true love, but I have a practice to run.”