A Long Tall Texan Summer: Tom Walker by Diana Palmer Page B

broom. What a good thing that he wasn't entertaining thoughts of marriage.
    No woman in her right
    mind would put up with his canine companion.
    He was thirty-four. He should have been long-since married, but he and his sister, Kate, had been victims of a shocking, terrible upbringing that had stunted them sexually. Their father had beaten both of
    them as children and raised the devil every time one of them so much as smiled at the opposite sex. In fact, sex, he lectured, was the greatest sin of all. He was a lay minister, so they believed him.
    What they hadn't known at the time was that he had a brain tumor that modified his once-loving personality and eventually killed him. Their long-missing mother had been found by Jacob Cade, his sister
    Kate's husband,
    and presented to them both at Jacob and Kate's wedding, over six years ago. It had been a painful reunion until they learned that far from deserting them as children, their mother had never
    dreamed that their father would kidnap them and spirit them away from her. But he had done just that.
    She'd spent half a lifetime using money from her meager salary trying to find them again. She lived in Missouri,
    but they both saw her frequently. Now that Kate was married and had a son, their mother often visited her.
    Tom wondered if he could ever marry. Kate had, but then Jacob Cade had been the love of her life since her early teens. Presumably Kate's fear of the physical side of marriage had been overcome. She and Cade had a son, who was five years old. And although they'd tried to have a second child, they hadn't been able to just yet.
    He'd have liked children. But his one sexual experience had left him sick with guilt Kate's wedding had pointed out, as nothing else ever had, how very alone he was. He'd gone back to his job with an advertising firm in New York City and that weekend, to a local bar to drown his sorrows.
    She'd been there at a going-away party for one of the girls in the office. Elysia Craig had been his secretary for two years. She was a pretty blonde with gray eyes and a neat little figure who was teased by her co-workers for being so prim and prudish. Tom thought it was a joke. He never realized that she was as inexperienced
    as he was. Not until it was far too late. His most vivid memory of Elysia was of her crouching in the full-sized bed in his apartment
    with a white sheet clutched to her breasts, weeping
    like a widow. He'd hurt her without meaning to, and the tears had been the last straw. He couldn't remember saying a single
    word to her as she dressed and got into the cab he called for her. He'd been far too inebriated
    and sick to drive by then.
    He hadn't known how to apologize, or explain.
    His behavior had shamed him. He couldn't even meet
    her eyes the next morning, or speak to her. Most of the women in the office where he worked were sophisticated and savvy, but Elysia wasn't. His inability to communicate with her provoked her into
    quitting her job that very day and going back home to Texas. To his shame, he hadn't even looked for her. He'd still been fighting feelings of shame and guilt, holdovers from his brutal childhood, despite the
    aching hunger he'd felt for Elysia.
    Her gentle, kind nature was what had attracted
    him to her in the first place, but except for his excessive Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html drinking he would never have approached her. His feelings for her he'd kept secret, never dreaming that he might one day end up in bed with her. It had been the most exquisite experience of his life, but the guilt
    had made him sick, so he pushed it to the back of his mind and tried to forget it.
    Not long afterward, he'd given up his advertising
    job and studied the investment business.
    His first job
    had been as an assistant advisor
    with a well-known national company. Then he'd moved to Houston, Texas, to open his own office in the building with a friend, Logan Deverell. But he'd