To Have and to Hold by Diana Palmer Page A

little left. Can I come in, or would you rather I set up housekeeping under your carport? I've got a blanket in here," he mumbled, eyeing his big suitcase.
    "Idiot. Come in."
    She stood back and let him inside. "Upstairs first, I'll show you where to put your stuff. How long are you staying."
    "Till in the morning. I'm on my way to Washington to try a case, and you were en route," he grinned. "Do you mind?"
    "Of course not, I'll burn another hamburger, and you can have supper with me. How are Uncle Fred, and Aunt Johnnie?"
    "Too mean to live with. That's why I've got an apartment of my own."
    "You've got an apartment because you like girls," she corrected with a laugh.
    "As usual, there you go knocking my sterling character." He sighed with mock resignation. "I don't insult yours."
    "You haven't been here long enough," she countered opening the door to the guest room. "If you'd like to freshen up, I'll see about making another hamburger."
    "With onions," he called after her. "Lots of onions."
    "No wonder you can't get any girls," she muttered.
    ❧
    Horace was great fun, and he took her mind off Cal while they munched their way through hamburgers and french fries.
    "You sure have changed," he said, swallowing down the last of his burger with a tall swallow of iced tea. "A far cry from the freckle-faced little stringbean I used to chase around the house."
    "Why, thank you, sweet cousin. If it was a compliment," she added thoughtfully.
    "It was." He sighed wearily. "I seem to have been driving forever. By the way, the folks want to know why you won't ever come see them."
    "Time," she replied with a smile. "Work takes all of it."
    "That's not what your friend Brenda told me," he grinned, then changed the subject when he saw the bitter bleak expression tear the smile from her face. "Speaking of the devil, what does Brenda look like, anyway?" he asked.
    "She's little and fair, with curling blonde locks and limpid green eyes, and a voice like music in the night," she told him solemnly.
    "My God, is she that bad?" he groaned.
    She laughed. "She's a dish and unmarried, and she's a live wire at a party. You ought to stop back by on your way home and I'll introduce you."
    "Would you really do that to your best friend?"
    "With regret, but yes, I would." She smiled at him over her glass. "You're not bad, cousin. I like you most of the time. When you're not trying to get me out of this lovely old house, that is."
    He reddened with a grin. "I know, I'm obvious. But I think you're super, too, cuz, and if it weren't the house it'd be something else. I have to have something to argue over."
    "That's why you became a lawyer, I'll bet, because you have a steady stream of people to argue with," she told him.
    "How did you ever guess!" he laughed.
    ❧
    It was late when they finished talking over old times and finally went to bed. Understandably, they overslept the next morning.
    She was awakened by a loud rap on her door.
    "Up and at 'em, Cuz," Horace called. "I'll tiptoe downstairs and start a pot of coffee. You awake?"
    "Yes, I'm awake, I'm awake, you do that," she mumbled into her pillow.
    With a shrug, Horace went down the stairs in his blue robe, his feet and legs bare, and started toward the kitchen, yawning. He almost stumbled over the cat, cursed, and started to tell her what he thought about cross-eyed cats who couldn't walk straight, when there came a loud knock on the back door.
    He wondered idly who it might be at that hour of the morning, and without thinking clearly about it, he threw open the back door.
    There was a man standing impatiently on the other side of it. A big, dark, very strange angry man who took one look at the thin stranger in the robe and, without a single word, threw a pile-driving right cross at the thin jaw.
    Horace went down and out for the count with a hard thud. And the big, dark man headed straight for the stairs.
    He stopped at the head of them and stared at the room he expected to be occupied. With set lips