Linda Style - The Man From Texas.pdf

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T
HE
M
AN FROM
T
EXAS
Linda Style
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
To Victoria Curran, with deep appreciation for
being an extraordinary editor, and for having
the patience of a saint. Thank you for your
understanding and support through
a most difficult time.
And to my wonderful family…
always the wind beneath my wings.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER ONE
D
ON’T THINK
. Just do it and get out.
Taylor Dundee sucked in a deep breath of mountain air, waited a moment, then shoved the key into
the lock.
Six months later and she still got that empty, gutted feeling whenever she thought about sorting
through her mother’s things. Taylor steeled herself against the heartache, turned the knob, then slowly
pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The lingering scent hit her first. Apples and cinnamon. Every day when she’d come home from
school, the house had smelled as if there was something baking in the oven.
Sunlight and shadows played over the pale green overstuffed sofa and love seat. Her mom’s
paintings hung on the walls, the scrapbooks she’d made were stacked on the table, along with a dried
floral arrangement and the pottery her mother had fired in a kiln in the back.
It was almost as if Margaret Dundee was still there.
But she wasn’t. Her mother would never be here again. Taylor swallowed over a lump in her
throat. Tears welled behind her eyes. She blinked them back. It would be so much easier if the dull
ache in her chest would go away. Somehow she had to do this. Just do it and go.
Maybe if her mom’s death hadn’t been so sudden, the accident so…strange…. She simply couldn’t
understand how her mother had missed a turn on a road she’d driven hundreds of times—couldn’t
understand why her mother was on the road at two in the morning or why she’d called earlier that day
to tell Taylor she
had
to talk to her.
From the coffee table, she picked up one of the ceramic miniatures that her mother had so carefully
crafted, holding it in the palm of her hand. A little girl, kneeling in prayer, every tiny feature hand
painted. Her mom had said she’d patterned the figurine after Taylor as a child when she’d kneel by
her bed to say her prayers.
She closed her hand around it, then stuck it in her Taylor Made purse. She headed for the kitchen to
make coffee. Leaving Phoenix at five that morning to beat the heat, she’d been too preoccupied to stop
for breakfast. It had taken all the courage she could muster to finally go home to her mom’s. Several
months later than she should have. She ran some water in the coffeepot. As she shut off the faucet, she
heard a thump.
She froze. There was a loud scratching sound. Then nothing.
Maybe it was a tree branch scraping the house or a squirrel on the roof. Nothing bad ever happened

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