Passion Flower. Diana Palmer

      Chapter One

      JENNIFER KING eyed the closed hotel room door nervously. She hadn’t wanted this assignment, but she hadn’t had much choice, either. Her recent illness had left her savings account bare, and this job was all she had to hold on to. It was a long way from the brilliant career in interior decorating she’d left behind in New York. But it was a living.

      She pushed back a loose strand of blond hair and hoped she looked sedate enough for the cattleman behind the door. The kind of clothes she’d favored in New York were too expensive for her budget in Atlanta.

      She knocked at the door and waited. It seemed to take forever for the man inside to get there. Finally, without warning, the door swung open.

      “Miss King?” he asked, smiling pleasantly.

      She smiled back. He was much younger than she’d expected him to be. Tall and fair and pleasant. “Yes,” she said. “You rang for a temporary secretary?”

      “Just need a few letters done, actually,” he said, taking the heavy portable typewriter from her hand. “I’m buying some cattle for my brother.”

      “Yes, Miss James at the agency told me it had to do with cattle.” She sat down quickly. She was pale and wan, still feeling the after-effects of a terrible bout with pneumonia.

      “Say, are you all right?” he asked, frowning.

      “Fine, thank you, Mr. Culhane,” she said, remembering his name from Miss James’s description of the job. “I’m just getting over pneumonia, and I’m a little weak.”

      He sat down across from her on the sofa, lean and rangy, and smiled. “I guess it does take the whip out of you. I’ve never had it myself, but Everett nearly died on us one year. He smokes too much,” he confided.

      “Your brother?” she asked with polite interest as she got her steno pad and pen from her large purse.

      “My brother. The senior partner. Everett runs the show.” He sounded just a little jealous. She glanced up. Jennifer was twenty-three, and he couldn’t have been much older. She felt a kinship with him. Until their deaths three years back, her parents had pretty much nudged her into the job they thought she wanted. By the sound of it, Everett Culhane had done the same with this young man.

      She dug out her pad and pen and crossed her thin legs. All of her was thin. Back in New York, before the frantic pace threatened her health, she’d been slender and poised and pretty enough to draw any man’s eye. But now she was only a pale wraith, a ghost of the woman she’d been. Her blond hair was brittle and lusterless, her pale green eyes were dull, without their old sparkle. She looked bad, and that fact registered in the young man’s eyes.

      “Are you sure you feel up to this?” he asked gently. “You don’t look well.”

      “I’m a little frail, that’s all,” she replied proudly. “I’m only just out of the hospital, you see.”

      “I guess that’s why,” he muttered. He got up, pacing the room, and found some notes scribbled on lined white paper. “Well, this first letter goes to Everett Culhane, Circle C Ranch, Big Spur, Texas.”

      “Texas?” Her pale eyes lit up. “Really?”

      His eyebrows lifted, and he grinned. “Really. The town is named after a king-size ranch nearby—the Big Spur. It’s owned by Cole Everett and his wife Heather, and their three sons. Our ranch isn’t a patch on that one, but big brother has high hopes.”

      “I’ve always wanted to see a real cattle ranch,” she confided. “My grandfather went cowboying out to Texas as a boy. He used to talk about it all the time, about the places he’d seen, and the history...” She sat up straight, poising her pen over the pad. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get off the track.”

      “That’s all right. Funny, you don’t look like a girl who’d care for the outdoors,” he commented as he sat back down with the sheaf of papers in his hand.

      “I love it,” she said quietly. “I lived in a small town until I was ten and my parents moved to Atlanta. I missed it terribly. I still do.”

      “Can’t you go back?” he asked.

      She shook her head sadly. “It’s too late. I have no family left. My parents are dead. There are a few scattered relatives, but none close enough to visit.”

      “That’s rough. Kind of like me and Everett,” he added. “We got raised by our aunt and uncle. At least, I did. Everett wasn’t so lucky. Our dad was still alive while he was a boy.” His face clouded, as if with an unpleasant memory. He cleared his throat. “Well, anyway, back to the letter...”

      He began to dictate, and she kept up with him easily. He thought out the sentences before he gave them to her, so there were few mistakes or changes. She wondered why he didn’t just call his brother, but she didn’t ask the question. She took down several pages of description about bulls and pedigrees and bloodlines. There was a second letter, to a bank executive in Big Spur, detailing the method the Culhane brothers had devised to pay back a sizeable loan. The third letter was to a breeder in Carrollton, outlining transport for a bull the man had evidently purchased from the Culhanes.

      “Confused?” he murmured dryly when he stopped.

      “It’s not my business...” she began gently.

      “We’re selling off one of our best bulls,” he said, “to give us enough down payment on another top breeding bull. Everett is trying for a purebred Hereford herd. But we don’t have the cash, so I’ve come down here to do some fancy trading. I sold the bull we had. Now I’m trying to get a potential seller to come down on his price.”

      “Wouldn’t a phone call to your brother be quicker?” she asked.

      “Sure. And Everett would skin my head. I came out here on a bus, for God’s sake, instead of