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Texas Moon
Joan Elliott Pickart
MR. FEBRUARY NAME:Tux Bishop GAME: Private Investigator AIM: Find a suitable wife and settle down DAME: Not woman-in-jeopardy Nancy Shatner! Tux can't explain how he knows trouble is stalking a beautiful stranger. He just knows . He figures he must be destined to protect the unwilling Nancy Shatner, but he can't be destined to marry her!No red-blooded Texas relies on fate to find a woman. That, Tux will do on his own. Just as soon as he can keep his mind - and his hands - off Nancy… . MAN OF THE MONTH: Born under a wild Texas moon, this man of the month is a confirmed Family Man… he just doesn't know it until Nancy rounds him up!


Forget Nancy Shatner? (#u14ca028e-c217-5483-80d9-4cc3511e4604)Letter to Reader (#u02db237a-8cae-5003-a5e0-40ca1b854900)Title Page (#u8faed32f-e5f7-5b8d-b38f-00daaaca5db9)About the Author (#uca70a74c-85e8-59b0-bcee-93c6a8e00a91)Dedication (#uf65cf33e-2e46-56e4-9fef-54a4ca6f7abe)Prologue (#u07a4002c-4983-5fd2-9601-3de80289bd1d)Chapter One (#u052b6c58-334d-5d6e-80ee-3164f0b97599)Chapter Two (#ufd822dea-59e3-5ea5-988b-692ae6021998)Chapter Three (#u3464a39f-f712-5042-ae7a-304ca40dc1ba)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Forget Nancy Shatner?
That was a tad tough to do, considering Tux was spending twenty-four hours a day with the lady. Oh, yeah, a really rough trip, especially when she looked the way she did now.
Her jeans were snug, accentuating her shapely legs and bottom. Her blouse clung to the lush fullness of her breasts. Her hair was shiny, the wild waves fetching in their gypsy-like tumble.
Yes, Nancy Shatner was incredibly beautiful.
Forgetting Nancy Shatner was totally impossible.
So forget forgetting. Tux would concentrate on remembering that she was an assignment. Nothing more, nothing less.


Tux, Bram Blue and Gibson are unforgettable
men with love as endless as the Texas sky—
and just waiting for women
special enough to win their hearts!
Dear Reader,
Happy Valentine’s Day! This season of love is so exciting for us here at Silhouette Desire that we decided to create a special cover treatment for each of this month’s love stories—just to show how much this very romantic holiday means to us.
And what a fabulous group of books we have for you! Let’s start with Joan Elliott Pickart’s MAN OF THE MONTH, Texas Moon. It’s romantic and wonderful—and has a terrific hero!
The romance continues with Cindy Gerard’s sensuous A Bride for Abel Greene, the next in her NORTHERN LIGHTS BRIDES series, and also with Elizabeth Bevarly’s Roxy and the Rich Man, which launches her new miniseries about siblings who were separated at birth, THE FAMILY McCORMICK.
Christine Pacheco is up next with Lovers Only, an emotional and compelling reunion story. And Metsy Hingle’s dramatic writing style shines through in her latest, Lovechild.
It’s always a special moment when a writer reaches her.25the book milestone—and that’s just what Rita Rainville has done in the humorous and delightful Western, City Girls Need Not Apply.
Silhouette Desire—where you will always find the very best love stories! Enjoy them all....


Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to:
Silhouette Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
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Texas Moon
Joan Elliott Pickart


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
JOAN ELLIOTT PICKART is the author of over sixty-five novels. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys watching football, knitting, reading, gardening and attending craft shows on the town square. Joan has three daughters and a fantastic little grandson. Her three dogs and one cat allow her to live with them in a cozy cottage in a charming small town in the high pine country of Arizona.
For my fourth daughter, Autumn Joan Pickart.
Born June 21st, 1995—Nanjing, China.
Home September 27,1995.
And for Hand in Hand International Adoptions,
the miracle makers.
Prologue
“Well, now I declare, isn’t this the nicest surprise? You’ve come to visit Granny Bee. Bring yourself in and have some homemade lemonade. I still make my honey, of course. Was how I got my name Granny Bee.
“Tell you a story? Land’s sake, I’ve been spinnin’ tales as far back as I can remember.
“How would you like to hear about the Bishop boys? Now then, Tux is the oldest, then a year later along came the twins, Blue and Bram. There was so much love in that big, old shabby house, you could feel it by walkin’ in the door.
“Jana-John, the boys’ mama, has been paintin’ pictures ever since I can recall. She doesn’t give a hoot if they’re any good. She’s happy paintin’, and that’s just fine.
“The boys’ daddy is Abraham Lincoln Bishop, and I swear he truly does have the looks of Mr. Lincoln. Abe Bishop was a history professor ‘fore he retired. Now he writes long papers on history doin’s, but I’ve never heard tell of what he does with the things once he writes ’em.
“Now Tux, it was found, had psychic powers. He can see in his mind somethin’ that’s goin’ on far away. He doesn’t fancy doin’ it, ’cause those powers are embarrassin’ to him, makes him feel like folks might not accept him as the person he is, and would figure he was strange. He’d just as soon no one knew ’bout those powers.
“A while back, the boys sat ‘round the table with their folks, and the brothers decided it was time to marry and have some babies. It was as good as done, they thought, as they were used to doin’ what they set out to do. Well, findin’ the right person to love isn’t all that easy. Those boys were in for a mighty big surprise.
“Now, I told you ‘bout Tux’s powers, that he didn’t like havin’. You can just imagine how upsetting it was when those pictures started comin’ without him doin’ one thing to bring ’em. Tux didn’t like that one little bit.
“But, my stars, that’s exactly what was happenin’....”
One
Tux Bishop shot bolt upright in bed, the sound of his pounding heart echoing in his ears. He took a deep, shuddering breath, then dragged both hands down his sweat-soaked face.
“Damn it,” he said, then threw back the sheet and left the bed.
The clock on the nightstand glowed the message that it was just after two in the morning. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Tux began to pace naked around the large bedroom.
This was the third night in a row, he fumed. He’d been jolted awake, heart racing, dripping with sweat, three times now.
The dreams he’d been having were not dreams... at least not in the usual sense of the word. That fact was what had him tied in knots and mad as hell.
Tux sank onto the edge of the bed, rested his elbows on his knees and made a steeple of his fingers, tapping it against his lips.
Slow down, calm down, he ordered himself. Ranting, raving and wearing out the carpet wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He had to analyze the situation and try to determine what in the hell was going on.
Yes, okay, he had psychic powers that enabled him to glimpse events taking place anywhere in the world.
But...and that was a very big but...the only way his psychic abilities could be put into operation was by him going into deep meditation, a near-trance, that left him drained and exhausted.
He preferred not to use his detested powers, and rarely did so. He had, in fact, totally ignored them for many years.
But now?
“Damn it,” he said, shaking his head.
He knew that the dreams he’d had for three nights now were not really products of his subconscious mind.
They were not dreams.
The images were psychic messages that had come to him unbidden.
Why?
Even more, how?
He commanded his psychic powers. Outside forces did not dictate when his unwelcomed ability would be activated.
Tux stretched out in the bed again, laced his hands beneath his head and glowered at the ceiling.
He had two choices. He could ignore what was happening and hope it was a short-lived fluke and had run its course. Or he could square off against it, take a close mental look at the scenes that had come to him, and attempt to sift, sort, then dismiss them once and for all.
“Yeah,” he said. “No contest. I’m the one who’s in charge here.”
So, okay, he’d start at the beginning.
The first night he’d seen a shadowy figure with no discernible features, or a clue as to whether it was a man or woman. Swirling around the figure was a dark maze of what appeared to be beads or balls of some sort.
The second night the maze had been clearer. The dark cloud had become brightly colored beads, as well as buttons. The beads had separated into straight rows. The shadowy figure had been far from clear, but it was most definitely a woman.
Then tonight there had been even more. He’d had a glimpse of a sign that read: Buttons and Beads.
He’d also seen the woman. She had dark eyes and a wild tumble of black hair that fell to her shoulders in curly disarray. She was very lovely with a gypsylike appearance that was accentuated by a bright blue shawl she’d been wearing.
She’d been holding out her hands, as though pleading for someone to come and help her, and tears had flowed down her pale cheeks.
And on all three nights, he’d sensed the cold chill of danger.
“Lord,” he said, and pulled his hands from beneath his head and dropped his arms heavily onto the bed.
He needed a plan of action. The thought of enduring a fourth night like this held no appeal. Whatever was triggering his psychic powers had to be stopped before he went nuts.
“Buttons and Beads.” He rolled onto his stomach, punched the pillow, then lowered his head again with a weary sigh.
First thing in the morning, he thought, as sleep began to creep over his senses, he’d track down a place named Buttons and Beads. Even if it meant talking to every telephone information operator in the country, he’d find it.
Nancy Shatner finished counting the glossy red beads, then scooped them into a plastic bag. She slipped the bag through a slot in a small white machine that sat on the table, heat sealing the bag.
Next came a sticker with the name, address and telephone number of the shop, which she pressed into place in the lower right-hand corner of the bag.
After checking off the red beads on an order form, she carried the rectangular hard-plastic bin to the front of the store and set it in its designated place, returning to the rear work area with a bin of blue beads.
Settled once more at the table; she checked the order form, nodded, then lifted a handful of blue beads from the bin to a large felt mat. Using what was actually a frosting spatula, she began to quickly move beads two at a time from one side of the mat to the other.
“Two, four, six, eight,” she said aloud, then continued to count silently.
She made piles of twenty beads, which she would recount before sealing them into a bag.
After making five piles of twenty, she took a sip of tea from a ceramic mug, wrinkling her nose as she discovered it was cold. Setting the mug to one side, she stretched her arms above her head, then dropped her hands to her lap, smiling as her gaze fell on the stack of orders she was filling.
Business is booming, she thought. Her reputation for quick service and a product of superb quality was growing. Her mailorder catalog with colored photographs of the buttons and beads was worth the extra money she’d crossed her fingers and paid.
Nancy switched her gaze to the far end of the large table where she was just beginning to start the assembly of a new catalog, which would have a special sale section to mark the celebration of Buttons and Beads being officially two years old.
The walk-in trade, she mused, was increasing nicely, much to her surprised delight. The area of town where she was located wasn’t exactly a high-class shopping mecca. It wasn’t a high-class anything, for that matter.
The decision to set up the front area attractively for whatever retail business she might garner had been a good one. It was easy enough to tote the bins to the rear area to fill mail orders, and she considered every face-to-face sale a bonus.
“Life is a bowl of cherries,” she said, then laughed. “Or whatever. Get to work, Ms. Shatner.”
Over the past two years, she’d perfected the knack of being able to count with one section of her brain, and think about whatever struck her fancy with the other part of her mind.
A fact, she thought merrily, that had probably kept her from turning into a blithering idiot from spending her days counting two, four, six...
Life is a bowl of cherries? she mentally repeated, as she slid blue beads from one side of the mat to the other. Now that she really thought about it, that didn’t make much sense. What if a person didn’t like cherries?
The bottom line was that her life was in shipshape order. She was happy, fulfilled and contented. Her fledgling business was doing well, and she had marvelous friends in the store’s shabby, run-down neighborhood. She had everything she wanted and needed.
Well...
Nancy frowned slightly as she continued to count the beads.
There were moments...not often, but once in a while... when she was a tad lonely. Sitting alone in her little apartment above the store, watching a romantic movie on her minuscule television, sometimes caused her to wistfully yearn for a special man, a wonderful man, to take her into his arms.
“Hush, Nancy,” she said. “Eighteen, twenty,” she added, completing a pile of beads.
She stared into space.
It was perfectly understandable, she reasoned, that she’d have fleeting thoughts of being loved and loving in return, of having a child that was a miraculous result of that love. She was, after all, a normal, healthy twenty-five-year-old woman.
But the fleeting thoughts were just that... fleeting. She valued her hard-won independence far too much to relinquish it for any reason. To enter into a relationship with a man would require her to give away a part of her being, and to be accountable to someone other than herself.
No.
Never again.
“Stop it,” she scolded herself. “You’ll make the bowl of cherries gloomy by thinking about that stuff.”
Blanking her mind beyond counting, she began to hum a peppy tune.
Tux stood across the street, frowning as he stared at the store with the sign hung on the top front that read Buttons and Beads.
It was a typical June morning in Houston, hot and humid, but Tux was oblivious to the trickle of sweat running down his back beneath his cotton shirt.
It had been ridiculously easy to find the store with the sign he’d seen so clearly in the images in his mind. He’d simply opened the Houston telephone book to the yellow pages, and there it was.
He folded his arms over his chest and leaned one shoulder against the chipped bricks of the front of the deserted building behind him, sweeping his gaze along the street.
It was a mishmash of structures. Some, like the one he’d propped himself on, were empty, the whitewashed windows and crumbling brick walls covered in spray-painted graffiti. Others had professionally produced signs like the one announcing Buttons and Beads, sparkling clean windows and walls, and nicely painted front doors.
He could see a variety of businesses—a bakery, a used clothes store called The Second Time Around, a pawnshop, a small grocery store, and some others he couldn’t quite decipher from where he stood.
The height of the buildings, combined with the curtains in the upstairs windows of the occupied ones, indicated that the owners, or possibly other renters, lived above the stores.
There was pride of ownership there, as well as evidence of broken dreams and a failure to succeed. But the effort of sprucing up that the tenants or owners had made couldn’t erase the section of the city they were in.
Dangerous.
“Damn,” he muttered.
He did not want to cross that street and go into Buttons and Beads. There was a knot in his gut the size of a bowling ball caused by the dread of what he might find.
Tux shook his head in self-disgust.
Some former government agent now a private investigator he was. He was shaking in his shorts over what he might discover beyond the door of that shop. The woman he’d seen in the visions, that beautiful, gypsylike woman, had been in danger, had been pleading for help as she cried tears of fear.
His psychic powers didn’t see into the future, never had. He could glimpse only what was taking place at the actual moment, or had very recently occurred.
Why the foggy and confusing images of what might have taken place in that store had reached him without him bidding them to come, he didn’t know. Hopefully it was a fluke that would never happen again.
Maybe... Yeah, that was a comforting thought. Maybe the scenario he’d witnessed had occurred years before, and had accidentally landed in his brain.
. Granted, the card on the door of Buttons and Beads said Open, but it could very well be that he’d walk in there and find a little old man running the place.
The old guy would relate a sad tale of a robbery years before that had caused the young woman, who then owned the shop, to be slightly...very slightly....harmed. She’d hightailed it out of there after recovering from minor injuries suffered during the assault, and was now happily married with five kids.
Tux blew out a puff of air from a pent-up breath, then told himself to cross that street.
Now.
Mumbling several earthy expletives, he pushed himself away from the wall and started slowly forward.
The brass bell above the door tinkled, alerting Nancy to the fact that someone had entered the store. She continued to count, cocking her head to listen for a greeting from a friend in the neighborhood. They all knew to call out a hello of some sort, then wait until she had finished counting the beads into a pile of twenty.
Realizing that a real customer was out front due to the absence of a familiar holler, she dropped the frosting spatula and got quickly to her feet to hurry from the rear area.
As she came through the doorway, she was smiling pleasantly.
Tux’s shoulders slumped in defeat when he saw the woman who had emerged from the back of the shop.
It was her, he thought dismally, the woman from the visions. There she was, with her wild tumble of shiny black curls, big dark eyes and lovely features.
She was wearing a white peasant blouse that accentuated her slender throat, and a multicolored skirt. There was a gypsylike aura to her, just as he’d seen in the haunting images.
She was absolutely beautiful.
And he wished to the heavens that she wasn’t standing there in front of him.
Also taunting him were the bins of beads separated by color, representing the columns he’d seen in the visions.
Tux frowned and shook his head.
“Oh...hell,” he said, glaring at the woman.
Nancy blinked in surprise at the man’s unconventional greeting.
Not, she admitted, that she had said anything cheerful or welcoming. She’d been momentarily struck dumb by the unexpected presence of one of the most gorgeous men she’d ever seen.
He was about six feet tall, had need-of-a-trim blond hair that was sun-streaked to nearly white in places, a marvelous tan, and incredible blue eyes. A pale blue dress shirt covered broad shoulders and chest, and a flat belly. His jeans were faded, the now soft material hugging narrow hips and powerful legs.
Gorgeous, she reaffirmed in her mind.
“Oh, hell?” she repeated, moving to stand behind the row of bins.
Still glowering, Tux closed the distance remaining to the bins.
“Do you own a bright blue shawl?” he said gruffly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Just answer the question.”
Nancy planted her hands on her hips. “I certainly will not. If you’re attempting to sell shawls, you’ve got a lot to learn about how to approach potential customers, mister. You’re rude, pure and simple. Goodbye.”
Tux stared up at the ceiling for a long moment, then looked at the woman again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Let me start over. I’m Tux Bishop.”
“Nancy Shatner,” she said, eyeing him warily.
“Hello, Nancy.” Tux paused. “Do you own a bright blue shawl?”
“Goodbye, Mr. Bishop,” she said, folding her arms beneath her breasts.
“No, no, wait,” he said, raising both hands. “I’m not selling anything.”
“That’s good,” she said dryly, “because with your oh-socharming personality you couldn’t pay the rent by being a salesman.” She leaned slightly toward him. “Just what exactly is it that you want?”
Oh, lady, Tux thought, that was not a terrific question for a beautiful woman to ask a red-blooded, healthy man. With no stretch of the imagination whatsoever, he could visualize taking Nancy Shatner into his arms, nestling her to his body, then capturing her tantalizing lips with his own.
Whoa, Bishop, he ordered himself. He could feel the heat low in his body, coiling, twisting, turning. He wasn’t there intent on seduction. He needed answers to what had happened to him and why it had taken place, before he went out of his ever-lovin’ mind.
“Mr. Bishop?”
“What? Oh, call me Tux.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s more friendly, Nancy.”
“It’s Ms. Shatner. You don’t evoke friendliness, not even close. Look, I’m very busy, Mr. Bishop. I don’t want to be rude, but I’m rapidly approaching having no choice. Please state your reason for being here...now.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I don’t have a long time to listen. Give me an edited version.”
This, Tux thought, was not going well. He needed to start over.
He flashed Nancy his best, hundred-watt, knock-’em-dead smile.
Good grief, Nancy thought, Tux Bishop smiling should be declared against the law. That smile probably had women dissolving into puddles at his feet. Well, not Nancy Shatner. So what if her heart had actually skipped a beat and a frisson of heat had slithered down her back? It didn’t mean a thing.
“Nancy,” Tux said, still smiling, “look, it’s an easy enough question that won’t cost you one penny to answer. Do you own a bright blue shawl?”
“No.”
“No, you won’t answer the question? Or no, you don’t own a blue shawl?”
Nancy sighed. “I have several shawls, but not a bright blue one. I have never owned a bright blue shawl. Does that complete your survey? Are we finished here?” She nodded. “We’re definitely finished. Goodbye, Mr. Bishop.”
“Tux. Listen, I... Oh, hell.”
“That’s how this conversation started. So, oh, hell, to you, too, and goodbye.”
“Nancy,” he began, a serious expression on his face, “I have to explain something to you. It’s very important, it really is. I realize that the last thing a woman wants to hear from some fool of a guy dumb enqugh to say it is ‘trust me,’ but that’s what I’m asking you to do. Trust me. Give me some time to tell you what’s going on.” He paused. “Please.”
No? Yes? Nancy thought. Darn it, he suddenly sounded, even looked, concerned, or worried, or... There was a sincere quality to his voice now, too, edged with a touch of... what? Panic? Urgency?
Trust him? Why should she? He was obviously after something, but heaven only knew what. Was the concern she was witnessing real, or was he a very practiced actor?
No, forget it. She was sending him packing right this second.
But then again, she was admittedly nosy enough to want to discover what he wanted from her.
“Well,” she said, “all right, you may have five minutes, but you’d better make this good, Mr. Bishop.”
“Thank you, Nancy. Is there somewhere we can go and sit down?”
“No. You stay right where you are. Speak. You’re using up your time.”
Tux sighed. “Yeah, okay. Try to keep an open mind, will you?”
Nancy looked directly at him, no readable expression on her face.
“You’re difficult to deal with, do you know that?” Tux said.
Damn, he thought, he’d decided to jump right in and tell Nancy about his psychic powers and the visions he’d seen. As uncomfortable as he was with his so-called gift, he’d felt there was no other way to handle this besides just blurting it out.
But he suddenly didn’t like that plan. He was standing in front of a very beautiful woman, and he had no intention of watching her narrow her eyes, take a step back, and mentally label him as strange.
He did not, however, want to lie to Nancy Shatner, either. This was going to have to be handled very carefully, with expertise, finesse.
“Hello?” Nancy prompted. “Your five minutes is ticking away very rapidly, Mr. Bishop.”
“Tux.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, here goes. I know this guy who has psychic powers. We’re very good friends, even if he is a step off from normal because he has visions, you know what I mean?”
“And?”
“Well, I humor him, because he’s my buddy. Friends do that for friends.” He was not lying to Nancy. He’d read magazine articles that said a person should be their own best friend. “Besides, my...friend’s visions are usually right on the mark when he has them. Anyway, he had some visions about...about you.”
Nancy blinked, opened her mouth, closed it, then tried again.
“What?” she said, more in the form of a squeak.
“It’s true. He saw you, and you were wearing a bright blue shawl.”
“But I don’t own a blue shawl.”
Tux ran one hand over the back of his neck. “So you said, and that muddies the waters even more. Damn, this doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s crazy, that’s what it is,” Nancy said. “Who is this friend of yours? Why didn’t he come here himself? I don’t know very many people in Houston. Why would he know me?”
“You don’t have to know a person to have psychic images about them. My friend is sensitive about his powers, and doesn’t like to discuss them, so that’s why he sent me. The thing is, he doesn’t have the ability to see into the future. He can only glimpse what is taking place at the moment, or very, very recently. That’s why I said this really doesn’t make sense.”
“Is he certain he saw me?” she asked, leaning slightly toward him. “Absolutely positive?”
He nodded. “Yes. He saw the Buttons and Beads sign that’s on the front of your store. That’s how I was able to find you this morning.”
“Dear heaven, this is creepy,” she said, wrapping her hands around her elbows.
No joke, Tux thought dryly. Nancy was having the usual reaction to an announcement like the one he was making. It was creepy. He was creepy. He was glad he hadn’t told her that he was the one with the psychic powers.
“Well,” Nancy said, “what was I doing? You know, what was taking place in the visions?”
Oh, hell, Tux thought, he didn’t want to scare her to death. What should he say? It wasn’t as though he had any experience in predicting the future. How did he even know there was any validity to what he’d seen? This whole situation was confusing and very disturbing.
“Mr. Bishop?” Nancy persisted. “Tux?”
“What?” he said, snapping back to attention. “Oh, the visions that you were in. Well, it was a mishmash of things, you understand.
“The buttons and beads were swirling around as though they were being whipped by a wind, then they settled into columns, rows, which I assume were those bins you have there.
“The painted sign saying Buttons and Beads came into view, then disappeared. My friend doesn’t see images like a movie, all neat and tidy and organized.”
Nancy nodded. “I’ve got it. So? What was I doing in the mishmash?”
Tux began to search his mind frantically for what he should say. For all he knew, the visions had meant nothing because he really didn’t possess the power to see into the future.
On the other hand, if by chance this once...and it better not happen again...he actually had glimpsed a scene of something that had not yet taken place, but was going to happen; Nancy deserved to be warned of the danger that she might be facing.
Then again, she didn’t even own a bright blue shawl.
He was going nuts arguing with himself. He was chasing his own thoughts around in his head like a hamster in one of those endless wheels that went nowhere.
Tux cleared his throat. “Yes, well, you want to know the part you played in what my friend saw. That’s certainly a reasonable request. I—”
He was interrupted by the tinkling of the bell over the door as a short, plump woman in her sixties bustled in, carrying a grocery sack. Breathing a mental sigh of relief at the reprieve, Tux stepped back out of the way.
“Hello, darling,” the woman greeted Nancy. “How are you this lovely summer morning?” She glanced at Tux. “Oh, you have company. Go right ahead with what you were doing. I’ll wait.”
“We’re just chatting,” Nancy replied. “Glenna Cushman, this is Tux Bishop. Tux, Glenna owns the used clothes store down the block.”
Tux smiled. “It’s a pleasure, ma’am. I saw your shop. The Second Time Around is a clever name.”
“I know,” Glenna said, laughing merrily. “I was so tickled with myself when I thought of it.” She slid her gaze over Tux from head to toe, then back again. “Hmmm, aren’t you a dandy hunk of stuff? Yummy.” She looked at Nancy. “Nancy Shatner, please say you noticed that this is one very sexy man.”
Tux laughed.
Nancy blushed a pretty pink and rolled her eyes heavenward.
“Glenna, please,” Nancy said, with a moan. “Hush. All right?”
“Well, facts are facts, dear,” Glenna persisted. “The man definitely does wonderful things for a pair of jeans. Beads and buttons simply won’t keep a woman warm on a snowy winter night.”
“Glenna,” Nancy said, leaning slightly toward her, “this is Houston, Texas. We don’t have snowy winter nights.”
“Figure of speech. You know what I mean,” Glenna said. “You’re young and beautiful. You need a man in your life. Tux, don’t you think Nancy is beautiful?”
“Glenna,” he said, his voice very low and rumbly as he looked directly at Nancy, “I think Nancy is extremely beautiful. She reminds me of a gypsy. Oh, yes, she is definitely beautiful.” And now he knew she was unattached, was not involved in a relationship with a man. Thank you, Glenna Cushman.
Dear heaven, Nancy thought, unable to tear her gaze from Tux’s mesmerizing blue eyes. She could hardly breathe and her heart was beating like a drum.
Tux’s voice had dropped an octave, and she felt as though it were caressing her like dark velvet, creating thrumming heat as it swept over and throughout her. Tux Bishop was having a very unsettling and unwelcomed effect on her, drat him.
“I must dash back to the store,” Glenna announced, breaking the strange sensuous spell that had weaved around Tux and Nancy. “I just took some things that came in late yesterday out of the washer and dryer. Per usual, my darling girl, you get first pick. I thought this was perfect for you.”
Glenna reached into the sack and whipped out a garment that she flipped onto the top of the bins in a splash of color.
It was a bright blue shawl.
Two
Nancy stared at the blue shawl as she agreed absently with Glenna that it was lovely. The older woman reminded Nancy once again how handsome Tux was, then hurried out the door to return to her own store.
“Tux?” Nancy said. She tore her eyes from the shawl to look at him. “You told me your friend couldn’t see into the future.”
“He can’t.” He frowned as he met her troubled gaze.
“But he did. He saw me wearing the shawl before it belonged to me, and now here it is.”
“Yeah, here it is.” He ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Why would he suddenly glimpse something from the future? I can’t accept this.”
“Oh, really?” Nancy returned, her voice rising. “Pitching a fit isn’t going to change the fact that I now own a bright blue shawl. You keep dancing around the subject of what was happening to me in those visions. I want you to tell me.”
Once again the tinkling bell over the door announced the entrance of someone into the store, and once again Tux sighed inwardly with relief.
An attractive, middle-aged woman, who was smartly dressed in an obviously expensive sundress with a matching wide-brimmed hat, went to the row of bins.
“Good morning,” the woman said, smiling at Nancy. “I need some beads for a blouse I’m having made. It has a Western style, and I thought it would be nice if beads were added to the fringe. A friend told me about your store, so I drove all the way over here to select the beads myself.”
“I appreciate your making the trip,” Nancy replied pleasantly. “Now then, what color is the blouse and what kind of material is it being made from?”
Tux tuned out the discussion between the two women. He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and wandered around the narrow area making up the front portion of the store.
There was a lot of inventory in a small space, he mused. Nancy Shatner had used every inch of room to advantage. The sun pouring in the gleaming front window cascaded over the bins of buttons and beads, creating an extremely appealing kaleidoscope of color.
There were more beads than buttons, he noticed. The beads were a variety of every shape, size, color and material imaginable. There were even leather beads, as well as some that looked like delicate crystal.
Tux stopped in front of the two bins holding the buttons. He picked up a square button that appeared to be hand-painted china, then carefully replaced it. The next one he scrutinized was a replica of a buffalo nickel, the one after that a tiny wooden log.
Fascinating, he thought, and very clever. It would be interesting to know how Nancy had come to the decision to operate such an unusual business. It would, in fact, be interesting to know more about Nancy Shatner herself, the woman.
Tux went to the front window and stared at the shabby, empty building he’d leaned against across the street.
Surely Nancy didn’t live above Buttons and Beads, he thought. This was definitely not a neighborhood for a woman alone to take up residency. Not even close. It wasn’t that great a location to operate a business, but low rent had no doubt enticed Nancy to set up shop here.
Her reputation for having quality merchandise was obviously spreading, as evidenced by the arrival of Mrs. Megabucks from across town. He had to give Nancy credit for what she’d accomplished, that was for sure.
“There you are,” Nancy said, handing the woman a white bag. “Thank you so much. Your blouse is going to be beautiful. I tucked one of my catalogs into that bag so you can browse at your leisure, and I’ll put your name on my mailing list so you’ll be notified of special sales in the future.”
“Marvelous,” the woman said. “I’ll certainly tell all my friends about Buttons and Beads. Some won’t come into this section of town, so I’ll share the catalog, too. Goodbye for now.”
“Goodbye,” Nancy said, “and thank you again.”
The woman left the store, and Tux turned from the window to look at Nancy.
“You seem to have everything covered from A to Z,” he said. “I’m impressed, ma’am.”
“Thank you, sir.” She smiled as she dipped her head slightly. “What kind of work do you do?”
“I’m a private investigator,” Tux said, walking slowly back toward the bins.
“Really? I’ve never met a detective before. Were you a police officer?”
“No, I worked for the government until about a year or so ago.”
“Ah, I see. Then you were, no doubt, a secret agent of some kind.”
Tux frowned. “I didn’t say that.”
“It’s obvious. You worked for the government. If you’d been a mailman, or internal revenue clerk, or social security expert, you would have said so. Besides, secret agents who get tired of dashing all over the world are perfectly trained to become private investigators.” She shrugged. “That’s how it goes in the movies, and it makes sense to me.”
Tux chuckled. “You’re really something. You’re also right. I don’t announce that I was a government agent. People either start asking me questions about what they believe must have been an exciting life, or I make them nervous and they close up.” He paused. “Do I make you nervous, Nancy?” He looked directly into her dark eyes.
“No,” she said quietly.
Oh, Tux definitely had an unsettling effect on her, she admitted silently, but it had nothing to do with his former or present occupations. It was Tux Bishop, the man, who was throwing her off-kilter, causing funny flutters of heat to whisper throughout her. He was just so incredibly, blatantly male.
She lifted her chin a tad. “I believe that everyone should try to know who they are and discover what they want. Then they should move forward and go after their goal, their dreams and...”
Nancy’s voice trailed off and she averted her eyes from Tux’s.
“Whatever,” she finished saying after a moment. “I didn’t mean to get on a soapbox about it. Just erase all that. You didn’t ask for a sermonette.”
Tux looked at Nancy intently, suddenly wishing his powers... which were usually annoying...included the ability to peer into a person’s mind. To be more precise, into Nancy Shatner’s mind.
Who had tried to keep her from going after her goals, her dreams? he wondered. Her voice had rung with determination, conviction...and, yes, passion.
“If I’m nervous about anything,” Nancy said, “it’s your apparent reluctance to reveal to me what I was doing in the visions your friend had and what was happening to me. Is there some reason you don’t want to tell me what he saw?”
“Of course I’ll tell you, Nancy,” Tux said, “but I want to be certain you understand that this whole thing could be a false alarm.”
“Fine. Now explain my role in the scenario that your friend saw.”
“Yeah, well.” Tux began slowly. “I realize I’ve been postponing telling you, but I didn’t want to scare you. Nancy, my friend sensed danger during all three visions. When he could finally see you clearly, you had on the shawl, you were crying and holding out your arms as though pleading for help. He sensed you were frightened.”
“Oh, dear,” she whispered. She pressed trembling fingertips to her lips.
“I’m sorry,” Tux said miserably.
On impulse he strode past the end of the bins to where Nancy stood behind them, and wrapped his arms around her.
“I’m sorry I frightened you,” he repeated. “I feel so rotten about this, especially because I can’t explain why or how it happened. If I...we, my friend and I...could figure it out, it might help to ease your fears.”
Nancy encircled Tux’s waist with her arms and rested her head on the solid wall of his chest.
Oh, he felt so good, she thought. He was strong and powerful. Yes, she was determined to be independent, to take care of herself, answer to no one but herself, but, oh, God, this whole bizarre business was suddenly frightening.
Nancy sighed. It was a shuddering sigh and Tux tightened his hold on her, inhaling her delicate aroma of flowers. He hardly remembered moving to comfort her, his protective instincts having risen to the fore, but now he was very aware that she felt like heaven itself pressed close to his body.
He could feel her breasts, lush and full, against his chest. He could feel how delicate she was, like fine china. He could feel the tenseness caused by her fright slowly ebbing.
But then there was an even greater shift, change, as senses heightened, as the man totally reacted to the woman, the woman to the man. Heat began to build and chum in a body soft, a body hard. Heartbeats quickened.
The blue shawl, the threatening visions, the endless questions, were all forgotten.
Nancy lifted her head to meet Tux’s gaze, seeing the smoky hue of desire in his eyes, not caring if her own eyes revealed the same.
Tux covered her mouth with his, parting her lips, meeting her tongue. It was an explosion of sensation that rocketed through them like the licking flames of a roaring fire.
Hot.
Burning.
He deepened the kiss and passions soared.
Tux raised his head slightly to draw a rough breath, then slanted his mouth the other way as he claimed Nancy’s lips again, drinking of her taste like a thirsty man having found sweet nectar.
Oh, Tux, Nancy’s mind hummed. It was ecstasy. The feel, the aroma, the taste of this man was exquisite. Never, never before had she experienced such an incredible awareness of her own femininity compared to the blatant masculinity of a man, this man, Tux.
She was on fire, burning with the want of him. Her breasts ached with a tantalizing pain, yearning for the soothing touch of Tux’s hands. Deep and low within her, the heat pulsed, matching the rapid tempo of her heart.
She was being swept away on passion’s tide, and she gloried in it...
What on earth was she doing?
Nancy broke the kiss and moved her hands to press them flat on Tux’s chest, pushing him away, forcing him to release her. She took a quick step backward and willed her racing heart to still.
Tux frowned, shook his head once sharply, then took a raspy breath.
“Nancy?” he said, hearing the gritty quality of his voice.
“I...” She wrapped her hands around her elbows. “That shouldn’t have happened. I don’t do things like that. I don’t leap into the arms of a man I don’t even know. You must think I’m...” She lifted her chin. “Well, I’m not. Understand? I was upset, momentarily frightened by what you’ve been saying ever since you came in here.”
Tux nodded. “Oh.”
“Oh? Oh! That’s all you have to say?” she said, none too quietly.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she admitted shaking her head. “I’m totally mortified. I don’t wish to discuss what happened any further.”
“But I just thought of something I want to say.”
She glared at him. “Spare me.”
“Hang in there,” he said, smiling. “This won’t take long.” His smile faded and his expression became serious. “I just wanted to say that kissing you was sensational. You sent me up in flames, Nancy Shatner. I’m very attracted to you. You’re a beautiful, intelligent, passionate woman.”
“I am?” She blinked. “I am not! What I mean is, I...” She threw up her hands. “I don’t know what I mean. Okay, fine, you’ve had your say. The subject is closed.”
“For now.”
“Forever!”
“No way, but we won’t argue the point at the moment.” He paused. “Listen, like it or not we’re in a bit of a mess here.” He glanced at the blue shawl where it was still spread across the bins of beads, then looked at Nancy again. “The shawl didn’t disappear while we were kissing.” He stared up at the ceiling, then narrowed his eyes as he directed his attention to the shawl. “Let’s gather some data.”
Nancy flipped one hand breezily in the air. “Why not? Data is nice. Gather your little heart out.”
Tux shot her a dark look, then folded his arms over his chest.
“If I was going to rob this place,” he said, “what would I get, besides a life’s supply of buttons and beads?”
Nancy shrugged. “Nothing. The majority of my business is mail orders paid by check. The cash flow from walk-in customers is minimal. Tux, seriously, there’s nothing here worth stealing.”
“Is there a tenant living upstairs?”
“Yes. Me.”
He dropped his arms to plant his hands on his narrow hips.
“You’re joking. Right? You wouldn’t be dumb enough to live alone in this neighborhood. Right? If you do, I just may have to erase the adjective intelligent from my list describing you. Tell me you don’t live upstairs.”
“You’re pushing me, Mr. Bishop. This is my store.” She pointed to the ceiling. “Up there is my home. That’s not dumb, it’s sound economic reasoning. I’m a flight of stairs away from my store, which is handy, due to the fact that I can’t afford a car. Everything I need is within walking distance of here.”
“Including sleazes who would steal from their own grandmothers,” Tux said. “This is a high-crime district, lady.”
“This is where I live and work, mister. I’ve been here for nearly two years and I’ve never had one bit of trouble. We’re like a family on this block. We look after each other. No one else has been robbed, or whatever, since I’ve been here, either, because businesses in this area aren’t exactly Fortune 500 enterprises.”
“Okay, okay,” Tux conceded, raising both hands in a gesture of peace. “You’ve made your point. Do you own a gun?”
“No.”
“Dandy,” he muttered, shaking his head. “You don’t even have a way to protect yourself. Look, we’re not getting anywhere. I think what I should do is talk to someone who’s up on psychic powers, see if there’s a reasonable explanation for why my friend’s have suddenly gone berserk.”
“That makes sense. Maybe there’s nothing at all to worry about. Maybe Glenna bringing me the blue shawl was just a weird coincidence.” She shivered. “Oh, I hope so, I really do.”
Tux closed the distance between them and drew one thumb gently over her lips. Nancy shivered again, only this time it wasn’t from a sudden rush of fear. The feel of Tux’s callused thumb on the soft flesh of her lips had been a simple, quick gesture, yet it had instantaneously fanned the still glowing embers of desire within her into hot, leaping flames.
Tux’s friend had sensed she was in danger when he saw his visions? she thought. Tux, himself, was a source of danger to her ability to reason, think straight, behave in a manner she was accustomed to. Oh, yes, Tux Bishop was a very dangerous man.
“I’m sorry about all this, Nancy,” he said quietly. “I know I’ve frightened you, but we’ll get to the bottom of it. I’ll find out what I can, then report back to you.
“In the meantime, be very careful. Make certain you check the doors and windows at night, don’t go strolling outside after dark, things like that Do you have a telephone upstairs?”
“Yes, it rings up there and down here at the same time. I’ll give you one of my business cards with the number.” She hurried into the back room and returned to hand him the card, which he slipped into his shirt pocket.
“I’ll talk to you soon,” he said.
Nancy nodded.
Their eyes met. The sensual haze that had encased them during the kisses shared began to weave its invisible threads once again, over and around them.
The incredible awareness, the sensuous pull between them from the moment they’d seen each other was eerie, like nothing either of them had experienced before.
It was exciting, but unsettling.
It was confusing, yet intertwined with a calming rightness.
“No,” Nancy whispered, not realizing she’d spoken aloud.
“What are you doing to me, Nancy Shatner?” Tux said, his voice raspy.
“Nothing.” She took a step backward. “Nothing.”
“You look like a beautiful gypsy. Are you? A gypsy? Do you have powers, too, that you haven’t told me about?”
“No, of course not. Don’t be silly. I’m not a gypsy, I just happen to like to wear this style of clothes sometimes. I get them at Glenna’s store.”
“Then how do you explain whatever this is that keeps... crackling between us, keeps wrapping around us? I can’t find the right words to describe it, but I know you feel it as much as I do. How do you explain that?”
“It’s simply a result of the bizarre scenario we’re suddenly finding ourselves in,” she said. “What am I doing to you? If you’ll recall, Mr. Bishop, you came in here with your story of visions and danger, and a blue shawl. You started this whole... whatever it is.”
A slow smile began to form on Tux’s lips, a very male smile, that caused Nancy to take yet another step away from him.
“Well,” he replied, “I guess you’re right. I started it. The really interesting part will be to see where it all goes. Right, Nancy?”
She lifted her chin. “Goodbye, Tux. I have a great deal of work to do.”
He looked at her for another long moment, then nodded. “I’m off to find an expert on psychic powers. I’ll check with you later. Take care of yourself.”
Nancy watched as Tux strode from behind the bins to the door, then left the store. Only then did she realize she’d been holding her breath until he was gone, and drew in a gulp of much needed air.
“Oh, goodness,” she said, pressing her hands to her cheeks.
“What a morning. What a mess. I don’t believe this.” She turned, then frowned as her gaze fell on the blue shawl. “Yes, I do,” she added wearily.
She snatched up the lusciously soft shawl and stomped into the back room.
Late that afternoon, Tux sat in the living room of a seventy-two-year-old man, who looked remarkably like Santa Claus.
“I appreciate your listening to my story, Dr. Nixon,” Tux said. “As I explained, I spent most of the day on the telephone looking for help with this situation, and was told more than once that you were the best authority in the area on psychic powers.”
“Call me Jeremiah, son,” the man answered. “Well, you’ve brought me an interesting tale, that’s for sure. But in all my years of researching psychic phenomena, I’ve always had to admit the same conclusion...there are no hard-and-fast rules we can count on.”
Tux leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers loosely together.
“Can you at least give me your opinion on what has happened?” he asked. “Why did I suddenly have visions predicting the future when I have never before had the power to do that? Even more, how do I know that what I saw will actually take place?”
“The blue shawl has already appeared, son.”
Tux slouched back in the chair. “I know.” He sighed and shook his head. “I hate this.”
Dr. Nixon chuckled. “A person wouldn’t need psychic powers to figure that out. You obviously like to be in control of your life, and at the moment you feel dictated to by outside forces.”
“Exactly. Not only that, there’s Nancy Shatner to consider. She’s in danger, or will be. But to what degree? I mean, maybe the fear I sensed, then saw on her face in the visions, was because a mouse ran across her floor.”
“Good point,” Jeremiah agreed, nodding. “It’s reasonable to me that your psychic ability took a side trip to an arena where it has never been, but due to your lack of experience, the danger that surrounds Nancy is not easily deciphered.”
“I hate this,” Tux repeated.
“Well, to be prudent, I’d suggest you assume the worst. Use the cliché of ‘better to be safe than sorry.’ You’d best watch over Nancy Shatner.”
“But for how long? In the first place, it’s difficult to continually remember when I’m talking to Nancy that I’m supposedly representing a friend of mine who has the powers, but I sure don’t want to tell Nancy the truth. She’s already used the word creepy in regard to this. I can live without that and the other adjectives she’d come up with. Secondly, I don’t know what the danger is, how serious it might be, or how ridiculous.”
“True. If she does see a mouse and gets hysterical, then that’s the end of the story. But you did say she works and lives in a high-crime neighborhood, so...” Dr. Nixon’s voice trailed off.
“Yeah, I hear you,” Tux said, frowning.
“Having listened to the details of your background, Tux, you’re more than capable of protecting Nancy.” He paused. “The lifelong researcher in me is fascinated by all of this. I’m just sorry I can’t give you concrete data as to why this happened. All I can offer you is my opinion.”
“Which is?”
“I believe that you and Nancy Shatner are connected in some way. The men of science would say that you two had an unexplainable link that enabled you to receive a message from Nancy that was based on events yet to happen.”
“Great,” Tux said dryly.
“However, there might be another theory coming from the romantics, those who speak more from their hearts than their minds.”
“Oh?”
“They’d be inclined to feel that you and Nancy are soul mates, found each other with thoughts before you actually met. She called out to you, you came. Destiny, son, destiny.”
“And you? What do you believe?”
Dr. Nixon smiled. “I believe I’ll be very eager to hear which theory proves to be true. You will keep me posted, won’t you?”
Tux got to his feet. “Yes, of course I will, providing I survive it all. I swear, I really—”
“Hate this,” Jeremiah concluded for him, laughing. “Tux, the data is crystal clear.”
Destiny.
When Dr. Nixon had explained the two approaches to viewing the situation, Tux had filed the information and not paid active attention to it.
But as he drove away from the old gentleman’s house, he realized he was actually hearing for the first time that portion of what had been said.
Destiny.
Destiny?
Ah, come on, give it a rest, Tux thought, with an impatient shake of his head. That really was the nonsense of romantics.
Soul mates.
He was chucking that one out the window, too. He and Nancy Shatner were not soul mates, not each other’s destiny. That was a bunch of hogwash. He and Nancy had connected by thought waves because they hadn’t yet met as they were destined to do? Ridiculous.
But...
Nancy had called out to him.
And he’d come.
She was in some kind of potential danger.
He fully intended to watch over and protect her until the source of that danger could be discovered and dealt with,
He’d been determined to locate the beautiful, gypsylike woman, who had pleaded for help in his visions.
And when he did find her, he’d kissed her.
Tux tightened his hold on the steering wheel and shifted slightly on the seat as heat coiled low and tight in his body from the remembrance of the kisses shared with Nancy.
She’d turned him inside out, that was for sure. He’d never been so instantly consumed by lust when kissing a woman.
“Wrong,” he said, smacking the steering wheel with the heel of his hand.
It hadn’t been just lust. What had swept throughout him like a hot, flaming rocket when he’d held Nancy in his arms, kissed her, savored the feel of her feminine, delicate body nestled against him, had not been just lust.
There had been a maze of indiscernible emotions tumbling through his mind as well. He’d recognized protectiveness and possessiveness, but the remainder were a tangled puzzle.
Protectiveness? That was easily explained. Nancy was in some kind of danger from an event yet to take place. It was perfectly natural for a decent, basically nice guy, to be determined to protect her from that danger lurking in future shadows.
Possessiveness? Well, that was reasonable, too. After all, he was the one who had been mentally informed of that danger, then delivered the news flash of its existence to Nancy. She was his for the duration of this dilemma; his to protect. His. Hence, the emotion of possessiveness.
Tux nodded decisively.
Destiny? Soul mates? Forget it. He was a realist, a man who operated with his feet firmly on the ground.
Logical thinking dictated that romantic-based psychic messages could only be received by someone who had a mind receptive to those kinds of thoughts, a place to receive them.
That wasn’t him, not by a long shot. Therefore, he was back to Dr. Nixon’s theory one, the scientific analysis. By some cosmic...or whatever...fluke, his brain waves had mistakenly connected with Nancy’s. It was like dialing the telephone and getting the wrong number.
There, he decided, he had at least some of this disaster figured out, and felt better for it. The fact remained though, that he was well and truly stuck with the situation itself, had to see it through to its proper end.
He’d protect Nancy Shatner.
Because, for now, she was his.
Fine.
Tux turned on the radio and began to sing along to a country-and-western song declaring that mamas shouldn’t let their babies grow up to be cowboys.
“Whoa,” he said suddenly, “I’m supposed to be at Mom and Dad’s house for dinner.”
He flicked on the blinker, changed lanes, and concentrated on the heavy traffic.
He totally ignored the whispering little voice in his mind that repeated one word over and over...destiny.
In her apartment above Buttons and Beads, Nancy set a salad and a plate of toast on the table next to a tall glass of iced tea. She sank wearily onto a wobbly wooden chair and sighed.
The remainder of the day after Tux had left the store had seemed like a never-going-to-end series of hours. She’d had difficulty concentrating, and had to continually recount piles of beads as she lost track of what number she was on.
Images of what had taken place with Tux Bishop kept flitting before her mind’s eye from every direction.
She saw him frowning, then smiling that sinfully lethal smile, saw desire in the mesmerizing depths of his incredible blue eyes.
She saw herself in his arms, responding to his kisses in total abandon, her behavior far removed from her normal conduct.
And she saw the bright blue shawl.
Nancy picked up a slice of toast, glared at it, then dropped it back onto the plate. She got to her feet and crossed the small room to look out the window, her gaze sweeping over as much of the block as she could see.
Was there really something, someone, out there intent on doing her harm? Was she in danger from a source unknown?
Oh, if only she could turn back the clock, erase the moment that Tux had opened the door and entered Buttons and Beads, and remove this nightmare from her life.
But if she had the power to do that, she would never have experienced the ecstasy of kissing Tux, being held by him, savoring the wonderful feel of his magnificent, strong body pressed against her.
“Nancy,” she said dismally, “you’re a befuddled mess.”
She continued to stare out the window, her hands wrapped around her elbows.
She was tired, confused and frightened.
Two tears slid down her pale cheeks.
And for the first time in a long while, she was very, very lonely.
Three
When Tux entered the living room at his parents’ home, Blue and Bram were already there.
“Yo, big brother,” Blue called. “Do any cloak-and-dagger investigating today?”
“You could say that,” Tux replied, no hint of a smile on his face. “Punch any cows?”
Bram laughed. “He gotcha good, Blue. Before anyone asks... Yes, today I worked on building a building. Bishop Construction is alive and well, thank you very much.”
The brothers were all six feet tall, with well-proportioned physiques. They boasted the same shade of blue eyes, which most women commented on shortly after meeting them. Their features were similar. rugged, handsome, tanned, definitely declaring them to be related, but each uniquely their own.
But it was the contrasting shades of their hair that was immediately apparent when the three were together.
While Tux’s hair was blond and sun-streaked to nearly white in places, Blue’s was as black as a raven’s wing, causing his eyes to appear even a deeper, richer shade of sapphire. Bram’s shade of hair fell somewhere in between his brothers, being medium brown, with some sun-lightened streaks.
They were the Bishop boys, and each knew his brothers would lay their lives on the line for him.
Tux slouched into a green-and-red plaid chair that Jana-John had bought at a yard sale over twenty years before, deciding it was a “happy chair.” No one had questioned her as to how a chair could look “happy.” The now rather faded, lumpy creation had been set in place and never moved from the selected spot for two decades.
“You don’t look too happy, Tux,” Bram said, from where he sat on a blue-and-white striped sofa.
“Mmm,” Tux murmured.
Blue settled onto an old Boston rocker that Jana-John had used for countless hours to rock her babies.
“So?” Blue prompted. “Are you talking about it, Tux, or just mulling over whatever is eating at you? Your call, my man.”
“Where are the folks?” Tux asked.
Blue and Bram both shrugged.
“They’ll pop up,” Bram said, “providing they remember we’re here for dinner. I don’t smell anything cooking, though.” He smiled. “Which is safer, really. Maybe we’ll send out for pizza.”
“Hold that thought,” Blue said. “Pray that thought. We’ve got the greatest mother in Texas... hell, the world...but heaven knows she can’t cook. Hey, remember the time she decided to make us pancakes from scratch?”
“Yep,” Bram said, chuckling. “We sold them to every kid on the block. Twenty-five cents for a homemade, rock-hard Frisbee.”
Bram looked at Tux, who was staring into space, glowering at nothing.
“Okay, Tux,” Bram said. “I guess you’d better spill it before you explode.”
“I hate this,” Tux muttered. “I really hate this.”
“Hate what?” Blue and Bram said in unison.
Tux got to his feet and began to pace restlessly around the room that had been carpeted in a striped pattern of fuchsia, yellow and black.
“I had a vision,” Tux told them. “Correct that I had three visions in as many nights. I didn’t meditate, didn’t concentrate, didn’t go into a near-trance. The visions just came on their own.”
“That has never happened before,” Blue said.
“It gets worse,” Tux continued, still pacing around the room. “It turns out that the visions were predicting the future, not showing something in the present.”
“Whew,” Bram said. “You don’t have the ability to predict the future. We checked that out years ago when we were planning to bet five bucks on a Super Bowl.”
“Yeah, well, I saw the future. A woman...an incredibly beautiful woman...named Nancy Shatner, who owns a store called Buttons and Beads, is in some kind of danger. I sensed the danger, but I don’t know how serious it is, or what the danger is from. I saw her in the visions pleading for help, crying, and she was wearing a bright blue shawl.”
“Define incredibly beautiful,” Bram said, but his brothers ignored him.
“Did you track her down?” Blue asked. “Does she own a blue shawl?”
Tux stopped and shoved both hands through his thick hair.
“Are you ready for this?” he said. “While I’m standing in her store, trying to convince her that my friend, who had the visions, isn’t totally nuts, a lady from down the block, who has a used clothes place, bounces in all excited because she’s bringing Nancy a bright blue shawl she knows Nancy will want to have.”
“Holy smokes,” Bram uttered, his eyes widening.
“No joke,” Blue said. “Is this for real? You don’t have any clue as to what kind of danger Incredibly Beautiful Nancy is in?”
“Obviously not,” Jana-John said, coming into the room.
“Therefore, you’d better watch over Nancy Shatner until this mystery is solved, Tux.”
Blue and Bram had gotten to their feet the instant their mother appeared.
Jana-John Bishop was just barely over five feet tall and had an ethereal aura. She seemed to float when she walked, just glided gracefully when she moved from one place to the next.
Her blue eyes were clear and sparkling, her features those of her sons, but softened to feminine perfection. Her blond hair was swept to the top of her head and secured by two combs. The hairdo had taken her moments to arrange, and looked like she’d spent hours in a beauty salon to achieve the fetching, tousled affect
Tonight she was wearing a flowing “something” that had been crafted from a multitude of filmy handkerchiefs.
When the boys were small, one of their friends had asked them, “How come you got a fairy princess for a mom, and I only got a regular kinda mom?”
“Hello, my darlings,” Jana-John said, kissing each on the cheek as they bent down so she could reach them. “Oh, you’re all so handsome, so fine.” She looked at Tux. “You’re disturbed by what has happened with your psychic powers, aren’t you, dear? I heard you talking while I was putting dinner on the table.
“Bram, go retrieve your father from his study, and we’ll discuss Tux’s problem while we eat.”
Tall, thin, Abraham Lincoln Bishop soon took his place at the head of the table. He’d fastened his shirt one button off, leaving it lopsided, and his dark hair stood straight up from long fingers being pulled through it during the day.
He had a generally disheveled appearance and a bemused expression on his face. But when he met each of his sons’ gaze, Abe’s light blue eyes radiated warmth and love.
“Good evening, darling wife,” Abe said, looking at Jana-John. “You look exquisite this evening.”
“Thank you, love,” she said, smiling.
She settled onto her chair at the opposite end of the table from her husband, and clasped her hands beneath her chin.
“Isn’t this a delightful meal for a hot summer night?” she said. “There’s lemonade, sliced smoked chicken from the deli, two loaves of crunchy French bread, and a delicious fruit salad.”
“Marvelous, my dear,” Abe said, beaming.
Tux, Blue and Bram looked at the six bowls on the table. There was one filled with oranges, another held apples, then on they went—bananas, grapes, peaches and plums.
“Fruit salad?” Blue said.
“Well, yes,” his mother said. “Arrange the fruit on your plate, take a bite of each in whatever order you prefer, and by the time it all reaches your tummy, you’ll have a salad.”
Bram shrugged. “Makes sense to me.” He tossed an orange to Tux. Tux’s hand shot out and snatched the orange out of the air. “Start your salad, big brother.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes, then Jana-John explained to Abe what had taken place with Tux’s psychic powers.
“You don’t say,” Abe said. “Tux, you see that you take proper care of that young woman until this mystery is solved.”
“Yes, sir,” Tux said.
“He knows that, Abe,” Jana-John said. “In all your reading have you run across anything like this?”
“Can’t remember that I have,” Abe said. “Back in history if a man had psychic powers they locked him away in an institution.”
“Good plan,” Blue said. “Bye, Tux. Can I have your stereo system?”
Tux glared at Blue, then directed his attention to his father. “I spoke to a Dr. Jeremiah Nixon this afternoon about this mess.”

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