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No one can resist a book by

Diane Palmer

“Nobody does it better.”

—Bestselling author Linda Howard

“Sensual and suspenseful.”

—Booklist on Lawless

“Diana Palmer is a mesmerising storyteller who captures the essence of what a romance should be.”

—Affaire de Coeur

“The dialogue is charming, the characters likeable and the sex sizzling.”

—Publishers Weekly on Once in Paris

Available in July 2009
from Mills & Boon^® Cherish

Heart of Stone

by Diana Palmer

The Rancher’s Surprise Marriage

by Susan Crosby

Hannah’s Baby

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

Her Texas Lawman

by Stella Bagwell

The Prince’s Royal Dilemma

by Brenda Harlen

The Baby Plan

by Kate Little

DIANA PALMER

has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humour. With over forty million copies of her books in print, Diana Palmer is one of North America’s most beloved authors and considered one of the top ten romance authors in the US. Diana’s hobbies include gardening, archaeology, anthropology, iguanas, astronomy and music. She has been married to James Kyle for over twenty-five years, and they have one son.

Heart of Stone
DIANA PALMER

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my sister, Dannis Spaeth Cole,

and my niece, Maggie, in Cuthbert, Georgia,

and to my other niece, Amanda Hofstetter,

in Portland, Oregon. Love you all.

Chapter One

Keely Welsh felt his presence before she looked up and saw him. It had been that way from the day she met Boone Sinclair, her best friend’s eldest brother. The man wasn’t movie-star handsome or gregarious. He was a recluse, a loner who hardly ever smiled, who intimidated people simply by walking into a room. For some unknown reason, Keely always knew when he was around, even if she didn’t see him.

He was tall and slender, but he had powerful legs and big hands and feet. There were rumors about him that grew more exaggerated with the telling. He’d been in Special Forces overseas five years earlier. He’d saved his unit from certain destruction. He’d won medals. He’d had lunch with the president at the White House. He’d taken a cruise with a world-famous author. He’d almost married a European princess. And on and on and on.

Nobody knew the truth. Well, maybe Winona and Clark Sinclair did. Winnie and Clark and Boone were closer than brothers and sisters usually were. But Winnie didn’t talk about her brother’s private life, not even to Keely.

There hadn’t been a day since she was thirteen when Keely hadn’t loved Boone Sinclair. She watched him from a distance, her green eyes soft and covetous. Her hands would shake when she happened on him unexpectedly. They were shaking now. He was standing at the counter, signing in. He had an appointment for his dog’s routine shots. He made one every year. He loved the old tan-and-black German shepherd, whose name was Bailey. People said it was the only thing on earth that he did love. Maybe he was fond of his siblings, but it didn’t show. His affection for Bailey did.

One of the other vet techs came out with a pad and called in Bailey, with a grin at Boone. It wasn’t returned. He led the old dog into one of the examination rooms. He walked right past Keely. He never looked at her. He didn’t speak to her. As far as he was concerned, she was invisible.

She sighed as the door closed behind him and his dog. It was that way anyplace in town that he saw her. In fact, it was like that at his huge ranch near Comanche Wells, west of Jacobsville, Texas. He never told Winnie that she couldn’t have Keely over for lunch or an occasional horseback ride. But he ignored her, just the same.

“It’s funny, you know,” Winnie had remarked one day when they were out riding. “I mean, Boone never makes any comment about you, but he does make a point of pretending he doesn’t see you. I wonder why.” She looked at Keely then, with her dark eyes mischievous in their frame of blond hair. “You wouldn’t know, I guess?”

Keely only smiled. “I haven’t got a clue,” she said. It was the truth.

“It’s only you, too,” her friend continued thoughtfully. “He’s very polite to our brother Clark’s occasional date—even to that waitress that Clark brought home one night for dinner, and you know what a snob Boone can be. But he pretends you don’t exist.”

“I may remind him of somebody he doesn’t like,” Keely replied.

“There was that girl he was engaged to,” Winnie said out of the blue.

Keely’s heart jumped. “Yes, I remember when he was engaged,” she replied. It had been when she was fourteen, almost fifteen years old, just before he came back from overseas. Keely’s young heart had been broken.

“It was just before you came back here to live with your mom,” Winnie continued as if she’d read Keely’s mind. “In fact, it was just about the time she started drinking so much more…” She hesitated. Keely’s mother was an alcoholic and it was a sensitive subject to her friend. “Anyway, Boone was mustering out of the Army at the time. His fiancée rushed to Germany where he’d been taken when he was airlifted out of combat, wounded, and then…poof. She was gone, Boone came home, and he never mentioned her name again. None of us could find out what happened.”

“Somebody said she was European royalty,” Keely ventured shyly.

“She was distantly related to some man who was knighted in England,” came the sarcastic reply. “Anyway, she ran out on Boone and he was bitter for a long time. So three weeks ago the phone rings and he gets a call from her. She’s been living with her father, who owns a private detective agency in SanAntonio. She told Boone she’d made a terrible mistake and wanted to make up.”

Keely’s heart fell. A rival who had a history with Boone. It made her miserable just to think about it, despite the fact that she would never get close enough to Boone to give the other woman any competition. “Boone doesn’t forgive people,” she said, thinking aloud.

“That’s right,” Winnie replied, smiling. “But he’s mellowed a bit. He takes her out on dates occasionally now. In fact, they’re going to a Desperado concert next week.”

Keely frowned. “He likes hard rock?” she asked, surprised. He looked so staid and dignified that she couldn’t picture him at a rock concert. She said so.

Winnie laughed. “I can,” she said. “He’s not the conservative, quiet man he seems to be. Especially when he loses his temper or gets in an argument.”

“Boone doesn’t argue,” Keely mused aloud.

He didn’t. If he was angry enough, he punched. Never women, of course, but his men knew not to push him, especially if he was broody. One horse handler had found out the hard way that nobody made jokes at the boss’s expense. Boone had been kicked by a horse, which the handler thought was hilarious. Boone roped the man, tied him to a post and anointed him with a bucket of recycled hay. All without saying a word.

Keely laughed out loud.

“What?” Winnie asked.

“I was remembering that horse wrangler….”

Winnie laughed, too. “He couldn’t believe it, he said, even when it was happening. Boone really does look so straitlaced, as if he’d never stoop to dirty his hands. His cowboys used to underestimate him. Not anymore.”

“The rattlesnake episode is noteworthy, as well,” came the amused reply.

“That cook was so shocked!” Winnie blurted out. “He was a really rotten cook, but he threatened to sue Boone if he fired him, so it looked as if we were stuck with him. He’d threatened to cook Boone a rattler if he made any more remarks about the food. He added a few spicy comments about why Boone’s fiancée took a powder. Then one morning he looks in his Dutch oven to see if it’s clean enough to cook in, and a rattlesnake jumps up right into his face!”

“Lucky for the cook it didn’t have any fangs.”

“The cook didn’t know that!” Winnie laughed. “He didn’t know who did it, either. He resigned on the spot. The men actually cheered as he drove off. The next cook was talented, and the soul of politeness to my brother.”

“I am not surprised.”

She shook her head. “Boone does have these little quirks,” his sister murmured. “Like never turning on the heat in his bedroom, even in icy weather, and always going around with his shirts buttoned to the neck.”

“I’ve never seen him with his shirt off,” Keely remarked. It was unusual, because most of the cowboys worked topless in summer heat when they were branding or doctoring cattle. But Boone never did.

“He used to be less prudish,” Winnie said.

“Boone, prudish?” Keely sounded shocked.

Winnie glanced at her and chuckled. “Well, I guess that really doesn’t fit at all.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Winnie pursed her lips. “Come to think of it, he’s not the only prude around here. I’ve never even seen you in a T-shirt, Keely. You always wear long sleeves and high necklines.”

Keely had a good reason for that, one she’d never shared with anyone. It was the reason she didn’t date. It was a terrible secret. She would have died rather than tell Winnie, who might tell Boone….

“I was raised very strictly,” Keely said quietly. And she had been; for all their odd tendencies, both her parents had insisted that Keely go to Sunday School and church every single Sunday. “My father didn’t approve of clothing that was too flashy or revealing.”

Probably because Keely’s mother propositioned any man she fancied when she drank. She’d even tried to seduce Boone. Keely didn’t know that, and Winnie didn’t know how to tell her. It was one reason for Boone’s antagonism toward Keely.

Things would have been better if Keely knew where her father was. She’d told people she thought he was dead, because it was easier than admitting that he was an alcoholic, just like her mother, and linked up with a bunch of dangerous men. She’d missed her father at first. But she’d have been in more danger if she’d stayed with him.

She still loved him, in her way, despite what had happened to her.

“Come to think of it, Keely, you don’t even date.”

Keely shrugged. “I’m a vet tech. I have a busy life. I work on call, you know. If there’s an emergency at midnight on a weekend, I still go to the office.”

“That’s a lot of hogwash,” Winnie said gently as they paused to let the horses drink from one of the crystal-clear streams on the wooded property where they were riding. “I’ve even tried to set you up with nice men I know from work. You freeze when a man comes near you.”

“That’s because you work with the police, Winnie, and you bring cops home as prospective dates for me,” Keely said mischievously. It was true. Winnie worked as a clerk in the Jacobsville Police Department’s office during the day, and now she was doing a stint two nights a week as a dispatcher for the 911 center. In fact, she was hoping that job would work into something permanent, because being around Officer Kilraven all day when he was on the day shift was killing her.

“Policemen make me nervous,” Keely was saying. “For all you know, I might have a criminal past.”

Winnie wasn’t smiling. She shook her head. “You’re hiding something.”

“Nothing major. Honest.” What she suspected about her father, if true, would have shamed her. If Boone ever found out, she’d really die of shame. But she hadn’t heard from her father since she was thirteen, so it wasn’t likely that he’d just turn up someday with his new outlaw friends. She prayed that he wouldn’t. Her mother’s behavior was hard enough to live down as it was.

“There’s this really handsome policeman who’s been working with us for a few weeks. He’s just your type.”

“Kilraven,” Keely guessed.

“Yes! How did you know?”

“Because you talk about him all the time,” Keely returned. She pursed her lips. “Are you sure you aren’t interested in him? I mean, you’re single and eligible yourself.”

Winnie flushed. “He’s not my type.”

“Why not?”

Winnie shifted in the saddle uneasily. “He told me he wasn’t my type. He said I was too young to be mooning over a used-up lobo wolf like him and not to do it anymore.”

Keely gasped out loud. “He didn’t!”

The older girl nodded sadly. “He did. I didn’t realize that I was so obvious with it. I mean, he’s drop-dead gorgeous, most women look at him. He just noticed more when I did it. Because I’m who I am, I guess,” she added darkly. “Boone might have said something to him. He’s very protective of me. He thinks I’m too naive to be let loose on the world.”

“In his defense, you have led a sheltered life,” Keely said gently. “Kilraven is street smart. And he’s dangerous.”

“I know,” Winnie muttered. “There have been times that he’s been in situations where I sweat blood until he walks back into the station. He’s noticed that, too. He didn’t like it and he said so.” She took a long, sad breath and looked at Keely. “So you can know all about my private agony, but you won’t share yours? It’s no use, Keely. I know.”

Keely laughed nervously. “Know what? I don’t keep secrets.”

“Your whole life is a secret. But your biggest one is that you’re in love with my brother.”

Keely looked as if she’d been slapped.

“I would never tell him,” Winnie said quietly. “That’s the truth. I’m sorry for the way he treats you. I know how much it hurts.”

Keely shifted her eyes, embarrassed.

“Don’t be like that,” Winnie said, her voice gentle. “I won’t tell. Ever. Honest.”

Keely relaxed. She drew in a breath, watching the creek bubble over rocks. “It doesn’t hurt anything, what I feel. He’ll never know. And it helps me to understand what it might be like to love a man—even if that love is never returned. It’s a taste of something I can never have, that’s all.”

Winnie frowned. “What do you mean? Of course you’ll be loved one day! Keely, you’re only nineteen. Your whole life is ahead of you!”

Keely looked at her friend, and her dark eyes were soft and sad. “Not that way, it isn’t. I won’t ever marry.”

“But one day…”

She shook her head. “No.”

Winnie bit her lower lip. “When you’re a little older, it might be different,” she began. “Keely, you’re nineteen. Boone is thirty. That’s a big age difference, and he thinks about things like that. His fiancée was only a year younger than he was. He said that people should never marry unless they’re the same age.”

“Why?”

Winnie sighed. “I’ve never talked about it much, but our mother was twelve years younger than dad. He died a broken man because she ran away with his younger brother. He always said he made a major mistake by marrying someone from another generation. It was just too many years between them. They had nothing in common.”

Keely felt heartsick for the family. “Is your mother still alive?”

She bit her lip. “We…don’t know,” she said. “We’ve never tried to find her or our uncle. They married, after the divorce, and moved to Montana. Neither one of them ever tried to contact us again.”

“That’s so sad.”

“It made Boone bitter. Well, that and then his fiancée cutting out on him. He doesn’t have a high opinion of women.”

“You can’t blame him, really,” Keely had to admit. She patted her horse’s neck. “It’s sad, isn’t it, that we’re both too young for the men we care about?”

“Only in their minds,” Winnie returned. “But we can always change their opinions. We just have to find an angle. One that works.”

Keely laughed. “Doesn’t that sound easy?”

Winnie grimaced. “Not really.” She tugged on the reins, backing her horse out of the creek. Keely followed suit. “Let’s talk about something more cheerful,” Winnie said on the way back to the ranch. “Are you coming to the big charity dance?”

Keely shook her head. “I’d like to, even without a date, but both my junior bosses are going, and so is our senior tech. I have to be on call.”

“That’s awful!”

“It’s fair, though. I was off last year.”

“I remember. Last year you stayed home.”

Keely studied the pommel as the leather squeaked under the steady motion of the horse’s body. “Nobody asked me to go with them.”

“You don’t encourage men,” Winnie pointed out.

Keely smiled sadly. “What for?” she asked. “Any man who asked me would have been second best. I don’t want to get involved with anyone.”

Winnie had always been curious about Keely’s odd private life. She wondered what had happened to the other woman to leave her so alone. “It’s just a dance,” she pointed out. “You don’t have to agree to marry the man when he takes you home.”

Keely burst out laughing. “You’re terrible!” she choked.

“Just pointing out an obvious fact,” came the amused reply.

“Anyway, I’ll be working. You go and have enough fun for both of us.”

“Any man who took me would be second choice, too,” she reminded her friend. “The difference is, I want to go so I can rub my date in Kilraven’s face.”

“He won’t go,” Keely murmured.

“What makes you think so?”

“Just a guess. He keeps to himself. He reminds me of Cash Grier, the way he was before he married Tippy Moore. Grier was a bona fide woman hater. I think Kilraven is, too.”

Winnie hesitated. “I wonder.”

Keely didn’t follow up on the remark. She felt sorry for Winnie. She felt sorry for herself, too. Men were such a headache….

She came back to the present in time to see Boone coming out of the examination room with Bailey on a leash. He walked right past Keely without looking at her or saying a word to her. She stared after him with her heart breaking right inside her chest. Then she turned and went back to work, putting on a happy face for the benefit of her coworkers.

Keely hated Boone’s ex-fiancée on sight. Misty Harris’s father ran a private detective agency in San Antonio, and she was wealthy. She was pretty, she was very intelligent and she looked down on other women. Boone, Winnie had told Keely, liked a woman with a good mind and an independent spirit. She also thought that the woman probably was good in bed, which made Keely uncomfortable.

The woman had a poisonous tongue, and she didn’t like Keely. It was obvious when she arrived for a date with Boone the next Friday night and found Keely sitting in the living room with Winnie.

“No dates?” she chided the other women, looking sleek in a black cocktail dress with her long black hair flowing over her shoulders. Her deep blue eyes were twinkling with malicious amusement. “Too bad. Boone’s taking me to the Desperado concert. He’s going to introduce me to the lead singer. We’ve had tickets for two months. It’s going to be a great evening!”

“I love Desperado,” Winnie had to agree.

“I wouldn’t miss this concert for anything,” the brunette purred.

There was a noise at the side door, scratching and howling.

“Oh, it’s that dog,” the brunette muttered. “He’s filthy. For God’s sake, Winnie, you aren’t going to let him in? The Persian rugs are priceless! He’ll get mud all over them!”

“Bailey is a member of the family,” Winnie said icily as she opened the door and pulled a towel from a shelf nearby. “Hello, old fellow!” she greeted the old German shepherd. “Did you get wet?”

She started toweling him dry and wiping his paws. He was panting and whining. His tongue was purple. He shuddered. His stomach was swollen.

With a practiced eye, Keely observed him. Something was wrong. She got up and joined Winnie at the sliding glass door, going down on one knee. Her hands touched the dog’s distended belly.

She clenched her teeth. “He’s got bloat,” she told Winnie.

“What was that?” Boone asked, taking the steps two at a time.

Keely looked up at him, trying not to betray her pleasure at just the sight of him. “Bailey’s got bloat. He needs to be seen by a vet right now.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Boone shot back. “Dogs don’t get bloat.”

“Big dogs do,” Keely said urgently. “You must have seen the condition in cattle at one time or another. Here. Feel!”

She grabbed his hand and carried it to the dog’s belly.

He felt it and scowled.

“Look at the color of his tongue,” Keely persisted. “He isn’t getting enough oxygen. If you don’t get him to the vet soon, he’ll be dead.”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” the brunette spat. “He’s just eaten too much. Put him in his kennel. He’ll be fine by morning.”

“He’ll be dead,” Keely repeated flatly.

“Listen, you, I’m not missing that concert for a stupid old dog with an upset stomach!” the brunette raged. “You’re just trying to get Boone to notice you by telling him something’s wrong with that dog! He knows what a crush you have on him. This is a pathetic act!”

Boone looked at Keely, who was pale and sick at heart to have her innermost secret spoken aloud for Boone to hear.

He ran his hand over Bailey’s stomach one last time. “It’s not bloat,” he pronounced. “He’s just had too much to eat and he’s got gas.” He got to his feet, patting the old dog on the head, smiling. “You’ll be fine, won’t you, old man?”

Keely glared at him. The dog was still panting and now he was whimpering loudly.

“He’s not your dog,” Boone shot at her. “Misty’s right. This is a bid for attention, just like old Bailey whining so that I’ll pet him. But it won’t work. I’m taking Misty to the concert.”

Keely was so infuriated that she wouldn’t even look at him. Bailey was dying.

“Let’s go,” Boone told Misty.

He didn’t speak to Keely again, or to Winnie. He and his date walked back to the garage. Minutes later, his car roared out down the driveway.

“What are we going to do?” Winnie asked, because she believed her best friend.

“We can let him die or take him to the vet,” Keely said curtly.

“Who’s driving?” was all the other woman asked.

The oldest of the three vets, Bentley Rydel, and the owner of the clinic, was on call. He was the best surgeon of the group. At thirty-two, he was the only unmarried one. People said it was because he was so antagonistic that no woman could get near him. It was probably the truth.

He helped Keely get Bailey into the X-ray room and onto the table. She held him while the X-rays were taken, petting him and talking soothingly to him. For a man who resembled nothing more than a human pit viper with other members of his own species, he was the soul of compassion with animals.

He and Winnie were back in ten minutes with the X-rays. He looked somber as he showed them the proof that Bailey’s stomach had turned over. “It’s a complicated and expensive procedure, and I can’t promise you that it will succeed. If I don’t operate, the necrosis will spread and he’ll die. He may die anyway. You have to make a decision.”

“He’s my brother’s dog,” Winnie said uneasily, petting the whimpering old animal.

“Your brother will have to give consent.”

“He won’t,” Keely said miserably. “He doesn’t think it’s bloat.”

Bentley’s eyebrows arched. “And what veterinary school did he graduate from?”

Winnie’s phone playing the theme from Star Wars interrupted the conversation. She answered it nervously. She’d recognized Boone’s number on the caller ID screen.

“It’s Boone!” she whispered with her hand over the phone. She grimaced. “Hello?” she said hesitantly.

“Where the hell is my dog?” he demanded.

Winnie took a deep breath. “Boone, we brought Bailey here to the vet…”

“We? Keely’s mixed up in this, isn’t she?” he demanded, outraged.

The vet, seeing Winnie’s pained expression, held out his hand for the phone. Winnie gave it to him gladly.

“This animal,” the vet began firmly, “has a severe case of bloat. I can show you on the X-rays where necrosis of tissue has already begun. If I don’t operate, he will be dead in an hour. The decision is yours, but I urge you to make it quickly.”

Boone hesitated. “Will he live?”

“I can’t promise you that,” Bentley said curtly. “He should have been brought in when the symptoms first presented. The delay has complicated the procedure. This conversation,” he added acidly, “is another delay.”

The curse was audible two feet from the cell phone. “Do it,” Boone said. “I’ll give you permission. My sister can be your witness. Do what you can. Please.”

“Certainly I will.” He handed the phone to Winnie. “Keely, we need to prep him for surgery.”

“Yes, sir.” Keely was smiling. Her boss was a great negotiator. Now, at least Bailey had a chance, no thanks to the heartless woman who’d have sacrificed his life for a concert ticket.

The operation took two hours. Keely stood gowned beside the vet, administering anesthetic to the dog and checking his vital signs constantly. There was only a small amount of dead tissue, luckily, and she watched Bentley’s skillful hands cut it away efficiently.

“What was the delay?” he asked her.

She clenched her teeth. “Concert tickets for Desperado. Boone’s date didn’t want to miss it.”

“So she decided that Bailey should die.”

She grimaced. “I’m not sure she was being deliberately coldhearted.”

“You’d be surprised at how many people consider animals inanimate objects with no feelings. Old-timers come in sometimes and tell me in all seriousness that no animal feels pain.”

“Baloney,” she muttered.

He laughed shortly. “My opinion exactly.”

“How’s he doing?” she asked.

He nodded as he worked. “All right. There are no complications to worry about. I operated on Tom Walker’s Shiloh shepherd for this about two months ago, remember, and he had a tumor the size of my fist. We lost him despite the timely intervention.”

“We aren’t going to lose Bailey?” she asked worriedly.

“Not a chance. He’s old, but he’s a fighter.”

She smiled. Even if Boone gave her hell, it would be worth it. She was fond of the old dog, too, even if Boone felt she was using his pet. It made her furious that Boone believed that heartless brunette. Keely wasn’t stupid enough to think that such a play would work on a man with a head like a steel block. Boone wouldn’t care if she was Helen of Troy, he’d walk right by her without looking. She knew better than to try to chase him. She was amazed that he didn’t realize that.

“Done,” Bentley announced finally when the last suture was in place. Keely took away the anesthetic and waited while the vet examined the old dog. “I think he’ll do, but don’t quote me. We’ll know in the morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll carry him in for you,” he volunteered, because the dog was very heavy and Keely had problems carrying weight.

“You don’t have to,” she began self-consciously.

His pale blue eyes were kind as they met hers. “You’ve had some sort of injury to your left shoulder. I don’t have to see it to know it’s there. It won’t let you bear weight.”

She grimaced. “I didn’t realize it was so obvious.”

“I won’t give you away,” he said with a smile. “But I won’t make you carry loads too heavy, either.”

“Thanks, boss,” she said, smiling back.

He shrugged. “You’re the hardest worker I’ve got.” He seemed self-conscious after he said that, and he made a big production of lifting Bailey, very carefully, to one of the recovery cages where he’d be kept and monitored until he came out from under the anesthetic.

“I can stay and watch him,” she began.

He shook his head. “I had a call on my cell phone while we were prepping Bailey,” he reminded her. “There’s a heifer calving over at Cy Parks’s place. She’s having a hard time. It’s one of his purebred herd and he wants me there to make sure the calf is born alive.”

“So you have to go out there.”

He nodded. “I’ll check on Bailey when I get back. It’s Friday night,” he added with a faint smile. “Usually we get emergency cases all night, you know.”

“Want me to stay and answer the phone?” she asked.

He studied her quizzically. “It’s Friday night,” he repeated. “Why don’t you have a date?”

She shrugged. “Men hate me. If you don’t believe that, just ask Boone Sinclair.”

He looked over her shoulder and his eyebrows lifted as a door opened. “Speak of the devil,” he said in a voice that didn’t carry over Winnie’s greeting to her brother.