Beloved. Diana Palmer

she said simply. “There’s no accounting for taste, is there?”

      He smiled gently. “I guess not.”

      “You know, you really are a nice man, Dr. Gaines,” she added.

      He chuckled. “That’s what my wife says all the time.”

      “She’s right,” she agreed.

      “Don’t you have family?”

      She shook her head. “My father died of a heart attack, and my mother died even before he did. She had cancer. It was hard to watch, especially for Dad. He loved her too much.”

      “You can’t love people too much.”

      She looked up at him with such sadness that her face seemed to radiate it. “Yes, you can,” she said solemnly. “But I’m going to learn how to stop.”

      Charles pulled up at the curb and Dr. Gaines waved them off.

      “Look at him,” Charles said with a grin. “He’s drooling! He wants my car.” He stepped down on the accelerator. “Everybody wants my car. But it’s mine. Mine!”

      “Charles, you’re getting obsessed with this automobile,” she cautioned.

      “I am not!” He glanced at her. “Careful, you’ll get fingerprints on the window. And I do hope you wiped your shoes before you got in.”

      She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

      “I’m kidding!” he exclaimed.

      She let out a sigh of relief. “And Dr. Gaines wanted me to have therapy,” she murmured.

      He threw her a glare. “I do not need therapy. Men love their cars. One guy even wrote a song about how much he loved his truck.”

      She glanced around the luxurious interior of the pretty car, leather coated with a wood-grained dash, and nodded. “Well, I could love Big Red,” she had to confess. She leaned back against the padded headrest and closed her eyes.

      He patted the dash. “Hear that, guy? You’re getting to her!”

      She opened one eye. “I’m calling the therapist the minute we get to my house.”

      He lifted both blond eyebrows. “Does he like cars?”

      “I give up!”

      When she arrived home, she was met at the door by a hovering, worried Mrs. Lester.

      “It was an old, empty prescription bottle!” Tira told the kindly older woman. “And the pistol wasn’t for me, it was for that mouse we can’t catch in the kitchen!”

      “The mouse?”

      “Well, we can’t trap him or drive him out, can we?” she queried.

      The housekeeper blushed all the way to her white hairline and wrung her hands in the apron. “It was the way it looked…”

      Tira went forward and hugged her. “You’re a doll and I love you. But I was only drunk.”

      “You never drink,” Mrs. Lester stated.

      “I was driven to it,” she replied.

      Mrs. Lester looked at Charles. “By him?” she asked with a twinkle in her dark eyes. “You shouldn’t let him hang around here so much, if he’s driving you to drink.”

      “See?” he murmured, leaning down. “She wants my car, that’s why she wants me to leave. She can’t stand having to look at it day after day. She’s obsessed with jealousy, eaten up with envy…”

      “What’s he talking about?” Mrs. Lester asked curiously.

      “He thinks you want his car.”

      Mrs. Lester scoffed. “That long red fast flashy thing?” She sniffed. “Imagine me, riding around in something like that!”

      Charles grinned. “Want to?” he asked, raising and lowering his eyebrows.

      She chuckled. “You bet I do! But I’m much too old for sports cars, dear. Tira’s just right.”

      “Yes, she is. And she needs coddling.”

      “I’ll fatten her up and see that she gets her rest. I knew I should never have let her talk me into that vacation. The first time I leave her in a month, and look what happens! And the newspapers…!” She stopped so suddenly that she almost bit her tongue through.

      Tira froze in place. “What newspapers?”

      Mrs. Lester made a face and exchanged a helpless glance with Charles.

      “You, uh, made the headlines,” he said reluctantly.

      She groaned. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, there goes my one-woman show!”

      “No, it doesn’t,” Charles replied. “I spoke to Bob this morning before I came after you. He said that the phone’s rung off the hook all morning with queries about the show. He figures you’ll make a fortune from the publicity.”

      “I don’t need—”

      “Yes, but the outreach program does,” he reminded her. He grinned. “They’ll be able to buy a new van!”

      She smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it. She didn’t want to be notorious, whether or not she deserved to.

      “Cheer up,” he said. “It’ll be old news tomorrow. Just don’t answer the phone for a day or two. It will blow over as soon as some new tragedy catches the editorial eye.”

      “I guess you’re right.”

      “Next Saturday,” he reminded her. “I’ll pick you up at six.”

      “Where will you be until then?” she asked, surprised, because he often came by for coffee in the afternoon.

      “Memphis,” he said with a sigh. “A business deal that I have to conduct personally. I’ll be out of town for a week. Bad timing, too.”

      “I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Mrs. Lester’s right here.”

      “I guess so. I do worry about you.” He smiled sheepishly. “I don’t have any family, either. You’re sort of the only relative I have, even though you aren’t.”

      “Same here.”

      He searched her eyes. “Two of a kind, aren’t we? We loved not wisely, and too well.”

      “As you said, it’s their loss,” she said stubbornly. “Have a safe trip. Are you taking Big Red?”

      He shook his head. “They won’t let me take him on the plane,” he said. “Walters is going to stand guard over him in the garage with a shotgun while I’m gone, though. Maybe he won’t pine.”

      She burst out laughing. “I’m glad I have you for a friend,” she said sincerely.

      He took her hand and held it gently. “That works both ways. Take care. I’ll phone you sometime during the week, just to make sure you’re okay. If you need me…”

      “I have your mobile number,” she assured him. “But I’ll be fine.”

      “See you next week, then.”

      “Thanks for the ride home,” she said.

      He shrugged and flashed her a white smile. “My pleasure.”

      She watched him drive away with sad eyes. She was going to have to live down the bad publicity without telling her side of the story. Well, what did it matter, she reasoned. It could, after all, have been worse.

      Chapter Three

      The week passed slowly until the charity ball on Saturday evening. It was to be a lavish one, hosted by the Carlisles, a founding