The Case of the Missing Secretary by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

front of a minister…I’ve got to get out there and save her!”
    He was gone before the last word hit the air, with a shell-shocked Dane looking after him. Tess came to stand beside him, staring toward the closed door. “Logan?” she asked. He nodded. “Where’d he go?” “To San Antonio to save Kit from Emmett.” She turned and looked up at him. “I beg your pardon?”
    “It seems that Emmett is in a perpetual state of readiness to marry the first available woman, but he can’t get her past his three kids. Logan’s gone to the rescue.” “I thought he wanted to find Tansy?” “We did. She’s staying with Emmett.”
    “And so is Kit, because she phoned last night with some story about being hijacked by white Indians and narrowly escaping being burned at the stake.”
    He smiled down at her. After a minute, he bent and kissed her with slow, lingering warmth. “I need a very strong cup of black coffee, and then you can tell me that again. Join me?” She looped her arm through his. “I’d be delighted.”
    The thunderous knocking at the front door woke Kit, who’d over-slept from sheer exhaustion. She and Tansy and Emmett had been up very late. Emmett had serenaded her. His voice grated like a nail file, but he did play the guitar quite well and she enjoyed listening to him. Then they talked about rodeo-which was the passion of his life-and about his plans for the future. They didn’t talk a lot about the kids, who were carefully concealed behind curtains and under chairs listening. They’d been told three times to go to bed,
     
    The Case of the Missing Secretary339 but they never paid any attention to their father. Anyway, they were bent on finding out everyone’s opinion of them. The knocking stopped, but it was followed by a familiar bellow. “Where is she?” Logan demanded.
    “What a hell of a nerve, practically breaking into my house at this ungodly hour!” Emmett muttered. “Quiet down or I’ll turn those kids loose on you!” “Oh, God, not that, anything but that!” Logan groaned. There were muffled giggles down the hall.
    “Anyway, Tansy’s asleep. Or she was, until you tried to knock the house down around our ears.” “I’m not looking for Tansy. Where’s Kit?”
    Kit’s heart leaped in her chest. She couldn’t believe that he’d come all this way for her! Had he seen Tess Lassiter and become concerned when he knew she was out here with the volatile San Antonio Deverells? Had he missed her?
    She sat up in bed, just in time for Logan to throw open the door and confront her. She was dressed in the concealing flannel gown Tansy had loaned her. “So there you are!” he growled.
    “My, what a pretty picture.” Emmett sighed as he saw her. “Dar-lin’, you would look lovely propped up in my bed like that…”
    “Out!” Logan shoved his cousin unceremoniously out the door and slammed it. “You lecher! She’s only a child!” “I’m going to marry her…” came through the door. “Over my dead and decaying corpse!”
    There was a muttering sound, like gagging, and quickly retreating footsteps.
    “So much for him,” Logan said with satisfaction. He stared at Kit for a long moment. “You can’t marry him. It isn’t love. He just likes women. There are so few who can get past those kids, he’ll gladly latch on to anyone they like.” “I’m not blind,” she said primly, folding her slender hands in her lap “Why are you here? I thought you wanted me to find Tansy. I did.”
    I know that. But you had no business moving in with the Family from Hell.”

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    Diana Palmer
     
    “What a way to talk about your own cousins!”
    “Everybody knows about them. Nobody will even come near the place for fear of disappearing in the brush! Emmett lets those kids do anything they want to since his wife left. He doesn’t care enough to make the barest attempt at control. He’s too busy riding in rodeos to prove he’s still a man, and getting his body broken to bits in the