Diana Palmer - Matt Caldwell - Texas Tycoon

Dear Reader,

It is a great pleasure for me to congratulate Silhouette Books on its 20th anniversary. I signed my first book contract with Silhouette in 1980. We go back quite a long way together, and it has been a wonderful association. All of us at Silhouette—authors, editors, artists, copy editors, salespeople, publicists and management—are a team. We work together to produce the books which our readers have so loyally purchased all these years.

Before I started writing for Silhouette Books, I was holding down a full-time job as a newspaper reporter, on call twenty-four hours a day. I did feature material for two other newspapers, as well. At night I wrote books and hoped that someday, someone would want to publish them. Sure enough, in 1980, Silhouette Books decided that I just might suit them. We entered into a partnership. Since they took me on trust, I worked very hard to earn my place as one of their authors.

Each year meant a new book, often many more than one. I can go through the titles of my books, and remember the birth of our son, Blayne, the death of both my parents, the purchase of our first and only home, my husband James’s two open-heart surgeries, our son’s school days and graduation, the wonderful years of my marriage and the trips to faraway places which I used to dream of seeing when I was a little girl growing up on a sharecropper’s farm in southwest Georgia. I can see my life through the pages of the books I wrote during those years, and revisit warm and sweet memories of people now dead who meant so much to me when I was young and bright with ambition and dreams of publication.

I have had a wonderful career and a wonderful life. God has blessed me with a loving family, many great friends (Especially you, Ann!), the best editors on earth and a way to contribute something to the world which has given me so much. I hope that my books have helped some of you through bad times in your own lives, just as the authors I collect and love have comforted me during the storms of my own life. I wish you continued success, Silhouette Books, and I hope to remain a part of your family until I die or you get tired of me—whichever comes first. Thank you for giving me a chance to do what I love best in all the world. God bless you.

Love to Silhouette and to my very special readers,

Dear Reader,

It’s going to be a wonderful year! After all, we’re celebrating Silhouette’s 20th anniversary of bringing you compelling, emotional, contemporary romances month after month.

January’s fabulous lineup starts with beloved author Diana Palmer, who returns to Special Edition with Matt Caldwell: Texas Tycoon. In the latest installment of her wildly popular LONG, TALL TEXANS series, temperatures rise and the stakes are high when a rugged tycoon meets his match in an innocent beauty—who is also his feisty employee.

Bestselling author Susan Mallery continues the next round of the series PRESCRIPTION: MARRIAGE with Their Little Princess. In this heart-tugging story, baby doctor Kelly Hall gives a suddenly single dad lessons in parenting—and learns all about romance!

Reader favorite Pamela Toth launches Special Edition’s newest series, SO MANY BABIES—in which babies and romance abound in the Buttonwood Baby Clinic. In The Baby Legacy, a sperm-bank mix-up brings two unlikely parents together temporarily—or perhaps forever….

In Peggy Webb’s passionate story, Summer Hawk, two Native Americans put aside their differences when they unite to battle a medical crisis and find that love cures all. Rounding off the month is veteran author Pat Warren’s poignant, must-read secret baby story, Daddy by Surprise, and Jean Brashear’s Lonesome No More, in which a reclusive hero finds healing for his heart when he offers a single mom and her young son a haven from harm.

I hope you enjoy these six unforgettable romances and help us celebrate Silhouette’s 20th anniversary all year long!

Best,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Eldarador and W.G. with love

Diana Palmer is legendary for her unforgettable tales about those lovable Long, Tall Texans…

The Long, Tall Texans series

Silhouette Romance

Calhoun #580

Justin #592

Tyler #604

Sutton’s Way #670

Ethan #694

Connal #741

Harden #783

Evan #819

Donavan #843

Emmett #910

Regan’s Pride #1000

Coltrain’s Proposal #1103

The Princess Bride #1282

Callaghan’s Bride #1355

Silhouette Desire

The Case of the Missing Secretary #733

That Burke Man #913

Beloved #1189

Silhouette Special Edition

Matt Caldwell: Texas Tycoon #1297

Silhouette Books

Abduction and Seduction 1995

“Redbird”

Lone Star Christmas 1997

“Christmas Cowboy”

A Long, Tall Texan Summer 1997

Love with a Long, Tall Texan 1999

Harlequin Books

Husbands on Horseback 1996

“Paper Husband”

DIANA PALMER got her start in writing as a newspaper reporter and published her first romance novel for Silhouette Books in 1982. In 1993, she celebrated the publication of her fiftieth novel for Silhouette Books. Affaire de Coeur lists her as one of the top ten romance authors in the country. Beloved by fans worldwide, Diana Palmer is the winner of numerous national Waldenbooks Romance Bestseller awards and national B. Dalton Books Bestseller awards.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

The man on the hill sat on his horse with elegance and grace, and the young woman found herself staring at him. He was obviously overseeing the roundup, which the man at her side had brought her to view. This ranch was small by Texas standards, but around Jacobsville, it was big enough to put its owner in the top ten in size.

“Dusty, isn’t it?” Ed Caldwell asked with a chuckle, oblivious to the distant mounted rider, who was behind him and out of his line of sight. “I’m glad I work for the corporation and not here. I like my air cool and unpolluted.”

Leslie Murry smiled. She wasn’t pretty. She had a plain, rather ordinary sort of face with blond hair that had a natural wave, and gray eyes. Her one good feature besides her slender figure was a pretty bow mouth. She had a quiet, almost reclusive demeanor these days. But she hadn’t always been like that. In her early teens, Leslie had been flamboyant and outgoing, a live wire of a girl whose friends had laughed at her exploits. Now, at twenty-three, she was as sedate as a matron. The change in her was shocking to people who’d once known her. She knew Ed Caldwell from college in Houston. He’d graduated in her sophomore year, and she’d quit the following semester to go to work as a paralegal for his father’s law firm in Houston. Things had gotten too complicated there, and Ed had come to the rescue once again. In fact, Ed was the reason she’d just been hired as an executive assistant by the mammoth Caldwell firm. His cousin owned it.