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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 que ried.
    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."

184
    Beloved
    Diana Palmer
    185

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