in Austin? What had she been doing to become so exhausted? Where did she live in Houston? What was her telephone number?
Who was Glory Carson?
If his brothers knew how badly he’d blown the opportunity to gather information about a possible wife candidate, they’d razz him from now until next Tuesday.
Well, all was not lost.
They still had to land, exit the plane and walk up the tunnel. Before he was separated from Glory in the crunch of people in the terminal, he was definitely going to find out how to contact her.
He had no intention of losing track of her, because he had every intention of seeing Ms. Glory Carson again.
Two
Bram sank onto the sofa in his living room and muttered a word his mother would never have allowed to be spoken under her roof.
It was totally unbelievable, he mentally fumed, reflecting on the mayhem that had arisen the moment the powers that be had given permission for the passengers of the airplane to leave their seats.
He’d leaned over to retrieve the panda and to tell Glory Carson that he wished to speak to her—his intention being the request of her telephone number—when a little old lady, who looked no bigger than an elf, had asked him if he’d please retrieve her parcel from the overhead compartment, dear boy?
Two more women tagged him for the same job, as well as one short, stocky man. When he’d finally been able to return to his seat, the panda was still there, grinning like an idiot, but Glory was gone.
His last hope had been the luggage claim area, but no Glory Carson appeared to snatch a suitcase from the rotating jumble of luggage. Apparently she had been in Austin for a short enough stay to have a carryon in the overhead compartment like the rest of the world.
“Damn it,” Bram said, then lunged to his feet. “The telephone book!”
Twenty minutes later, Bram smacked the large book shut and glowered into space.
Nothing, he thought, shaking his head in disgust. He’d looked up every spelling of Carson imaginable. He’d even called directory assistance and come up empty. The operator had found a Dr. G. Carson, but Bram hadn’t bothered to ask for the number.
No, Glory wasn’t a doctor, for Pete’s sake. They’d covered the Ms. versus Mrs. bit on the plane. If Glory was a doctor, she would have said so at the time.
Bram began to pace, the large living room accommodating his long, heavy strides back and forth across the chocolate-colored carpeting.
He’d decorated his apartment on the fifteenth floor of a high-rise in earth tones: brown, oatmeal, yellow, burnt orange and deep green. The knickknacks and pictures were of a Southwestern motif, the furniture oversize to allow for his height. The color scheme, he’d told his mother, represented Texas, which was exactly the way he wanted it.
He’d decided years before that even though he owned a construction company, he wouldn’t build himself a house until he was ready to marry and settle down. Then he would draw up plans with his wife’s input to create a home, not just a structure with the label of “home.”
But here he was, thirty-three years old, more than ready to find the woman of his dreams, have babies with her, build that special home.
Here he was, alone and lonely.
And he’d let a very viable wife candidate in the form of Ms. Glory Carson slip through his fingers.
“Man,” Bram said, halting his trek and dragging one hand through his hair, “this is frustrating as hell.”
He spun around and started toward the kitchen, realizing suddenly that he was hungry. As he passed the panda where it was perched in an easy chair, Bram glared at the toy.
“Knock off the smile, pal,” he said. “This is not a happy situation.”
In the kitchen Bram began to yank food from the refrigerator, shoving all and everything onto the nearest counter.
Tomorrow, he decided, he’d talk to Tux, who was a private investigator. After Tux finished laughing himself silly over Bram’s inability to obtain a telephone number from a woman held captive on an airplane, he would hopefully agree to use his investigative resources to track down Glory for Bram.
Whatever it takes, Bram vowed, as he pitched a moldy tomato into the trash. Yes, sir, he’d pull out all the stops, leave no stone unturned, and a whole slew of other clichés.
He would find Glory Carson.
Glory sank into bed with an exhausted sigh, savoring the feel of the marshmallow-soft pillow beneath her head.
Sleep at last, she thought. She’d unpacked her carryon, eaten a light dinner, sorted through the maze of papers in her briefcase, checked with her answering service for messages, then finally indulged in a long, leisurely bubble bath.
And now she was anticipating hours of blissful sleep before the alarm clock shrilled the announcement that it was Monday morning and the beginning of a new and busy week.
As she began to drift off into slumber, sudden images of a six-foot-tall panda began to dance before her mental vision.
Glory’s last conscious thought before sleep claimed her was that the human-size panda toy had gorgeous, sapphire blue eyes.
The next morning the panda sat in a chair in the corner of Tux Bishop’s office. The huge toy now had a billed Houston Oilers cap balanced on top of its head. No respectable panda, one of Tux’s investigators had declared, would be seen without a cap announcing loyalty to the city’s football team.
Bram paced heavily back and forth across his brother’s office, finishing his tale of having found, then lost, Glory Carson.
“It wasn’t my fault, of course,” Bram said, slouching onto a chair opposite Tux’s desk.
“Of course not,” Tux said, then paused. “Whose fault is it?”
“Our mother’s. Mrs. Jana-John Bishop.”
Tux chuckled. “This ought to be good. What does our sweet mother have to do with the fact that you screwed up royally on that airplane?”
“She taught us to be polite gentlemen, you dolt. What was I supposed to do when those little old ladies asked me to get their junk out of the overhead compartments? Tell them to go find a Boy Scout? Tux, Glory has vanished. I need your help here.”
“Hmm.” Tux rested his elbows on the arms of the chair, made a steeple of his hands and tapped his fingertips against his lips as he stared into space.
There was a definite family resemblance among the Bishop brothers, each having nicely muscled physiques on six-foot frames, rugged, handsome features, and the same deep blue eyes.
Tux’s hair, however, was very blond, streaked nearly white-blond by the sun in
