by Diana Palmer
Calhoun’s face hardened. “Misty will corrupt her. I don’t want Abby passed around like an hors d’oeuvre by some of Misty’s sophisticated boyfriends.”
Justin’s eyebrows arched. That didn’t sound like Calhoun. Come to think of it, Calhoun didn’t look like Calhoun. “Abby’s our ward,” he reminded his brother. “We don’t own her. We don’t have the right to make her decisions for her, either.”
Calhoun glared at him. “What do you want me to do, let her be picked up and assaulted by any drunken cowboy who comes along? Like bloody hell I will!”
He turned on his heel and walked out of the room. Justin pursed his thin lips and smiled softly to himself.
* * *
Abby woke the next morning with a headache and a feeling of impending doom. She sat up, clutching her head. It was seven o’clock, and she had to be to work by 8:30. Even now, breakfast would be underway downstairs. Breakfast. She swallowed her nausea.
She got out of bed unsteadily and went into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. She managed that and felt much better. As she started to get out of her gown, she noticed that the buttons were fastened. Odd. She was sure she’d left the thing unbuttoned. Oh, well, she must have gotten it buttoned and climbed in under the covers sometime before dawn.
It was Saturday, but ordinarily the feedlot stayed open. The cattle still had to be looked after, and the paperwork had to be done no matter what day it was. Abby had gotten used to the long work week, and it was just routine not to have her Saturdays free. She could get off at noon sometimes if she needed to go somewhere. But that hadn’t been her habit in recent months. She was hungry for the sight of Calhoun, and he was there most weekends.
She got into a pale gray suit with a blue silk print blouse and put her hair into a French twist. She used a little makeup—not much—and slid her nylon-encased feet into tiny stacked high heels. Well, she was no ravishing beauty, that was for sure, but she wouldn’t disgrace herself. She was going down with all flags flying. Calhoun would be mad as fury, and she couldn’t let him see how pale she was.
The Ballenger brothers were both at the table when she got downstairs. Calhoun glanced at her, his gaze odd and brooding, as she sat between him and Justin.
“It’s about time,” he said curtly. “You look like hell, and it serves you right. I’ll be damned if I’ll have you passing out in bars with that Davies woman!”
“Please, Calhoun, not before I eat,” Abby murmured. “My head hurts.”
“No wonder,” he shot back.
“Stop cussing at my breakfast table,” Justin told him firmly.
“I’ll stop when you do,” Calhoun told his brother, just as firmly.
“Oh, hell,” Justin muttered, and bit into one of Maria’s fluffy biscuits.
Ordinarily that byplay would have made Abby smile, but she felt too dragged-out to care. She sipped black coffee and nibbled at buttered toast, refusing anything more nourishing.
“You need to take some aspirins before you go to work, Abby,” Justin said gently.
She managed to smile at him. “I will. I guess gin isn’t really my drink.”
“Liquor isn’t healthy,” Calhoun said shortly.
Justin’s eyebrows lifted. “Then why were you emptying my brandy bottle last night?”
Calhoun threw down his napkin. “I’m going to work.”
“You might offer Abby a lift,” Justin suggested with a strangely calculating expression.
“I’m not going directly to the feedlot,” Calhoun said. He didn’t want to be alone with Abby, not after the way he’d seen her the night before. He could hardly look at her without remembering her lying across that bed….
“I’m not through with breakfast,” Abby replied, hurt that Calhoun didn’t seem to want her company. “Besides,” she told Justin with a faint smile, “I can drive. I didn’t really have all that much to drink.”
“Sure,” Calhoun replied harshly, dark eyes blazing. “That’s why you passed out on your bed.”
Abby knew she’d stopped breathing. Justin was pouring cream into his second cup of coffee, his keen eyes on the pitcher, not on the other occupants of the room. And that was a good thing, because Abby looked up at Calhoun with sudden stark knowledge of what he’d seen the night before and had her fears confirmed by the harsh stiffening of his features.
She blushed and started, almost knocking over her cup. So she had gone to sleep on the covers. Calhoun found her with her bodice undone, he’d seen her—
“Never mind breakfast. Let’s go,” Calhoun said suddenly, his lean hand on the back of her chair. “I’ll take you to the feedlot before I do what I have to. You’re not fit to drive.”
Justin was watching now, his gaze narrow and frankly curious as it went from Abby’s red face to Calhoun’s taut expression.
That look was what decided Abby that Calhoun was the lesser of the two evils. She couldn’t tell Justin what had happened, but he’d have it out of her in two seconds if she didn’t make a run for it. Calhoun must have realized that, too.
He took her arm and almost pulled her out of the chair, propelling her out of the room with a curt goodbye to his brother.
“Will you slow down?” she moaned as he took the steps two at a time. “My legs aren’t long enough to keep up with you, and my head is splitting.”
“You need a good headache,” he muttered without a glance in her direction. “Maybe it will take some of the adventure out of your soul.”
She glared at his broad back in silence as she followed him to the Jaguar and got into the passenger seat.
He started the car and reversed it, but he didn’t go toward the feedlot. He went down the driveway, turned off onto a ranch road that wasn’t much more than a rut in the fenced pastures and cut off the engine on a small rise.
He didn’t say anything at first. He rested his lean hands on the steering wheel, studying them in silence, while Abby tried to catch her breath and summon enough nerve to talk to him.
“How dare you come into my room without knocking,” she whispered after a long minute, her voice sounding husky and choked.
“I did knock. You didn’t hear me.”
She bit her lower lip, turning her gaze to the yellowish-brown pastures around them.
“Abby, for God’s sake, don’t make such an issue out of it,” he said quietly. “Would you rather I’d left you like that? What if Justin had come to wake you, or Lopez?”
She swallowed. “Well, I guess they’d have gotten an eyeful,” she said, her voice unsteady. After a minute, her face flushed, she turned toward him and asked plaintively, “Calhoun…I wasn’t uncovered all the way, was I?”
He looked into her eyes and couldn’t quite manage to look away. She was lovely. He reached out involuntarily and touched the side of her neck, his fingers tender and exquisitely arousing.
“No,” he managed, watching the relief shadow her eyes as he told the lie with a straight face. “I buttoned you back up and tucked you in.”
She let out a hard breath. “Thank you.”
His fingers moved up to her cheek. “Abby, have you ever let a man see your breasts?” he asked unexpectedly.
She couldn’t handle a remark that intimate. She dropped her eyes and tried to catch her breath.
“Never mind, tenderfoot,” he chided softly. “I can guess.”
“You mustn’t talk like that,” she whispered.
“Why?” he mused, tilting her chin up so that her shocked eyes met his. “You’re the one trying to grow up, aren’t you? If you want me to treat you like an adult, Abby, then this is part of it.”
She shifted nervously. He made her feel so gauche it was ridiculous. She twisted her purse out of shape, afraid to meet the dark eyes that were relentlessly probing her face.
“Don’t,” she pleaded breathlessly, and her eyes closed.
“Are you really afraid of me?” he asked, his voice deeper, silkier.
He touched her mouth with a lean foref
inger and she actually jumped, her eyes flashing open, all her hidden hungers and fears lying vulnerable there. And that was when his self-control fell away. She was hungry for him. Just as hungry as he was for her. Was that why she’d been so restless, because she’d become attracted to him and was trying to hide it? He had to know.
She couldn’t answer him. She felt as if he were trying to see inside her mind. “I’m not afraid of you. Can’t we go?”
“What are you trying to do?” he whispered, leaning closer, threatening her lips with his. “Block it out? Pretend that you aren’t hungry for my mouth?”
Her heart went wild at the soft question. If he didn’t stop, she was going to go in headfirst. He could be playing, and to have him tease her without meaning it would kill her. Her fingers touched his shoulder, pushed experimentally against the hard muscle under the soft fabric of his suit. They trembled there as her eyes suddenly tangled with his and her mouth echoed the faint tremor of her body.
He stared at her. It was a kind of exchange that Abby had never experienced before. A level, unblinking, intense look that curled her toes and made her heart race. Very adult, very revealing. His dark eyes held hers, and his lean fingers traced up and down her soft throat, arousing, teasing. His hard mouth moved closer to hers, hovering above it so that she could feel his warm, minty breath on her parted lips, so that she was breathing him.
“Cal…houn,” she whispered, her voice breaking on a hungry sob.
She heard his intake of air and felt his hand curl under her long hair, powerful and warm, cradling her nape to tilt her head up.
“This has been coming for a hell of a long time, baby,” he whispered as his head bent and he started to give in to the hunger that had become a fever in his blood. “I want it as much as you do….”
He leaned even closer, but just as his hard mouth started down over hers, before his lips touched her pleading ones, the sound of an approaching vehicle broke them apart like an explosion.
Calhoun felt disoriented. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw one of the ranch trucks coming up behind, but it took a moment to register. He was having trouble breathing. His body felt rigid, like drawn cord.
He glanced at Abby. She’d moved away and the realization that she was trembling brought home the total shock of what he’d been about to do. Damn it, she’d knocked him for a loop without even trying. That made him mad, and so, ironically, did the fact that she’d given in so easily. It infuriated him even more that he’d been about to kiss her. He didn’t want complications, damn it, and Abby was the biggest he’d ever faced. Was she vulnerable because she wanted him or just because she’d suddenly discovered that she was a woman and wanted to experiment?
“We’d better get to work,” he said tersely, starting the Jaguar. He drove down the path, waving to the men in the vehicle behind them. He cut off at the next dirt road, and minutes later they were at the feedlot. “Go on in. I’ve got to drive over to Jacobsville and talk to our attorney for a few minutes,” he said as coolly as he could. That was a bald-faced lie, but he needed time to get hold of himself. He was as tense as a boy with his first woman, and he was losing his sense of humor. He didn’t want Justin to see him like this and start asking embarrassing questions.
“All right,” Abby said, her voice faltering.
He glanced at her with narrowed eyes. She’d give the show away all by herself if she went inside looking like that. “Nothing happened,” he said shortly. “And nothing will,” he added, his voice cold, “if you can manage to stop looking at me like a lovesick calf!”
A sob tore from her throat. Her wide, hurt eyes sought his and quickly fell away. She opened the door and got out, closing it quietly behind her. She straightened and walked toward the office without looking back.
Calhoun almost went after her. He hadn’t wanted to say that to Abby, of all people, but he was off balance and terrified of what he might do to her if she kept looking at him that way. He couldn’t make love to her, for God’s sake. She was a child. She was his ward. Even as he told himself that, a picture formed in his mind of Abby lying on the bed with her breasts bare. He groaned and jerked the car into gear, sending it flying down the road.
Abby didn’t know how she got through the day. It was impossible to act as if nothing had happened, but since Justin knew she had a hangover he didn’t question her pale complexion or her unusually quiet demeanor. And Calhoun didn’t come back to the office. That was a godsend. Abby didn’t think she could have borne seeing him after what he’d said to her.
“You need a diversion,” Justin remarked later in the day, just about quitting time. “How about a steak in Houston? I’ve got to meet a man and his wife to talk about a new lot of stocker calves, and I’d hate to go alone.”
He was smiling, and Abby warmed to his gentle affection. Justin wasn’t the cold creature most people thought him. He was just a sad, lonely man who should have married and had several children to spoil.
“I’d like that very much,” Abby said honestly. It would be nice to go out to dinner, especially if it meant she could avoid Calhoun. Of course, it was Saturday night. He wasn’t usually home on Saturday nights anyway, but it would be so much better if she didn’t have to dread seeing him.
“Good,” Justin said, rising. “We’ll get away about six.”
Abby wore a soft burgundy velour dress. It had a slightly flared knee-length skirt and bishop sleeves, and a neckline that was V-shaped and not at all suggestive. She wore black accessories with it and, because it had turned cold, her heather-colored wool cape.
“Very nice,” Justin said, smiling. He had on dark evening clothes and looked elegant and sophisticated, as he always did on the rare occasions when he dressed up.
“I could return the compliment,” Abby said. She clutched her purse, sending a restless look down the hall.
“He won’t be home,” Justin told her, intercepting her worried glance. “I gather the two of you had another falling-out?”
She sighed. “The worst yet,” she confessed, unwilling to tell him any of the details. She looked up at him. “Calhoun acts as if he hates me lately.”
Justin searched her eyes quietly. “And you don’t know why,” he mused. “Well, give it time, Abby. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
She blinked. “I don’t understand.”
He laughed softly and took her arm. “Never mind. Let’s get going.”
Houston was big and sprawling and flat as a pancake, but it had a very special personality and Abby loved it. At night it was as colorful as Christmas, all jewel lights and excitement.
Justin took her to a small, intimate dinner club where they met the Joneses, Clara and Henry. They owned a small ranch in Montana where they raised stocker calves to supply to feedlots. They were an older couple but full of fun, and Abby liked them instantly. She and Clara talked fashion while Justin and Henry talked business. Abby was really having a good time until she glanced across the room and saw a familiar face on the cozily intimate dance floor.
Calhoun! Her eyes widened as she followed his blond head through the crowd until there was a clear space. Then she saw the ravishing blonde with him. He was holding the woman, who was at least his own age, with both hands at her waist, and she was curled up against him as if they’d been dancing together for years. They were smiling at each other like lovers.
Abby felt sick. She could almost feel herself turning green. If Calhoun had worked at it for years, he couldn’t have hurt her any worse. Coming on the heels of the insulting remark he’d made just a few hours earlier, it was a death blow. This was his kind of woman, Abby realized. Sleek, beautiful, sophisticated. This was one of his shadowy lovers. One of the women he never brought home.
“What’s wrong, Abby?’ Justin asked suddenly. But before she could answer he followed her gaze to the dance floor, and something in his dark eyes became frightening, dangerous.
“Isn’t that Calhoun?” Henry Jones grinned. “Well, well, let’s get him over h
ere, Justin, and see what he thinks of our proposition.” Before anyone could stop him, he got up and headed for the dance floor.
“Mrs. Jones, shall we go to the powder room?” Abby asked with a pale but convincing smile.
“Certainly, dear. Excuse us, won’t you, Justin?” the white-haired woman asked politely, and started out of the restaurant ahead of Abby.
Justin unexpectedly caught Abby’s upper arm and drew her back. “Don’t panic,” he said quietly. “I’ll get you out of here as soon as I can. Do you want a drink?”
She looked up, almost in tears at his unexpected understanding. “Could I have a piña colada with just a little rum?” she asked.
“I’ll order it. Keep your chin up.”
She smiled at him softly. “Thanks, big brother,” she said gently.
He grinned. “Any time. Get going.”
She glanced away in time to catch Calhoun’s dark eyes. She nodded her head at him and turned away with no apparent haste.
Ten minutes later, she and Mrs. Jones returned to find Calhoun about to leave the table, the blonde still clinging to his arm. He looked up at Abby. His face was unreadable, but there was something in his expression that disturbed her. She wasn’t about to let it show, though. Lovesick calf, indeed. She’d show him, by gosh.
She smiled. “Hi, Calhoun!” she said easily, sliding into the chair next to Justin’s. “Isn’t this a nice place? Justin decided I needed a night on the town. Wasn’t that sweet of him?” She picked up her piña colada and took a big sip, relieved to find that it had barely enough rum to taste and even more relieved that her hand didn’t shake and betray her shattered nerves.
“She’s a big girl now,” Justin told his brother, leaning back in his chair arrogantly and daring Calhoun to say a word. His cool smile and level, cold stare had a real impact, even on his brother.
