Kitabı oku: «Diana Palmer Texan Lovers: Calhoun / Justin / Tyler / Sutton's Way / Ethan / Connal», sayfa 3

“What’s she to you?” the drunken cowboy demanded.

“My ward.”

Calhoun caught the smaller man’s wrist in a hard, cruel grasp and twisted. The man groaned and went down, holding his hand and cursing.

“Hey, you can’t do that to Tom!” one of the man’s cronies protested, standing up. He was almost Calhoun’s size, and a lot rougher-looking.

“Want to make something out of it, sonny?” Calhoun asked in a soft drawl that was belied by the dark glitter in his eyes.

“You bet I do!”

The younger man threw a punch, but he was too slow. Calhoun’s big fists put him over a table. He reached down and picked up the Stetson that the man’s blow had connected with and looked around the room as he ran his fingers through his thick, silky blond hair.

“Anybody else?” he invited pleasantly.

Eyes turned the other way, and the band started playing again. Then Calhoun looked down at Abby.

She swallowed. “Hi,” she said, and tried to smile. “I thought you were out on a date.”

He didn’t say a word, but his glittering eyes told her every single thing he was feeling. He wouldn’t admit for a minute that his dinner date was strictly business, or that he’d expected something like this after the argument he and Abby had had. She was giving him fits, but he didn’t let his expression show how concerned he really was.

“Did you see Misty?” she asked hopefully.

“Luckily for her, no,” he said in a tone that could have boiled ice water. “Get your purse.”

She fumbled on the chair beside hers for it, weak and shaky. He had a gift for intimidating people, she thought, watching him slam his Stetson over his eyes at a slant. The men who were picking themselves up off the floor didn’t seem anxious to tangle with him twice. It was amazing, she thought, how unruffled he looked for a man who’d just been in a fight.

He caught her arm and propelled her out of the bar and into the night air. Misty and Ty were standing just outside, both looking faintly apprehensive.

“It wasn’t all my fault, Cal,” Misty began in a subdued tone.

Calhoun eyed her coldly. “You know what I think of this so-called friendship. And I know the reason behind it, even if she doesn’t.”

Abby was puzzled by that remark. The cold, level look in Calhoun’s dark eyes and the uncomfortable flush in Misty’s pretty face didn’t add up.

“I’d better go get Shelby,” Ty said quietly. “I was going to offer to take Abby home, but under the circumstances I’m a bit relieved that you came along,” he told Calhoun.

“If Justin finds out you were in the same room with her, there’ll be hell to pay,” Calhoun agreed. “But thanks all the same.” He turned Abby toward his Jaguar. “I assume you rode into town with your girlfriend?” he added.

“We came in Misty’s car,” Abby murmured. She felt weary and a little sick. Now she really looked like a child, with all the concerned adults making a fuss over her. Tears burned in her eyes, which she was careful to keep hidden from the angry man beside her.

“Honest to God,” he muttered as he put her into the passenger seat and went around to get into the driver’s seat. “I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with you lately. Last night I find you in line at a male strip show, and tonight you’re getting drunk and eyeing strange men in bars!”

“I was not eyeing that lewd creature,” she said unsteadily. “And you can’t say I was dressed to invite his kind of comment. I’m not wearing anything that’s the least bit immodest!”

He glanced at her. “You were in a bar unescorted. That’s all the invitation that kind of man needs!”

She felt his gaze on her, but she wouldn’t look at him. She knew she’d cry if she did. She clasped her hands firmly in her lap and stared out the window instead as he started the car and headed for home.

It was a long ride, over deserted paved roads and dirt ones that led past the huge feedlot and then uphill to the house, which sat on a level plain about three miles away.

“Do you want me to carry you?” he asked stiffly as he helped her out of the car and she stumbled.

She pushed away from him as if she’d touched hot coals. “No, thank you.” He was making her more nervous than ever tonight. The scent of him filled her nostrils, all leathery and spicy and clean. She averted her eyes and walked as straight as she could toward the kitchen door. “Are you going to sneak me in the back way so that Justin doesn’t see me?” she challenged.

“Justin told me where to find you,” Calhoun said as he put the key in the lock and opened the back door. “He’s still watching his war movie.”

“Oh.” She walked through the door he was holding open for her. “I thought you were out on a date.”

“Never mind where I was,” he said curtly. “My God, I really must have radar.”

She flushed. Thank God he couldn’t see her face. She felt odd tonight. Frightened and nervous and a little unsure of herself. The gin had taken away some of her inhibitions, and she had to be careful not to let Calhoun see how vulnerable she felt when he came close to her.

She went in ahead of him, barely noticing the huge, spotless kitchen with its modern conveniences, or the hall, or the mahogany staircase she began to climb. Behind the closed living room door, bombs were going off in a softly muted way, indicating that Justin’s war movie was still running.

“Abby.”

She stopped, her back to him, trying not to show how nervous she felt. He was behind her, much too close, and she could smell the fresh, clean scent of his body and the spicy cologne he wore.

“What’s wrong, honey?” he asked.

His tone broke her heart. He used it with little things—a newborn kitten, or a filly he was working for the first time. He used it with children. He’d used it with Abby the day her mother had died in the wreck. It had been Calhoun who’d found her and broken the news to her and then held her while she cried. It was the tone he used when something was hurt.

She straightened, trying hard to keep her back straight and her legs under control. “That man…” she began, unable to tell him he was breaking her heart because he couldn’t love her.

“Damn that drunken—” He turned her, his strong hands gentle on her upper arms, his dark eyes blazing down into hers. He was so big, and none of it was fat. He was all muscle, lean and powerful, all man. “You’re all right,” he said softly. “Nothing happened.”

“Of course not,” she whispered miserably. “You rescued me. You always rescue me.” Her eyes closed, and a tear started down her cheek. “But hasn’t it occurred to you that I’m always going to land in trouble if you don’t let me solve my own problems?” She looked up at him through a mist. “You have to let go of me,” she whispered huskily, and her eyes reflected her heartbreak. “You have to, Calhoun.”

There was a lot of truth in what she said, and he didn’t really know how to respond. He worried about her. This strange restlessness of hers, this urge to run from him, wasn’t like Abby. She was melancholy, when for the past five years or more she’d been a vibrant, happy little imp, always laughing and playing with him, teasing him, making him laugh. She couldn’t know how somber the house had been when she’d first come to live with him and Justin. Justin never laughed anyway, and Calhoun had come to be like him. But Abby had brought the sunshine. She’d colored the world. He scowled down at her, wondering how she did it. She wasn’t pretty. She was plain, and she was serious a good bit of the time. But when she laughed…When she laughed, she was beautiful.

His hands contracted. “I wouldn’t mind if you’d go to conventional places,” he muttered. “First I catch you in line to watch a bunch of nude men parade around a stage, and the very next night you’re drinking gin and tonic in a bar. Why?” he asked, his deep voice soft with curiosity and concern.

She shifted. “I’m just curious about those things,” she said finally.

He searched her eyes quietly. “That isn’t it,” he replied, his own gaze narrowing. His hands shifted, gentle on her arms, Abby could feel their warmth through the fabric. “Something’s eating you alive. Can’t you tell me what it is?”

She drew in her breath. She’d almost forgotten how perceptive he was. He seemed to see right through to the bone and blood sometimes. She let her gaze drop to his chest, and she watched its lazy rise and fall under his gray vest. He was hairy under his shirt. She’d seen him once in a while on his way to or from the shower, and it had been all she could do not to reach out and run her hands over him. He had thick brown hair across his tanned chest, and it had golden tips where it curled. There was a little wave in his thick blond hair, not much, but enough that it was unruly around his ears. She let her gaze go up, feeding on him, lingering just above his dimpled chin at the thin but sensuous curve of his upper lip and the faintly square, chiseled fullness of his lower lip. He had a sexy mouth. His nose was sexy, too. Very straight and imposing. He had high cheekbones, and thick eyebrows on a jutting brow that shadowed his deep-set eyes. He had black eyes. Both the Ballengers did. But Calhoun was something to look at, and poor old Justin was as rangy-looking as a longhorn bull by comparison.

“Abby, are you listening to me?” Calhoun murmured, shaking her gently because her faintly intoxicated stare was setting his blood on fire.

Her eyes levered up to his, finding darkness in them, secrets, shadows. Her lips parted on a hopeless sigh. When Misty had told her last week about seeing him with some ravishing blonde up in Houston, it had knocked her for a loop, bringing home the true hopelessness of her situation. Calhoun liked sophisticated women. He’d never look twice at drab little Abby. Once Abby had faced that unpalatable fact, she’d been on a one-way road to misery. She’d been looking for an escape, last night and tonight, but she couldn’t find one. Wherever she turned, Calhoun was there, hounding her, not realizing how badly he was hurting her.

“What did you say?” she asked miserably.

His chest rose and fell roughly. “It’s hopeless trying to talk to you in this condition. Go to bed.”

“That’s just where I was headed,” she said.

She turned and started up the staircase ahead of him, her eyes burning with tears that she was too proud to let him see. Oh, Calhoun, she moaned inwardly, you’re killing me!

She went into her room and closed the door behind her. She almost locked it, but realized that would be a joke and a half. Locking a door against Calhoun was a hilarious idea. He’d as soon come looking for a lady vampire as to look at Abby with amorous intent. She started laughing as she went into the bathroom to bathe her face, and she almost couldn’t stop.

Chapter Four

Abby managed to get into the silver satin night gown, but she couldn’t seem to fasten it in the front. The gown hung open over her full, firm breasts. She looked at herself in the mirror as she passed it, fascinated by the sophistication the unbuttoned state lent her. She looked oddly mature with the pink swell of her breasts blatantly revealed and her long hair tangled around her face. Then she laughed at her own fancy and stretched out on top of the pale pink coverlet on her canopied bed.

The whole room was decorated in shades of pink and white with blue accents. She loved it. The Ballengers had let her choose her own colors, and these were what she favored. Very feminine colors, even if she wasn’t a sophisticated blonde. She shifted restlessly on the cover, and the bodice of her gown came completely away from one breast. Her eyes closed. What did it matter, she thought as she drifted off to sleep. There was no one to see her.

No one except Calhoun, who eased the door open with an expression of concern in his dark eyes. He saw something that knocked the breath out of him.

Abby was barely conscious. She didn’t even open her eyes when he came into the room. It was just as well, because he knew he wouldn’t be lucid if he had to speak. He’d never thought of Abby as a woman, but the sight of her in that silky drift of silver fabric, with one exquisite breast completely bare and her slender body outlined to its best advantage, shot through him like fire.

He stood frozen in the doorway, facing for the first time the fact that Abby was an adult. No sane man who saw her lying there like that could ever think of her as a child again. And even as the thought formed he realized why he hadn’t been himself lately, why he’d deliberately antagonized her, why he’d been so overprotective. He…wanted her.

He closed the door absently behind him and moved closer to her. God, she was lovely! His face hardened as he stared down at her, helplessly feeding on the sensuous nudity she wasn’t even aware of.

He wondered if she’d ever let any of her dates see her like this, and a murderous rage stiffened his tall form. He hated the thought of that. Of another man looking at her, touching her, putting his mouth on that soft swell and searching for a tip that he could make hard with the warm pressure of his open mouth….

He shook himself. This wouldn’t do. “Abby,” he said tersely.

She stirred, but only to shift on the bed so that the whole damned bodice fell open. He actually trembled at the sweetness of her pretty pink breasts with their delicate mauve tips relaxed in sleep.

He muttered something explosive and forced himself to bend over her, to pull the fabric together and fasten it. His hands shook. Thank God she wasn’t awake to witness his vulnerability.

She moaned when his hard knuckles came into contact with her skin, and she arched slightly in her sleep.

His lips parted on a rough breath. Her skin was like silk, warm and sensuous. He gritted his teeth and caught the last button. Then he scooped her up in his arms and stood holding her propped on one knee while he tore the covers loose and stripped back the colorful pink patterned top sheet over the soft blue fitted one.

Her eyes blinked and opened lazily. She searched his hard face, smiling faintly. “I’m asleep,” she whispered, nuzzling close. Her sweet scent and the feel of her soft body in his arms overwhelmed him.

“Are you?” he asked, his voice deeper, huskier than he wanted it to be. He laid her down on the sheet, cupping the back of her head in his hand while he drew a pillow under it, his mouth just above hers.

Her hands were around his neck. He drew them down and pulled the covers up over her with a feeling of relief.

“I never had anybody tuck me in before,” she mumbled drowsily.

“Don’t expect a bedtime story,” he murmured, his deep voice lazy with forced humor. “You’re too young for the only ones I know.”

“I guess I am. Too young for everything. Much too young.” She sighed heavily, as her eyes closed. “Oh, Calhoun, I wish I was blond….”

“Now what brought that on?” he asked, but she was asleep again. He looked down at her softly flushed sleeping face, his eyes narrow and dark and thoughtful. After a minute he turned and went out, flicking off the light behind him.

Justin was coming out of the living room when Calhoun got back downstairs.

“Did you bring Abby home?” Justin asked his brother.

“Yes. She’s in bed. Dead drunk,” Calhoun added with a faintly amused smile. He’d already taken off his Stetson, along with his jacket and vest.

Justin’s dark eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with you? Your lip is cut.”

“A slight altercation in the local bar and dance hall,” Calhoun said sardonically. He went to the brandy bottle and poured himself half a snifterful. He swirled it, staring into the glass. “Want one?”

Justin shook his head and lit a cigarette instead, ignoring Calhoun’s pointed glare of disapproval.

“What were you fighting about?”

Calhoun sipped his brandy. “Abby.”

Justin turned, his dark eyebrows arching. “Abby?”

“Misty Davies took her to a bar.”

“Last night a nude revue, tonight a bar.” Justin stared at his cigarette. “Something’s eating our girl.”

“I know. I just don’t know what. I don’t like what Misty’s doing, either, but I can’t tell Abby.”

Justin cocked his head as he drew on the cigarette. “She’s trying to get back at you through Abby, I gather.”

“Got it in one.” Calhoun raised the brandy snifter mockingly before he drained it. “She came on to me hard, and I turned her down. My God, as if I’d be crazy enough to seduce Abby’s best friend.”

“Misty should have known that. Is Abby all right?”

“I guess,” Calhoun said, not adding that he’d put her to bed himself or that she was the reason he was drinking, something he rarely did. “Some red-faced jackass was manhandling her.”

Justin whirled. “And?”

“I think I knocked one of his teeth out.”

“Good for you. All the same, she needs watching.”

“I’ll say amen to that. Shall we flip a coin?” Calhoun asked with pursed lips.

“Why should I interfere when you’re doing such a good job of looking out for her interests?” Justin asked, smiling faintly. His smile faded as he searched the younger man’s troubled eyes. “You do remember that Abby turns twenty-one in three months? And I think she’s already been apartment-hunting with Misty.”

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 forefinger 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.”