CHAPTER SEVEN
Justin could hardly believe what he saw when he woke up the next morning. He was so used to the dreams of Shelby ending at dawn. But here she was, with her long, dark hair on his pillow, her soft, elfin features relaxed in sleep, her mouth full and sweet and tempting.
He lay there, just watching her, for a long time. He’d been lonely without her. More lonely than he’d realized until they were speaking again. When they were dating, he’d dreamed of having Shelby in his bed, relaxed in sleep, and doing just this—watching her sleep. She couldn’t know how precious she was to him, or that last night had been a revelation, a culmination of every longing he’d ever had, even though he hadn’t been able to finish what he’d started. Just finding her virginal was a shock of pure delight.
He didn’t even start to think about why she’d deceived him. He was too enraptured by the sight of her lovely face in sleep, by her dark head lying so trustingly on his pillow.
When she didn’t stir, he smiled gently and bent to brush her lips with his.
He saw her long black eyelashes flutter and then lift. She sighed, saw him and smiled, a new softness in her pale green eyes.
“Good morning,” she whispered.
“Good morning.” He kissed her again. “Did you sleep well?”
“I’ve never slept so well in all my life. And you?”
“I could say the same.” He pulled the sheet back over her, tucking it in. “You don’t have to get up yet.”
“Are you going to work this early?” she murmured with a sleepy glance at the clock.
“I have to fly up to Dallas, honey,” he said, rising. “A new customer. I’ll be home by dark.”
“I don’t have to be at work until nine,” she said with a smug smile.
“I wish you’d give up that job,” he said, frowning down at her.
“Justin, I like it,” she protested, but not vehemently.
“I don’t like having you so handy to Barry Holman,” he murmured.
She stared at him. “Maybe he is a womanizer, but not with me,” she told him. “He’s a very nice man and he’s good to me.”
Justin turned away. It wouldn’t do to have her know how jealous he was of her handsome boss. “I’ve got to get a shower.”
She watched him rummage in his drawer for underwear and head toward the bathroom, her eyes hungry on his bare torso. It seemed so unreal, the intimacy that they’d shared the night before. She blushed just remembering it, but he was gone before he saw the scarlet flush on her cheeks.
She wondered if she should have told him about Tammy Lester and the way Mr. Holman seemed so interested in her. She might do that later.
But she dozed off while he was in the shower, and when she woke up again, he was dressed in a pale gray suit that clung lovingly to the powerful lines of his tall body, and he was straightening his red-and-gray-striped tie in the mirror.
“Is Maria up this early to feed you?” she murmured sleepily.
“I’ll have breakfast on the plane.” He turned, digging into his pockets, and tossed a set of car keys on the bed beside her. “Take the T-bird to work. Your transportation problem will have to wait until tomorrow.”
She sat up, holding the keys. “But how will you get to the airport?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I wonder if my heart will take all this concern?” he asked.
Her soft eyes ran over him and then the night before came back with alarming clarity. She saw him the way he’d been downstairs with her, felt again the intimacy…
“My God, what a scarlet blush,” he murmured, loving her reactions. “I suppose you’d get under the bed if I started reminiscing?”
“You bet I would,” she said with her last bit of pride. Then she ruined it all by smiling and hiding her face in her hands. “Oh, Justin,” she whispered, remembering.
He sat down on the bed beside her, drawing her forehead against his chest. He smelled of cologne, and just being close to him made her weak and giddy.
“Do you feel like going to work?” he asked then, tilting her eyes up to his. “You don’t have to.”
“I know.” She sighed gently. “But I’m only sore. I was more scared than hurt in the first place.”
“You weren’t the only one,” he murmured. “I’ve got five new gray hairs this morning thanks to you.”
She reached up and touched his neatly combed hair at the temple, where silver hairs were threaded through the black ones. “I’m sorry. I was running away, I guess. You seem to hate me from time to time.”
“Sometimes I thought I did,” he confessed, and he didn’t smile. “Six years is a long time to brood. I believed you, about Wheelor.” He slid his hand under her nape. The fingers contracted suddenly, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to pin her forehead to his jacket. “Why?” he asked in a deceptively soft voice. “Why lie to me about it? Wasn’t breaking the engagement enough, without ripping my pride to shreds, as well?”
And there it was, she thought, the bitterness seeping through. He was never going to get over what she’d done, and the fact of her innocence physically didn’t seem to make much difference. It certainly wasn’t going to stop him from blaming her for the past, even if he wanted her desperately. He’d always wanted her, but that wasn’t enough anymore. Her eyes went misty with sadness. He’d told her last night that he’d been six years without a woman. That showed how bitter he was, that he didn’t even want women anymore. But he wanted her, and she could imagine that it made him forget the past when he was close to her. Years of celibacy would probably make a man forget a lot when he was in the throes of passion.
Her world crumbled. She closed her eyes with a small sigh.
“I told you why last night,” she said. “It was Dad’s idea.”
“And I told you before, your father liked me. He did everything in the world to help me. That night he and Wheelor came to see me, he even cried, Shelby.”
Her eyes lifted to his. “It all goes back to trust, and I know how little of that you have for me,” she said. “Not that it’s all your fault, Justin. I didn’t help things by deliberately lying to you in the beginning. But you don’t trust me at all.”
His jaw tautened. “I can’t,” he said. He let go of her all at once and got to his feet, moving away. “I want you, you know that. But I can’t let you close. A woman who’ll betray a man once will do it twice.”
“I’m still a virgin,” she reminded him uncomfortably.
“That isn’t what I meant. You lied to me. You sold me out.” He took a deep breath and pulled out a cigarette. “I’m not even sure you wouldn’t do it now with that slick boss of yours.” He glanced at her set face, his eyes glittering. “It’s easy to see how little encouragement he’d need from you, and he’s good-looking, isn’t he, honey? There’s nothing plain about him.”
“You aren’t plain,” she muttered.
“How perceptive of you to know I was talking about myself,” he snapped. “Stay out of trouble while I’m gone, and don’t put your foot down on my accelerator.”
“I won’t touch your precious car, if you’d rather,” she shot back, her green eyes flashing. “I’ll take a cab, and let all of Jacobsville see me do it!”
He glared at her and she glared back. And all at once, he started to grin, then to smile, and finally laughter burst from his set lips and glittered in his black eyes.
“Hellcat,” he murmured.
“Savage,” she threw right back.
He tossed the cigarette into the big ashtray on his dresser and moved toward her purposefully. She threw off the covers and headed for the other side of the bed, but he was too quick. Before she was halfway over, he had her flat on her back and had pinned her with the length of his big, hard-muscled body.
“That’s it, struggle,” he encouraged with a groan. “My God, can you feel what’s happening to me?”
She could. She stopped, her cheeks like red flags.
“Well, the world won’t end,” he said with soft amusement. “You know how I feel when I’m aroused, and last night we didn’t have several layers of clothes between us.”
“Stop!” She buried her face in his throat, clinging, trembling with embarrassment and excitement.
“You baby,” he chided, but the words were tender. He rolled over onto his back, pulling her over with him, his dark eyes searching her pale ones as she poised over his chest. He looked down at the deep cleavage of her pajama jacket and the faint swell of her breasts above it where they were pressed against him. “Is this better?” he murmured.
“You’re a horrible man, and I don’t think I want to live with you anymore,” she said, pouting.
“Yes, you do.” He coaxed her mouth down to his by pulling a strand of her long, silky hair. “Kiss me.”
“You’ll rumple your suit,” she said.
“I’ve got a lot of other suits, but I want to be kissed. Come on, I’ve got a plane to catch.”
She gave in to the gentle teasing. All the arguing was forgotten the minute her soft mouth touched his hard one. She felt his hand sliding into her hair, pulling gently, and her lips parted to the soft, intense searching of his warm mouth.
“After you see the doctor, we’ll have to wait a couple of days before we can finish what we started last night,” he whispered into her mouth. “So don’t start worrying about that and getting nervous all over again, okay?” His dark eyes searched hers. “I won’t rush you, Shelby. This time, it’s going to be exactly the way you want it.”
She kissed his eyes, gently closing the eyelids, lingering on the thick lashes in a rage of tenderness. She wanted to whisper that she loved him more than her own life, that everything she’d done that had hurt him had been, in the beginning, only to protect him. But he didn’t trust her yet, and she was going to have to bring him around before she could share her deepest secrets with him.
“Will you believe me when I say that I’m not afraid of you anymore?” she whispered against his lips.
“Honey, that’s pretty hard to miss, considering the position we’re in,” he whispered back.
“What positi…Justin!”
He laughed as he flipped her onto her back and slid over her, nibbling warmly at her lips. “This position,” he whispered. “Kiss me goodbye and I’ll go.”
“I’ve already done…that…several times,” she whispered, the words punctuated with soft, clinging kisses.
“Do it several more and I’ll work on getting my legs to support me,” he murmured drily. “My knees are pretty weak right now.”
“So are mine.” She linked her arms around his neck and bit his lower lip. “You’re mine now,” she said quietly, her eyes holding his. “Don’t you go off and flirt with other women.”
Her possessiveness made him ache. He slid his hands under her back and lifted her up, taking his time as he bent hungrily to her open mouth. He kissed her with growing insistence until his own body forced him to either stop or go on.
He rolled away reluctantly and got to his feet, taut with pride as he looked down at his handiwork. She was sprawled in delicious abandon on the sheets, her hair like a halo around her, her mouth soft and red and swollen from his kisses, her eyes dreamy with desire.
“If I had a photograph of you that looked the way you look now,” he said huskily, “I’d walk around bent double every time I looked at it. I’ve never seen a woman as beautiful as you are.”
“I’m not even pretty,” she chided, smiling. “But I’m glad you like me the way I am. I like you, too.”
He drew in a slow breath. “I’d better get out of here while I can. It helps to remember your condition.”
She averted her eyes to the sheets, feeling nervous.
“You’d really have let me go on, wouldn’t you?” he asked, his voice deep with feeling. “Even knowing how bad it was going to hurt you, you wouldn’t have stopped me.”
“I wanted you to know,” she whispered.
“It took a lot of courage.” He frowned, watching her. “Did it hurt you when I accused you of being frigid?”
“A little,” she said, trying to spare him.
He sighed angrily. “A lot, I imagine. Try to remember that I didn’t know the truth, and don’t hate me for it. There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, either, Shelby.” He turned then, retrieving his cigarette from the ashtray. “I’d better get a move on,” he said after a cursory glance at the thin gold watch on his wrist. “No speeding,” he cautioned from the door.
The remark intrigued her, but she knew he wasn’t going to tell her any more than he wanted her to know. “All right. Have a good trip.”
“I’ll do my best.”
He didn’t say goodbye. He gave her one last glance and closed the door behind him. Shelby watched him leave with mixed emotions. Sometimes she wished she could read his mind, because that was the only way she was ever going to know how he really felt about her. She wondered if he knew himself.
She got up and dressed and drove the Thunderbird to the office, taking a minute to make an appointment that afternoon with Dr. Sims. By the time she got home, she was worn out from the combination of an unexpectedly long day trying to keep peace between an irritable Mr. Holman and a venomous Tammy Lester, and having the rest of the surgery done—which was embarrassing as well as uncomfortable, because she had to tell Dr. Sims why she needed it.
But a cup of fresh coffee and a nice supper soothed her. She went upstairs to her own room, wishing she had the right to go straight to Justin’s. But he hadn’t said anything about the sleeping arrangements, so apparently he’d thought of last night as a temporary thing because of what had happened.
She went to sleep early. She didn’t hear the car come in, or Justin’s footsteps heading toward his own bedroom expectantly. She didn’t hear the muffled curse when he found his bed empty, or the shocked silence when he found Shelby asleep in her own.
He closed the door firmly and went to his room, dreams going black in his eyes. He’d expected her to be waiting up, or at least sleeping in his bed. But she hadn’t, and he didn’t know if she’d just been uncertain about what to do or if she was putting a wall between them because of the argument they’d had that morning.
Shelby, blissfully unaware of what had happened after she was asleep, went down to breakfast the next morning full of hope. Only to find a cold, taciturn Justin at the table looking at her as if she’d just tried to shoot him.
She stopped suddenly in the doorway. Her long denim skirt swung around her calves, her hands going nervously to the blue cotton blouse and scarf she was wearing with it.
“Good morning,” she said, faltering.
“Hell, no, it isn’t,” he said.
Her eyebrows arched. “It isn’t?”
He lifted his coffee cup and sipped the rich black liquid. “I’ll have one of the boys drive you to work,” he said. “May I have the keys to the Thunderbird?”
She reached into her skirt pocket and put them beside him on the table, but he caught her hand before she could move away.
He looked up, his expression brooding. “Why did you go back to your own room?”
She sighed and then smiled. “Because I didn’t know if you still wanted me to sleep with you,” she said sadly. “You were half-mad when you left, and you didn’t say anything.” Her shoulders lifted and fell. “I didn’t want to impose.”
“My God, honey, we’re married,” he said huskily. “You couldn’t impose on me if you tried.”
She stared down at the big, lean hand holding hers. Its warm strength made her tingle. “You’ve been very remote since we’ve been married.”
“I think you’re beginning to understand why, though, aren’t you?” he asked softly.
She looked down into his dark, quiet eyes. She nodded. “You…want me.”
“That’s part of it,” he agreed without elaborating. “Did you see Dr. Sims?”
Her blush gave him the answer even before she nodded.
He drew her down in the chair beside him. “I’ll drive you to work,” he said and pushed a platter of eggs toward her.
She smiled, but she didn’t let him see her do it.
Justin had calmed down by the time they got to Jacobsville, but Barry Holman set him off again immediately when they reached the office. The handsome blond lawyer was outside on the street, looking all around, and to an onlooker, it might have appeared as if he was waiting impatiently for Shelby. To Justin, unfortunately, that’s exactly what it looked like.
Holman’s head lifted when Justin pulled the Thunderbird up at the curb, and his face lit up. He smiled with exaggerated pleasure and rushed to meet Shelby with a cursory nod to Justin, whose expression turned murderous.
“Thank God you’re here,” Barry enthused, opening the door for her. “I was afraid you were going to be late. How pretty you look this morning!” He knew about day-before-yesterday’s mishap, of course, but Shelby was shocked by his attentiveness and was already beginning to wonder what ailed him as he helped her onto the sidewalk. “I’ll take good care of her, Justin,” he said, adding fuel to the fire, grinning at her smoldering husband.
Justin didn’t answer him or speak to Shelby. He slammed the car door, his eyes glittering in Shelby’s direction, and roared away down the street.
“What’s wrong?” Shelby asked, mentally nervous about Justin’s unexpected anger. Mr. Holman had certainly given Justin a bad impression of their working relationship.
“That woman has got to go,” he said without preamble, waving his hands. “She’s locked herself in my office and she won’t let me in. I’ve called the fire department, though,” he added with a smug glitter in his eyes. “They’ll break the door down and get her out, and then she can leave. Permanently.”
Shelby put a hand to her head. “Mr. Holman, why is Tammy locked in your office?”
He cleared his throat. “It was the book.”
“What book?”
“The book I threw at her,” he said irritably.
“You threw a book at Tammy!” she gasped.
“Well, it was a dictionary.” He shifted with his hands in his pockets. “We had a slight disagreement over the spelling of a legal term, which I should know, Shelby,” he added angrily, “after all, I’m a lawyer. I know how to spell legal terms; they teach us that in law school.”
Shelby, who’d sampled some of Mr. Holman’s expertise at spelling legal terms, didn’t say a word.
He shifted again. “Well, I said some things. Then she said some things. Then I sort of tossed the book her way. That was when she locked herself in my office.”
“Just because of the book,” she probed.
He stared down at the pavement. “Uh, yes. That. And the broken glass.”
Her eyes gaped. “Broken glass?”
“The window, you know.” He moved sheepishly toward the curb, having spotted what he was searching for earlier. He picked up the torn dictionary with a faint grin. “Here it is! I knew it had to be out here somewhere.”
Shelby was torn between laughter and tears when the fire truck came blaring down the street with its siren going and pulled to a screeching halt at the curb.
“You didn’t tell them why you needed them to come here, by any chance?” Shelby asked as she watched the firemen, because they’d come in a pumper truck and were very obviously unwinding a long, flat hose.
“No, come to think of it, I didn’t. Hi, Jake!” Mr. Holman called to the fire chief with a big grin. “Good of you to come. Uh, there’s not exactly a fire, though. I’m more in need of a different kind of help.”
Jake, a big, burly man with a red face, came closer. “No fire? Well, what do you need us to do, Barry?” he asked, gesturing to the men to roll up the hose again.
“I need you to break down my office door with an ax,” Mr. Holman said.
“Why?”
“I lost my key,” Mr. Holman improvised.
“Then wouldn’t a locksmith do you more good?” Jake continued. He was beginning to give Shelby’s boss a strange kind of look.
Mr. Holman frowned thoughtfully. “Oh, no, I don’t think so. It wouldn’t make nearly the impression that an ax would.”
Jake was looking puzzled.
“One of our…employees…has locked herself in the office and won’t come out,” Shelby explained.
“Well, my gosh, Barry, an ax banging the door down would scare her half to death!” Jake said.
“Yes.” Mr. Holman smiled thoughtfully. “It sure as hell would.”
Just as Jake started to speak, Tammy Lester came out of the building, looking explosive, and went right up to Barry Holman and hit him as hard as she could.
“I quit,” she said furiously, almost trembling with rage. “Sorry, Shelby, but you’re back to being a one-woman office. I can’t take one more day of Mr. God’s Gift to Womanhood! And you can’t spell, Mr. Big-Shot Attorney!”
“I can spell better than you can, you escapee from a high-school remedial spelling course!” he yelled after her. “And don’t expect that I’ll come running, begging you to come back! There must be hundreds of stupid women who can’t spell in this town who need work!”
Jake was gaping at the normally calm attorney. So was Shelby. She was having a hard time trying not to laugh. That would only complicate things, of course. She eased past the fire chief and quickly went into the office to escape what was about to happen.
And sure enough, she’d barely gotten inside the carpeted office when Jake let Mr. Holman have it with both barrels. There was something about false alarms and potential arrests…at that point, Shelby closed the door and went to her computer.
She worried about the way Justin had reacted to Mr. Holman waiting on the street for her. It didn’t look good, and Justin was already wildly jealous of the man. That didn’t make a lot of sense, but then Shelby didn’t know a lot about men. She assumed that it was only a surface jealousy, because Barry Holman was handsome and a womanizer and Justin was possessive and very territorial. She never once thought that it might be anything more than that.
Because it disturbed her, she phoned the house to explain to Justin what had happened. But Maria told her that he hadn’t come back yet. She tried again at lunch, but he was out with a client. So she went back to work and forgot all about it, while Mr. Holman sputtered and muttered about Tammy for the rest of the day and finally closed the office an hour early because he wasn’t getting any work done.
“Don’t worry about making up the time,” he told Shelby quietly. “We’ve got court next month, and you may have to put in some overtime getting out briefs and helping me with research.” He glowered at the door. “I was going to let Miss Lester help with that, since she does seem to have a feel for legwork. But now that she’s quit for such a stupid reason, you’ll have to do it.”
“Most secretaries would get nervous if their bosses threw books at them,” Shelby pointed out.
“I didn’t hit her, did I?” he asked mockingly. “I hit the window. That reminds me, you’d better call Jack Harper and get him over here tomorrow to put in another windowpane.” He looked uncomfortable. “And, uh, you don’t need to go into details about how it got broken. Do you?”
“I’ll tell him an eagle flew through it,” she agreed.
He glared and stomped off toward his car.
Shelby started toward where she usually parked her car when it dawned on her that she didn’t have a car.
“Oh, Mr. Holman,” she called without thinking, “could you drop me off at the feedlot? I haven’t been able to get Justin, and he won’t be here for another hour to pick me up.”
“Sure. Come on.”
He helped her into the black Mercedes and shot off down the road toward the Ballenger feedlot. “What happened to your new car?” he asked. “Engine trouble?”
She smiled wistfully. She hadn’t told him about the sports car, even though he knew she had been driving Justin’s car the day before. “Justin gave it to Mr. Doyle.”
“He runs a junkyard,” Mr. Holman reminded her.
“That’s right, he does, and he has a brand-new car crusher.” She sighed. “Justin said if I liked, he could have my sports car made into a nice wall decoration. It’s about five inches thick…”
“What did he do that for?” the lawyer asked.
“He thinks I’m reckless,” Shelby said. “I think he’s planning to buy me something sedate. Like a Sherman tank.”
Mr. Holman smiled. “I hope I didn’t get you into any trouble this morning,” he said belatedly as he turned off on the long road that led to the feedlot. “I wasn’t thinking. I was glad to see you because I knew that you could talk her out of the office if the firemen didn’t work.”
“Tammy’s really a nice woman,” she said.
He glowered. “She’s a pain.”
“If you’d give her half a chance, she might surprise you. She’s very efficient.”
He shifted against the seat. “I did notice that you’re pretty rushed. I didn’t mean to rob you of her help.”
She glanced at him. “You might consider asking Tammy to come back. Maybe she’s sorry, too.”
He pursed his lips. “Maybe she is. I suppose I could drop by her dad’s house and just mention that she could come to work tomorrow.”
“It might be a better idea to call first,” Shelby said, remembering Tammy’s temper.
“I’ll do that.” He pulled up at the feedlot office and grinned. “Thanks for being so understanding.”
“My pleasure. No, don’t get out. I can open the door all by myself.” She laughed. She got out, smiling at him, and waved him away.
Behind her, Justin stood watching, a cigarette smoking in his lean fingers, his height emphasized by the jeans and chambray shirt and boots he wore around the feedlot. His hat was pulled low over his black eyes and he looked dangerous.
Shelby turned and saw him and stopped suddenly. “Uh, hi.”
He lifted the cigarette to his mouth. “You’re an hour early.”
“We had a problem at the office.” She flushed, and that made it worse. “I need a ride to the house.”
“Calhoun’s going that way,” he returned. “He can drop you off.”
He went inside the building, leaving her standing in the sun with the sound of the cattle lowing and moving in the sprawling complex ringing in her ears.
Calhoun came out in a beige suit, scowling. “Justin is sitting behind his desk with his feet crossed, not doing a damned thing, and he dragged me out of a meeting to run you home,” he said, stunned. “Not that I mind, Shelby. I’m just curious. Is he at you again?”
“When isn’t he?” she said curtly. “Mr. Holman brought me out here. I guess Justin thinks I seduced him on the highway!”
“Shhh!” Calhoun put his finger to his lips and pulled her toward his white Jaguar. “Don’t make him any worse than he already is. His secretary’s already threatened to walk out!”
“He has that effect on so many people,” she said with venom in her tone. “Overbearing, unfeeling, insensitive, insufferable…!”
“Now, now,” he soothed. “You’ll just work yourself into a lather, and it won’t solve anything. He’s only jealous. You’re a woman. You ought to know exactly what to do about that.”
She flushed and averted her face as he helped her into the front seat and got in beside her.
He glanced in her direction curiously, noting her scarlet blush. It amazed him how much alike Justin and Shelby were; both old-fashioned and full of hang-ups.
He started the car and cleared his throat. “Do you mind if I say something pretty personal, Shelby? Since we’re related these days and all?”
She couldn’t look at him. “That depends on what it is.”
“Yes, I can imagine. You react just like Justin does,” he mused. He pulled out onto the road and pressed down on the accelerator. “Well, it’s this. My brother isn’t exactly a lily, but in recent years he’s been a hermit. He hasn’t dated anybody. He’s sort of rusty with women, is what I’m driving at.”
“I could tell you what he is, if you weren’t his brother,” she muttered, clutching her purse.
“Shelby,” he said patiently, “the best way to get a man’s attention and knock the fire off his temper is just to hug him as hard as you can and let nature take care of the details.”
She went scarlet. She knew that Calhoun was pretty much like her boss, a man who knew women well. But if she couldn’t talk to Justin about intimacy, she certainly couldn’t talk to Calhoun about it.
“He wouldn’t like it,” she said in a husky voice.
“He’d like it,” he returned. He reached over and patted her shoulder gently. “He’s so crazy about you that he can’t see straight. You take my word for it, honey, he’ll fold up like an accordion if you use the right approach. And that’s all I’ll say. How are you and the sports car getting along?”
She gaped at him. He didn’t know? “Justin didn’t tell you?”
“Justin doesn’t talk much when he’s at the office,” he said pleasantly. “Mostly he works, and when he doesn’t, he broods.”
“I had a near-miss in the car, actually,” she mumbled. “I spun out and almost hit a truck.” She felt his stunned glance. “Justin took the car away and had it crushed.”
“Good for Justin,” he said unexpectedly. “That car was dangerous.” He stared at her. “And you know better than most how dangerous.”
She cleared her throat. “Switzerland was years ago.”
“All the same, Justin was right. He wouldn’t want to have to bury you so shortly after your wedding, you know.”
“Wouldn’t he?” she asked bitterly. “I think he hates me.”
“I wish I could convince you what a joke that statement is.” He pulled up in front of the house and smiled at her. “I dare you. Play up to him and see what happens. He’s as unknowledgeable about women as you are about men, so keep that in mind. And don’t, for God’s sake, mention that I said so,” he said under his breath. “The one time Justin and I really got into it, we both had to have stitches. Okay?”
“Okay.” She opened the door and glanced back shyly. “You’re a nice man.”
“Of course I am,” he said. “Ask Abby if you don’t believe it.” He grinned with the smugness of a man who knows how much he’s loved. “See you.”
“Tell Abby hello and give her my love.”
He laughed and waved as he went down the road. Shelby thought about what he’d said and wondered if she might be able to get up enough nerve to take his advice.
If Calhoun was right, and Justin was as backward as she was, it might really be interesting to see what would happen. Then she remembered his ardor and wondered if Calhoun actually knew his brother at all. The Justin Shelby experienced on the sofa wasn’t a man who didn’t know what to do with women. Justin was pretty tight-lipped with everyone, and Calhoun might not know exactly how well informed his big brother was.
But the thought of tempting Justin was delicious, and now she had no more reason to be afraid of him. She knew that he could be tender and that he wouldn’t lose control too soon. And now, thank goodness, there would be no more painful barrier to inhibit her. She smiled thoughtfully as she went up the steps, already making exciting plans for the night ahead.