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He took the steps two at a time, and Abby stood quietly, watching him drive off. It was a long time before she turned and went into the house.
She closed the front door and started toward the staircase, only to be stopped in her tracks by an off-key rendition of a Mexican drinking song. Somewhere in the back of her mind she recognized it as one Justin sang on the very rare occasions when he had had too many glasses of whiskey.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_25a55fe4-5b58-50e8-972d-e363f4f0d4b2)
Abby went all the way inside the house and closed the door. Then she slipped down the hall to the study and peeked in.
Justin was holding a square whiskey glass. It was empty. He was sprawled on the leather sofa with his dark hair in his eyes and his shirt rumpled, one big boot propped on the spotless leather seat, singing for all he was worth. On the coffee table beside him were a smokeless ashtray, a crumpled cigarette pack, a fresh cigarette pack, and half a bottle of whiskey.
“No puedo hacer…” He stopped at the sound of her footsteps and looked up at her with bloodshot eyes.
“Oh, Justin,” she moaned.
“Hello, Abby. Want a snort?”
She grimaced at the glass he held up. “It’s empty,” she told him.
He stared at it. “Damn. I guess it is. Well, I’ll fill it up, then.”
He threw his leg off the sofa, almost ending up on the floor in the process.
Abby put down her purse and coat and helped him onto the sofa. “Justin, this won’t help,” she said. “You know it won’t.”
“She cried,” Justin murmured. “Damn it, she cried. And he took her home. I want to kill him, Abby,” he said, his eyes blazing, his voice harsh. “My own brother, and I want to kill him because he went off with her!”
She bit her lower lip. She didn’t know what to say, what to do. Justin never drank, and he never complained. But he looked as if he were dying, and Abby could sympathize. She’d felt that way, too, when Calhoun had left with Shelby.
“I saw them go,” he ground out. He put his face in his lean hands and sighed heavily. “She’s part of me. Still part of me after all the years, all the pain. Calhoun knew it, Abby, he did it deliberately….”
“Calhoun loves you,” she defended him. “He wouldn’t hurt you on purpose.”
“Any man could fall in love with her,” he kept on. “Shelby’s beautiful. A dream walking.”
Abby knew how attractive Shelby was. The knowledge didn’t help her own sense of failure, her own lack of confidence or her breaking heart.
“Drinking isn’t the answer,” she said softly. She touched his arm. “Justin, get some sleep.”
“How can I sleep when he’s with her?”
“He won’t be for long. Tyler just went home,” she said tautly.
He took a deep breath, letting it out in jerks. His hands came away from his eyes. “I don’t know much about women, Abby,” he said absently. “I don’t have Calhoun’s charm, or his experience, or his looks.”
She felt a sense of kinship with him then, because she had the same problem. Justin had always seemed so self-assured that she’d never thought of him having the same doubts and fears that she did.
“And I don’t have Shelby’s assets,” Abby confessed. She sat down beside him. “I guess we’d both lose a beauty contest. I wish I was blond, Justin.”
“I wish I had a black book.” Justin sighed.
She grinned at him, and he grinned back. He poured whiskey into the glass, getting half again as much on the heavy coffee table. “Here,” he offered it to her. “To hell with both of them. Have a shot of ego salve.”
“Thanks, masked man,” she sighed, taking it. “Don’t mind if I do.”
It tasted horrible. “Can you really drink this stuff and live?” she wondered. “It smells like what you put in the gas tank.”
“It’s Scotch whiskey,” he returned. “Cutty Sark.”
“It would cutty a shark all right,” she mused, sipping it.
“Not cutty a shark. Cutty Shark. Sark. Hell.” He took the glass and finished what little whiskey she’d left. “Now, if you’re going to drink Cutty Sark, Abby, you have to learn to sing properly. I’ll teach you this song I learned down in Mexico, okay?”
And he proceeded to do just that. When Calhoun walked in the front door about thirty minutes later, there was a very loud off-key chorus coming from the study.
He stared in the door incredulously. Justin was lying back on the sofa, his hair in his eyes, one knee lifted, a whiskey bottle in his hand. Abby was lying against his uplifted knee, her legs thrown over the coffee table, sipping from a whiskey glass. She looked as disreputable as his brother did, and both of them looked soaked to the back teeth.
“What in hell is going on?” Calhoun asked as he leaned against the doorjamb.
“We hate you,” Abby informed him, lifting her glass in a toast.
“Amen.” Justin grinned.
“And just as soon as we get through drinking and singing, we’re going to go down to the feedlot and open all the gates, and you can spend the rest of the night chasing cows.” She smiled drunkenly. “Justin and I figure that’s what you do best, anyway. Chasing females, that is. So it doesn’t matter what species, does it, old buddy?” she asked Justin, twisting her head back against his knee.
“Nope,” Justin agreed. He lifted the whiskey bottle to his lips, rolling backward a little as he sipped it.
“We were going to lock you out,” Abby added, blinking, “but we couldn’t get up to put on the chain latches.”
“My God.” Calhoun shook his head at the spectacle they made. “I wish I had a camera.”
“What for?” Justin asked pleasantly.
“Never mind.” Calhoun unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. “I’ll make some black coffee.”
“Don’t want any,” Abby murmured drowsily. “It would mess up our systems.”
“That’s right,” Justin agreed.
“You’ll see messed-up systems by morning, all right.” Calhoun grimaced and moved off toward the kitchen.
“We should check his collar for lipstick!” Abby told Justin in a stage whisper.
“Good idea,” Justin frowned. He started to sit up, then fell back against the arm of the sofa, cradling the bottle. “In a minute. I have to rest first.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll do it.” She yawned. “When he gets back.” Her eyes closed.
By the time Calhoun got back, they were both snoring. The whiskey bottle was lying on the floor, with the neck in Justin’s lean hand. Calhoun righted it and put it on the table along with Abby’s empty glass. The sight of them was as puzzling as it was amusing. Both Justin and Abby were usually the teetotalers at any gathering, and here they were soused. He wondered if his leaving with Shelby had set them off and realized that it probably had. In Justin’s case it was understandable. But Abby’s state was less easily understood, after the way she’d treated him since he’d kissed her. Unless…
He frowned, his dark eyes quiet and curious as he watched her flushed, sleeping face. Unless she’d finally realized why he’d been rough with her and was regretting her hot words. Was that possible? She’d seemed jealous of the time he’d spent with Shelby at the dance, and here she was three sheets to the wind. Well, well. Miracles did happen, it seemed.
He still wasn’t sure about Tyler Jacobs’s feelings toward Abby, but at least now he didn’t have to worry about Justin’s. If just seeing his brother with Shelby had this effect on Justin, he was still crazy about Shelby.
Calhoun lifted Abby and sat her crookedly in a chair while he laid Justin down on the sofa, pulled the older man’s big boots off and covered him with one of the colorful serapes that were draped on chairs all over the room. Then he swung Abby up in his arms, balanced her on his knee while he turned off the overhead light, and closed the study door. Justin was going to hate himself in the morning.
Abby stirred as he carried her up the staircase. Her eyes flickered open, and she stared up drunkenly at the hard, quiet face above hers.
“You’re with Shelby,” she muttered drowsily. “We know you are. We know what you’re doing, too.” She laughed bitterly, then sighed and broke into the Mexican song Justin had taught her.
“Stop that.” Calhoun scowled at her. “My God, you shouldn’t use language like that.”
“What language?”
“That song Justin taught you,” he muttered, topping the staircase and heading down the hall toward her room. “It’s vulgar as all hell.”
“He didn’t say it was.”
“Of course he didn’t. He wouldn’t have taught it to you if he’d been sober. He’ll have a heart attack if he hears you singing it when he’s back on his feet.”
“Want me to teach it to you?” she asked.
“I already know it.”
“That isn’t surprising,” she sighed. She closed her eyes as he walked through the open door into her room and kicked it shut behind him. There were memories in this room, he thought angrily as he headed toward the bed. Abby, half-naked on that pink coverlet. Abby’s soft body under his against that far wall—where she’d put a bookcase. He frowned at it. The new furniture arrangement was fairly revealing. Why would she shift the bookcase there unless it bothered her to remember?
He laid her down on the bed and watched her curl up. “No, you don’t,” he murmured. “You can’t go to sleep like that.”
She yawned. “Yes, I can.”
He pulled off her shoes, and after a moment’s hesitation his hard fingers went to her skirt. He removed it and about a hundred layers of full underskirts, and then her panty hose and blouse. Under it all, she was wearing dainty pink lace briefs and a matching bra that was no cover at all over her full, firm breasts.
This, he thought as he looked at her, was a hell of a mistake. But she was the most delicious little morsel. Her body was perfect, the most beautiful he’d seen in his life. And when he realized just how innocent she was, how untouched, his body rippled with pleasure mingled with need.
She sighed then, and her eyes opened. She searched his face, watching where his gaze had fallen. “You undressed me,” she said.
“You couldn’t sleep in that rig,” he replied tautly.
“I guess not.” She knew it should bother her that he was seeing her like this, in those wispy pink things she’d been crazy enough to buy at Misty’s insistence. But if the way he was staring at her was any indication, he seemed to like what he saw.
“Do you have pajamas or a gown?” he asked after a minute.
“A gown. Under my pillow.”
He managed to make his legs move and took out a bit of material that would cover no more of her than her underwear. “You’ll freeze to death in this thing,” he muttered.
“Misty said it was a sexy outfit,” she said drowsily. She moved, her long hair framing her oval face with its delicate flush, her pale blue-gray eyes enormous as they searched the faintly blurred outline of his body. “I thought I’d seduce Ty,” she added. “He likes me.”
His face hardened. “Like hell you will,” he said shortly.
“You did that to Shelby,” she accused. “Shame on you, when Justin loves her.”
“I didn’t touch Shelby,” he returned. “I left her at her front door and went back to the dance hall looking for you.”
“I wasn’t there,” she murmured.
“Obviously.” He didn’t mention that he’d had to fight the urge to go looking for Tyler’s car in case he and Abby were parked somewhere. The thought of her with Ty made him want to do something violent.
“Justin is going to beat you up when he can stand up again,” she told him gaily.
“I guess he’s entitled.” Calhoun sighed. “I sure as hell made a mess of things.” He sat down beside her, his eyes reluctantly leaving the long, sweet line of her legs and hips and the open seductiveness of her almost-bare breasts. “Do you know how perfect you are?” he said absently.
She was suddenly cold sober. Her eyes opened wide, searching his. “Me?”
“You,” he said harshly. “From your legs to your hips to those sweet, pretty brea—” He stopped, hating his own vulnerability. “Come here.” He put the gown in her lap and drew her into a sitting position, watching the tips of her firm breasts suddenly harden. He caught his breath.
She looked up at him curiously. “What’s wrong?”
“This.” He touched her delicately, only the back of his knuckles rubbing softly against her nipples. She pulled away, her breath audible, and he lifted his head to search her shocked eyes.
She looked back at him, relaxed from the alcohol, all her deeply buried longings surfacing without the restraint of a usually protective mind. She touched the back of his hand and intertwined her fingers with his. And then she pulled gently, watching as she drew his hand across her breasts.
“Abby…” he ground out.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “About what I said that morning. About how I…reacted.” She swallowed, searching for courage. She opened his fingers and pressed them hesitantly just underneath her breast, lifting them so that he could feel the swell against his skin.
“Don’t, for God’s sake,” he groaned.
She moved his hand against her, drowning in the sweetness of his touch, arching toward it. Both her hands went there, pushing his fingers completely over her. “Calhoun,” she moaned. She felt so weak that she thought she’d have to lie down again, but she couldn’t let go of his hand.
“You aren’t sober enough,” he whispered roughly, although the feel of her was doing terrible things to his self-control. He was already going rigid with need as he followed her down.
“I’m not sober enough to be afraid,” she whispered. Her eyes searched his glittering eyes. “Teach me.”
He actually shuddered. “I can’t.”
“Why?” she asked. “Because I’m plain and unsophisticated, because I’m not blond—” Her voice broke.
So did his control. He leaned down, his smoky breath mingling with hers as his hand cupped her. “Because you’re a virgin,” he breathed into her mouth as he took it.
She moaned. It was sweet, so sweet. Nothing like that other time, when he’d been rough and hadn’t given her enough room to respond. He’d been impatient and demanding, but now he was gentle. His fingers stroked her body from her breasts to her waist to her flat stomach. His mouth teased at hers, probed it, traced it in a silence that was thick with sensual pleasure. Abby felt warm all over, safe and cared-about. She let her lips admit the probing of his tongue, admit him into the sweet darkness of her mouth. She didn’t even protest when the kiss grew much deeper, much slower, or when she felt his hand slide under her to find the catch at her back.
The air was cool on her body. He removed the lacy covering that was no covering at all, and his hands were heaven on her hot skin. She moaned, helping him, pressing his fingers against her, drawing them over her hungry body.
“Abby,” he groaned against her mouth, half-crazy with the hunger to make love to her completely, to salve the ache that was throbbing through his body.
She opened her eyes, letting her gaze fall lazily to his chest. Her hands went to his shirt, and she worked at the buttons, feeling him tense. But he didn’t protest, even though his heartbeat was shaking his big body as it lay beside hers.
“There,” she whispered when she could see and touch the thick wedge of hair that ran down to his belt. “I’ll bet women love to touch you there,” she murmured as she pressed her fingers hungrily against him.
“I’ve never let a woman touch me like this before,” he said huskily. “I didn’t like it until now.”
