Diana Palmer Texan Lovers: Calhoun / Justin / Tyler / Sutton's Way / Ethan / Connal

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?”