LITMIR.BIZ

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you just shut up, Abby?”

      “Okay, Calhoun, I’ll do that very thing,” she agreed. She studied his hard, angry profile, and almost smiled at the way she’d gotten him ruffled. He might not be in love with her, but she certainly did have a knack for getting his attention.

      “All this sudden fascination with male nudity,” he grumbled, glaring at her. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you.”

      “Frustration,” she replied. “It comes from too many nights sitting home alone.”

      “I’ve never tried to stop you from dating,” he said defensively.

      “Oh, no, of course you haven’t. You just sit with my prospective dates and make a big deal of cleaning your gun collection while you air your archaic views on premarital sex!”

      “They’re not archaic,” he said curtly. “A lot of men feel the way I do about it.”

      “Do tell?” She lifted her eyebrow. “And I suppose that means that you’re a virgin, too, Calhoun?”

      His dark eyes cut sideways at her. “Do you think so, Abby?” he asked, in a tone she’d never heard him use.

      She suddenly felt very young. The huskiness in his deep voice, added to the faint arrogance in his dark eyes, made her feel foolish for even having asked. Of course he wasn’t a virgin.

      She averted her eyes. “Foolish question,” she murmured softly.

      “Wasn’t it, though?” He pressed on the accelerator. For some reason, it bothered him to have Abby know what his private life was like. She probably knew more than he’d given her credit for, especially if she was hanging around with Misty Davies. Misty frequented the same kind of city hot spots that Calhoun did, and she’d seen him with one or two of his occasional companions. He hoped Misty hadn’t talked to Abby about what she’d seen, but he couldn’t count on it.

      His sudden withdrawal puzzled Abby. She didn’t like the cold silence that was growing between them any more than she liked thinking about his women. “How did you know where I was?” she asked to break the rigid silence.

      “I didn’t, honey,” he confessed. The endearment sounded so natural coming from him that she’d never minded him using it, though she disliked its artificiality when other men did. “I happened to come home through Jacobsville. And who should I see in line—in front of all the lurid posters—but you?”

      She sighed. “Fate. Fate is out to get me.”

      “Fate may not be the only one,” he returned, but his voice was so low that she couldn’t hear.

      He turned onto the road that led past the feedlot to the big Spanish house where the Ballengers lived. On the way they passed the Jacobs’s colonial-style house, far off the road at the end of a paved driveway, with purebred Arabian horses grazing in sprawling pastures dotted with oak trees. There wasn’t much grass—the weather was still cold, and a few snow flurries had caused excitement the day before. Big bales of hay were placed around the property to give the horses adequate feed, supplemented with blocks of vitamins and minerals.

      “I hear the Jacobses are having financial problems,” Abby remarked absently.

      He glanced at her. “Since the old man died last summer, they’re close to bankrupt, in fact Tyler’s borrowed all he can borrow. If he can’t pull it together now, he never will. The old man made deals Ty didn’t even know about. If he loses that place, it’s going to be damned hard on his pride.”

      “Hard on Shelby’s, too,” she remarked.

      He grimaced. “For God’s sake, don’t mention Shelby around Justin.”

      “I wouldn’t dare. He gets funny, doesn’t he?”

      “I wouldn’t call throwing punches at people funny.”

      “I’ve seen you throw punches a time or two,” she reminded him, recalling one particular day not too long before when one of the new cowhands had beaten a horse. Calhoun had knocked the man to his knees and fired him on the spot, his voice so cold and quiet that it had cut to the bone. Calhoun didn’t have to raise his voice. Like Justin, when Calhoun lost his temper he had a look that made words unnecessary.

      He was an odd mixture, she thought, studying him. So tenderhearted that he’d go off for half a day by himself if he had to put down a calf or if something happened to one of his men. And so hotheaded at times that the men would actually hide from his anger. In temperament, he was like Justin. They were both strong, fiery men, but underneath there was a tenderness, a vulnerability, that very few people ever saw. Abby, because she’d lived with them for so many years, knew them better than any outsider ever could.

      “How did you get back so fast?” she asked to break the silence.

      He shrugged. “I guess I’ve got radar,” he murmured, smiling faintly. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t be sitting at home with Justin watching old war movies on the VCR.”

      “I didn’t think you’d be back before morning.”

      “So you decided you’d go watch a lot of muscle men strip off and wiggle on the stage.”

      “Heaven knows I tried.” She sighed theatrically. “Now I’ll die ignorant, thanks to you.”

      “Damn it all,” he laughed, taken aback by her reactions. She made him laugh more than any woman he’d ever known. And lately he’d found himself thinking about her more than he should. Maybe it was just his age, he thought. He’d been alone a long time, and a woman here and there didn’t really satisfy him. But Abby wasn’t fair game. She was a marrying girl, and he’d better remember that. No way could he seduce her for pleasure, so he had to keep the fires banked down. If he could.

      Justin was in his study when they got back, frowning darkly over some figures in his books. When he looked up, his craggy face was devoid of expression, but his dark eyes twinkled when he glanced from Calhoun’s irritated expression to Abby’s furious one.

      “How was the art show?” he asked her.

      “It wasn’t an art show,” Calhoun said flatly, tossing his Stetson onto the coffee table. “It was a male strip show.”

      Justin’s pencil stopped in midair as he stared at Abby. His shock was a little embarrassing, because Justin was even more old-fashioned and reactionary than Calhoun about such things. He wouldn’t even talk about anything intimate in mixed company.

      “A what?” Justin asked.

      “A male revue,” Abby countered, glaring at Calhoun. “It’s a kind of…variety show.”

      “Hell,” Calhoun retorted, his dark eyes flashing. “It’s a strip show!”

      “Abby!” Justin scolded.

      “I’m almost twenty-one,” she told him. “I have a responsible job. I drive a car. I’m old enough to marry and have children. If I want to go and see a male variety show—” she ignored Calhoun’s instantly inserted “strip show” “—I have every right.”

      Justin laid his pencil down and lit a cigarette. Calhoun glared at him, and so did Abby, but he ignored them. The only concession he made to their disapproval was to turn on one of the eight smokeless ashtrays they’d bought him for Christmas.

      “That sounds like a declaration of war,” Justin remarked.

      Abby lifted her chin. “That’s what it is.” She turned to Calhoun. “If you don’t stop embarrassing me in front of the whole world, I’ll move in with Misty Davies.”

      Calhoun’s good intentions went up in smoke. “Like hell you will,” he countered. “You’re not living with that woman!”

      “I’ll live with her if I want to!”

      “If you two would…” Justin began calmly.

      “Over

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