LITMIR.BIZ

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“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

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