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

She wouldn’t back away. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of watching her run. She lifted her face proudly, even though her knees felt weak and her heart was racing madly. She was afraid of him because of their past, because he wanted revenge. She was afraid because he thought she was experienced, and even with that minor surgery, she knew that it wasn’t going to be the easiest time of her life. Justin was deceptively strong. She knew the power in that lean, hard body, and to be overwhelmed by it in passion was a little scary.

He watched the fear flicker in her eyes, and understood it instantly. “You’re off base, honey,” he said quietly. “Way off base. I’d never hurt you in bed, not for revenge or any other reason.”

Her lower lip trembled on a stifled sob and tears welled in her eyes. She lowered her gaze to his broad chest, missing the faint shock in his face at her reaction. “Maybe you wouldn’t be able to help it,” she whispered.

“Shelby, are you really afraid of me?” he asked

huskily.

Her thin shoulders shifted. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Were you afraid with him?” he asked. “With Wheelor?”

She opened her mouth to speak and just gave up. What was the use? He wasn’t going to listen. She turned away and went toward the staircase.

“Running won’t solve anything,” he said shortly, watching her go with mingled feelings, the foremost of which was anger.

“Neither will trying to talk to you,” she replied. She turned at the bottom of the staircase, her green eyes bright with unshed tears and returning spirit. “Do your worst. Make me pay. I’m fresh out of things I care about. I’ve got absolutely nothing left to lose, so look out, Justin. I’m not going to live up to your idea of a society wife. I’m going to be myself, and I’m sorry if it destroys any of your old illusions.”

He eyed her quietly. “Meaning what?”

“No affairs,” she replied, picking the thought out of his mind. “Despite what you think of me, I’m not starved for a man.”

“That much I’d believe,” he said shortly. “My God, I get more warmth out of an ice cube than I ever got from you!”

She felt the impact of those words like daggers against her bare skin. She should have realized that he thought her frigid, but it had never really registered before.

“Maybe Tom Wheelor got more!” she threw at him.

His black eyes splintered with rage. He actually started toward her before he checked himself with the iron control that he kept on his temper.

Shelby saw that movement, and thanked God that he stopped when he did. She lifted her chin. “Good night, Justin. Thank you for a roof over my head and a place to live.”

His eyelids flickered as she started up the staircase. Looking at her he recalled years of dreams, of remembered delight in just being with her, frustration at having to hold back only to lose her anyway. He still cared. He’d lied to protect his pride, but he cared so much. And he was losing her, all over again.

He wanted to tell her that he hadn’t meant to accuse her of being frigid. He’d wanted her to distraction, and she hadn’t wanted him. That had hurt far more than having her break their engagement, especially when he’d found out that Tom Wheelor was her lover. It had damned near killed him. And here she was throwing it in his teeth, hitting him in his most vulnerable spot. He’d always wondered if she found him revolting physically. That was what made him believe that she’d meant what she told him about not wanting him, about wanting Tom Wheelor instead—that reluctance in her to let him get close to her.

And she was different now. She wasn’t the shy, introverted young woman he’d known six years ago. She was oddly reckless; high-spirited and uninhibited when she forgot herself. But he couldn’t bend. He couldn’t make himself bend enough to tell her what was in his heart, how much he still wanted her, because he didn’t dare trust her again. She’d hurt him too badly. He watched her go up the staircase, his eyes black and soft and full of hunger. He didn’t move until she was out of sight.

Chapter Four (#ulink_14209dec-5495-5d38-a64b-80d9dcb98c74)

Shelby had hoped beyond hope that Justin might still love her. That he might have married her not so much out of pity as out of love. But her wedding day had convinced her that what little emotion had been left in him after years of bitterness was all gone. He still blamed her for what he thought she’d done with Tom Wheelor, and he thought she was frigid.

She didn’t know how to deal with her own fears and his anger. Her marriage was going to be as empty as her life had been. There would be no black-headed little babies to nurse, no soft, sweet loving in the darkness, no shared delight in making a life together. There would be only separate bedrooms and separate lives and Justin’s hunger for vengeance.

The black depression that she’d taken to bed on her wedding night got worse. Justin tolerated her presence, but he was away more often than not. At meals, he spoke to her only when it was necessary, and he never touched her. He was like a polite host instead of a husband. And day by miserable day, Shelby began to feel a new recklessness. While Justin was away one weekend, she went on a white-water rafting race with Abby’s friend Misty Davies. She tried her hand at skydiving. She joined a fencing class. She went back to the old, more reckless days of her adolescence. Justin had never really known her, she thought sometimes. He seemed surprised by the things she enjoyed and a time or two he acted as if her lifestyle bothered him. Well, what had he expected her to do, she fumed, stay at home and arrange flowers? Perhaps that was the image he had of her, that she was a pretty socialite with beauty and no brains.

She’d kept working after the wedding, but Barry Holman insisted that she take a few days off. It wasn’t right, he said, for her to work through her honeymoon. She wanted to laugh at that, and tell him that her husband didn’t want a honeymoon. Justin had come home from his latest trip and had gone straight to the feedlot office with an abrupt and coolly polite greeting. After a few bored hours, Shelby phoned the office, just to see how things were going. She liked her job. She missed working terribly. It was something to do; it helped keep her mind off her marriage and her own inadequacies.

When she called, the poor temporary secretary, Tammy Lester, answered the phone, obviously half out of her mind trying to cope with an impatient, frustrated Barry Holman. So Shelby dressed in a cool white and red summery dress and white high heels and went to work.

The old sedan she drove broke down halfway there and she had to have it towed in to the dealer car lot where she had her mechanical work done.

Once Shelby was at the dealership, as fate would have it, she noticed Abby’s little sports car was there and up for sale. The sight of the car brought back memories. Shelby had driven one like it during six of the blackest months in her life, the time she’d spent in Switzerland after she’d given back Justin’s ring. She’d loved that car, but she’d wrecked it accidentally. The wreck hadn’t dampened her enthusiasm for fast cars, though. Now she wanted one—it appealed to the wild streak in her that had never totally disappeared. It wasn’t a suicidal streak; she just loved a challenge. She liked sports cars and the exhilaration of driving in the fast lane.

Justin didn’t know that Shelby had a wild streak, because he’d accepted the illusion of what she appeared to be rather than wondering what was beneath the surface. Well, he was in for a few shocks, she decided, starting now.

Because the dealer knew that Shelby had just married Justin, he didn’t even ask for a cosigner on the note. He sold her the car outright, with payments she could afford on her own salary.

She parked the vehicle right outside the office, delighting in its new paint job. Abby had had it painted red with white racing stripes just before she traded it for something more sedate. The new colors suited Shelby very well. She sighed over it, delighted that she could afford it and even manage the payments by herself. All her life she’d depended on her father’s money. There was something challenging and very satisfying about taking care of herself financially. She was sorry now that she’d panicked at being on her own and rushed into marrying Justin. She’d hoped for something more than a roof over her head, but that wasn’t going to happen. Justin was taking care of her, just as he’d taken care of Abby, and if he had any lingering desire for her, it didn’t show. After he’d accused her of being frigid, she’d kept out of his way altogether. If only she wasn’t so repressed, she could have told him what the problem was and how frightened she was of intimacy. But it was hopeless. Justin would probably be as embarrassed as she was to talk about it, anyway. So things would just have to rock along as they had been, until one of them broke the silence.

When she got to the office, Barry Holman was pacing the floor while the temporary secretary cried. They both turned as Shelby put her purse in the top drawer of the desk and smiled.

“Can I help?” she asked.

The woman at her desk cried even harder. “He yells,” she wailed, pointing at Barry Holman, who looked furiously angry from his blond head to his big feet.

“Only at incompetents!” he flashed back.

“Now, now,” Shelby soothed. “I’m here. I’ll take care of everything. Tammy, why don’t you make Mr. Holman a cup of coffee while I straighten out whatever’s fouled up, then I’ll show you how to update the files and you can keep busy with that. Okay?”

Tammy smiled, her soft brown eyes quiet. “Okay.”

She got up and Shelby sat down. Her dark brows lifted as Barry Holman glanced at her uncomfortably.

“It’s your vacation,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Why not? Justin is working, why shouldn’t I?”

He frowned. “Well…”

“Tell me what needs to be done, and then I’ll show you my new car.” She grinned. “It was Abby’s, and they let me buy it without even a cosigner.”

“Naturally, considering your husband’s credit line,” he mused. She gave him a strange look, but he ignored it, delighting in his good fortune. “Here, this is what’s giving Tammy fits.”

He produced two scribbled pages of notes on a legal pad that he wanted transcribed and put into English instead of abbreviations and scrawls, and fifty copies run off with different salutations on each.

“Simple, isn’t it?” he said. He glared toward the back of the office. “She cried.”

Shelby wanted to. It was an hour’s work just to translate his handwriting. But she knew how to use the computer’s word-processing program, and Tammy had three simplified tutorials spread out on the desk, none of which would explain the program to a person who’d never used a computer.

“She asked me what these were for.” Barry Holman sighed, picking up one of the diskettes in its jacket. He looked up. “She thought they were negatives.”

Shelby had to bite her lower lip. “She’s never had any computer training,” she reminded him.

“That’s no excuse for not having a brain,” he returned hotly.

“Mr. Holman!” Tammy exclaimed, glaring at him as she came back with three cups of black coffee on a tray. “That was unkind and unfair.”