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

“Didn’t they tell you at the temporary-services agency that computer experience was necessary to do this job?” he grumbled.

“I have computer experience,” Tammy replied with hauteur. “I play games on my brother’s Atari all the time.”

Mr. Holman looked as if he wanted to cry. He ground his teeth together, went back into his office and closed the door.

“I guess I told him.” Tammy grinned wickedly.

There was a loud, feverish, furious, “Damn!” from the vicinity of Mr. Holman’s office. Shelby and Tammy exchanged amused glances.

“They didn’t tell me about the computer,” Tammy confided. “They asked if I had office skills, and I do. I type over a hundred words a minute and take dictation at ninety. But I don’t read Sanskrit,” she whispered, pointing at the scribbling on the legal sheets.

Shelby burst out laughing. It felt so good to laugh, and she thanked God for this job, which was going to save her sanity. She shook her head and, putting the books aside, she began to explain the computer’s operation to Tammy.

After work, she took the long route home. Mr. Holman had relaxed after lunch, and he was tolerating Tammy much better now. In fact, he hadn’t even growled when Shelby had mentioned that it might be economical to have two secretaries in the office because of the backlog of filing and updating the computer’s entries. He’d talked about taking on an associate, and if he hired Tammy full time, he could do it.

Shelby turned the small sports car onto the highway sharply, delighting in its rack-and-pinion steering and easy handling. She gunned it up and up and up, loving the speed, loving the freedom and the wind tearing through her long hair. She felt reckless. As she’d told Justin, she had nothing left to lose. She was going to enjoy her life from now on. Justin could just do his worst.

There was a slow car in front, and she didn’t even brake. She surged around it and barely got back into her lane as a white car sped in the opposite direction. She thought it looked familiar, but she didn’t look in the rearview mirror. It was going toward the feedlot. She passed the turnoff, increasing her speed. She wasn’t ready to go home to her cell just yet.

Calhoun was muttering a prayer as he pulled up in front of the feedlot. That was Abby’s old car, and it had been Shelby at the wheel. He’d barely recognized her in that split second, her face laughing with pleasure at the speed, her hair flying in the wind. She made Abby’s friend Misty Davies look like a safe driver by comparison.

Justin looked up from his desk as Calhoun came in and closed the door behind him. “It’s almost time to go home,” he remarked, glancing at his Rolex. “I didn’t think you were coming back today from Montana.”

Calhoun grinned. “I missed Abby. Speaking of Abby,” he added, perching himself lazily on the edge of his brother’s desk, “a wild woman driving her sports car just came within an inch of running me down.”

“Didn’t Abby sell it?” Justin remarked.

“She certainly did. I insisted.”

“I see.” Justin smiled faintly. He leaned back with his cigarette smoking in his lean fingers. “I gather that some other fool’s wife is driving it?”

“You could put it that way. She was doing eighty if she was doing a mile.” His dark eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you want Shelby to have it?”

There was a shocked silence. “What do you mean, do I want Shelby to have it?” Justin sat up abruptly. “Are you telling me Shelby was driving that sports car?”

“I’m afraid so,” Calhoun said quietly. “You didn’t know?”

Justin’s expression became grim. Shelby wasn’t happy and he knew it. Her most recent behavior was already worrying him, although he was careful to keep his misgivings from Shelby. But purchasing a sports car was going too far. He was going to have to talk to her. He’d avoided confrontations, letting her settle in, keeping his distance while he tried to cope with the anguish of having Shelby in his house when she backed away the minute he came into the room. But this was too much.

He couldn’t let her kill herself. He got up from the desk without even looking at Calhoun, plucked his hat off the hat rack and started for the door. “Was she going toward the house?” he asked curtly.

“The opposite direction,” Calhoun told him. His eyes narrowed. “Justin, what’s going on between the two of you?”

The older man looked at him, black eyes glittering. “My private life is none of your business.”

Calhoun folded his arms. “Abby says Shelby is running wild, and that you’re apparently doing nothing to stop her. Are you that hell-bent on revenge?”

“You make it sound as if she’s suicidal,” Justin said coldly. “She’s not.”

“If she was happy, she wouldn’t be like this,” the younger man persisted. “You’ve got to stop trying to live in the past. It’s time to forget what happened.”

“That’s damned easy for you to say.” Justin’s black eyes flashed. “She threw me over and slept with another man!”

Calhoun stared at him. “You don’t have my track record, but you’re no more a saint than I am, big brother. Suppose Shelby couldn’t accept the women in your past?”

“It’s different with men,” the older man said irritably.

“Is it?”

“She was mine. I was so damned careful never to put a foot wrong with her. I held back and gritted my teeth to keep from scaring her, and she flinched away from me every time I touched her. And all the while she was sleeping with that pasty-faced boy millionaire. How do you think I felt?” he blazed. “And then she told me that I was too poor to suit her expensive tastes, she wanted somebody rich.”

“She didn’t marry him, did she?” Calhoun returned. “She left for Europe and went wild, just as she’s going wild now. She was in a wreck in Switzerland, Justin. In a sports car,” he added, watching the horror grow in his brother’s eyes, “just like the one she’s driving now. She was grieving for you. Even her father realized that, at last.”

Justin fumbled a cigarette into his mouth and lit it. “Nobody ever told me that.”

“When would you ever listen to anything about her?” Calhoun replied. “It’s only in the past few months that you’ve calmed down enough to talk about anything connected with the Jacobses.”

“I wanted her,” Justin ground out. “You can’t imagine how I felt when she broke it off.”

“Yes, I can,” Calhoun replied. “I was there. I know what it was like for you. But you never even considered that Shelby might have had a reason. She tried to explain it once, to tell you why she broke off the engagement. You wouldn’t even listen.”

“What was there to listen to?” Justin asked impatiently. “She’d already told me the truth, in the beginning.”

“I never believed it,” Calhoun replied. “And neither would you have, if you hadn’t been in love for the first time in your life and so damned uncertain about your own ability to keep Shelby. You were always worried about losing her to another man. Even to me. Remember?”

It was hard to argue with the truth. Justin knew he’d been possessive about Shelby. Hell, he still was. But how could he help it? She was a beautiful woman, and he was a plain, unworldly man. He’d never been able to understand why Shelby had stayed with him as long as she had.

“Even now,” Calhoun continued quietly, “it seems to me that you’re trying your best to make her leave you.”

Justin smiled mockingly. “What do you expect me to do, tie her in the cellar?” he asked reasonably. “I can’t make her stay if she doesn’t want to. Hell—” he laughed coldly “—I can’t even touch her. She flinched away from me the one time I tried to make love to her,” he said bluntly, remembering. His eyes went blacker and he looked away. “I can’t get near her. She’s afraid of me that way.”

“How interesting,” Calhoun said, choosing his words, “that such an experienced woman of the world could be afraid of sex. Isn’t it?”

Justin frowned. “What do you mean?”

Calhoun didn’t answer him. He was smiling a little when he started out the door, but Justin couldn’t see the smile. “I’ve got to get home. See you, big brother.” And before Justin could reply, he was gone.

Justin took a minute to get his temper under control. He went out the door behind Calhoun without a word to his secretary, his eyes narrow with concern. Calhoun had delayed him too long. Suppose Shelby wrecked that little car?

He went up and down the road, but he didn’t see any sign of the sports car. Later, he went to the house, and almost went down on his knees with relief when he found it parked at the steps.

He had to force himself to behave normally when his hands were almost shaking from fear that he might find her in a ditch somewhere. He walked into the house, tossing his hat onto the hat rack, and went into the dining room, where Shelby was sitting in a chair halfway down the long cherry-wood table, talking to Maria about some new recipe.

She looked toward the doorway, but when she saw him, all the laughter and animation went out of her like a light that was suddenly turned off. She was wearing a red and white dress and her hair was down around her shoulders in a pretty, dark, waving tangle. The wind, he thought absently, tearing through her hair in the convertible.

“I’ve traded cars,” she said defiantly. “How do you like it? It was Abby’s. You don’t even have to cosign with me, I can make the payments from my salary.”

Justin glanced at Maria, who knew the look and made herself scarce. He sat down at the head of the table, lit a cigarette and leaned back in the chair to stare intently at Shelby. “The last thing in the world you need is a sports car. You already drive too damned fast.”