by Diana Palmer
“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 my dead body!” Calhoun raged, moving closer. “She has parties that last for days!”
“…just try to communicate…” Justin continued.
“She likes people! She’s a socialite!” Abby’s eyes were almost black now as she clenched her fists by her side and glared up at Calhoun.
“…you just might…” Justin went on.
“She’s a featherbrained, overstimulated eccentric!” Calhoun retorted.
“…COME TO AN UNDERSTANDING!” Justin thundered, rising out of his chair with blazing eyes.
They both froze at the unfamiliar sound of his raised voice. He never shouted, not even when he was at his angriest.
“Damn, I hurt my ears,” Justin sighed, putting his palm to one while he glared at his brother and Abby. “Now, listen, this isn’t getting you anywhere. Besides that, any minute Maria and Lopez are going to come running in here thinking someone’s been murdered.” Just as he finished speaking, two robed, worried elderly people appeared, wide-eyed and apprehensive, in the doorway. “Now see what you’ve done,” Justin grumbled.
“What is all this noise about?” Maria asked, pushing back her long salt-and-pepper hair and glancing worriedly around the room. “We thought something terrible had happened.”
“¡Ay de mí! Another rumble.” Lopez shook his head and grinned at Abby. “What have you done now, niñita?”
She glared at him. “Nothing,” she said tersely. “Not one thing—”
“She went to a male strip show,” Calhoun volunteered.
“I did not!” she protested, red faced.
“What is the world coming to?” Maria shook her head, put her hands to it and went out mumbling in Spanish, followed by a chuckling Lopez. The couple, married more than thirty years, had been with the family for two generations. They were family, not just cook and former horse wrangler.
“But, I didn’t!” Abby called after them. She darted a speaking glance at Calhoun, who was perched on a corner of Justin’s desk looking elegant and imperturbable. “Now see what you’ve done!”
“Me?” Calhoun asked coolly. “Hell, you’re the one with the lurid curiosity.”
“Lurid?” She gaped at him. “Go ahead, tell me you’ve never been to a female strip show.”
Calhoun got up, looking uncomfortable. “That’s different.”
“Oh, sure it is. Women are sex objects but men aren’t, right?”
“She’s got you there,” Justin said.
Calhoun glared at both of them, turned on his heel and left the room. Abby gazed after him smugly, feeling as if she’d won at least a minor victory. There was little consolation in her triumph, though. Calhoun had been harder to get along with than a bone-dry snake at a poison water hole lately. She didn’t know how or what, but she was going to have to do something about the situation, and soon.
Chapter Two
Abby arranged to miss breakfast the next morning. Calhoun’s attitude irritated her. He didn’t want her himself, but he was so possessive that she couldn’t get near another man. His attitude was frustrating at best. He had no idea how she felt, of course. She was careful to hide her feelings for him. A man like Calhoun, who was rich and moderately handsome, could have any woman he wanted. He wouldn’t want a plain, unsophisticated woman like Abby. She knew that, and it hurt. It made her rebellious, too. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life grieving for a man she could never have. It was far better to look in other directions. But how could she, when Calhoun refused to let go?
She drove several miles from the r
anch to the office at the mammoth feedlot in the small red British sports car she’d talked Justin into cosigning for when she’d graduated from the local vocational school. Because of the attention Calhoun and Justin paid to hygiene, there wasn’t as much odor as most feedlots generated, which surprised a lot of visiting cattlemen. Abby had once gone with Calhoun to tour some other feedlots and had come out with a new respect for the one back home. The Ballenger brothers’ operation was a little more expensive to run, but there were hardly any cattle deaths here because of disease. And that was a prime consideration. A rancher who contracted with the feedlot to fatten his cattle for slaughter didn’t want to lose the animals to disease.
Since Abby was early, the office was deserted. There were three other women who worked here, all married, and they helped keep records on the various herds of feeder cattle being fattened for ranches all over the country. There were contracts to sort and file, records on each lot of cattle to keep, and ongoing vaccination and management reports. There was the constant hum of the heavy equipment used to feed the cattle and to remove waste to underground storage to be used later to fertilize pastures where grain was grown. The phones rang constantly and the computers had to be programmed. There was a payroll department, as well as a salesman, a staff veterinarian and a number of cowboys who moved cattle in and out and saw to feeding them and maintaining the machinery that kept it all going. Abby hadn’t realized until she’d come to work here how big the operation was.
The sheer size of it was staggering, even for Texas. Fenced areas filled with steers stretched to the horizon, and the dust was formidable, as was the smell, which was inevitable even when sanitary management practices were employed.
The Ballengers didn’t own a packing plant—that wasn’t legal, just as it wasn’t legal for packers to own custom feedlots. But the brothers did own a third of their feeder cattle, and the other two-thirds were custom fed. Abby had grown up hearing terms like profit margin, break-even prices and ration formulation. Now she understood what the words meant.
She put her purse under her desk and turned on her computer. There were several new contracts waiting to be filled in for new lots of four-footed customers.
The feedlot took in feeder cattle weighing six hundred to seven hundred pounds and fed them up to their slaughter weight of one thousand to eleven hundred pounds. The Ballengers had a resident nutritionist and an experienced stockman who handled the twice-daily feeding routine with its highly automated machinery. They had the feeding down to such a fine art that the Ballenger operation was included in the top five percent of feedlots nationally. And that was a real honor, considering all the things that could go wrong, from falling cattle prices to unexpected epidemics to drought.
Abby was fascinated by the workings of it all. There were thousands of bawling steers and heifers out there. There were always big cattle trucks coming and going and men yelling and herding and vaccinating and dehorning, and the noise could get deafening despite the soundproofed office walls. Visiting cattlemen came to see their investments. Those who didn’t come were sent monthly progress reports. Daily records were kept on everything.
Abby fed the first contract into her electronic typewriter, trying to decipher the spidery scrawl of Caudell Ayker, the feedlot office manager. He was second only to Calhoun in the chain of command, because Calhoun’s name went in as manager. He and Justin owned the feedlot jointly, but Justin held the lion’s share of the stock. Justin preferred money management to meeting with clients, so Calhoun did most of the day-to-day management on the feedlot. That was one reason Abby loved the job. It meant she got to see a lot of Calhoun.
When Calhoun walked in the door in a dashing pale tan suit, Abby hit the wrong key, covering the contract with a flock of Xs. She grimaced, backspacing to correct her mistake, and then discovered that she couldn’t do it. The correction was too little, too late. Irritated, she ripped the paper out of the machine, put a clean sheet in and started all over again.
“Having problems this morning, honey?” Calhoun asked with his usual cheerful smile, despite the way they’d parted in anger the night before. He never carried grudges. It was one of his virtues.
“Just the usual frustrations, boss,” she answered with a blithe smile.
He searched her eyes. They had such a peculiar light in them lately. He found her more and more disturbing, especially when she wore close-fitting suits like the blue one she had on today. It clung lovingly to every line of her tall, slender body, outlining the thrust of her high breasts, the smooth curve of her hips. He took a slow breath, trying to hide his growing attraction to her. It was odd how she’d managed to get under his skin so easily.
“You look nice,” he said unexpectedly.
She felt color blush her cheeks, and she smiled. “Thank you.”
He hesitated without knowing why, his dark eyes caressing her face, her mouth. “I don’t like your hair like that,” he added quietly. “I like it long and loose.”
She was having a hard time breathing. Her eyes worked up his broad chest to his face and were trapped by his steady gaze. Like electricity, something burst between them, linking them, until she had to drag her eyes down again. Her legs actually trembled.
“I’d better get back to work,” she said unsteadily, fiddling with the paper.
“We both had,” he replied. He turned and walked into his office without knowing how he got there. Once inside, he sat down behind his big oak desk and stared through the open door at Abby until the buzz of the intercom reminded him of the day’s business.
Things went smoothly for a little while, but it was too much to expect that the serenity would last. Just before lunch, one of the cattlemen who had feeder steers in the lot came by to check on them and got an eyeful of Abby.
“You sure are a pretty little thing,” the man said, grinning down at the picture she made in her neat blue knit suit and white blouse with her hair in a French twist and a minimum of makeup on her pretty face. He was about Calhoun’s age.
She flushed. The man wasn’t as handsome as Calhoun, but he was pleasant-looking and he seemed harmless. “Thank you,” she said demurely, and smiled at him, just as she smiled at other customers. But he took it as an invitation.
He sat down on the corner of her desk, giving her a purely masculine scrutiny with his pale blue eyes. “I’m Greg Myers,” he introduced himself. “I just stopped in on my way to Oklahoma City, and I thought I’d take Calhoun to lunch if he’s in. But I think I’d rather take you instead.” He lowered his voice, then reached out unexpectedly and touched Abby’s cheek, ignoring her indrawn breath. “You pretty little thing. You look like a tea rose, ripe for the picking.”
Abby just gaped at him. All her reading and imagining hadn’t prepared her for this kind of flirtation with an experienced man. She was out of her depth and frankly stunned.
“Come on, now,” Myers drawled, caressing her cheek. “Say you will. We’ll have a nice long lunch and get to know each other.”
While Abby was searching for the right words to extricate herself from the unwelcome situation, Calhoun came out of his office and stood directly behind Mr. Myers, looking suddenly murderous.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for me,” Calhoun said tersely. “Abby’s my ward, and she doesn’t date older men.”
“Oops.” Myers stood up, grinning sheepishly. “Sorry, old son, I didn’t know.”
“No harm done,” Calhoun said carelessly, but his eyes were dark and cold and dangerous-looking. “Let’s go. Abby, I’ll want the latest progress report on his cattle when we get back.”
Only a few months before, Abby might have had some snappy reply to that, or she might have jumped back at Calhoun for acting so possessive. But now she just looked at him, feeling helpless and hungry and awash on a wave of longing because he was acting jealous.
He seemed to stop breathing, too. His dark eyes searched hers, aware of her embarrassment, her confusion. He let his gaze fall to her mouth and wat
ched her lips part suddenly, and his body reacted in a way that shocked him.
“Lunch. Now.” Calhoun ushered the other cattleman to the door. “If you’ll get in the car, I’ll just get my hat and be right with you,” he told the man with a glued-on smile and a pat on the shoulder. “That’s right, you go ahead….” He turned to Abby, his expression unreadable. “I want to talk to you.” Calhoun took her arm and pulled her up, leading her into his office without a word. He closed the door, and the way he looked at her made her feel threatened and wildly excited all at the same time.
“Mr. Myers is waiting….” she faltered, disturbed by the darkness of his eyes as they met hers.
He moved toward her, and she backed up until his desk stopped her, her eyes riveted to his. Maybe he was going to make a declaration!
His chin lifted then, and it was anger that glinted in his dark eyes, not possessiveness. “Listen,” he said curtly, “Grey Myers has had three wives. He currently has at least one mistress. He’s forgotten more than you’ve had time to learn. I don’t want you to learn that kind of lesson with a professional Romeo.”
“I’m going to learn it with someone eventually,” she said, swallowing hard. Her body felt odd, taut and tingling all at once, because his was close enough that she could feel its warm strength.
“I know that,” he said impatiently, and his face hardened. “But I’d just as soon you didn’t join a queue. Myers is no serious suitor. He’s a playboy with a smooth manner, and he’d have you screaming for help five minutes after you were alone with him.”
So that was it. More big-brother responsibility. He wasn’t jealous, he was upset because his protective instincts had been aroused. She stared at the steady rise and fall of his chest in dull acceptance. Stupid me, she thought miserably, wishing for a star again.
“I wasn’t trying to lead him on,” she said finally. “I just smiled at him, like I smile at everyone—even you. I guess he thought I was sending out smoke signals, but I wasn’t, honestly.”