by Diana Palmer
The mind boggled at what he did like and she realized that he’d been curbing his instincts, holding back to make things easier for her. “Justin…”
“Shhh.” He kissed her mouth softly. “Go to sleep. You’re arousing me.”
“I’m sorry.”
He kissed her again and rolled over onto his stomach with a long sigh. “Good night, baby doll.”
“Good night, Justin.”
But she didn’t sleep for a long time. There were a thousand questions buzzing around in her mind, and only a few answers. At least she’d gotten one big hurdle out of the way, and Justin still wanted her. That was something. Even if he couldn’t love her, he might grow to have some kind of affection for her again. He couldn’t blame her totally about the past, since he knew she was still innocent. Or could he? It occurred to her then that he might still want vengeance for the bitterness and humiliation he’d suffered. That was a sobering thought, and it kept her awake for a very long time.
Chapter Seven
Justin could hardly believe what he saw when he woke up the next morning. He was so used to the dreams of Shelby ending at dawn. But here she was, with her long, dark hair on his pillow, her soft, elfin features relaxed in sleep, her mouth full and sweet and tempting.
He lay there, just watching her, for a long time. He’d been lonely without her. More lonely than he’d realized until they were speaking again. When they were dating, he’d dreamed of having Shelby in his bed, relaxed in sleep, and doing just this—watching her sleep. She couldn’t know how precious she was to him, or that last night had been a revelation, a culmination of every longing he’d ever had, even though he hadn’t been able to finish what he’d started. Just finding her virginal was a shock of pure delight.
He didn’t even start to think about why she’d deceived him. He was too enraptured by the sight of her lovely face in sleep, by her dark head lying so trustingly on his pillow.
When she didn’t stir, he smiled gently and bent to brush her lips with his.
He saw her long black eyelashes flutter and then lift. She sighed, saw him and smiled, a new softness in her pale green eyes.
“Good morning,” she whispered.
“Good morning.” He kissed her again. “Did you sleep well?”
“I’ve never slept so well in all my life. And you?”
“I could say the same.” He pulled the sheet back over her, tucking it in. “You don’t have to get up yet.”
“Are you going to work this early?” she murmured with a sleepy glance at the clock.
“I have to fly up to Dallas, honey,” he said, rising. “A new customer. I’ll be home by dark.”
“I don’t have to be at work until nine,” she said with a smug smile.
“I wish you’d give up that job,” he said, frowning down at her.
“Justin, I like it,” she protested, but not vehemently.
“I don’t like having you so handy to Barry Holman,” he murmured.
She stared at him. “Maybe he is a womanizer, but not with me,” she told him. “He’s a very nice man and he’s good to me.”
Justin turned away. It wouldn’t do to have her know how jealous he was of her handsome boss. “I’ve got to get a shower.”
She watched him rummage in his drawer for underwear and head toward the bathroom, her eyes hungry on his bare torso. It seemed so unreal, the intimacy that they’d shared the night before. She blushed just remembering it, but he was gone before he saw the scarlet flush on her cheeks.
She wondered if she should have told him about Tammy Lester and the way Mr. Holman seemed so interested in her. She might do that later.
But she dozed off while he was in the shower, and when she woke up again, he was dressed in a pale gray suit that clung lovingly to the powerful lines of his tall body, and he was straightening his red-and-gray-striped tie in the mirror.
“Is Maria up this early to feed you?” she murmured sleepily.
“I’ll have breakfast on the plane.” He turned, digging into his pockets, and tossed a set of car keys on the bed beside her. “Take the T-bird to work. Your transportation problem will have to wait until tomorrow.”
She sat up, holding the keys. “But how will you get to the airport?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I wonder if my heart will take all this concern?” he asked.
Her soft eyes ran over him and then the night before came back with alarming clarity. She saw him the way he’d been downstairs with her, felt again the intimacy…
“My God, what a scarlet blush,” he murmured, loving her reactions. “I suppose you’d get under the bed if I started reminiscing?”
“You bet I would,” she said with her last bit of pride. Then she ruined it all by smiling and hiding her face in her hands. “Oh, Justin,” she whispered, remembering.
He sat down on the bed beside her, drawing her forehead against his chest. He smelled of cologne, and just being close to him made her weak and giddy.
“Do you feel like going to work?” he asked then, tilting her eyes up to his. “You don’t have to.”
“I know.” She sighed gently. “But I’m only sore. I was more scared than hurt in the first place.”
“You weren’t the only one,” he murmured. “I’ve got five new gray hairs this morning thanks to you.”
She reached up and touched his neatly combed hair at the temple, where silver hairs were threaded through the black ones. “I’m sorry. I was running away, I guess. You seem to hate me from time to time.”
“Sometimes I thought I did,” he confessed, and he didn’t smile. “Six years is a long time to brood. I believed you, about Wheelor.” He slid his hand under her nape. The fingers contracted suddenly, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to pin her forehead to his jacket. “Why?” he asked in a deceptively soft voice. “Why lie to me about it? Wasn’t breaking the engagement enough, without ripping my pride to shreds, as well?”
And there it was, she thought, the bitterness seeping through. He was never going to get over what she’d done, and the fact of her innocence physically didn’t seem to make much difference. It certainly wasn’t going to stop him from blaming her for the past, even if he wanted her desperately. He’d always wanted her, but that wasn’t enough anymore. Her eyes went misty with sadness. He’d told her last night that he’d been six years without a woman. That showed how bitter he was, that he didn’t even want women anymore. But he wanted her, and she could imagine that it made him forget the past when he was close to her. Years of celibacy would probably make a man forget a lot when he was in the throes of passion.
Her world crumbled. She closed her eyes with a small sigh.
“I told you why last night,” she said. “It was Dad’s idea.”
“And I told you before, your father liked me. He did everything in the world to help me. That night he and Wheelor came to see me, he even cried, Shelby.”
Her eyes lifted to his. “It all goes back to trust, and I know how little of that you have for me,” she said. “Not that it’s all your fault, Justin. I didn’t help things by deliberately lying to you in the beginning. But you don’t trust me at all.”
His jaw tautened. “I can’t,” he said. He let go of her all at once and got to his feet, moving away. “I want you, you know that. But I can’t let you close. A woman who’ll betray a man once will do it twice.”
“I’m still a virgin,” she reminded him uncomfortably.
“That isn’t what I meant. You lied to me. You sold me out.” He took a deep breath and pulled out a cigarette. “I’m not even sure you wouldn’t do it now with that slick boss of yours.” He glanced at her set face, his eyes glittering. “It’s easy to see how little encouragement he’d need from you, and he’s good-looking, isn’t he, honey? There’s nothing plain about him.”
> “You aren’t plain,” she muttered.
“How perceptive of you to know I was talking about myself,” he snapped. “Stay out of trouble while I’m gone, and don’t put your foot down on my accelerator.”
“I won’t touch your precious car, if you’d rather,” she shot back, her green eyes flashing. “I’ll take a cab, and let all of Jacobsville see me do it!”
He glared at her and she glared back. And all at once, he started to grin, then to smile, and finally laughter burst from his set lips and glittered in his black eyes.
“Hellcat,” he murmured.
“Savage,” she threw right back.
He tossed the cigarette into the big ashtray on his dresser and moved toward her purposefully. She threw off the covers and headed for the other side of the bed, but he was too quick. Before she was halfway over, he had her flat on her back and had pinned her with the length of his big, hard-muscled body.
“That’s it, struggle,” he encouraged with a groan. “My God, can you feel what’s happening to me?”
She could. She stopped, her cheeks like red flags.
“Well, the world won’t end,” he said with soft amusement. “You know how I feel when I’m aroused, and last night we didn’t have several layers of clothes between us.”
“Stop!” She buried her face in his throat, clinging, trembling with embarrassment and excitement.
“You baby,” he chided, but the words were tender. He rolled over onto his back, pulling her over with him, his dark eyes searching her pale ones as she poised over his chest. He looked down at the deep cleavage of her pajama jacket and the faint swell of her breasts above it where they were pressed against him. “Is this better?” he murmured.
“You’re a horrible man, and I don’t think I want to live with you anymore,” she said, pouting.
“Yes, you do.” He coaxed her mouth down to his by pulling a strand of her long, silky hair. “Kiss me.”
“You’ll rumple your suit,” she said.
“I’ve got a lot of other suits, but I want to be kissed. Come on, I’ve got a plane to catch.”
She gave in to the gentle teasing. All the arguing was forgotten the minute her soft mouth touched his hard one. She felt his hand sliding into her hair, pulling gently, and her lips parted to the soft, intense searching of his warm mouth.
“After you see the doctor, we’ll have to wait a couple of days before we can finish what we started last night,” he whispered into her mouth. “So don’t start worrying about that and getting nervous all over again, okay?” His dark eyes searched hers. “I won’t rush you, Shelby. This time, it’s going to be exactly the way you want it.”
She kissed his eyes, gently closing the eyelids, lingering on the thick lashes in a rage of tenderness. She wanted to whisper that she loved him more than her own life, that everything she’d done that had hurt him had been, in the beginning, only to protect him. But he didn’t trust her yet, and she was going to have to bring him around before she could share her deepest secrets with him.
“Will you believe me when I say that I’m not afraid of you anymore?” she whispered against his lips.
“Honey, that’s pretty hard to miss, considering the position we’re in,” he whispered back.
“What positi…Justin!”
He laughed as he flipped her onto her back and slid over her, nibbling warmly at her lips. “This position,” he whispered. “Kiss me goodbye and I’ll go.”
“I’ve already done…that…several times,” she whispered, the words punctuated with soft, clinging kisses.
“Do it several more and I’ll work on getting my legs to support me,” he murmured drily. “My knees are pretty weak right now.”
“So are mine.” She linked her arms around his neck and bit his lower lip. “You’re mine now,” she said quietly, her eyes holding his. “Don’t you go off and flirt with other women.”
Her possessiveness made him ache. He slid his hands under her back and lifted her up, taking his time as he bent hungrily to her open mouth. He kissed her with growing insistence until his own body forced him to either stop or go on.
He rolled away reluctantly and got to his feet, taut with pride as he looked down at his handiwork. She was sprawled in delicious abandon on the sheets, her hair like a halo around her, her mouth soft and red and swollen from his kisses, her eyes dreamy with desire.
“If I had a photograph of you that looked the way you look now,” he said huskily, “I’d walk around bent double every time I looked at it. I’ve never seen a woman as beautiful as you are.”
“I’m not even pretty,” she chided, smiling. “But I’m glad you like me the way I am. I like you, too.”
He drew in a slow breath. “I’d better get out of here while I can. It helps to remember your condition.”
She averted her eyes to the sheets, feeling nervous.
“You’d really have let me go on, wouldn’t you?” he asked, his voice deep with feeling. “Even knowing how bad it was going to hurt you, you wouldn’t have stopped me.”
“I wanted you to know,” she whispered.
“It took a lot of courage.” He frowned, watching her. “Did it hurt you when I accused you of being frigid?”
“A little,” she said, trying to spare him.
He sighed angrily. “A lot, I imagine. Try to remember that I didn’t know the truth, and don’t hate me for it. There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, either, Shelby.” He turned then, retrieving his cigarette from the ashtray. “I’d better get a move on,” he said after a cursory glance at the thin gold watch on his wrist. “No speeding,” he cautioned from the door.
The remark intrigued her, but she knew he wasn’t going to tell her any more than he wanted her to know. “All right. Have a good trip.”
“I’ll do my best.”
He didn’t say goodbye. He gave her one last glance and closed the door behind him. Shelby watched him leave with mixed emotions. Sometimes she wished she could read his mind, because that was the only way she was ever going to know how he really felt about her. She wondered if he knew himself.
She got up and dressed and drove the Thunderbird to the office, taking a minute to make an appointment that afternoon with Dr. Sims. By the time she got home, she was worn out from the combination of an unexpectedly long day trying to keep peace between an irritable Mr. Holman and a venomous Tammy Lester, and having the rest of the surgery done—which was embarrassing as well as uncomfortable, because she had to tell Dr. Sims why she needed it.
But a cup of fresh coffee and a nice supper soothed her. She went upstairs to her own room, wishing she had the right to go straight to Justin’s. But he hadn’t said anything about the sleeping arrangements, so apparently he’d thought of last night as a temporary thing because of what had happened.
She went to sleep early. She didn’t hear the car come in, or Justin’s footsteps heading toward his own bedroom expectantly. She didn’t hear the muffled curse when he found his bed empty, or the shocked silence when he found Shelby asleep in her own.
He closed the door firmly and went to his room, dreams going black in his eyes. He’d expected her to be waiting up, or at least sleeping in his bed. But she hadn’t, and he didn’t know if she’d just been uncertain about what to do or if she was putting a wall between them because of the argument they’d had that morning.
Shelby, blissfully unaware of what had happened after she was asleep, went down to breakfast the next morning full of hope. Only to find a cold, taciturn Justin at the table looking at her as if she’d just tried to shoot him.
She stopped suddenly in the doorway. Her long denim skirt swung around her calves, her hands going nervously to the blue cotton blouse and scarf she was wearing with it.
“Good morning,” she said, faltering.
“Hell, no, it isn’t,” he said.
Her eyebrows arched. “It isn’t?”
He lifted his coffee cup and sipped the rich black liquid. “I’ll have one of the boys drive you to work,” he said. “May I have the keys to the Thunderbird?”
She reached into her skirt pocket and put them beside him on the table, but he caught her hand before she could move away.
He looked up, his expression brooding. “Why did you go back to your own room?”
She sighed and then smiled. “Because I didn’t know if you still wanted me to sleep with you,” she said sadly. “You were half-mad when you left, and you didn’t say anything.” Her shoulders lifted and fell. “I didn’t want to impose.”
“My God, honey, we’re married,” he said huskily. “You couldn’t impose on me if you tried.”
She stared down at the big, lean hand holding hers. Its warm strength made her tingle. “You’ve been very remote since we’ve been married.”
“I think you’re beginning to understand why, though, aren’t you?” he asked softly.
She looked down into his dark, quiet eyes. She nodded. “You…want me.”
“That’s part of it,” he agreed without elaborating. “Did you see Dr. Sims?”
Her blush gave him the answer even before she nodded.
He drew her down in the chair beside him. “I’ll drive you to work,” he said and pushed a platter of eggs toward her.
She smiled, but she didn’t let him see her do it.
Justin had calmed down by the time they got to Jacobsville, but Barry Holman set him off again immediately when they reached the office. The handsome blond lawyer was outside on the street, looking all around, and to an onlooker, it might have appeared as if he was waiting impatiently for Shelby. To Justin, unfortunately, that’s exactly what it looked like.
Holman’s head lifted when Justin pulled the Thunderbird up at the curb, and his face lit up. He smiled with exaggerated pleasure and rushed to meet Shelby with a cursory nod to Justin, whose expression turned murderous.