Long Tall Texans: Justin Part 2

He shuddered with unbearable need, his mouth rough as it pressed against hers. His body slid over her, pus.h.i.+ng her into the cus.h.i.+ons, heavy and hard and intimate. She felt his sudden loss of control with real fear. She knew what could happen, and that they were engaged. He might not try very hard to stop.

"Justin!"

"I'm not going to take your chast.i.ty, Shelby," he breathed into her mouth. His brows drew together in agonized pleasure as his hands slid over her hips. "Oh, G.o.d, honey, don't hold back with me. Let me love you. Kiss me back..."

The words died against her soft mouth. He kissed her with growing hunger, his loss of control evident in the urgent movement of his hips against hers, his hands suddenly searching as they moved over her soft b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Then his knee moved between her legs and she panicked.

She began to fight him, afraid of the unfamiliar intimacy that was beyond her experience. She pushed at him. All at once, he seemed to feel her resistance. He lifted his head, his eyes blazing with black hunger, and just stared at her for an instant, disoriented. Then when he saw the rejection, felt it in the stiffness of her body, he suddenly tore away from her and got to his feet. By the time she was able to breathe again, he was standing several feet away smoking a cigarette. Several tense minutes pa.s.sed before he turned around again to pour brandy into two snifters. He gave her one and smiled mockingly at the way she avoided touching him.

He turned away from her to stare out the window while he sipped his brandy. His back was ramrod stiff. "We'll sleep together when we're married," he said. "I hope you know that I don't plan on separate rooms."

"I know." She sipped her own drink with shaking hands, wanting to explain, but his att.i.tude was hardly welcoming. "Justin...I'm a virgin."

"Don't you think I knew that?" he asked tersely. He looked at her and his expression was a cold and totally unreadable mask, hiding emotions she couldn't even guess at. "My G.o.d, we're going to be married. Do I have to stop touching you altogether until the ring's on your finger?"

She started to speak and lowered her eyes to her gla.s.s. She stiffened. "Perhaps...it might be wiser."

"Considering my lack of control, I suppose you mean." He said it icily, in a tone she'd never heard him use. He drank his brandy and after a while, the anger seemed to go out of him, to Shelby's relief. He didn't apologize, but he went to her and took her hand gently, smiling at her as if nothing at all had happened. They drank brandy, and he taught her a Mexican drinking song as the aftereffects of the evening and the potency of the aged brandy began to work on them. Maria and Lopez had chanced to come home then from a party and Justin had taken Shelby home. Maria had been raging at him in Spanish, and Shelby only found out later that the song he'd been teaching her wasn't one she could ever sing in public.

She'd looked forward to the wedding with joy and also with apprehension. Justin's pa.s.sion had unsettled her and made her doubt her ability to match him. He was experienced and she wasn't, and she was more afraid than ever of having him make love to her when he was totally out of control.

But there was no cause for alarm, because there was no more heated lovemaking. The most ardent move he made for days afterward was to kiss her cheek or hold hands with her, and all the while, those black eyes wandered over her with the strangest searching expression. She relaxed and began to enjoy his company again, losing her nervousness since he wasn't making any more demands on her.

Then, suddenly, her father had put an end to it. Give up Justin, he'd demanded, or watch him lose everything he had. Justin would end up hating her, her father had said. He'd blame her for making him poor and their marriage wouldn't stand a chance. His pride alone would kill it.

She'd been very young and unworldly, and her father was an old hand at getting what he wanted. He'd enlisted aid from Tom Wheelor, who was motivated by the thought of a beneficial merger. And she'd done what her father asked and lied to Justin, admitted to having an affair with Tom, to wanting wealth and position, things that Justin couldn't give her.

So long ago, she thought. So much pain. She'd only been protecting Justin, trying to spare him the agony of losing everything he and his family had worked so long and so hard to achieve. But in the process, she'd sacrificed her own happiness. She had only herself to blame for Justin's cold att.i.tude. And not only did she blame herself for her betrayal, but she also hadn't been honest with him about the reasons she'd been afraid to let him touch her.

Now he was going to marry her out of pity, not out of love. And, too, there was always his wish for revenge. She didn't know how she was going to live with him, but only proximity was going to change his mind about her. And living with him would be so sweet. Even though she couldn't be the kind of woman he needed, it was all of heaven to be near him. Maybe one day she'd find the courage to tell him the truth about herself, to make him understand.

All her doubts were back. But she'd given her word to go through with the wedding, and she couldn't back down now. She was going to have to make the best of it, and hope that Justin's thirst for revenge wasn't prompting his decision to marry her.

Chapter Three.

Abby was enlisted to help Shelby with the wedding preparations. Shelby had always liked the Ballenger brothers' ward. Abby seemed to understand so well what was going on between Justin and his ex-fiancee.

"I don't imagine Justin is making it easy for you," Abby said while they addressed envelopes for the invitations that they'd just picked up from the printer.

Shelby brushed back a strand of dark hair, sighing gently. "He feels sorry for me," she said with a faint smile. "And maybe he's bent on revenge. But I'm afraid that's all he's got to give me."

"He seemed to be coming around pretty well the night we all went to that square dance and Calhoun spent most of it dancing with you," Abby recalled, tongue in cheek. It was easy to laugh about the past now, although she and Justin had been devastated at the time.

Shelby cleared her throat. "Justin had enough to say to me when we danced. Afterward, I guess he gave Calhoun the devil, if his expression was anything to go by. He was mad."

"Mad!" Abby laughed. Her blue-gray eyes searched Shelby's. "He went home and got drunk. Worse," she confessed ruefully, "he got me drunk, too. When Calhoun got back from taking you home, we were sprawled on the sofa together trying to figure out a way to get up and lock him out of the house."

Shelby's eyes glistened with amused light. "Abby!"

"Oh, it gets even better," she added. "Justin taught me this horribly obscene Spanish drinking song..."

Shelby blushed, remembering the first time she'd heard that song. "He taught it to me, too, the night we got engaged, and we were just starting to sing it when Maria came in and was furious."

Abby finished one of the envelopes and put an invitation in it, sealing it absently while she studied Shelby's reflective expression. "Justin never got over you, you know."

Shelby's eyes lifted. "He never got over what I did, you mean. He's so unbending, Abby. And I can't blame him for the way he feels. At the time, I lacerated his pride."

"Why?"

The other woman only smiled. "I thought I was saving him, you see," she said quietly. "My father didn't want a cowboy for a son-in-law. He had a rich man all earmarked for me, a financially advantageous marriage. But I wouldn't play along, and when he found out I'd agreed to marry Justin, he set out to destroy the relations.h.i.+p." She turned a sealed envelope in her hands. "I never realized how ruthless my father could be until then. He threatened to ruin Justin if I didn't go along." She smoothed the envelope as she remembered the bitterness. "I didn't believe him, so I called his bluff. The bank foreclosed on the feedlot and the Ballenger boys almost lost everything."

"It was a long time ago," Abby said, touching her hand gently. "The feedlot is prosperous now. In fact, it was then. Wasn't it?"

"My father promised that if I went along with his proposition, he'd pull a few strings and talk the bank out of putting the place on public auction. Justin told me about the bankruptcy proceedings," she added. "He was devastated. He even talked about calling off the engagement, so I figured I was going to lose him anyway and it might as well be to his advantage. At the time," she added, remembering how distant Justin had been, how standoffish, "I remember thinking that he'd changed his mind about marrying me. I was pretty reserved." She didn't enlarge on that, but she remembered clearly the way Justin had reacted when she'd struggled away from him on the sofa. But surely that hadn't hurt his pride. He must have been pretty experienced.

Abby leaned forward. "What did your father do?"

"He produced Tom Wheelor, my new fiance, and took him to meet Justin. He told Justin," she continued dully, "that I'd only been dating him to make Tom propose, because Tom was rich and Justin wasn't. He made out that it was all my fault, that I was the culprit. Justin believed him. He believed that I'd deliberately led him on, just to get Tom jealous enough to marry me. And then Dad told Justin that Tom and I were lovers, and Tom confirmed it."

Abby lifted her eyes. "You weren't," she said with certainty.

Shelby smiled. "Bless you for seeing the truth. Of course we weren't. But in order to save Justin's fledgling business, I had to go along with my father's lie. So when Justin called me and asked me for the truth, I told him what I'd been coached to say." She lowered her gaze to the carpet. "I told him that I wanted money, that I'd never wanted him, that it was all a game I'd been playing to amuse myself while I brought Tom in line." Her eyes closed. "I don't think I'll ever be able to forget the silence on the line, or the way he hung up, so quietly. A few weeks later, all the talk of bankruptcy died down, so I guess Dad convinced the bank that the Ballengers were a good risk. Tom Wheelor and I went around together for a while, to convince Justin, and then I went to Europe for six months and did my best to get myself killed on ski jumps all over Switzerland. Eventually I came back, but something in me died because of what my father did. He realized it at last, just before I lost him. He even apologized. But it was much too late."

"If you could just make Justin listen..." Abby sighed.

"He won't. He can't forgive me, Abby. It was like a public execution. Everybody knew that I'd jilted him for a richer man. You know how he hates gossip. That destroyed his pride."

Abby grimaced. "He must have realized that your father didn't approve of him."

"Oh, that was the beauty of it. My father welcomed Justin into the family with open arms and made a production about how proud he was going to be of his new son." She laughed bitterly. "Even when he went to Justin with Tom, my father played his part to perfection. He was almost in tears at the callous way I'd treated poor Justin."

"But why? Just for a merger? Didn't he care about your happiness?"

"My father was an empire builder," she said simply. "He let nothing get in the way of business, especially not the children. Ty never knew," she added. "He'd have been furious if he'd had any inkling, but it was part of the bargain that I couldn't tell Ty, either."

"Haven't you ever told Ty the truth?"

"It didn't seem necessary," Shelby replied. "Ty is a loner. It's hard even for me to talk to him, to get close to him. I think that may be why he's never married. He can't open up to people. Dad was hard on him. Even harder than he was on me. He ridiculed Ty and browbeat him most of our childhood. He grew up tough because he had to be, to survive his home life."

"I never knew. I like Ty," Abby said with a smile. "He's a very special man."

Shelby smiled back. She didn't tell Abby that Ty had been infatuated with her. And on top of losing his entire heritage and having to go to work for someone else, losing his chance with Abby was just the last straw. Ty had left for Arizona and his new job without a voiced regret. Perhaps the change would do him good.

Mrs. Simpson brought in a tray of cake and coffee and the three women sat and talked about the wedding until Abby had to leave. Shelby hadn't told anyone what Justin had said about her dress. But the next day she went into Jacobsville to the small boutique that one of her childhood playmates now owned, and the smart linen suit she bought to be married in was white.

That didn't worry her, because she knew she could prove to Justin that she was more than ent.i.tled to the symbolic white dress. Then she went for her premarital examination.

Dr. Sims had been her family doctor for half her life, and the tall, graying man was like family to all his patients. His quiet explanation after the examination, after the blood test was done by his lab, made her feel sick all over. And even though she protested, he was quietly firm about the necessity.

"It's only a very minor bit of surgery," he said. "You'll hardly feel it. And frankly, Shelby, if it isn't done, your wedding night is going to be a nightmare." He explained it in detail, and when he finished, she realized that she didn't have a choice. Justin might swear that he was never going to touch her in bed, but she knew it was unrealistic to a.s.sume that they could live together without going too far. And with the minor surgery, some pain could be avoided.

She finally agreed, but she insisted that he do only a partial job, so that there was no doubt she was a virgin. Doctor Sims muttered something about old-fas.h.i.+oned idiocy, but he did as she asked. He murmured something about the difficulty she might still encounter because of her stubbornness and that she might need to come back and see him. She hadn't wanted to argue about it, but it was important for Justin to believe her. This was the only proof she had left. The thing was, she hadn't counted on the prospect of such discomfort, and it began to wear on her mind. Had she done the right thing? She wanted Justin to know, without having to be told, that she was innocent. But that prospect of being hurt was just as frightening as it had been in the past-more so.

The wedding was the social event of the season. Shelby hadn't expected so many people to congregate in the Jacobsville Methodist church to see her get married. Certainly there were more spectators than she'd included on her list.

Abby and Calhoun were sitting in the family pew, holding hands, the tall blond man and the dark-haired woman so much in love that they radiated it all around. Beside them was Shelby's green-eyed, black-haired brother, Tyler, towering above everyone except Calhoun. There were neighbors and friends, and Misty Davies, Abby's friend, on the other side of the church. Justin was nowhere in sight, and Shelby almost panicked as she remembered his threat to leave if she wore a white dress.

But when the wedding march struck up, the minister and Justin were waiting for her at the altar. She had to bite her lower lip hard and grip her bouquet of daisies to keep from shaking as she walked down the aisle.

She and Justin had decided not to have a best man or a matron of honor, or much ceremony except for the actual service. There were plenty of flowers around the altar, and a candelabra with three unlit white candles. The minister was in his robes, and Justin was in a formal black suit, very elegant as he waited for his bride to join him.

When she reached him, and took her place at his side, she looked up. Her green eyes caught his black ones and her expression invited him to do what he'd threatened, to walk out of the church.

It was a tense moment and for one horrible second, he looked as if he were thinking about it. But the moment pa.s.sed. He lifted his cold eyes to the minister and he repeated what he was told to say without a trace of expression in his deep voice.

He placed a thin gold band on her hand. There had been no engagement ring, and he hadn't mentioned buying one. He'd bought her ring himself, on a trip to town, and he hadn't asked if she wanted him to wear one. Probably he didn't want to.

They replied to the final questions and lit two candles, each holding a flame to the third candle, signifying the unity of two people into one. The minister p.r.o.nounced them man and wife. He invited Justin to kiss his bride.

Justin turned to Shelby with an expression she couldn't read. He looked down at her for a long moment before he bent his head and brushed a light, cool kiss across her lips. Then he took her arm and propelled her down the aisle and outside into the hall, where they were surrounded seconds later by well-wishers.

There was no time to talk. The reception was held in the fellows.h.i.+p hall of the church, and punch, cake and canapes were consumed while Shelby and Justin were each occupied with guests.

Someone had a camera and asked them to pose for a photograph. They hadn't hired anyone to take pictures of the wedding, an oversight that Shelby was secretly disappointed at. She'd hoped for at least a photograph of them together, but perhaps this one would do.

She stood beside Justin and smiled, feeling his arm draw her to his side. Her eyes lifted to his, but it was hard to hold the smile as those black eyes cut into hers.

The instant the camera was gone, he glared at her. "I said any color except white."

"Yes, Justin, I know you did," she said calmly. "And think how you'd have felt if I'd insisted that you wear a blue dress instead of a black suit to be married in."

He blinked, as if he wasn't quite sure he'd heard right. "A white dress means-" he began indignantly.

"-a first wedding," she finished for him. "This is mine."

His eyes kindled. "You and I both know there's an implied second reason for wearing white, and you aren't ent.i.tled to it." He noticed something darken her eyes and his own narrowed. "You told me you could prove it, though, didn't you, Shelby?" He smiled coldly. "I just might let you do that before we're through."

She blushed and averted her eyes. For an instant, she felt cowardly, thinking about how difficult it was going to be if he wasn't gentle, if he treated her like the scarlet woman he thought she was. It didn't bear consideration, and she s.h.i.+vered. "I don't have to prove anything to you."

He laughed, the sound of it like ice shattering. "You can't, can you? It was all bravado, to keep me guessing until we were married."

Her eyes lifted to his. "Justin..."

"Never mind." He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. "I told you, we won't be sharing a bed. I don't care about your chast.i.ty."

She felt an aching sadness for what might have been between them and she looked at him, her eyes soft and quietly adoring on his craggy features. He was so beautiful. Not handsome, but beautifully made, for a man, from his lithe, powerful build to his black eyes and thick black hair and olive complexion. He looked exactly the way a man should, she decided.

He glanced down at her, caught in that warm appraisal. His cigarette hovered in midair while he searched her eyes, holding them for so long that her heart went wild in her chest. She let her eyes fall to his chiseled mouth, and she wanted it suddenly with barely contained pa.s.sion. If only she could be the uninhibited woman she wanted to be, and not such a frightened innocent. Justin intimidated her. He had to be at least as worldly as Calhoun. She'd disappoint him, anyway, but if only she could tell him the truth and ask him to be gentle. She s.h.i.+vered at the thought of telling him something so intimate.

It was a blessing that Ty chose that moment to say his goodbyes, sparing Shelby the embarra.s.sment of having Justin mock her for her weakness.

"I've got to catch a plane back to Arizona," he told his sister as he bent his head to brush her cheek with his lips. "My temporary lady boss is scared stiff of men."

Shelby's eyes brightened. "She's what?"

Ty looked frankly uncomfortable. "She's nervous around men," he said reluctantly. "d.a.m.n it, she hides behind me at dances, at meetings...it's embarra.s.sing."

Shelby had to fight down laughter. Her very independent brother didn't like clinging women, but this one seemed to be affecting him very strangely. His temporary boss was the niece of his permanent boss. She lived in Arizona, where she was trying to cope with an indebted dude ranch. Ty's boss in Jacobsville had sent him out to help. He'd hated it at the beginning, and he still seemed to, but maybe the mysterious Arizona lady was getting to him.

"Maybe she feels safe with you?" Shelby asked.

He glowered at her. "Well, it's got to stop. It's like having poison ivy wrap itself around you."

"Is she ugly?" Shelby persisted.

"Kind of plain and unsophisticated," he murmured. "Not too bad, I guess, if you like tomboys. I don't," he added doggedly.

"Why don't you quit?" Justin asked. "You can work for Calhoun and me, we've already offered you a job."

"Yes, I know. I appreciated it, too, considering how strained things were between our families," Ty said honestly. "But this job is kind of a challenge and that part I like."

Justin smiled. "Come and stay when you get homesick."

Ty shook his outstretched hand. "I might, one day. I like kids," he added. "A few nieces and nephews wouldn't bother me."

Justin looked murderous and Shelby went scarlet. Ty frowned, and Justin thanked G.o.d that Calhoun and Abby joined them in time to ward off trouble. He didn't want to think about kids. Shelby sure wouldn't want his, not if the way she'd reacted to him the one time he'd been ardent with her was any indication. She was repulsed by him.

"Isn't this a nice wedding?" Calhoun asked Ty, joining the small group with his arm around a laughing Abby. "Doesn't it give you any ideas?"

Ty smiled at Abby. "It does that, all right. It makes me want to get an inoculation, quick," he murmured drily.

"You'll outgrow that att.i.tude one day," Calhoun a.s.sured him. "We all get chopped down at the ankles eventually," he added, and ducked when Abby hit his chest. "Sorry, honey." He chuckled, brus.h.i.+ng a lazy kiss against her forehead. "You know I didn't mean it."

"Can we give you a lift to the airport, or did you rent a car?" Abby asked Ty.

"I rented a car, but thanks all the same. Why don't you two walk me out to it?" He kissed Shelby again. "Be happy," he said gently.

"I expect to," she said, and smiled in Justin's direction.

Ty nodded, but he didn't look convinced. When he followed Abby and Calhoun out of the fellows.h.i.+p hall, he was preoccupied and frowning thoughtfully.

The reception seemed to go on forever, and Shelby was grateful when it was finally time to go home. Justin had sent Lopez to fetch Shelby's things from Mrs. Simpson's house early that morning. The guest room had been prepared for Shelby. Maria had questioned that, but only once, because Justin's cold eyes had silenced her. Maria understood more than he realized, anyway. She, like everyone else on the property, knew that despite his bitterness, Justin still had a soft spot for Shelby. She was alone and impoverished, and it didn't surprise anybody that Justin had married her. If he felt the need for a little vengeance in the process, that wasn't unexpected, either.