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

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.”

“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.”