"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.
"h.e.l.lcat," 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 G.o.d, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. "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 embarra.s.sment 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 embarra.s.sing 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 m.u.f.fled 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.
"h.e.l.l, 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 G.o.d, 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.
"Thank G.o.d you"re here," Barry enthused, opening the door for her. "I was afraid you were going to be late. How pretty you look this morning!" He knew about day-before-yesterday"s mishap, of course, but Shelby was shocked by his attentiveness and was already beginning to wonder what ailed him as he helped her onto the sidewalk. "I"ll take good care of her, Justin," he said, adding fuel to the fire, grinning at her smoldering husband.
Justin didn"t answer him or speak to Shelby. He slammed the car door, his eyes glittering in Shelby"s direction, and roared away down the street.
"What"s wrong?" Shelby asked, mentally nervous about Justin"s unexpected anger. Mr. Holman had certainly given Justin a bad impression of their working relationship.
"That woman has got to go," he said without preamble, waving his hands. "She"s locked herself in my office and she won"t let me in. I"ve called the fire department, though," he added with a smug glitter in his eyes. "They"ll break the door down and get her out, and then she can leave. Permanently."
Shelby put a hand to her head. "Mr. Holman, why is Tammy locked in your office?"
He cleared his throat. "It was the book."
"What book?"
"The book I threw at her," he said irritably.
"You threw a book at Tammy!" she gasped.
"Well, it was a dictionary." He shifted with his hands in his pockets. "We had a slight disagreement over the spelling of a legal term, which I should know, Shelby," he added angrily, "after all, I"m a lawyer. I know how to spell legal terms; they teach us that in law school."
Shelby, who"d sampled some of Mr. Holman"s expertise at spelling legal terms, didn"t say a word.
He shifted again. "Well, I said some things. Then she said some things. Then I sort of tossed the book her way. That was when she locked herself in my office."
"Just because of the book," she probed.
He stared down at the pavement. "Uh, yes. That. And the broken gla.s.s."
Her eyes gaped. "Broken gla.s.s?"
"The window, you know." He moved sheepishly toward the curb, having spotted what he was searching for earlier. He picked up the torn dictionary with a faint grin. "Here it is! I knew it had to be out here somewhere."
Shelby was torn between laughter and tears when the fire truck came blaring down the street with its siren going and pulled to a screeching halt at the curb.
"You didn"t tell them why you needed them to come here, by any chance?" Shelby asked as she watched the firemen, because they"d come in a pumper truck and were very obviously unwinding a long, flat hose.
"No, come to think of it, I didn"t. Hi, Jake!" Mr. Holman called to the fire chief with a big grin. "Good of you to come. Uh, there"s not exactly a fire, though. I"m more in need of a different kind of help."
Jake, a big, burly man with a red face, came closer. "No fire? Well, what do you need us to do, Barry?" he asked, gesturing to the men to roll up the hose again.
"I need you to break down my office door with an ax," Mr. Holman said.
"Why?"
"I lost my key," Mr. Holman improvised.
"Then wouldn"t a locksmith do you more good?" Jake continued. He was beginning to give Shelby"s boss a strange kind of look.
Mr. Holman frowned thoughtfully. "Oh, no, I don"t think so. It wouldn"t make nearly the impression that an ax would."
Jake was looking puzzled.
"One of our...employees...has locked herself in the office and won"t come out," Shelby explained.
"Well, my gosh, Barry, an ax banging the door down would scare her half to death!" Jake said.
"Yes." Mr. Holman smiled thoughtfully. "It sure as h.e.l.l would."
Just as Jake started to speak, Tammy Lester came out of the building, looking explosive, and went right up to Barry Holman and hit him as hard as she could.
"I quit," she said furiously, almost trembling with rage. "Sorry, Shelby, but you"re back to being a one-woman office. I can"t take one more day of Mr. G.o.d"s Gift to Womanhood! And you can"t spell, Mr. Big-Shot Attorney!"
"I can spell better than you can, you escapee from a high-school remedial spelling course!" he yelled after her. "And don"t expect that I"ll come running, begging you to come back! There must be hundreds of stupid women who can"t spell in this town who need work!"
Jake was gaping at the normally calm attorney. So was Shelby. She was having a hard time trying not to laugh. That would only complicate things, of course. She eased past the fire chief and quickly went into the office to escape what was about to happen.
And sure enough, she"d barely gotten inside the carpeted office when Jake let Mr. Holman have it with both barrels. There was something about false alarms and potential arrests...at that point, Shelby closed the door and went to her computer.
She worried about the way Justin had reacted to Mr. Holman waiting on the street for her. It didn"t look good, and Justin was already wildly jealous of the man. That didn"t make a lot of sense, but then Shelby didn"t know a lot about men. She a.s.sumed that it was only a surface jealousy, because Barry Holman was handsome and a womanizer and Justin was possessive and very territorial. She never once thought that it might be anything more than that.
Because it disturbed her, she phoned the house to explain to Justin what had happened. But Maria told her that he hadn"t come back yet. She tried again at lunch, but he was out with a client. So she went back to work and forgot all about it, while Mr. Holman sputtered and muttered about Tammy for the rest of the day and finally closed the office an hour early because he wasn"t getting any work done.
"Don"t worry about making up the time," he told Shelby quietly. "We"ve got court next month, and you may have to put in some overtime getting out briefs and helping me with research." He glowered at the door. "I was going to let Miss Lester help with that, since she does seem to have a feel for legwork. But now that she"s quit for such a stupid reason, you"ll have to do it."
"Most secretaries would get nervous if their bosses threw books at them," Shelby pointed out.