Calhoun by Diana Palmer

Author:Diana Palmer [Palmer, Diana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460334393
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Abby went all the way inside the house and closed the door. Then she slipped down the hall to the study and peeked in.

Justin was holding a square whiskey glass. It was empty. He was sprawled on the leather sofa with his dark hair in his eyes and his shirt rumpled, one big boot propped on the spotless leather seat, singing for all he was worth. On the coffee table beside him were a smokeless ashtray, a crumpled cigarette pack, a fresh cigarette pack, and half a bottle of whiskey.

“No puedo hacer…” He stopped at the sound of her footsteps and looked up at her with bloodshot eyes.

“Oh, Justin,” she moaned.

“Hello, Abby. Want a snort?”

She grimaced at the glass he held up. “It’s empty,” she told him.

He stared at it. “Damn. I guess it is. Well, I’ll fill it up, then.”

He threw his leg off the sofa, almost ending up on the floor in the process.

Abby put down her purse and coat and helped him onto the sofa. “Justin, this won’t help,” she said. “You know it won’t.”

“She cried,” Justin murmured. “Damn it, she cried. And he took her home. I want to kill him, Abby,” he said, his eyes blazing, his voice harsh. “My own brother, and I want to kill him because he went off with her!”

She bit her lower lip. She didn’t know what to say, what to do. Justin never drank, and he never complained. But he looked as if he were dying, and Abby could sympathize. She’d felt that way, too, when Calhoun had left with Shelby.

“I saw them go,” he ground out. He put his face in his lean hands and sighed heavily. “She’s part of me. Still part of me after all the years, all the pain. Calhoun knew it, Abby, he did it deliberately….”

“Calhoun loves you,” she defended him. “He wouldn’t hurt you on purpose.”

“Any man could fall in love with her,” he kept on. “Shelby’s beautiful. A dream walking.”

Abby knew how attractive Shelby was. The knowledge didn’t help her own sense of failure, her own lack of confidence or her breaking heart.

“Drinking isn’t the answer,” she said softly. She touched his arm. “Justin, get some sleep.”

“How can I sleep when he’s with her?”

“He won’t be for long. Tyler just went home,” she said tautly.

He took a deep breath, letting it out in jerks. His hands came away from his eyes. “I don’t know much about women, Abby,” he said absently. “I don’t have Calhoun’s charm, or his experience, or his looks.”

She felt a sense of kinship with him then, because she had the same problem. Justin had always seemed so self-assured that she’d never thought of him having the same doubts and fears that she did.

“And I don’t have Shelby’s assets,” Abby confessed. She sat down beside him. “I guess we’d both lose a beauty contest. I wish I was blond, Justin.”

“I wish I had a black book.” Justin sighed.

She grinned at him, and he grinned back. He poured whiskey into the glass, getting half again as much on the heavy coffee table.

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