Long, Tall Texans: Calhoun (2 page)

"All this sudden fascination with male nudity," he grumbled, glaring at her. "I don't know what's gotten into you."

"Frustration," she replied. "It comes from too many nights sitting home alone."

"I've never tried to stop you from dating," he said defensively.

"Oh, no, of course you haven't. You just sit with my prospective dates and make a big deal of cleaning your gun collection while you air your archaic views on premarital sex!"

"They're not archaic," he said curtly. "A lot of men feel the way I do about it."

"Do tell?" She lifted her eyebrow. "And I suppose that means that you're a virgin, too, Calhoun?"

His dark eyes cut sideways at her. "Do you think so, Abby?" he asked, in a tone she'd never heard him use.

She suddenly felt very young. The huskiness in his deep voice, added to the faint arrogance in his dark eyes, made her feel foolish for even having asked. Of course he wasn't a virgin.

She averted her eyes. "Foolish question," she murmured softly.

"Wasn't it, though?" He pressed on the accelerator. For some reason, it bothered him to have Abby know what his private life was like. She probably knew more than he'd given her credit for, especially if she was hanging around with Misty Davies. Misty frequented the same kind of city hot spots that Calhoun did, and she'd seen him with one or two of his occasional companions. He hoped Misty hadn't talked to Abby about what she'd seen, but he couldn't count on it.

His sudden withdrawal puzzled Abby. She didn't like the cold silence that was growing between them any more than she liked thinking about his women. "How did you know where I was?" she asked to break the rigid silence.

"I didn't, honey," he confessed. The endearment sounded so natural coming from him that she'd never minded him using it, though she disliked its artificiality when other men did. "I happened to come home through Jacobsville. And who should I see in line—in front of all the lurid posters—but you?"

She sighed. "Fate. Fate is out to get me."

"Fate may not be the only one," he returned, but his voice was so low that she couldn't hear.

He turned onto the road that led past the feedlot to the big Spanish house where the Ballengers lived. On the way they passed the Jacobs's colonial-style house, far off the road at the end of a paved driveway, with purebred Arabian horses grazing in sprawling pastures dotted with oak trees. There wasn't much grass—the weather was still cold, and a few snow flurries had caused excitement the day before. Big bales of hay were placed around the property to give the horses adequate feed, supplemented with blocks of vitamins and minerals.

"I hear the Jacobses are having financial problems," Abby remarked absently.

He glanced at her. "Since the old man died last summer, they're close to bankrupt, in fact Tyler's borrowed all he can borrow. If he can't pull it together now, he never will. The old man made deals Ty didn't even know about. If he loses that place, it's going to be damned hard on his pride."

"Hard on Shelby's, too," she remarked.

He grimaced. "For God's sake, don't mention Shelby around Justin."

"I wouldn't dare. He gets funny, doesn't he?"

"I wouldn't call throwing punches at people funny."

"I've seen you throw punches a time or two," she reminded him, recalling one particular day not too long before when one of the new cowhands had beaten a horse. Calhoun had knocked the man to his knees and fired him on the spot, his voice so cold and quiet that it had cut to the bone. Calhoun didn't have to raise his voice. Like Justin, when Calhoun lost his temper he had a look that made words unnecessary.

He was an odd mixture, she thought, studying him. So tenderhearted that he'd go off for half a day by himself if he had to put down a calf or if something happened to one of his men. And so hotheaded at times that the men would actually hide from his anger. In temperament, he was like Justin. They were both strong, fiery men, but underneath there was a tenderness, a vulnerability, that very few people ever saw. Abby, because

she'd lived with them for so many years, knew them better than any outsider ever could.

"How did you get back so fast?" she asked to break the silence.

He shrugged. "I guess I've got radar," he murmured, smiling faintly. "I had a feeling you wouldn't be sitting at home with Justin watching old war movies on the VCR."

"I didn't think you'd be back before morning."

"So you decided you'd go watch a lot of muscle men strip off and wiggle on the stage."

"Heaven knows I tried." She sighed theatrically. "Now I'll die ignorant, thanks to you."

"Damn it all," he laughed, taken aback by her reactions. She made him laugh more than any woman he'd ever known. And lately he'd found himself thinking about her more than he should. Maybe it was just his age, he thought. He'd been alone a long time, and a woman here and there didn't really satisfy him. But Abby wasn't fair game. She was a marrying girl, and he'd better remember that. No way could he seduce her for pleasure, so he had to keep the fires banked down. If he could.

Justin was in his study when they got back, frowning darkly over some figures in his books. When he looked up, his craggy face was devoid of expression, but his dark eyes twinkled when he glanced from Calhoun's irritated expression to Abby's furious one.

"How was the art show?" he asked her.

"It wasn't an art show," Calhoun said flatly, tossing his Stetson onto the coffee table. "It was a male strip show."

Justin's pencil stopped in midair as he stared at Abby. His shock was a little embarrassing, because Justin was even more old-fashioned and reactionary than Calhoun about such things. He wouldn't even talk about anything intimate in mixed company.

"A what?" Justin asked.

"A male revue," Abby countered, glaring at Calhoun. "It's a kind of...variety show."

"Hell," Calhoun retorted, his dark eyes flashing. "It's a strip show!"

"Abby!" Justin scolded.

"I'm almost twenty-one," she told him. "I have a responsible job. I drive a car. I'm old enough to marry and have children. If I want to go and see a male variety show—" she ignored Calhoun's instantly inserted "strip show" "—I have every right."

Justin laid his pencil down and lit a cigarette. Calhoun glared at him, and so did Abby, but he ignored them.

The only concession he made to their disapproval was to turn on one of the eight smokeless ashtrays they'd bought him for Christmas.

"That sounds like a declaration of war," Justin remarked.

Abby lifted her chin. "That's what it is." She turned to Calhoun. "If you don't stop embarrassing me in front of the whole world, I'll move in with Misty Davies."

Calhoun's good intentions went up in smoke. "Like hell you will," he countered. "You're not living with that woman!"

"I'll live with her if I want to!"

"If you two would..." Justin began calmly.

"Over my dead body!" Calhoun raged, moving closer. "She has parties that last for days!"

"...just try to communicate..." Justin continued.

"She likes people! She's a socialite!" Abby's eyes were almost black now as she clenched her fists by her side and glared up at Calhoun.

"...you just might..." Justin went on.

"She's a featherbrained, overstimulated eccentric!" Calhoun retorted.

"...COME TO AN UNDERSTANDING!"
Justin thundered, rising out of his chair with blazing eyes.

They both froze at the unfamiliar sound of his raised voice. He never shouted, not even when he was at his angriest.

"Damn, I hurt my ears," Justin sighed, putting his palm to one while he glared at his brother and Abby.

"Now, listen, this isn't getting you anywhere. Besides that, any minute Maria and Lopez are going to come running in here thinking someone's been murdered." Just as he finished speaking, two robed, worried elderly people appeared, wide-eyed and apprehensive, in the doorway. "Now see what you've done," Justin grumbled.

"What is all this noise about?" Maria asked, pushing back her long salt-and-pepper hair and glancing worriedly around the room. "We thought something terrible had happened."

"Ay de mi!
Another rumble." Lopez shook his head and grinned at Abby. "What have you done now,
ninita?"

She glared at him. "Nothing," she said tersely. "Not one thing—"

"She went to a male strip show," Calhoun volunteered.

"I did not!" she protested, red faced.

"What is the world coming to?" Maria shook her head, put her hands to it and went out mumbling in Spanish, followed by a chuckling Lopez. The couple, married more than thirty years, had been with the family for two generations. They were family, not just cook and former horse wrangler.

"But, I didn't!" Abby called after them. She darted a speaking glance at Calhoun, who was perched on a corner of Justin's desk looking elegant and imperturbable. "Now see what you've done!"

"Me?" Calhoun asked coolly. "Hell, you're the one with the lurid curiosity."

"Lurid?" She gaped at him. "Go ahead, tell me you've never been to a female strip show."

Calhoun got up, looking uncomfortable. "That's different."

"Oh, sure it is. Women are sex objects but men aren't, right?"

"She's got you there," Justin said.

Calhoun glared at both of them, turned on his heel and left the room. Abby gazed after him smugly, feeling as if she'd won at least a minor victory. There was little consolation in her triumph, though. Calhoun had been harder to get along with than a bone-dry snake at a poison water hole lately. She didn't know how or what, but she was going to have to do something about the situation, and soon.

Abby arranged to miss breakfast the next morning. Calhoun's attitude irritated her. He didn't want her himself, but he was so possessive that she couldn't get near another man. His attitude was frustrating at best.

He had no idea how she felt, of course. She was careful to hide her feelings for him. A man like Calhoun, who was rich and moderately handsome, could have any woman he wanted. He wouldn't want a plain, unsophisticated woman like Abby. She knew that, and it hurt. It made her rebellious, too. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life grieving for a man she could never have. It was far better to look in other directions. But how could she, when Calhoun refused to let go?

She drove several miles from the ranch to the office at the mammoth feedlot in the small red British sports car she'd talked Justin into cosigning for when she'd graduated from the local vocational school. Because of the attention Calhoun and Justin paid to hygiene, there wasn't as much odor as most feed-lots generated, which surprised a lot of visiting cattlemen. Abby had once gone with Calhoun to tour some other feedlots and had come out with a new respect for the one back home. The Ballenger brothers' operation was a little more expensive

to run, but there were hardly any cattle deaths here because of disease. And that was a prime consideration.

A rancher who contracted with the feedlot to fatten his cattle for slaughter didn't want to lose the animals to disease.

Since Abby was early, the office was deserted. There were three other women who worked here, all married, and they helped keep records on the various herds of feeder cattle being fattened for ranches all over the country. There were contracts to sort and file, records on each lot of cattle to keep, and ongoing vaccination and management reports. There was the constant hum of the heavy equipment used to feed the cattle and to remove waste to underground storage to be used later to fertilize pastures where grain was grown. The phones rang constantly and the computers had to be programmed. There was a payroll department, as well as a salesman, a staff veterinarian and a number of cowboys who moved cattle in and out and saw to feeding them and maintaining the machinery that kept it all going. Abby hadn't realized until she'd come to work here how big the operation was.

The sheer size of it was staggering, even for Texas. Fenced areas filled with steers stretched to the horizon, and the dust was formidable, as was the smell, which was inevitable even when sanitary management practices were employed.

The Ballengers didn't own a packing plant—that wasn't legal, just as it wasn't legal for packers to own custom feedlots. But the brothers did own a third of their feeder cattle, and the other two-thirds were custom fed. Abby had grown up hearing terms like profit margin, break-even prices and ration formulation. Now she understood what the words meant.

She put her purse under her desk and turned on her computer. There were several new contracts waiting to be filled in for new lots of four-footed customers.

The feedlot took in feeder cattle weighing six hundred to seven hundred pounds and fed them up to their slaughter weight of one thousand to eleven hundred pounds. The Ballengers had a resident nutritionist and an experienced stockman who handled the twice-daily feeding routine with its highly automated machinery. They had the feeding down to such a

fine art that the Ballenger operation was included in the top five percent of feedlots nationally. And that was a real honor, considering all the things that could go wrong, from falling cattle prices to unexpected epidemics to drought.

Abby was fascinated by the workings of it all. There were thousands of bawling steers and heifers out there.

There were always big cattle trucks coming and going and men yelling and herding and vaccinating and dehorning, and the noise could get deafening despite the soundproofed office walls. Visiting cattlemen came to see their investments. Those who didn't come were sent monthly progress reports. Daily records were kept cm everything.

Abby fed the first contract into her electronic typewriter, trying to decipher the spidery scrawl of Caudell Ayker, the feedlot office manager. He was second only to Calhoun in the chain of command, because Calhoun's name went in as manager. He and Justin owned the feedlot jointly, but Justin held the lion's share of the stock. Justin preferred money management to meeting with clients, so Calhoun did most of the day-to-day management on the feedlot. That was one reason Abby loved the job. It meant she got to see a lot of Calhoun.