Justin. Diana Palmer
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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 attitude. 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.
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-fiancée.
“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 relationship.” 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 fiancé, 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