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. “Here,” he offered it to her. “To hell with both of them. Have a shot of ego salve.”
“Thanks, masked man,” she sighed, taking it. “Don’t mind if I do.”
It tasted horrible. “Can you really drink this stuff and live?” she wondered. “It smells like what you put in the gas tank.”
“It’s Scotch whiskey,” he returned. “Cutty Sark.”
“It would cutty a shark all right,” she mused, sipping it.
“Not cutty a shark. Cutty Shark. Sark. Hell.” He took the glass and finished what little whiskey she’d left. “Now, if you’re going to drink Cutty Sark, Abby, you have to learn to sing properly. I’ll teach you this song I learned down in Mexico, okay?”
And he proceeded to do just that. When Calhoun walked in the front door about thirty minutes later, there was a very loud off-key chorus coming from the study.
He stared in the door incredulously. Justin was lying back on the sofa, his hair in his eyes, one knee lifted, a whiskey bottle in his hand. Abby was lying against his uplifted knee, her legs thrown over the coffee table, sipping from a whiskey glass. She looked as disreputable as his brother did, and both of them looked soaked to the back teeth.
“What in hell is going on?” Calhoun asked as he leaned against the doorjamb.
“We hate you,” Abby informed him, lifting her glass in a toast.
“Amen.” Justin grinned.
“And just as soon as we get through drinking and singing, we’re going to go down to the feedlot and open all the gates, and you can spend the rest of the night chasing cows.” She smiled drunkenly. “Justin and I figure that’s what you do best, anyway. Chasing females, that is. So it doesn’t matter what species, does it, old buddy?” she asked Justin, twisting her head back against his knee.
“Nope,” Justin agreed. He lifted the whiskey bottle to his lips, rolling backward a little as he sipped it.
“We were going to lock you out,” Abby added, blinking, “but we couldn’t get up to put on the chain latches.”
“My God.” Calhoun shook his head at the spectacle they made. “I wish I had a camera.”
“What for?” Justin asked pleasantly.
“Never mind.” Calhoun unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. “I’ll make some black coffee.”
“Don’t want any,” Abby murmured drowsily. “It would mess up our systems.”
“That’s right,” Justin agreed.
“You’ll see messed-up systems by morning, all right.” Calhoun grimaced and moved off toward the kitchen.
“We should check his collar for lipstick!” Abby told Justin in a stage whisper.
“Good idea,” Justin frowned. He started to sit up, then fell back against the arm of the sofa, cradling the bottle. “In a minute. I have to rest first.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll do it.” She yawned. “When he gets back.” Her eyes closed.
By the time Calhoun got back, they were both snoring. The whiskey bottle was lying on the floor, with the neck in Justin’s lean hand. Calhoun righted it and put it on the table along with Abby’s empty glass. The sight of them was as puzzling as it was amusing. Both Justin and Abby were usually the teetotalers at any gathering, and here they were soused. He wondered if his leaving with Shelby had set them off and realized that it probably had. In Justin’s case it was understandable. But Abby’s state was less easily understood, after the way she’d
