Part 9 (2/2)

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 relations.h.i.+p.

”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 s.h.i.+fted 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 s.h.i.+fted 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.

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