Heartbreaker Read online

  Marge’s house was on the outskirts of Jacobsville, about six miles from the big ranch that had been in her and J.B.’s family for three generations. It was a friendly little house with a bay window out front and a small front porch with a white swing. All around it were the flowers that Marge planted obsessively. It was May, and everything was blooming. Every color in the rainbow graced the small yard, including a small rose garden with an arch that was Marge’s pride and joy. These were antique roses, not hybrids, and they had scents that were like perfume.

  “I’d forgotten all over again how beautiful it was,” Tellie said on a sigh.

  “Howard loved it, too,” Marge said, her dark eyes soft with memories for an instant as she looked around the lush, clipped lawn that led to the stepping stone walkway that led to the front porch.

  “I never met him,” Tellie said. “But he must have been a lovely person.”

  “He was,” Marge agreed, her eyes sad as she recalled her husband.

  “Look, it’s Uncle J.B.!” Dawn cried, pointing to the narrow paved road that led up to the dirt driveway of Marge’s house.

  Tellie felt every muscle in her body contract. She turned around as the sporty red Jaguar slid to a halt, throwing up clouds of yellow dust. The door opened and J.B. climbed out.

  He was tall and lean, with jet-black hair and dark green eyes. His cheekbones were high, his mouth thin. He had big ears and big feet. But he was so masculine that women were drawn to him like magnets. He had a sensuality in his walk that made Tellie’s heart skip.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he growled as he joined them. “I looked everywhere for you until I finally gave up and drove back home!”

  “What do you mean, where were we?” Marge exclaimed. “We were at Tellie’s graduation. Not that you could be bothered to show up…!”

  “I was across the stadium from you,” J.B. said harshly. “I didn’t see you until it was over. By the time I got through the crowd and out of the parking lot, you’d left the dorm and headed down here.”

  “You came to my graduation?” Tellie asked, in a husky, soft tone.

  He turned, glaring at her. His eyes were large, framed by thick black lashes, deep-set and biting. “We had a fire at the barn. I was late. Do you think I’d miss something so important as your college graduation?” he added angrily, although his eyes evaded hers.

  Her heart lifted, against her will. He didn’t want her. She was like a second sister to him. But any contact with him made her tingle with delight. She couldn’t help the radiance that lit up her plain face and made it pretty.

  He glanced around him irritably and caught Tellie’s hand, sending a thrill all the way to her heart. “Come here,” he said, drawing her to the car with him.

  He put her in the passenger side, closed the door and went around to get in beside her. He reached into the console between the bucket seats and pulled out a gold-wrapped box. He handed it to her.

  She took it, her eyes surprised. “For me?”

  “For no one else,” he drawled, smiling faintly. “Go on. Look.”

  She tore open the wrapping. It was a jeweler’s box, but far too big to be a ring. She opened the box and stared at it blankly.

  He frowned. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?”

  “It” was a Mickey Mouse watch with a big face and a gaudy red band. She knew what it meant, too. It meant that his secretary, Miss Jarrett, who hated being delegated to buy presents for him, had finally lost her cool. She thought J.B. was buying jewelry for one of his women, and Miss Jarrett was showing him that he’d better get his own gifts from now on.

  It hurt Tellie, who knew that J.B. shopped for Marge and the girls himself. He never delegated that chore to underlings. But, then, Tellie wasn’t family.

  “It’s…very nice,” she stammered, aware that the silence had gone on a little too long for politeness.

  She took the watch out of the box and he saw it for the first time.

  Blistering range language burst from his chiseled lips before he could stop himself. Then his high cheekbones went dusky because he couldn’t very well admit to Tellie that he hadn’t bothered to go himself to get her a present. He’d kill Jarrett, though, he promised himself.

  “It’s the latest thing,” he said with deliberate nonchalance.

  “I love it. Really.” She put it on her wrist. She did love it, because he’d given it to her. She’d have loved a dead rat in a box if it had come from J.B., because she had no pride.

  He pursed his lips, the humor of the situation finally getting through to him. His green eyes twinkled. “You’ll be the only graduate on your block to wear one,” he pointed out.

  She laughed. It changed her face, made her radiant. “Thanks, J.B.,” she said.

  He tugged her as close as the console would allow, and his eyes shifted to her soft, parted lips. “You can do better than that,” he murmured wickedly, and bent.

  She lifted her face, closed her eyes, savored the warm, tender pressure of his hard mouth on her soft one.

  He stiffened. “No, you don’t,” he whispered roughly when she kept her lips firmly closed. He caught her cheek in one big, lean hand and pressed, gently, just enough to open her mouth. He bent and caught it, hard, pressing her head back against the padded seat with the force of it.

  Tellie went under in a daze, loving the warm, hard insistence of his mouth in the silence of the little car. She sighed and a husky little moan escaped her taut throat.

  He lifted his head. Dark green eyes probed her own, narrow and hot and full of frustrated desire.

  “And here we are again,” he said roughly.

  She swallowed. “J.B….”

  He put his thumb against her soft lips to stop the words. “I told you, there’s no future in this, Tellie,” he said, his voice hard and cold. “I don’t want any woman on a permanent basis. Ever. I’m a bachelor, and I mean to stay that way. Understand?”

  “But I didn’t say anything,” she protested.

  “The hell you didn’t,” he bit off. He put her back in her seat and opened his car door.

  She went with him back to Marge and the girls, showing off her new watch. “Look, isn’t it neat?” she asked.

  “I want one, too!” Brandi exclaimed.

  “You don’t graduate until next year, darling,” Marge reminded her daughter.

  “Well, I want one then,” she repeated stubbornly.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” J.B. promised. He smiled, but it wasn’t in his eyes. “Congratulations again, tidbit,” he told Tellie. “I’ve got to go. I have a hot date tonight.”

  He was looking straight at Tellie as he said it. She only smiled.

  “Thanks for the watch,” she told him.

  He shrugged. “It does suit you,” he remarked enigmatically. “See you, girls.”

  He got into the sports car and roared away.

  “I’d really love one of those,” Brandi remarked on a sigh as she watched it leave.

  Marge lifted Tellie’s wrist and glared at the watch. “That was just mean,” she said under her breath.

  Tellie smiled sadly. “He sent Jarrett after it. He always has her buy presents for everybody except you and the girls. She obviously thought it was for one of his platinum blondes, and she got this out of spite.”

  “Yes, I figured that out all by myself,” Marge replied, glowering. “But it’s you who got hurt, not J.B.”

  “It’s Jarrett who’ll get hurt when he goes back to work,” Tellie said on a sigh. “Poor old lady.”

  “She’ll have him for breakfast,” Marge said. “And she should.”

  “He does like sharp older women, doesn’t he?” Tellie remarked on the way into the house. “He’s got Nell at the house, taking care of things there, and she could scorch leather in a temper.”

  “Nell’s a fixture,” Marge said, smiling. “I don’t know what J.B. and I would have done without her when we were kids. There was just Dad and us. Mom died when we were v
ery young. Dad was never affectionate.”

  “Is that why J.B.’s such a rounder?” Tellie wondered.

  As usual, Marge clammed up. “We don’t ever talk about that,” she said. “It isn’t a pretty story, and J.B. hates even the memory.”

  “Nobody ever told me,” Tellie persisted.

  Marge gave her a gentle smile. “Nobody ever will, pet, unless it’s J.B. himself.”

  “I know when that will be,” Tellie sighed. “When they’re wearing overcoats in hell.”

  “Exactly,” Marge agreed warmly.

  That night, they were watching a movie on television when the phone rang. Marge answered it. She came back in a few minutes, wincing.

  “It’s Jarrett,” she told Tellie. “She wants to talk to you.”

  “How bad was it?” Tellie asked.

  Marge made a face.

  Tellie picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Tellie? It’s Nan Jarrett. I just want to apologize…”

  “It’s not your fault, Miss Jarrett,” Tellie said at once. “It really is a cute watch. I love it.”

  “But it was your college graduation present,” the older woman wailed. “I thought it was for one of those idiot blond floozies he carts around, and it made me mad that he didn’t even care enough about them to buy a present himself.” She realized what she’d just said and cleared her throat. “Not that I think he didn’t care enough about you, of course…!”

  “Obviously he doesn’t,” Tellie said through her teeth.

  “Well, you wouldn’t be so sure of that if you’d been here when he got back into the office just before quitting time,” came the terse reply. “I have never heard such language in my life, even from him!”

  “He was just mad that he got caught,” Tellie said.

  “He said it was one of the most special days of your life and I screwed it up,” Miss Jarrett said miserably.

  “He’d already done that by not showing up for my graduation,” Tellie said, about to mention that none of them had seen him in the stands and thought he hadn’t shown up.

  “Oh, you know about that?” came the unexpected reply. “He told us all to remember he’d been fighting a fire in case it came up. He had a meeting with an out-of-town cattle buyer and his daughter. He forgot all about the commencement exercises.”

  Tellie’s heart broke in two. “Yes,” she said, fighting tears, “well, nobody’s going to say anything. None of us, certainly.”

  “Certainly. He gets away with murder.”

  “I wish I could,” Tellie said under her breath. “Thanks for calling, Miss Jarrett. It was nice of you.”

  “I just wanted you to know how bad I felt,” the older woman said with genuine regret. “I wouldn’t have hurt your feelings for the world.”

  “I know that.”

  “Well, happy graduation, anyway.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tellie hung up. She went back into the living room smiling. She was never going to tell them the truth about her graduation. But she knew that she’d never forget.

  Two

  Tellie had learned to hide her deepest feelings over the years, so Marge and the girls didn’t notice any change in her. There was one. She was tired of waiting for J.B. to wake up and notice that she was around. She’d finally realized that she meant nothing to him. Well, maybe she was a sort of adopted relative for whom he had an occasional fondness. But his recent behavior had finally drowned her fondest hopes of anything serious. She was going to convince her stupid heart to stop aching for him, if it killed her.

  Five days later, on a Monday, she walked into Calhoun and Justin Ballenger’s office at their feedlot, ready for work.

  Justin, Calhoun’s elder brother, gave her a warm welcome. He was tall, whipcord lean, with gray-sprinkled black hair and dark eyes. He and his wife, Shelby—who was a direct descendant of the founder of Jacobsville, old John Jacobs—had three sons. They’d been married for a long time, like Calhoun and Abby. J. D. Langley’s wife, Fay, had been working for the Ballengers as Calhoun’s secretary, but a rough pregnancy had forced her to give it up temporarily. That was why Tellie was in such demand.

  “You’ll manage,” Justin’s secretary, Ellie, assured her with a smile. “We’re not so rushed now as we are in the early spring and autumn. It’s just nice and routine. I’ll introduce you to the men later on. For now, let me show you what you’ll be doing.”

  “Sorry you have to give up your own vacation for this,” Justin said apologetically.

  “Listen, I can’t afford a vacation yet,” she assured him with a grin. “I’m a lowly college student. I have to pay my tuition for three more years. I’m the one who’s grateful for the job.”

  Justin shrugged. “You know as much about cattle as Abby and Shelby do,” he said, which was high praise, since both were actively involved in the feedlot operation and the local cattlemen’s association. “You’re welcome here.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and meant it.

  “Thank you,” he replied, and left them to it.

  The work wasn’t that difficult. Most of it dealt with spreadsheets, various programs that kept a daily tally on the number of cattle from each client and the feeding regimen they followed. It was involved and required a lot of concentration, and the phones seemed to ring constantly. It wasn’t all clients asking about cattle. Many of the calls were from prospective customers. Others were from buyers who had contracted to take possession of certain lots of cattle when they were fed out. There were also calls from various organizations to which the Ballenger brothers belonged, and even a few from state and federal legislators. A number of them came from overseas, where the brothers had investments. Tellie found it all fascinating.

  It took her a few days to get into the routine of things, and to get to know the men who worked at the feedlot. She could identify them all by face, if not by name.

  One of them was hard to miss. He was the ex–Green Beret, a big, tall man from El Paso named Grange. If he had a first name, Tellie didn’t hear anyone use it. He had straight black hair and dark brown eyes, an olive complexion and a deep, sexy voice. He liked Tellie on sight and made no secret of it. It amused Justin, because Grange hadn’t shown any interest in anything in the weeks he’d been working on the place. It was the first spark of life the man had displayed.

  He told Tellie, who looked surprised.

  “He seems like a friendly man,” she stammered.

  He lifted a dark eyebrow. “The first day he worked here, one of the boys short-sheeted his bed. He turned on the lights, looked around the room, dumped one of the other men out of a bunk bed and threw him headfirst into the yard.”

  “Was it the right man?” Tellie asked, wide-eyed.

  “It was. Nobody knew how he figured it out, and he never said. But the boys walk wide around him. Especially since he threw that big knife he carries at a sidewinder that crawled too close to the bunkhouse. Cag Hart has a reputation for that sort of accuracy with a Bowie, but he used to be the only one. Grange is a mystery.”

  She was intrigued. “What did he do, before he came here?”

  “Nobody knows. Nobody asks, either,” he added with a grin.

  “Was he stationed overseas, in the army?”

  “Nobody knows that, either. The 411 is that he was in the Green Berets, but he’s never said he was. Puzzling guy. But he’s a hard worker. And he’s honest.” He pursed his lips and his dark eyes twinkled. “And he never takes a drink. Ever.”

  She whistled. “Well!”

  “Anyway, you’d better not agree to any dates with him until J.B. checks him out,” Justin said. “I don’t want J.B. on the wrong side of me.” He grinned. “We feed out a lot of cattle for him,” he added, making it clear that he wasn’t afraid of J.B.

  “J.B. doesn’t tell me who I can date,” she said, hurting as she remembered how little she meant to Marge’s big brother.

  “Just the same, I don’t know anything about Grange, and I’m sort of responsib
le for you while you’re here, even though you’re legally an adult,” Justin said quietly. “Get the picture?”

  She grimaced. “I do. Okay, I’ll make sure I don’t let him bulldoze me into anything.”

  “That’s the spirit,” he said with a grin. “I’m not saying he’s a bad man, mind you. I just don’t know a lot about him. He’s always on time, does his job and a bit more, and gets along fairly well with other people. But he mostly keeps to himself when he’s not working. He’s not a sociable sort.”

  “I feel somewhat that way, myself,” she sighed.

  “Join the club. Things going okay for you otherwise? The job’s not too much?”

  “The job’s great,” she said, smiling. “I’m really enjoying this.”

  “Good. We’re glad to have you here. Anything you need, let me know.”

  “Sure thing. Thanks!”

  She told Marge and the girls about Grange. They were amused.

  “He obviously has good taste,” Marge mused, “if he likes you.”

  Tellie chuckled as she rinsed dishes and put them in the dishwasher. “It’s not mutual,” she replied. “He’s a little scary, in a way.”

  “What do you mean? Does he seem violent or something?” Brandi wanted to know.

  Tellie paused with a dish in her hand and frowned. “I don’t know. I’m not afraid of him, really. It’s just that he has that sort of effect on people. Kind of like Cash Grier,” she added.

  “He’s calmed down a bit since Tippy Moore came to stay with him after her kidnapping,” Marge said. “Rumor is that he may marry her.”

  “She’s really pretty, even with those cuts on her face,” Dawn remarked from the kitchen table, where she was arranging cloth for a quilt she meant to make. “They say somebody real mean is after her, and that’s why she’s here. Mrs. Jewell stays at the house at night. A stickler for convention, is our police chief.”

  “Good for him,” Marge said. “A few people need to be conventional, or society is going to fall.”

  Brandi looked at her sister and rolled her eyes. “Here we go again with the lecture.”