Heartbreaker Read online

  “Forgiveness comes hard to me,” he said.

  She knew that. He’d never held any grudges against her, but she knew people in town who’d crossed him years ago, and he still went out of his way to snub them. He didn’t forgive, and he never forgot.

  “Are you so perfect that you never make mistakes?” she wondered out loud.

  “None to date,” he replied, and he didn’t smile.

  “Your day is coming.”

  His eyes narrowed as he stared down at her. “You won’t leave Grange alone. Is that final?”

  She swallowed. “Yes. It’s final.”

  He gave her a look as cold as death. His head jerked. “Your choice.”

  He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room. She watched him go with nervous curiosity. What in the world did he mean?

  Marge was very quiet at breakfast the next day. Dawn and Brandi kept giving Tellie odd looks, too. They went off to church with friends. Marge wasn’t feeling well, so she stayed home and Tellie stayed with her. Something was going on. She wondered what it was.

  “Is there something I’ve done that I need to apologize for?” she asked Marge while they were making lunch in the kitchen.

  Marge drew in a slow breath. “No, of course not,” she denied gently. “It’s just J.B., wanting his own way and making everybody miserable because he can’t get it.”

  “If you want me to stop dating Grange, just say so,” Tellie told her. “I won’t do it for J.B., but I will do it for you.”

  Marge smiled at her gently. She reached over and patted Tellie’s hand. “You don’t have to make any such sacrifices. Let J.B. stew.”

  “Maybe the man does bring back some terrible memories,” she murmured. “J.B. looked upset when he talked about it. He must…he must have loved her very much.”

  “He was twenty-one,” Marge recalled. “Love is more intense at that age, I think. Certainly it was for me. She was J.B.’s first real affair. He wasn’t himself the whole time he knew her. I thought she was too old for him, too, but he wouldn’t hear a word we said about her. He turned against me, against Dad, against the whole world. He ran off to get married and said he’d never come back. But she argued with him. We never knew exactly why, but when she took her own life, he blamed himself. And then when he learned the truth…well, he was never the same.”

  “I’m sorry it was like that for him,” she said, understanding how he would have felt. She felt like that about J.B. At least, she thought, she wasn’t losing him to death—just to legions of other women.

  Marge put down the spoon she was using to stir beef stew and turned to Tellie. “I would have told you about her, eventually, even if Grange hadn’t shown up,” she said quietly. “I knew it would hurt, to know he felt like that about another woman. But at least you’d understand why you couldn’t get close to him. You can’t fight a ghost, Tellie. She’s perfect in his mind, like a living, breathing photograph that never ages, never has faults, never creates problems. No living woman will ever top her in J.B.’s mind. Loving him, while he feels like that about a ghost, would kill your very soul.”

  “Yes, I understand that now,” Tellie said heavily. She stared out the window, seeing nothing. “How little we really know people.”

  “You can live with someone for years and not know them,” Marge agreed. “I just don’t want you to waste your life on my brother. You deserve better.”

  Tellie winced, but she didn’t let Marge see. “I’ll get married one of these days and have six kids.”

  “You will,” Marge agreed, smiling gently. “And I’ll spoil your kids the way you’ve spoiled mine.”

  “The girls didn’t look too happy this morning,” Tellie remarked.

  Marge grimaced. “J.B. had them in the kitchen helping prepare canapés,” she said. “They didn’t even get to dance.”

  “But, why?”

  “They’re just kids,” Marge said ruefully. “They aren’t old enough to notice eligible bachelors. To hear J.B. tell it, at least.”

  “But that’s outrageous! They’re sixteen and seventeen years old. They’re not kids!”

  “To J.B., you all are, Tellie.”

  She glowered. “Maybe Brandi and Dawn would like to go halves with me on a really mean singing telegram.”

  “J.B. would slug the singer, and we’d get sued,” Marge said blithely. “Let it go, honey. I know things look dark at the moment, but they’ll get better. We have to look to the future.”

  “I guess.”

  “The girls should be home any minute. I’ll start dishing up while you set the table.”

  Tellie went to do it, her heart around her ankles.

  If she’d wondered what J.B. meant with his cryptic remark, it became crystal clear in the days that followed. He came to the house to see Marge and pretended that Tellie wasn’t there. If he passed her on the street at lunchtime, he didn’t see her. For all intents and purposes, she had become the invisible woman. He was paying her back for dating Grange.

  Which made her more determined, of course, to go out with the man. She didn’t care if J.B. snubbed her forever; he wasn’t dictating her life!

  Grange discovered J.B.’s new attitude the following Saturday, when he took Tellie to a local community theater presentation of Arsenic and Old Lace. J.B. came in with his gorgeous blonde and sat down in the row across from Tellie and Grange. He didn’t look their way all night, and when he passed them on the way out, he didn’t speak.

  “What the hell is wrong with him?” Grange asked her on the way home.

  “He’s paying me back for dating you,” she said simply.

  “That’s low.”

  “That’s J.B.,” she replied.

  “Do you want me to stop asking you out, Tellie?” he asked quietly.

  “I do not. J.B. isn’t telling me what to do,” she replied. “He can ignore me all he likes. I’ll ignore him back.”

  Grange was quiet. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “You just wanted to know what happened,” she defended him. “Nobody could blame you for that. She was your sister.”

  He pulled up in front of Marge’s house and cut off the engine. “Yes, she was. She and Dad were the only family I had, but I was rotten to them. I ran wild when I hit thirteen. I got in with a bad crowd, joined a gang, used drugs—you name it, I did it. I still don’t understand why I didn’t end up in jail.”

  “Her death saved you, didn’t it?” she asked.

  He nodded, his face averted. “I didn’t admit it at the time, though. She was such a sweet woman. She always thought of other people before she thought of herself. She was all heart. It must have been a walk in the park for Hammock’s father to convince her that she was ruining J.B.’s life.”

  “Can you imagine how the old man felt,” she began slowly, “because he was always afraid that J.B. would find out the truth and know what he’d done. He had to know that he’d have lost J.B.’s respect, maybe even his love, and he had to live with that until he died. I don’t imagine he was a very happy person, even if he did what he felt was the right thing.”

  “He didn’t even know my sister, my dad said,” Grange replied. “He wouldn’t talk to her. He was sure she was a gold digger, just after J.B.’s money.”

  “How horrible, to think like that,” she murmured thoughtfully. “I guess I wouldn’t want to be rich. You’d never be sure if people liked you for what you were or what you had.”

  “The old man seemed to have an overworked sense of his own worth.”

  “It sounds like it, from what Marge says.”

  “Did you ever know him?”

  “Only by reputation,” she replied. “He was in the nursing home when I came to live with Marge.”

  “What is she like?”

  She smiled. “The exact opposite of J.B. She’s sweet and kind, and she never knows a stranger. She isn’t suspicious or crafty, and she never hurts people deliberately.”

  “But her brother does?”

&
nbsp; “J.B. never pulls his punches,” she replied. “I suppose you know where you stand with him. But he’s uncomfortable to be around sometimes, when he’s in a bad mood.”

  He studied her curiously. “How long have you been in love with him?”

  She laughed nervously. “I don’t love J.B.! I hate him!”

  “How long,” he persisted, softening the question with a smile.

  She shrugged. “Since I was fourteen, I suppose. I hero-worshiped him at first, followed him everywhere, baked him cookies, waylaid him when he went riding and tagged along. He was amazingly tolerant, when I was younger. Then I graduated from high school and we became enemies. He likes to rub it in that I’m vulnerable when he’s around. I don’t understand why.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t understand why, either,” he ventured.

  “You think?” She smiled across the seat at him. “I’m surprised that J.B. hasn’t tried to run you out of town.”

  “He has.”

  “What?”

  He smiled faintly. “He went to see Justin Ballenger yesterday.”

  “About you?” she wondered.

  He nodded. “He said that I was a bad influence on you, and he wondered if I wouldn’t be happier working somewhere else.”

  “What did Justin say?” she asked.

  He chuckled. “That he could run his own feedlot without Hammock’s help, and that he wasn’t firing a good worker because of Hammock’s personal issues.”

  “Well!”

  “I understand that Hammock is pulling his cattle out of the feedlot and having them trucked to Kansas, to a feedlot there for finishing.”

  “But that’s horrible!” Tellie exclaimed.

  “Justin said something similar, with a few more curse words attached,” Grange replied. “I felt bad to cause such problems for him, but he only laughed. He said Hammock would lose money on the deal, and he didn’t care. He wasn’t being ordered around by a man ten years his junior.”

  “That sounds like Justin,” she agreed, smiling. “Good for him.”

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t solve the problem, though,” he told her. “It’s only the first salvo. Hammock won’t quit. He wants me out of your life, whatever it takes.”

  “No, it’s not about me,” she said sadly. “He doesn’t like being reminded of what he lost. Marge said so.”

  Grange’s dark eyes studied her quietly. “He didn’t want you to know about my sister,” he said after a minute. “I ticked him off that first day we went to lunch, by telling you the family secret.”

  “Marge said that she would have told me herself eventually.”

  “Why?”

  She smiled. “She thinks I’d wear my heart out on J.B., and she’s right. I would have. He’ll never get past his lovely ghost to any sort of relationship with a real woman. I’m not going to waste my life aching for a man I can’t have.”

  “That’s sensible,” he agreed. “But he’s been part of your life for a long time. He’s become a habit.”

  She nodded, her eyes downcast. “That’s just what he is. A habit.”

  He drew in a long breath. “If you want to stop seeing me…”

  “I do not,” she said at once. “I really enjoy going out with you, Grange.”

  He smiled, because it was obvious that she meant it. “I like your company, too.” He hesitated. “Just friends,” he added slowly.

  She smiled back. “Just friends.”

  His eyes were distant. “I’m at a turning point in my life,” he confessed. “I’m not sure where I’m headed. But I know I’m not ready for anything serious.”

  “Neither am I.” She leaned her head against the back of the seat and studied him. “Do you think you might stay here, in Jacobsville?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got some problems to work out.”

  “Join the club,” she said, and grinned at him.

  He laughed. “I like the way I feel with you. J.B. can go hang. We’ll present a united front.”

  “Just as long as J.B. doesn’t go and hang us!” she exclaimed.

  Five

  Grange liked to bowl. Tellie had never tried the sport, but he taught her. She persuaded Marge to let the girls come with them one night. Marge tagged along, but she didn’t bowl. She sat at the table sipping coffee and watching her brood fling the big balls down the alley.

  “It’s fun!” Tellie laughed. She’d left the field to the three experts who were making her look sick with her less-than-perfect bowling.

  “That’s why you’re sitting here with me, is it?” Marge teased.

  She shrugged. “I’m a lemon,” she confessed. “Nothing I do ever looks good.”

  “That’s not true,” Marge disputed. “You cook like an angel and you’re great in history. You always make A’s.”

  “Two successes out of a hundred false starts,” Tellie sighed.

  “You’re just depressed because J.B.’s ignoring you,” Marge said, cutting to the heart of the matter.

  “Guilty,” Tellie had to admit. “Maybe I should have listened.”

  “Bull. If you give J.B. the upper hand, he’ll walk all over you. The way you used to be, when you were fourteen, I despaired of what would happen if he ever really noticed you. He’d have destroyed your life, Tellie. You’d have become his doormat. He’d have hated that as much as you would.”

  “Think so? He seems pretty uncomfortable with me when I stand up to him.”

  “But he respects you for it.”

  Tellie propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “Does the beauty queen runner-up stand up to him?” she wondered.

  “Are you kidding? She won’t go to the bathroom without asking J.B. if he thinks it’s a good idea!” came the dry response. “She’s not giving up all those perks. He gave her a diamond dinner ring last week for her birthday.”

  That hurt. “I suppose he picked it out himself?”

  Marge sighed. “I think she did.”

  “I can’t believe I’ve wasted four years of my life mooning over that man,” Tellie said, wondering aloud at her own stupidity. “I turned down dates with really nice men in college because I was hung up on J.B. Well, never again.”

  “What sort of nice men?” Marge queried, trying to change the subject.

  Tellie grinned. “One was an anthropology major, working on his Ph.D. He’s going to devote his life to a dig in Montana, looking for Paleo Indian sites.”

  “Just imagine, Tellie, you could work beside him with a toothbrush…”

  “Stop that,” Tellie chuckled. “I don’t think I’m cut out for dust and dirt and bones.”

  “What other nice men?”

  “There was a friend of one of my professors,” she recalled. “He raises purebred Appaloosa stallions when he isn’t hunting for meteorites all over the world. He was a character!”

  “Why would you hunt meteorites?” Marge wondered.

  “Well, he sold one for over a hundred thousand dollars to a collector,” the younger woman replied, tongue in cheek.

  Marge whistled. “Wow! Maybe I’ll get a metal detector and go out searching for them myself!”

  That was a real joke, because Marge had inherited half of her father’s estate. She lived in a simple house and she never lived high. But she could have, if she’d wanted to. She felt that the girls shouldn’t have too much luxury in their formative years. Maybe she was right. Certainly, Brandi and Dawn had turned out very well. They were responsible and kindhearted, and they never felt apart from fellow students.

  Tellie glanced at the lanes, where Grange was throwing a ball down the aisle with force, and grace. He had a rodeo rider’s physique, lean in the hips and wide in the shoulders. Odd, the way he moved, Tellie mused, like a hunter.

  “He really is a dish,” she murmured, deep in thought.

  Marge nodded. “He is unusual,” she said. “Imagine a boy on a path that deadly turning his life around.”

  “J.B. said he was forced out of the military.�
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  Marge gaped at her. “He told you that? How did he know?”

  Tellie glowered. “I expect he’s had a firm of private detectives on overtime, finding out everything they could about him. J.B. loves to have leverage if he has to go against people.”

  “He won’t bother Grange,” Marge said. “He just wants to make sure that the man isn’t a threat to you.”

  “He wants to decide who I marry, and how many kids I have,” she returned coolly. “But he’s not going to.”

  “That’s the spirit, Tellie,” Marge chuckled.

  “All the same,” Tellie replied, “I wish he wouldn’t snub me. I’m beginning to feel like a ghost.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “You think so? I wonder.”

  Saturday came, and Grange had something to do for Justin, so Tellie stayed home and helped Marge clean house.

  A car drove up out front and two car doors slammed. Tellie was on her hands and knees in the kitchen, scrubbing the tile with a brush while Marge cleaned upstairs. J.B. walked in with a ravishing young blond woman on his arm. She was tall and beautifully made, with a model-perfect face and teeth, and hair to her waist in back.

  “I thought they abolished indentured servitude,” J.B. drawled, looking pointedly at Tellie.

  She looked up at him with cold eyes, pushing sweaty hair out of her eyes with the back of a dirty hand. “It’s called housecleaning, J.B. I’m sure you have no idea what it consists of.”

  “Nell takes care of all that,” he said. “This is Bella Dean,” he introduced the blonde, wrapping a long arm around her and smiling at her warmly.

  “Nice to meet you,” Tellie said, forcing a smile. “I’d shake hands, but I’m sure you’d rather not.” She indicated her dirty hands.

  Bella didn’t answer her. She beamed up at J.B. “Didn’t we come to take your sister and your nieces out to eat?” she asked brightly. “I’m sure the kitchen help doesn’t need an audience.”

  Tellie got to her feet, slammed the brush down on the floor and walked right up to the blonde, who actually backed away.