Heartbreaker (2 page)

“Notice how furiously everybody applauded when he stopped speaking,” Dawn agreed.

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“You two have been hanging out with me for too long,” Tellie observed. “You’re picking up all my bad habits.”

They both hugged her. “We love you, bad habits and all,” they said. “Congratulations on your degree!”

“You did very well indeed,” Marge echoed. “Magna cum laude, no less! I’m proud of you.”

“Honor graduates don’t have social lives, Mother,” Brandi pointed out. “No wonder she made such good grades. She spent every weekend in the dorm, studying!”

“Not every weekend,” Tellie muttered. “There was that archaeology field trip…”

“With the geek squad.” Dawn yawned.

“They weren’t all geeks,” she reminded them. “Anyway, I like digging up old things.”

“Then you should have gotten your degree in archaeology instead of history,” Brandi said.

She chuckled. “I’ll be digging up old documents instead of old relics,” she said. “It will be a cleaner job, at least.”

“When do you start your master’s degree work?” Marge asked.

“Fall semester,” she replied, smiling. “I thought I’d take the summer off and spend a little time with you guys. I’ve already lined up a job working for the Ballenger brothers at their feedlot while Calhoun and Abby take a cruise to Greece with the boys. I guess all those summers following J.B. and his veterinarian around the ranch finally paid off. At least I know enough about feeding out cattle to handle the paperwork!”

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“Lucky Calhoun and Abby. Wow,” Dawn said on a sigh. “I’d love to get a three-month vacation!”

“Wouldn’t we all,” Tellie agreed wistfully. “In my case, a job is a vacation from all the studying! Biology was so hard!”

“We don’t get to dissect things anymore at our school,” Brandi said. “Everybody’s afraid of blood these days.”

“With good reason, I’m sorry to say,” Marge mused.

“We don’t get to do dissections, either,” Tellie told her with a smile. “We had a rat on a dissecting board and we all got to use it for identification purposes. It was so nice that we had an air-conditioned lab!”

The girls made faces.

“Speaking of labs,” Marge interrupted, “who wants a nice hamburger?”

“Nobody dissects cows, Mom,” Brandi informed her.

“We can dissect the hamburger,” Tellie suggested, “and identify the part of the cow it came from.”

“It came from a steer, not a cow,” Marge said wryly. “You could use a refresher course in Ranching 101, Tellie.”

They all knew who’d be teaching it at home, and that was a sore spot. Tellie’s smile faded. “I expect I’ll get all the information I need working from Justin at the feedlot.”

“They’ve got some handsome new cowboys working for them,” Marge said with sparkling eyes. “One’s an ex–Green Beret who grew up on a ranch in West Texas.”

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Tellie shrugged one shoulder. “I’m not sure I want to meet any men. I’ve still got three years of study to get my master’s degree so that I can start teaching history in college.”

“You can teach now, can’t you?” Dawn asked.

“I can teach adult education,” Tellie replied. “But I have to have at least a master’s degree to teach at the college level, and a Ph.D. is preferred.”

“Why don’t you want to teach little kids?” Brandi asked curiously.

Tellie grinned. “Because you two hooligans destroyed all my illusions about sweet little kids,” she replied, and ducked when Brandi threw a pillow at her.

“We were such sweet little kids,” Dawn said belligerently. “You better say we were, or else, Tellie!”

“Or else what?” she replied.

Dawn wiggled her eyebrows. “Or else I’ll burn the potatoes. It’s my night to cook supper at home.”

“Don’t pay any attention to her, dear,” Marge said. “She always burns the potatoes.”

“Oh, Mom!” the teenager wailed.

Tellie just laughed. But her heart wasn’t in the wordplay. She was miserable because J.B. had missed her graduation, and nothing was going to make up for that.

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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!”

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“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?”

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“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.

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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.

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“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.”

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“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 very 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.

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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.