Heartbreaker (11 page)

“Then why in hell didn’t she ride in with you?” Grange asked, brown eyes flashing. “She must have been upset—she loves Marge. She shouldn’t even have been driving in weather this dangerous.”

That was a question J.B. didn’t want to touch. He ignored it, following the gurney into one of the examination rooms with Grange right on his heels.

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He got one of Tellie’s small hands in both of his and held on tight. “Tellie,” he said huskily, feeling the pain all the way to his boots. “Tellie, hold on!”

“She shouldn’t have been driving,” Grange repeated, leaning against the wall nearby. He was obviously upset as well, and the look he gave J.B. would have started a fight under better circumstances.

The entrance of Copper Coltrain interrupted him.

Copper gave J.B. an odd look. “It isn’t your day, is it?” he asked, moving to Tellie’s side. “What happened?”

“Her car hydroplaned, apparently,” Grange said tautly. “I found it overturned. She was lying facedown in a ditch full of water. If I’d been just a little later, she’d have drowned.”

“Damn the luck!” Coltrain muttered, checking her pupil reaction with a small penlight. “She’s concussed as well as bruised,” he murmured. “I’m going to need X-rays and a battery of tests to see how badly she’s hurt. But the concussion is the main thing.”

J.B. felt sick. One of his men had been kicked in the head by a mean steer and dropped dead of a massive concussion. “Can’t you do something now?” he raged at Coltrain.

The physician gave him an odd look. It was notorious gossip locally that Tellie was crazy about J. B.

Hammock, and that J.B. paid her as little attention as possible. The white-faced man with blazing green eyes facing him didn’t seem disinterested.

“What would you suggest?” he asked J.B. curtly.

“Wake her up!”

Grange made a rough sound in his throat.

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“You can shut up,” J.B. told him icily. “You’re not a doctor.”

“Neither are you,” Grange returned with the same lack of warmth. “And if you’d given her a lift to the hospital, she wouldn’t need one, would she?”

J.B. had already worked that out for himself. His lips compressed furiously.

Tellie groaned.

Both men moved to the examination table at the same time. Coltrain gave them angry looks and bent to examine Tellie.

“Can you hear me?” he asked her softly. “Tellie?”

Her eyes opened, green and dazed. She blinked and winced. “My head hurts.”

“I’m not surprised,” Coltrain murmured, busy with a stethoscope. “Take a deep breath. Let it out.

Again.”

She groaned. “My head hurts,” she repeated.

“Okay, I’ll give you something for it. But we need X-rays and an MRI,” Coltrain said quietly. “Anything hurt besides your head?”

“Everything,” she replied. “What happened?”

“You wrecked your car,” Grange said quietly.

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She looked up at him. “You found me?”

He nodded, dark eyes concerned.

She managed a smile. “Thanks.” She shivered. “I’m wet!”

“It was pouring rain,” Grange said, his voice soft, like his eyes. He brushed back the blood-matted hair from her forehead, disclosing a growing dark bruise. He winced.

“You’re concussed, Tellie,” Dr. Coltrain said. “We’re going to have to keep you for a day or two.

Okay?”

“But I’ll miss graduation!” she exclaimed, trying to sit up.

He gently pushed her back down. “No, you won’t,” he said with a quizzical smile.

She blinked, glancing at J.B., who looked very worried. “But it’s May. I’m a senior. I have a white gown and cap.” She hesitated. “Was I driving Marge’s car?”

“No. Your own,” J.B. said slowly, apprehensively.

“But I don’t have a car, don’t you remember, J.B.?” she asked pleasantly. “I have to drive Marge’s.

She’s going to help me buy a car this summer, because I’m going to work at the Sav-A-Lot Grocery Store, remember?”

J.B.’s indrawn breath was audible. Before the other two men could react, he pressed Tellie’s small hand closer in his own. “Tellie, how old are you?” he asked.

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“I’m seventeen, you know that,” she scoffed.

Coltrain whistled. J.B. turned to him, his lips parted in the preliminary to a question.

“We’re going to step outside and discuss how to break it to Marge,” Coltrain told her gently. “You just rest. I’ll send a nurse in with something for your headache, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed. “J.B., you aren’t leaving, are you?” she added worriedly.

Coals of fire, he was thinking, as he assured her that he’d be nearby. She relaxed and smiled as she lay back on the examination table.

Coltrain motioned the other two men outside into the hall. “Amnesia,” he told J.B. at once. “I’m sure it’s temporary,” he added quickly. “It isn’t uncommon with head injuries. She’s very confused, and in some pain. I’ll run tests. We’ll do an MRI to make sure.”

“The head injury would cause it?” Grange asked worriedly.

J.B. had a flush along his high cheekbones. He didn’t speak.

Coltrain gave him a curious look. “The brain tends to try to protect itself from trauma, and not only physical trauma. Has she had a shock of some kind?” he asked J.B. pointedly.

J.B. replied with a curt jerk of his head. “We had a…misunderstanding at the house,” he admitted.

Grange’s dark eyes flashed. “Well, that explains why she wrecked the car!” he accused.

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J.B. glared at him. “Like hell it does…!”

Coltrain held up a hand. “Arguing isn’t going to do her any good. She’s had the wreck, now we have to deal with the consequences. I’m going to admit her and start running tests.”

J.B. drew a quick breath. “How are we going to explain this to Tellie?”

Coltrain sighed. “Tell her as little as possible, right now. Once she’s stabilized, we’ll tell her what we have to. But if she thinks she’s seventeen, sending her to Marge’s house is going to be traumatic—she’ll expect the girls to be four years younger than they are, won’t she?”

J.B. was thinking, hard. He saw immediately a way to solve that problem and prevent Nell from escaping at once. “She can stay at the house with Nell and me,” he said. “She and Marge and the girls did stay there when she was seventeen for a couple of weeks while Marge’s house was being remodeled. We can tell her that Marge and the girls are having a vacation while workmen tend to her house. I’ll make it right with Dawn and Brandi.”

“You and Tellie were close when she was in her teens, I recall,” Coltrain recalled.

“Yes,” J.B. said tautly.

Coltrain chuckled, glancing at Grange. “She followed him around like a puppy when she first went to live with Marge,” he told the other man. “You couldn’t talk to J.B. without tripping over Tellie. J.B. was her security blanket after she lost her mother.”

“She was the same way with Marge,” J.B. muttered.

“Not to that extent, she wasn’t,” Coltrain argued. “She thought the sun rose and set on you…”

“I need to go back and check on Marge,” J.B. interrupted, visibly uncomfortable.

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“I’ll stay with Tellie for a while,” Grange said, moving back into the examination room before the other two men could object.

J.B. stared after him with bridled fury, his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes smoldering. “He’s got no business in there,” he told Coltrain. “He isn’t even family!”

“Neither are you,” the doctor reminded him.

J.B. glared at him. “Are you sure she’ll be all right?”

“As sure as I can be.” He studied the other man intently. “You said something to her, something that hurt, didn’t you?” he asked, nodding when J.B.’s high cheekbones took on a ruddy color. “She’s hiding in the past, when you were less resentful of her. She’ll get her memory back, but it’s going to be dangerous to rush it. You have to let her move ahead at her own pace.”

“I’ll do that,” J.B. assured him. He drew in a long breath. “Damn. I feel as if my whole life crashed and burned today. First Marge, now Tellie. And Nell quit,” he added angrily.

“Nell?” Coltrain exclaimed. “She’s been there since you were a boy.”

“Well, she wants to leave,” J.B. muttered. “But she’ll stay if she knows Tellie’s coming to the house. I’d better phone her. Then I’ll go back to Marge’s room.” He met Coltrain’s eyes. “If she needs anything, anything, I’ll take care of it. I don’t think she’s got any health insurance at all.”

“You might stop by the admissions office and set things up,” Coltrain suggested. “But I’ll do what needs doing, finances notwithstanding. You know that.”

“I do. Thanks, Copper.”

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Coltrain shrugged. “I’m glad she’s rallying,” he said. “And Marge, too.”

“Same here.”

J.B. left him to go back to the admissions office and sign Tellie in. He felt guilty. Her wreck was certainly his fault. The least he could do was provide for her treatment. He hated knowing that he’d upset her that much, and for nothing. She was only trying to help. Frustration had taken its toll on him and driven him into Bella’s willing arms. The last thing he’d expected was for Tellie to walk in on them. He’d never been quite so ashamed of himself. Which was, of course, no excuse to take his temper out on her. He wished he could take back all the things he’d said. While her memory was gone, at least he had a chance to regain her trust and make up, a little, for what he’d done.

Tellie felt drained by the time Coltrain had all the tests he wanted. She was curious about the man who’d told her that he found her in the wrecked car and called the ambulance. He was handsome and friendly and seemed to like her very much, but she didn’t know him.

“It was very kind of you to rescue me,” she told Grange when she was in a private room.

He shrugged. “My pleasure.” He smiled at her, his dark eyes twinkling. “You can save me, next time.”

She laughed. Her head cocked to one side as she studied him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember your name.”

“Grange,” he said pleasantly.

“Just Grange?” she queried.

He nodded.

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“Have I known you a long time?”

He shook his head. “But I’ve taken you out a few times.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “And J.B. let me go with you?” she exclaimed. “That’s very strange. I wanted to go hiking with a college boy I knew and he threw a fit. You’re older than any college boy.”

He chuckled. “I’m twenty-seven,” he told her.

“Wow,” she mused.

“You’re old for your age,” he said, evading her eyes. “J.B. and I know each other.”

“I see.” She didn’t, but he was obviously reluctant to talk about it. “Marge hasn’t been to see me,” she added suddenly. “That’s not like her.”

Grange recalled what J.B. and Coltrain had discussed. “Her house is being remodeled,” he said. “She and the girls are on a vacation trip.”

“While school’s in session?” she exclaimed.

He thought fast. “It’s Spring Break, remember?”

She was confused. Hadn’t someone said it was May? Wasn’t Spring Break in March? “But graduation is coming up very soon.”

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“You got your cap and gown early, didn’t you?” he improvised.

She was frowning. “That must be what happened. I’m so confused,” she murmured, holding her head.

“And my head absolutely throbs.”

“They’ll give you something for that.” He checked his watch. “I have to go. Visiting hours are over.”

“Will you come back tomorrow?” she asked, feeling deserted.

He smiled. “Of course I will.” He hesitated. “It will have to be during my lunch hour, or after work, though.”

“Where do you work?”

“At the Ballenger feedlot.”

That set off bells in her head, but she couldn’t think why. “They’re nice, Justin and Calhoun.”

“Yes, they are.” He stood up, moving the chair back from her bed. “Take care. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay. Thanks again.”

He looked at her for a long time. “I’m glad it wasn’t more serious than it is,” he told her. “You were unconscious when I found you.”

“It was raining,” she recalled hesitantly. “I don’t understand why I was driving in the rain. I’m afraid of it, you know.”

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“Are you?”

She shook her head. “I must have had a reason.”

“I’m sure you did.” He looked thunderous, but he quickly erased the expression, smiled and left her.

She settled back into the pillow, feeling bruised and broken. It was such an odd experience, what had happened to her. Everyone seemed to be holding things back from her. She wondered how badly she was damaged. Tomorrow, she promised herself, she’d dig it out of J.B.

Seven

T ellie woke up early, expecting to find herself alone. But J.B. was sprawled in the chair next to the bed, snoring faintly, and he looked as if he’d been there for some time. A nurse was tiptoeing around to get Tellie’s vitals, sending amused and interested glances at the long, lean cowboy beside the bed.

“Has he been there long?” Tellie wanted to know.

“Since daybreak,” the nurse replied with a smile. She put the electronic thermometer in Tellie’s ear, let it beep, checked it and wrote down a figure. She checked her pulse and recorded that, as well. “I understand the nurse on the last shift tried to evict him and the hospital administrator actually came down here in person to tell her to cease and desist.” She gave Tellie a speaking glance. “I gather that your visitor is somebody very important.”