Heartbreaker (13 page)

“Almost never. She died in a tornado.” She nodded, at Tellie’s astonished look. “That’s right, one of the worst in south Texas history hit here back in the eighties,” she recalled. “It lifted the barn off its foundations and twisted it. His grandmother’s favorite horse was trapped there, and old Mrs. Hammock put on a raincoat and rushed out to try to save it. Nobody saw her go. The tornado picked her up and put her in the top of an oak tree, dead. They had to get a truck with a cherry picker to get her down, afterward,” Nell said softly. “J.B. was watching. He hates tornadoes to this day. It’s why we have elaborate storm shelters here and in the bunkhouse, and even under the barn.”

“That’s why he looked funny, when I mentioned liking to watch the Weather Channel,” she said slowly.

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“He watches it religiously in the spring and summer,” Nell confided. “And he has weather alert systems in the same places he has the shelters. All his men have cell phones with alert capability. He’s something of a fanatic about safety.”

“Have I ever been in a tornado?” she asked Nell.

Nell looked surprised. “Why do you ask?”

“J.B. said I’m fuzzy about the past,” she replied. “I gather that I’ve lost some memories, is that it?”

Nell came and sat down in the chair beside the bed. “Yes. You have.”

“And the doctor doesn’t want me remembering too soon?”

“He thinks it’s better if you remember all on your own,” Nell said. “So we’re conspiring to keep you in the dark, so to speak,” she added with a gentle smile.

Tellie frowned. “I wish I could remember what I’ve forgotten.”

Nell burst out laughing. “Don’t rush it. When you remember, we’ll leave together.”

Tellie gaped at her. “You’re quitting? But you’ve been here forever!”

“I’ve been here too long,” Nell said curtly, rising. “There are other bosses who don’t yell and threaten people.”

“You yell and threaten back,” Tellie reminded her.

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“Remembered that, did you?” she teased.

“Yes. So why are you leaving him?”

“Let’s just say that I don’t like his methods,” she replied. “And that’s all you’re getting out of me. I’ll be in the kitchen. Just use the intercom if you need me, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks, Nell.”

Nell smiled at her. “I like having you here.”

“Who’s he dating this week?” Tellie called after her.

“Another stacked blonde, of course,” came the dry reply. “She has the IQ of a lettuce leaf.”

Tellie chuckled. “Obviously he doesn’t like competition from mere women.”

“Someday he’ll come a cropper,” she said. “I hope I live to see the day.”

Tellie watched her close the door with faint misgivings. J.B. did like variety, she seemed to know that.

But there was something about the reference, about a blond woman, that unsettled her. Why had she and J.B. argued? She wished she could remember.

Her light was still on when he came home. She was reading a particularly interesting book that she’d found in the bookcase, an autobiography by Libbie Custer, the woman who’d married General George Custer of Civil War and Little Bighorn fame. It was a tale of courage in the face of danger, unexpectedly
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riveting. Mrs. Custer, it seemed, had actually gone with her husband to the battlefield during the Civil War. Tellie had never read of women doing that. Mrs. Custer was something of a renegade for her oppressed generation, a daring and intelligent woman with a keen wit. She liked her.

J.B. opened the door to find her propped up in bed on her pillows with the book resting against her upraised knees under the covers.

“What are you doing up at this hour?” he asked sternly.

She glanced at him, still halfway in the book she was reading. He looked elegant in a dinner jacket and black tie, she thought, although the tie was in his hand and the shirt was open at the throat, over a pelt of dark hair. She frowned. Why did the sight of his bare chest make her heart race?

“I found this book on the shelf and couldn’t put it down,” she said.

He moved to the bed, stuck the tie in his pocket and sat down beside her. He took the book in a big, lean hand and checked the title. He gave it back, smiling. “Libbie Custer was one of my grandmother’s heroines. She actually met her once, when she gave a speech in New York while my grandmother was visiting relatives there as a child. She said that Mrs. Custer was a wonderful speaker. She lived into her nineties.”

“She wrote a very interesting book,” Tellie said.

“There are three of them altogether,” he told her. “I believe you’ll find the other two on the shelf as well, along with several biographies of the Colonel and the one book that he wrote.”

“General Custer,” she corrected.

He grinned. “That was a brevet promotion, given during the Civil War for outstanding courage under fire. His actual military rank was Colonel, at the time he died.”

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“You read about him, too?” she asked.

He nodded. “These were some of the first books I was exposed to as a child. My mother was big on reading skills,” he said coolly. “Her picks were nonfiction, mostly chemistry and physics. Grandmother’s were more palatable.”

She noted the play of emotions on his lean, hard face. “Your mother was a scientist,” she said suddenly, and wondered where the memory came from.

“Yes.” He stared at her intently. “A research chemist. She died when we were young.”

“You didn’t like her very much, did you?”

“I hated her,” he said flatly. “She made my grandmother miserable, making fun of her reading tastes, the way she dressed, her skills as a homemaker. She demeaned her.”

“Was your grandmother your mother’s mother?”

He shook his head. “My father’s mother. In her day, she was an elegant horsewoman. She won trophies. And she was an actress before she married. But that, to my mother’s mind, was fluff. She only admired women with Mensa-level IQs and science degrees.”

“What about your father, couldn’t he stop her from tormenting the old lady?”

He scoffed. “He was never here. He was too involved with making money to pay much attention to what went on around the house.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You must have had an interesting childhood.”

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He cocked an eyebrow. “There’s a Chinese curse—‘may you live in interesting times.’ That would have been appropriate for it.”

She didn’t quite know what to say. He looked so alone. “Nell said she died in a tornado. Your grandmother, I mean.”

He nodded. “She was trying to save her horse. She’d had him for twenty-five years, ridden him in competition. She loved him more than any other thing here, except maybe me.” He grimaced. “I’ll never forget watching them bring her down from the treetop. She looked like a broken doll.” His eyes closed briefly. “I don’t have much luck with women, when it comes to love.”

That was a curious thing to say. She felt odd as he said it, as if she knew something more about that, but couldn’t quite call it up.

“I guess life is a connected series of hard knocks,” she mused.

He glanced at her. “Your own life hasn’t been any bed of roses,” he commented. “You lost your father when you were born, and your grandfather and your mother only six months apart.”

“Did I?” she wondered.

He cursed under his breath. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It didn’t trigger any memories,” she assured him, managing a smile. “I’m pretty blank about recent events. Well, I remember I’m graduating,” she amended, “and that I borrowed Marge’s car to drive to your house…” She hesitated. “Marge’s car…”

“Stop trying to force it,” he said, tapping her knee with a hard finger. “Your memory will come back when it’s ready to.”

“Nell said she was quitting. Did you have a row with her?”

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“Did she say that I had?” he asked warily.

“She didn’t say much of anything, J.B.,” she muttered. “I can’t get a straight answer out of anybody, even that nice man who was in the emergency room with me.” She hesitated. “Has he come by to see me?”

He shifted restlessly. “Why ask me?” he wondered, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“He did come to see me!” she exclaimed, seeing the truth in the ruddy color that ran along his high cheekbones. “He came, and you wouldn’t let him in!”

Eight

J.B. not only looked angry, he looked frustrated. “Coltrain said you didn’t need visitors for two or three days, at least,” he said firmly.

She was still staring at him, with wide pale green eyes. “But why not? Grange won’t tell me anything.

Every time I asked a question, he pretended to be deaf.” Her eyes narrowed. “Just like you, J.B.,” she added.

He patted her knee. “We’re all trying to spare you any unnecessary pain,” he said.

“So you’re admitting that it would be painful if I remembered why you and I argued,” she said.

He glared. “Life is mostly painful,” he pointed out. “You and I have had disagreements before.”

“Have we? And you seem like a man with such a sunny, even disposition,” she said innocently.

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“Ha!” came an unexpected comment from the hall.

They both turned to the doorway, and there stood Nell, in a housecoat with her hair in curlers, glaring at both of them.

“I have an even disposition,” he argued.

“Evenly bad,” Nell agreed. “She should be asleep,” she said, nodding at Tellie.

He got to his feet. “So she should.” He took the book away from Tellie and put it on the bedside table.

“Go to sleep.”

“Can I get you anything before I go to bed, Tellie?” Nell asked.

“No, but thanks.” J.B. pulled the pillows out from under her back and eased her down on the bed. He pulled up the covers, studied her amusedly and suddenly bent and brushed his hard mouth over her forehead. “Sleep tight, little bit.” He turned off the lamp.

“I don’t need tucking in,” she said.

“It never hurts,” he mused. He passed Nell. “You going to stand there all night? She needs her sleep.”

“You’re the one who was keeping her awake!” Nell muttered.

“I was not…!”

Their voices, harsh and curt, came through the closed door after he’d pulled it shut. Tellie sighed and closed her eyes. What an odd pair.

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The next morning, there was heavy rain and lightning. Thunder shook the house. Alarmed, Tellie turned on the weather alert console next to her bed and listened to the forecast. There was a tornado watch for Jacobs County, among others in south Texas.

She grimaced, remembering tornadoes in the past. She’d seen one go through when she was a little girl.

It hadn’t touched down near their house, but she could never forget the color of the clouds that contained it. They were a neon-green, like slimy pond algae, enclosed in thick gray swirls. She got to her feet, a little shakily, and went to the window to look out. The clouds were dark and thick and lightning struck down out of them so unexpectedly, and violently, that she jumped.

“Get away from that window!” J.B. snapped from the doorway.

She turned, her heart racing from the double impact of the storm and his temper. “I was just looking,”

she protested.

He closed the door behind him, striding toward her with single-minded determination. He swung her up in his powerful arms and carried her back to bed.

“Lightning strikes the highest point. There are no trees taller than the house. Get the point?” he asked.

She clung to his strong neck, savoring his strength. “I get it.”

He eased her down on the pillow, his green eyes staring straight into hers as he rested his hands beside her head on the bed. “How’s your head?”

“Still there,” she mused. “It does throb a bit.”

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“No wonder,” he said. He searched her eyes for so long that her heart raced. He looked down at her pajama jacket and his teeth clenched. She looked down, too, but she didn’t see anything that would make him frown.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He drew in a long breath. “You’re still a child, Tellie,” he said, more for his own benefit than for hers. He stood up. “Ready for breakfast?”

She frowned. “Why did you say that?”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and went to the window to look out.

“You’ll get struck by lightning,” she chided, throwing his own accusation back at him.

“I won’t.”

His back was arrow straight. She stared at it longingly. It had been sweet to lie in his arms while he carried her. She felt an odd stirring deep in her belly.

“You really hate storms, don’t you?” she said.

“Most people do, if they’ve ever lived through one.”

She remembered what he’d told her about the grandmother he loved so much, and how she’d died in a tornado. “I’ve only seen one up close.”

He turned toward her, his eyes watchful and quiet.

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“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I don’t remember you going out on more than two dates the whole time you were in high school.”

The reference to the past, luckily, went right over her head. She blinked. “I was always shy around boys,” she confessed. “And none of them really appealed to me. Especially not the jocks. I hate sports.”

He laughed softly. “Was that why?”

She twisted the hem of the sheet between her fingers and stared at them. “You must have noticed at some point that I’m not overly brainy or especially beautiful.”