Heartbreaker (19 page)

Eleven

A s it happened, they managed to get around the tree in their raincoats and walk out to the main highway. It was still raining, but the storm was over. Marge got on her cell phone and called her friend Barbara, who phoned one of the local firemen, an off-duty officer who agreed to pick them up and take them to the hospital.

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When they got there, J.B. was in the emergency room sitting on an examination table, grinning. He had a cut across his forehead and a bruise on his bare shoulder, but his spirit seemed perfectly unstoppable.

Tellie almost ran to him. Almost. But just as she tensed to do it, a blond head came into view under J.B.’s other arm. Bella, in tears, sobbing, as she clung to J.B.’s bare chest mumbling how happy she was that he wasn’t badly hurt.

She drew back and Marge and Nell and the girls joined her, out of sight of J.B. and Bella.

“You go ahead,” she told them. “But…don’t tell him I was here. Okay?”

Marge nodded, the others agreed. They understood without a word of explanation. “Go on out front, honey,” Marge said gently. “We’ll find you there when we’re through.”

“Okay. Thanks,” Tellie said huskily, with a forced smile. Her heart was breaking all over again.

As Marge and the girls moved into the cubicle, Tellie walked back to the front entrance where there were chairs and a sofa around the information desk. She couldn’t bring herself to walk into that room.

J.B. hadn’t looked as if he disliked Bella, despite what Marge had told her about his anger that Bella had spilled the beans about Tellie’s past. He looked amazingly content, and his arm had been firm and close around Bella’s shoulders.

Why, Tellie asked herself, did she continually bash her stupid head against brick walls? Love was such a painful emotion. Someday, she promised herself, she was going to learn how to turn it off. At least, as far as J. B. Hammock was concerned!

She didn’t see Bella walk past the waiting room. She hardly looked up until Marge and the girls came back.

“He’s going to be all right,” Marge told her, hugging her gently. “Just a few cuts and bruises, nothing else. Let’s go home.”

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Tellie smiled back, but only with her eyes.

J.B. buttoned his shirt while Bella stood waiting with his tie. He felt empty. Tellie hadn’t even bothered to come and see about him. Nothing in recent years had hurt so much. She’d finally given up on him for good.

“We can get Albert to fix you something nice for breakfast,” Bella said brightly.

“I’m not hungry.” He took the tie and put it in place. “At least Marge and the girls cared enough to brave the storm to see me. Tellie couldn’t be bothered, I guess,” he said bitterly.

“She was in the waiting room,” Bella said blankly.

He scowled. “Doing what?”

Bella shrugged one thin shoulder. “Crying.”

Crying. She’d come to see about him after all, but she hadn’t come into the room? Then he remembered that when Marge and the girls came in, he had Bella in his arms. He winced mentally. No wonder Tellie had taken off like that. She thought…

He looked down at Bella shrewdly. “I’m going to have to let Albert go,” he said with calculated sadness.

“With all the damage the storm did to the house and barn, I’m going to go in the hole for sure. It’s been a bad year for cattle ranchers anyway.”

Bella was very still. “You mean, you might lose everything?”

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He nodded. “Well, I don’t mind hard work. It’s a challenge to start from scratch. You can move in with me, Bella, and take over the housekeeping and cooking…”

“I, uh, I have an invitation from my aunt in the Bahamas to come stay the summer with her,” Bella said at once. “I’m really sorry, J.B., but I’m not the pioneering type, and I hate housework.” She smiled. “It was fun while it lasted.”

“Yes,” he said, hiding a smile. “It was.”

The next day was taken up finding insurance adjusters and contractors to repair the damage at the ranch.

He’d lost several head of livestock to injuries from falling trees and flying debris. The barn would have to be rebuilt, and the front part of the house would need some repair, as well. He wasn’t worried, though.

He could well afford what needed doing. He smiled at his subterfuge with Bella. As he’d suspected, she’d only wanted him for as long as she thought he was rich and could take her to five-star restaurants and buy her expensive presents.

When he had the repairs in hand, he put on a gray vested business suit, polished boots and his best creamy Stetson, and went over to Marge’s to have a showdown with Tellie.

Nell opened the door, her eyes guilty and welcoming all at once. “Glad you’re okay, boss,” she said stiffly.

“Me, too,” he agreed. “Where is everybody?”

“In the kitchen. We’re just having lunch. There’s plenty,” she added.

He slipped an arm around her shoulders and kissed her wrinkled forehead with genuine affection. “I’ve missed you,” he said simply, and walked her into the kitchen.

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Marge and the girls looked up, smiling happily. They all rushed to hug him and fuss over him.

“Nell made minestrone,” Marge said. “Sit down and have a bowl with us.”

“It smells delicious,” he remarked, putting his hat on the counter. He sat down, looking around curiously.

“Where’s Tellie?”

There was a long silence. Marge put down her spoon. “She’s gone.”

“Gone?” he exclaimed. “Where?”

“To Houston,” Marge replied sadly. “She phoned some classmates and found an apartment she could share, then she phoned the dean at home and arranged to teach as an adjunct for night classes.

Orientation was today, so she was able to sign up for her master’s classes.”

J.B. looked at his bowl with blind eyes. Tellie had gone away. She’d seen him with Bella, decided that he didn’t want her, cut her losses and run for the border. Added to what she’d remembered, the painful things he’d said to her the day of the wreck, he couldn’t blame her for that. She didn’t know how drastically he’d changed toward her. Now he’d have to find a way back into her life. It wasn’t going to be easy. She’d never fully trust him again.

But he wasn’t giving up before he’d started, he told himself firmly. He’d never really tried to court Tellie.

If she still cared at all, she wouldn’t be able to resist him—any more than he could resist her.

Tellie was finding her new routine wearing. She taught a night class in history for four hours, two nights a week, and she went to classes three other days during the week. She was young and strong, and she knew she could cope. But she didn’t sleep well, remembering Bella curled close in J.B.’s arm the night of the tornado. He wouldn’t marry the beautiful woman, she knew that. He wouldn’t marry anyone. But he had nothing to offer Tellie, and she knew, and suffered for it.

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One of her classmates, John, who’d helped her find a room the night before she came back to Houston, paused by her table in the college coffeehouse.

“Tellie, can you cover for me in anthropology?” he asked. “I’ve got to work tomorrow morning.”

She grinned up at him. John, like her, was doing master’s work, although his was in anthropology. Tellie was taking the course as an elective. “I’ll make sure I take good notes. How about covering for me in literature? I’ll have a test to grade in my night school course.”

“No problem,” he said. He grinned down at her, with a hand on the back of her chair. “Sure you don’t want to go out to dinner with me Friday night?”

He was good-looking, and sweet, but he liked to drink and Tellie didn’t. She was searching for a reply when she turned her gaze to the door.

Her heart jumped up into her throat. J.B. was standing just inside the door of the crowded café, searching. He spotted her and came right on, his eyes never leaving her as he wound through the crowd.

He stopped at her table. He spared John a brief glance that made veiled threats.

“I’d better run,” John said abruptly. “See you later, Tellie.”

“Sure thing.”

J.B. pulled out a chair and sat down, tossing his hat idly onto the chair beside hers. He didn’t smile. His eyes were intent, curiously warm.

“You ran, Tellie.”

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She couldn’t pretend not to know what he was talking about. She pushed back her wavy hair and picked up her coffee cup. “It seemed sensible.”

“Did it?”

She sipped coffee. “Did the tornado do much damage at the ranch?”

He shrugged. “Enough to keep me busy for several days, or I’d have been here sooner,” he told her. He paused as the waitress came by, to order himself a cup of cappuccino. He glanced at Tellie and grinned.

“Make that two cups,” he told the waitress. She smiled and went to fill the order, while J.B. watched Tellie’s face. “You can’t afford it on your budget,” he said knowingly. “My treat.”

“Thanks,” she murmured.

He leaned back in his chair and looked at her, intently, unsmiling. “Heard from Grange?”

She shook her head. “He phoned before I left Jacobsville to say he was going back to Washington, D.C. Apparently he was subpoenaed to testify against his former commanding officer, who’s being court-martialed.”

He nodded. “Cag Hart told me. He and Blake Kemp and Grange served in the same division in Iraq. He said Grange’s commanding officer had him thrown out of the army and took credit for a successful incursion that was Grange’s idea.”

“He told me,” she replied.

The waitress came back with steaming cappuccino for both of them. J.B. picked his up and sipped it.

Tellie sniffed hers with her eyes closed, smiling. She loved the rich brew.

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After a minute J.B. met her eyes again. “Tellie, is this what you really want?” he asked, indicating the coffeehouse and the college campus.

The question startled her. She toyed with the handle of her cup. “Of course it is,” she lied. “When I get my doctorate, I can teach at college level.”

“And that’s all you want from life?” he asked. “A career?”

She couldn’t look at him. “We both know I’ll never get very far any other way. I have plenty of friends who cry on my shoulder about their girlfriends or ask me to take notes for them in class, or keep their cats when they go on holiday.” She shrugged. “I’m not the sort of woman that men want for keeps.”

He closed his eyes on a wave of guilt. He’d said such horrible things to her. She already had a low self-image. He’d lowered it more, in a fit of bad temper.

“Beauty alone isn’t worth much,” he said after a minute. “Neither is wealth. After I got out of the emergency room, I went home to an empty house, Tellie,” he said sadly. “I stood there in the vestibule, with crystal chandeliers and Italian marble all around me, mahogany staircases, Persian rugs…and suddenly it felt like being alone in a tomb. You know what, Tellie? Wealth isn’t enough. In fact, it’s nothing, unless you have someone to share it with.”

“You’ve got Bella,” she said with more bitterness than she knew.

He laughed. “I told her I was in the hole and likely to lose everything,” he commented amusedly. “She suddenly remembered an invitation to spend the summer in the sun with her aunt.”

Tellie’s eyes lifted to his. She was afraid to hope.

He reached across the table and curled her fingers into his. “Finish your cappuccino,” he said gently. “I want to talk to you.”

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She was hardly aware of what she was doing. This must be a dream, J.B. sitting here with her, holding her hand. She was going to wake up any minute. Meanwhile, she might as well enjoy the fantasy. She smiled at him and sipped her cappuccino.

He took her out to his car and put her in the passenger side. When he was seated behind the wheel, he reached back and brought out a shopping bag with colored paper tastefully arranged in it. “Open it,” he said.

She reached in and pulled out a beautiful lacy black mantilla with red roses embroidered across it. She caught her breath. She collected the beautiful things. This was the prettiest one she’d ever seen. She looked at him with a question in her eyes.

“I picked it out myself,” he told her quietly. “I didn’t send Jarrett shopping this time. Don’t stop. There’s more, in the bottom of the bag.”

Puzzled, she reached down and her fingers closed around a velvety box with a bow on it. She pulled it out and stared at it curiously. Another watch? she wondered.

“Go on. Open it.”

She took off the bow and opened the box. Inside was…another box. Frowning, she opened that one, too, and found a very small square box. She opened that one, too, and caught her breath. It was a diamond. Not too big, not too small, but of perfect quality in what looked like expensive yellow gold.

Next to it was an equally elegant band studded with diamonds that matched the solitaire.

J.B. was holding his breath, although it didn’t show.

She met his searching gaze. “I…don’t understand.”

He took the box from her, lifted out the solitaire and slid it gently onto her ring finger. “Now, do you understand?”

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She was afraid to try. Surely it was still part of the dream. If not, it was a cruel joke.

“You don’t want me,” she said bitterly. “I’m ugly, and you can’t bear me to touch you…!”

He pulled her across into his arms and kissed her with unabashed passion, cradling her against his broad chest while his mouth proceeded to wear down all her protests. When she was clinging to him, breathless, he folded her in his arms and rocked her hungrily.