Heartbreaker (3 page)

“Well, you wouldn’t be so sure of that if you’d been here when he got back into the office just before quitting time,” came the terse reply. “I have never heard such language in my life, even from him!”

“He was just mad that he got caught,” Tellie said.

“He said it was one of the most special days of your life and I screwed it up,” Miss Jarrett said miserably.

“He’d already done that by not showing up for my graduation,” Tellie said, about to mention that none of them had seen him in the stands and thought he hadn’t shown up.

“Oh, you know about that?” came the unexpected reply. “He told us all to remember he’d been fighting a fire in case it came up. He had a meeting with an out-of-town cattle buyer and his daughter. He forgot all about the commencement exercises.”

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Tellie’s heart broke in two. “Yes,” she said, fighting tears, “well, nobody’s going to say anything. None of us, certainly.”

“Certainly. He gets away with murder.”

“I wish I could,” Tellie said under her breath. “Thanks for calling, Miss Jarrett. It was nice of you.”

“I just wanted you to know how bad I felt,” the older woman said with genuine regret. “I wouldn’t have hurt your feelings for the world.”

“I know that.”

“Well, happy graduation, anyway.”

“Thanks.”

Tellie hung up. She went back into the living room smiling. She was never going to tell them the truth about her graduation. But she knew that she’d never forget.

Two

T ellie had learned to hide her deepest feelings over the years, so Marge and the girls didn’t notice any change in her. There was one. She was tired of waiting for J.B. to wake up and notice that she was around. She’d finally realized that she meant nothing to him. Well, maybe she was a sort of adopted relative for whom he had an occasional fondness. But his recent behavior had finally drowned her fondest hopes of anything serious. She was going to convince her stupid heart to stop aching for him, if it killed her.

Five days later, on a Monday, she walked into Calhoun and Justin Ballenger’s office at their feedlot, ready for work.

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Justin, Calhoun’s elder brother, gave her a warm welcome. He was tall, whipcord lean, with gray-sprinkled black hair and dark eyes. He and his wife, Shelby—who was a direct descendant of the founder of Jacobsville, old John Jacobs—had three sons. They’d been married for a long time, like Calhoun and Abby. J. D. Langley’s wife, Fay, had been working for the Ballengers as Calhoun’s secretary, but a rough pregnancy had forced her to give it up temporarily. That was why Tellie was in such demand.

“You’ll manage,” Justin’s secretary, Ellie, assured her with a smile. “We’re not so rushed now as we are in the early spring and autumn. It’s just nice and routine. I’ll introduce you to the men later on. For now, let me show you what you’ll be doing.”

“Sorry you have to give up your own vacation for this,” Justin said apologetically.

“Listen, I can’t afford a vacation yet,” she assured him with a grin. “I’m a lowly college student. I have to pay my tuition for three more years. I’m the one who’s grateful for the job.”

Justin shrugged. “You know as much about cattle as Abby and Shelby do,” he said, which was high praise, since both were actively involved in the feedlot operation and the local cattlemen’s association.

“You’re welcome here.”

“Thanks,” she said, and meant it.

“Thank you,” he replied, and left them to it.

The work wasn’t that difficult. Most of it dealt with spreadsheets, various programs that kept a daily tally on the number of cattle from each client and the feeding regimen they followed. It was involved and required a lot of concentration, and the phones seemed to ring constantly. It wasn’t all clients asking about cattle. Many of the calls were from prospective customers. Others were from buyers who had contracted to take possession of certain lots of cattle when they were fed out. There were also calls from various organizations to which the Ballenger brothers belonged, and even a few from state and federal legislators. A number of them came from overseas, where the brothers had investments. Tellie found it all
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fascinating.

It took her a few days to get into the routine of things, and to get to know the men who worked at the feedlot. She could identify them all by face, if not by name.

One of them was hard to miss. He was the ex–Green Beret, a big, tall man from El Paso named Grange.

If he had a first name, Tellie didn’t hear anyone use it. He had straight black hair and dark brown eyes, an olive complexion and a deep, sexy voice. He liked Tellie on sight and made no secret of it. It amused Justin, because Grange hadn’t shown any interest in anything in the weeks he’d been working on the place. It was the first spark of life the man had displayed.

He told Tellie, who looked surprised.

“He seems like a friendly man,” she stammered.

He lifted a dark eyebrow. “The first day he worked here, one of the boys short-sheeted his bed. He turned on the lights, looked around the room, dumped one of the other men out of a bunk bed and threw him headfirst into the yard.”

“Was it the right man?” Tellie asked, wide-eyed.

“It was. Nobody knew how he figured it out, and he never said. But the boys walk wide around him.

Especially since he threw that big knife he carries at a sidewinder that crawled too close to the bunkhouse. Cag Hart has a reputation for that sort of accuracy with a Bowie, but he used to be the only one. Grange is a mystery.”

She was intrigued. “What did he do, before he came here?”

“Nobody knows. Nobody asks, either,” he added with a grin.

“Was he stationed overseas, in the army?”

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“Nobody knows that, either. The 411 is that he was in the Green Berets, but he’s never said he was.

Puzzling guy. But he’s a hard worker. And he’s honest.” He pursed his lips and his dark eyes twinkled.

“And he never takes a drink. Ever.”

She whistled. “Well!”

“Anyway, you’d better not agree to any dates with him until J.B. checks him out,” Justin said. “I don’t want J.B. on the wrong side of me.” He grinned. “We feed out a lot of cattle for him,” he added, making it clear that he wasn’t afraid of J.B.

“J.B. doesn’t tell me who I can date,” she said, hurting as she remembered how little she meant to Marge’s big brother.

“Just the same, I don’t know anything about Grange, and I’m sort of responsible for you while you’re here, even though you’re legally an adult,” Justin said quietly. “Get the picture?”

She grimaced. “I do. Okay, I’ll make sure I don’t let him bulldoze me into anything.”

“That’s the spirit,” he said with a grin. “I’m not saying he’s a bad man, mind you. I just don’t know a lot about him. He’s always on time, does his job and a bit more, and gets along fairly well with other people.

But he mostly keeps to himself when he’s not working. He’s not a sociable sort.”

“I feel somewhat that way, myself,” she sighed.

“Join the club. Things going okay for you otherwise? The job’s not too much?”

“The job’s great,” she said, smiling. “I’m really enjoying this.”

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“Good. We’re glad to have you here. Anything you need, let me know.”

“Sure thing. Thanks!”

She told Marge and the girls about Grange. They were amused.

“He obviously has good taste,” Marge mused, “if he likes you.”

Tellie chuckled as she rinsed dishes and put them in the dishwasher. “It’s not mutual,” she replied. “He’s a little scary, in a way.”

“What do you mean? Does he seem violent or something?” Brandi wanted to know.

Tellie paused with a dish in her hand and frowned. “I don’t know. I’m not afraid of him, really. It’s just that he has that sort of effect on people. Kind of like Cash Grier,” she added.

“He’s calmed down a bit since Tippy Moore came to stay with him after her kidnapping,” Marge said.

“Rumor is that he may marry her.”

“She’s really pretty, even with those cuts on her face,” Dawn remarked from the kitchen table, where she was arranging cloth for a quilt she meant to make. “They say somebody real mean is after her, and that’s why she’s here. Mrs. Jewell stays at the house at night. A stickler for convention, is our police chief.”

“Good for him,” Marge said. “A few people need to be conventional, or society is going to fall.”

Brandi looked at her sister and rolled her eyes. “Here we go again with the lecture.”

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“Uncle J.B. isn’t conventional,” Dawn reminded her mother. “He had that football team cheerleader staying at his house for almost a month. And his new girlfriend was a runner-up Miss Texas, and she spends weekends with him…”

Tellie’s hands were shaking. Dawn grimaced and looked at her mother helplessly.

Dawn got up and hugged Tellie from behind. “I’m sorry, Tellie,” she said with obvious remorse.

Tellie patted the hands around her waist. “Just because I’m a hopeless case, doesn’t mean you have to walk on eggshells around me,” she assured the younger woman. “We all know that J.B. isn’t ever going to get married. And even if he did, it would be some beautiful, sophisticated—”

“You hush,” Marge broke in. “You’re pretty. Besides, it’s what’s inside that counts. Beauty doesn’t last.

Character does.”

“Her stock phrase,” Brandi said with a grin. “But she’s right, Tellie. I think you’re beautiful.”

“Thanks, guys,” Tellie murmured.

She went back to her task, and the conversation became general.

The next day Grange came right up to Tellie’s desk and stood staring down at her, wordlessly, until she was forced to look up at him.

“They say that you live with J. B. Hammock’s sister, Marge,” he said.

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She was totally confounded by the question. She stared at him blankly. “Excuse me?”

He shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I didn’t come to Jacobsville by accident,” he said, glancing around as Justin came out of his office and gave him a faint glower. “Have lunch with me,” he added.

“It’s not a pass. I just want to talk to you.”

If it was a line, it was a good one. “Okay,” she said.

“I’ll pick you up at noon.” He tipped his wide-brimmed hat, nodded toward Justin, and went back out to the feedlot.

Justin went straight to Tellie. “Trouble?” he asked.

“Well, no,” she said. “He wants to talk to me about Marge, apparently.”

His eyebrows arched. “That’s a new one.”

“He was serious. He wants me to have lunch with him.” She grinned. “He can’t do much to me over a hamburger in town.”

“Good point. Okay, but watch your step. Like I said,” he added, “he’s an unknown quantity.”

“I’ll do that,” she promised.

Barbara’s Café in town was the local hot spot for lunch. Just about everybody ate there when they
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wanted something home cooked. There were other places, such as the Chinese and Mexican restaurants, and the pizza place. But Barbara’s had a sort of Texas atmosphere that appealed even to tourists.

Today it was crowded. Grange got them a table and ordered steak and potatoes for himself, leaving Tellie to get what she wanted. They’d already agreed they were going Dutch. So he must have meant it, about it not being a date.

“My people were all dead, and Marge and J.B. took me in,” Tellie said when they’d given their orders to the waitress. She didn’t add why. “I’ve known the Hammocks since I was a child, but I was fourteen when I went to live with Marge and her girls. She was widowed by then.”

“Are you and J.B. close?” he queried, placing his hat in an empty chair.

“No,” she said flatly. She didn’t elaborate. She started to get the feeling that it was not Marge he wanted information on.

His dark eyes narrowed as he studied her. “What do you know about his past?” he asked.

Her heart jumped. “You mean, generally?”

“I mean,” he added with flaming eyes, “do you know anything about the woman he tried to marry when he was twenty-one?”

She felt suddenly cold, and didn’t know why. “What woman?” she asked, her voice sounded hoarse and choked.

He looked around them to make sure they weren’t being overheard. He lifted his coffee cup and held it in his big, lean hands. “His father threatened to cut him off without a cent if he went through with the wedding. He was determined to do it. He withdrew his savings from the bank—he was of legal age, so he could—and he picked her up at her house and they took off to Louisiana. He was going to marry her there. He thought nobody could find them. But his father did.”

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This was fascinating stuff. Nobody had said anything to her about it, certainly not J.B. “Did they get married?”

His face tautened. “His father waited until J.B. went out to see about the marriage license. He went in and talked to the woman. He told her that if she married J.B., he’d turn in her brother, who was fourteen and had gotten mixed up with a gang that dealt in distribution of crack cocaine. There had been a death involved in a drug deal gone bad. The boy hadn’t participated, but he could be implicated as an accessory. J.B.’s father had a private detective document everything. He told the woman her brother would go to prison for twenty years.”

She grimaced. “Did J.B. know?”

“I don’t know,” he said uncomfortably. “I came here to find out.”

“But what did she do?”