Heartbreaker

by Diana Palmer

  Her heart was bursting with raw pain. She hoped she wouldn’t pass out. She knew her face was white. She wanted to move, to leave, but her feet felt frozen to the carpet.

  Her tormented expression and lack of response seemed to make him worse. “You skinny, ugly little tomboy,” he raged, white-hot with fury. “Who’d want something like you for keeps? Get out, I said!”

  She gave up. She turned away, slowly, aware of the gloating smile on Bella’s face, and closed the door behind her. Her knees barely gave her support as she walked back toward the front door.

  Nell was standing by the staircase, drying her hands on her apron, looking shocked. “What in the world is all the yelling about?” she exclaimed. She hesitated when she saw the younger woman’s drawn, white face. “Tellie, what’s wrong?” she asked gently.

  Tellie fought for composure. “Marge…is on her way to the hospital in an ambulance, with the girls. I think it’s a heart attack. I couldn’t make J.B. listen. He’s…I walked in on him and that woman…He yelled at me and said I was chasing him, and called me horrible names…!” She swallowed hard and drew herself erect. “Please tell him we’ll all be at the hospital, if he can tear himself loose long enough!”

  She turned toward the door.

  “Don’t you drive that car unless you’re all right, Tellie,” Nell said firmly. “It’s pouring down rain.”

  “I’m fine,” she said in a ghostly tone. She even forced a smile. “Tell him, okay?”

  “I’ll tell him,” Nell said angrily. Her voice softened. “Don’t worry, honey. Marge is one tough cookie. She’ll be all right. You just drive carefully. You ought to wait and go with him,” she added slowly.

  “If I got in a car with him right now, I’d kill him,” Tellie said through her teeth. Helpless tears were rolling down her pale cheeks. “See you later, Nell.”

  “Tellie…”

  It was too late. Tellie closed the door behind her and went to her car. She was getting soaked and she didn’t care. J.B. had said terrible things to her. She knew that she’d never get over them. He wanted her to stop chasing him. She hadn’t been, but it must have looked like it. She’d gone to his office this morning, and to the house this afternoon. It was about Marge. He wouldn’t believe it, though. He thought Tellie was desperate for him. That was a joke, now. She was sure that she never wanted to see him again as long as she lived.

  She started the car and turned it. The tires were slick. She hadn’t realized how slick until she almost spun out going down the driveway. She needed to keep her speed down, but she wasn’t thinking rationally. She was hearing J.B. yell at her that she was an ugly stray he’d taken in, that he didn’t want her. Tears misted her eyes as she tried to concentrate on the road.

  There was a hairpin curve just before the ranch road met the highway. It was usually easy to maneuver, but the rain was coming so hard and fast that the little car suddenly hydroplaned. She saw the ditch coming toward her and jerked the wheel as hard as she could. In a daze, she felt the car go over and over and over. Her seat belt broke and something hit her head. Everything went black.

  J.B. stormed out of the living room just seconds after he heard Tellie’s little car scatter gravel as it sped away. His hair was mussed, like his shirt, and he was in a vicious humor. It had been a bad day altogether. He shouldn’t have yelled at Tellie. But he wondered why she’d come barging in. He should have asked. It was just that it had shamed him to be seen in such a position with Bella, knowing painfully how Tellie felt about him. He’d hurt her with just the sight of him and Bella, without adding his scathing comments afterward. Tellie wouldn’t even realize that shame had put him on the offensive. She had feelings of glass, and he’d shattered them.

  Nell was waiting for him at the foot of the staircase. She was visibly seething, and her white hair almost stood on end with bridled rage. “So you finally came out, did you?”

  “Tellie was tearing up the driveway as she left,” he bit off. “What the hell got into her? Why was she here?” he added reluctantly, because he’d realized, belatedly, that she hadn’t looked as if she were pursuing him with amorous intent.

  Nell gave him a cold smile. “She couldn’t get you on the phone, so she drove over to tell you that Marge has had a heart attack.” She nodded curtly when she saw him turn pale. “That’s right. She wasn’t here chasing you. She wanted you to know about your sister.”

  “Oh, God,” he bit off.

  “He won’t help you,” Nell ground out. “Yelling at poor Tellie like that, when she was only trying to do you a good turn…!”

  “Shut up,” he snapped angrily. “Call the hospital and see…”

  “You call them.” She took off her apron. “You’ve got my two weeks’ notice, as of right now. I’m sick of watching you torture Tellie. I quit! See if your harpy girlfriend in there can cook your meals and clean your house while she spends you into the poorhouse!”

  “Nell,” he began furiously.

  She held up a hand. “I won’t reconsider.”

  The living room door opened, and Bella slinked into the hallway, smiling contentedly. “Aren’t we going out to eat?” she asked J.B. as she moved to catch him by one arm.

  “I’m going to the hospital,” he said. “My sister’s had a heart attack.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” Bella said. “Do you want me to go with you and hold your hand?”

  “The girls will love that,” Nell said sarcastically. “You’ll be such a comfort to them!”

  “Nell!” J.B. fumed.

  “She’s right, I’d be a comfort, like she said,” Bella agreed, missing the sarcasm altogether. “You need me, J.B.”

  “I hope he gets what he really needs one day,” Nell said, turning on her heel.

  “You’re fired!” he yelled after her.

  “Too late, I already quit,” Nell said pleasantly. “I’m sure Bella can cook you some supper and wash your clothes.” She closed the kitchen door behind her with a snap.

  “Now, you know I can’t cook, J.B.,” Bella said irritably. “And I’ve never washed clothes—I send mine to the laundry. What’s the matter with her? It’s that silly girl who was here, isn’t it? I don’t like her at all…”

  J.B. reached into his pocket and pulled out two large bills. “Call a cab and go home,” he said shortly. “I have to get to the hospital.”

  “But I should go with you,” she argued.

  He looked down at her with bridled fury. “Go home.”

  She shifted restlessly. “Well, all right, J.B., you don’t need to yell. Honestly, you’re in such a bad mood!”

  “My sister has had a heart attack,” he repeated.

  “Yes, I know, but those things happen, don’t they? You can’t do anything about it,” she added blankly.

  It was like talking to a wall, he thought with exasperation. He tucked in his shirt, checked to make sure his car keys were in his pocket, jerked his raincoat and hat from the hall coat rack and went out the door without a backward glance.

  Dawn and Brandi were pacing the waiting room in the emergency room at Jacobsville General Hospital while Dr. Coltrain examined their mother. They were quiet, somber, with tears pouring down their cheeks in silent misery when J.B. walked in.

  They ran to him the instant they saw him, visibly shaken. He gathered them close, feeling like an animal because he hadn’t even let Tellie talk when she’d walked in on him. She’d come to tell him that Marge was in the hospital with a heart attack, and he’d sent her running with insults. Probably she’d come to his office that morning because something about Marge had worried her. He’d been no help at all. Now Tellie was hurt and Nell was quitting. He’d never felt so helpless.

  “Mama won’t die, will she, Uncle J.B.?” Brandi asked tearfully.

  “Of course she won’t,” he assured her in the deep, soft tone he used with little things or hurt children. “She’ll be fine.”

  “Tellie said she was going to tell you about Mama. Why didn’t Telli
e come with you?” Dawn asked, wiping her eyes.

  He stiffened. “Tellie’s not here?”

  “No. She had to go over to your house, because you didn’t answer your phone,” Brandi replied. “I guess the lines were down or something.”

  “Or something,” he said huskily. He’d taken the phone off the hook.

  “She may have gone home to get Mama a gown,” Dawn suggested. “She always thinks of things like that, when everybody else goes to pieces.”

  “She’ll be here as soon as she can…I know she will,” Brandi agreed. “I don’t know what we’d do without Tellie.”

  Which made J.B. feel even smaller than he already did. Tellie must be scared to death. She’d been with her grandfather when he died of a heart attack. She’d loved him more than any other member of her small family, including the mother she’d lost more recently. Marge’s heart attack would bring back terrible memories. Worse, when she showed up at the hospital, she’d have to deal with what J.B. had said to her. It wasn’t going to be a pleasant reunion.

  Dr. Coltrain came out, smiling. “Marge is going to be all right,” he told them. “We got to her just in time. But she’ll have to see a heart specialist, and she’s going to be on medication from now on. Did you know that her blood pressure was high?”

  “No!” J.B. said at once. “It’s always been low!”

  Coltrain shook his head. “Not anymore. She’s very lucky that it happened like this. It may have saved her life.”

  “It was a heart attack, then?” J.B. persisted, with the girls standing close at his side.

  “Yes. But a mild one. You can see her when we’ve got her in a room. You’ll need to sign her in at the office.”

  “I’ll do that right now.”

  “But, where’s Tellie?” Dawn asked when they were alone.

  J.B. wished he knew.

  He was on his way back from the office when he passed the emergency room, just in time to see a worried Grange stalking in beside a gurney that two paramedics were rushing through the door. On the stretcher was Tellie, unconscious and bleeding.

  “Tellie!” he exclaimed, rushing to the gurney. She was white as a sheet, and he was more frightened now than he was when he learned about Marge. “What happened?” he shot at Grange.

  “I don’t know,” Grange said curtly. “Her car was off the road in a ditch. She was unconscious, in a couple of inches of water, facedown. If I hadn’t come along when I did, she’d have drowned.”

  J.B. felt sick all the way to his soul. It was his fault. All his fault. “Where was the car?” he asked.

  “On the farm road that leads to your house,” Grange replied, his eyes narrowed, suspiciously. “Why are you here?”

  “My sister just had a heart attack,” he said solemnly. “The girls and I have been in the emergency waiting room. She’s going to be all right. Tellie came to tell me about it,” he added reluctantly.

  “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.

  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.

  “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.

  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.

  “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 m
ake 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.

  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…”