by Diana Palmer
“Well, gee whiz, I guess I’d better rush right out there and get myself a prescription for the pill and get busy, huh?” she asked rakishly. “Heaven forbid that I should be a throwback to a more conservative age, especially in this house! Didn’t you write the book on sexual liberation?”
He felt uncomfortable. “Running with the crowd is the coward’s way out. You have to have the courage of your convictions.”
“You’ve just told me to forget them and follow the example of the Romans.”
He glowered. “I did not!”
She threw up her hands. “Then why are you complaining?”
“I wasn’t complaining!”
“You don’t have to yell at me,” she muttered. “I’m sick.”
“I think I’m going to be,” he said under his breath.
“You sure have changed since I was in the wreck,” she murmured, staring at him curiously. “I never thought I’d see the day when you’d advise me to go out and get experienced with men. I don’t even know any men.” She frowned. “Well, that’s not completely true. I know Grange.” Her eyes brightened. “Maybe I can ask him to give me some pointers. He looks like he’s been around!”
J.B. looked more and more like the storm outside. He moved toward the bed and sat down beside her, leaning down with his hands on either side of her face on the pillow. “You don’t need lessons from Grange,” he said through his teeth. “When you’re ready to learn,” he added on a deep, husky breath, “I’ll teach you.”
Ripples of pleasure ran up and down her nerves, leaving chill bumps of excitement all over her arms. Her breath caught at the thought of J.B.’s hard, beautiful mouth on her lips.
His eyes went down to her pajama jacket, and this time they lingered. For an instant, he looked shocked. Then his eyes began to glitter and he smiled, very slowly.
She looked down again, too, but she couldn’t see anything unusual. Well, her nipples were tight and hard, and a little uncomfortable. That was because of her sudden chill. Wasn’t it?
Her eyes met his again, with a faint question in them.
“You don’t even understand this, do you?” he asked, and suddenly, without warning, he drew the tip of his forefinger right over one distended nipple with the faintest soft brushing motion.
She gasped out loud and her body arched. She looked, and was, shocked out of her mind.
J.B.’s green eyes darkened with sudden hunger. His gaze fell to her parted, full lips, to the pulse throbbing in the hollow of her throat. He ached to open her pajama top and put his mouth right on her breast. Unthinkable pleasures were burning in the back of his mind.
Tellie was frightened, both of what was happening to her body, and of letting him know how vulnerable she was. There was something vaguely unsettling about the way he was looking at her. It brought back a twinge of memory, of J.B. mocking her because she was weak toward him…
She brought up her arms and crossed them over her breasts.
“Spoilsport,” he murmured, meeting her shocked eyes.
She fought to breathe normally. “J. B. Hammock, I’m seventeen years old!” she burst out.
He started to contradict her and realized at once that he didn’t dare. He scowled and got to his feet abruptly. What the hell was he thinking?
He ran a hand over his hair and turned away. “I’ve got to go to town and see a Realtor about a parcel of land that’s just come up for sale,” he said in a strangely thick tone. “It adjoins my north pasture. I’ll send Nell up with breakfast.”
“Yes, that would be…that would be nice.”
He glanced back at her from the door. He felt frustrated and guilty. But behind all that, he was elated. Tellie was vulnerable to him, and not just in the girlish way she had been for the past few years. She was vulnerable as a woman. It was the first time her body had reacted to his touch in that particular way.
He should have been ashamed of himself. He wasn’t. His eyes slid over her body in the pajamas as if she belonged to him already. He couldn’t hide the pride of possession that he felt.
It made Tellie shake inside. Surely he wasn’t thinking…?
“Don’t beat yourself to death over it,” he said. “We’re all human, Tellie. Even me. See you later.”
He went out quickly and closed the door behind him, before his aching body could provoke him into even worse indiscretions than he’d already committed.
Nell brought breakfast and stared worriedly at Tellie’s high color. “You’re not having a relapse, are you?” she asked, worried.
Tellie wished she could confide in the housekeeper, or in someone. But she had no close friends, and she couldn’t even have told Marge. She couldn’t talk to Marge about her brother!
“Nothing’s wrong, honest,” Tellie said. “I went to look out the window, and a big flash of lightning almost made me jump out of my skin. I’m still reeling.”
Nell’s face relaxed. “Is that all?” She smiled. “I don’t mind storms, but J.B. is always uneasy. Don’t forget his grandmother died in a tornado outbreak.”
“He told me,” she said.
“Did he, now?” Nell exclaimed. “He doesn’t talk about the old lady much.”
Tellie nodded. “He doesn’t talk about much of anything personal,” she agreed. She frowned. “I wonder if he confides in his fashion dolls?”
Nell didn’t get the point at first, but when she did, she burst out laughing. “That was mean, Tellie.”
Tellie just grinned. She was going to forget what J.B. had done in those few tempestuous seconds. She was certain that he’d regretted it.
Sure enough, he didn’t come in to see her at all the rest of the day. Next morning, he went out without a word.
About lunchtime, Grange showed up. Since J.B. wasn’t there to keep him out, Nell escorted him up to Tellie’s room with a conspiratorial grin.
“Company,” Nell announced. “He can stay for lunch. I’ll bring up a double tray.” She went out, but left the door open.
Grange moved toward the bed with his wide-brimmed hat in his hand. He’d had a haircut and a close shave. He smelled nice, very masculine. His dark eyes twinkled as he studied Tellie in her pink pajamas.
She felt self-conscious and pulled the sheet up higher.
He laughed. “Sorry.”
She shrugged. “I’m not used to men seeing me in my nightclothes,” she told him. It wasn’t totally true. He didn’t know, and J.B. seemed to constantly forget, that she’d been almost assaulted by a boy in her early teens. It hadn’t left immense scars, but she still felt uneasy about her body. She wasn’t comfortable with men. She wondered if she should admit that to J.B. It might soften his provocative attitude toward her.
“I’ll try not to stare,” Grange promised, smiling as he sat down in the chair beside her bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Much better,” she said. “I wanted to get up, but Nell won’t let me.”
“Concussion is tricky,” he replied, and he didn’t smile. “The first few days are chancy. Better you stay put in bed, just for the time being.”
She smiled at him. “I’ll bet you’ve seen your share of injuries, being in the military.”
He nodded. “Concussion isn’t all that uncommon in war. I’ve seen some nasty head injuries that looked pretty innocent at first. Better safe than sorry.”
“I hate being confined,” she confessed. “I want to get out and do things, but Dr. Coltrain said I couldn’t. Nell and J.B. are worse than jailers,” she added.
He chuckled. “Nell’s a character.” He hesitated. “Did you know there’s a chef in the kitchen, complete with tall white hat and French accent?”
She nodded. “That’s Albert,” she replied. “He’s been here for the past ten years. J.B. likes continental cuisine.”
“He seems to be intimidated by Nell,” he observed.
“He probably is. Gossip is that when Albert came here, Nell was in possession of the kitchen and unwilling to turn it over to a foreigner. The
y say,” she added in a soft, conspiratorial tone, “that she chased him into the living room with a rolling pin when he refused to make dumplings her way. It took a pay raise and a color television for his room to keep him here. J.B. and Nell had a real falling out about that, and she threatened to quit. She got a raise, too.” She laughed shortly. She’d remembered something from the past! Surely the rest couldn’t be far behind now.
Grange chuckled at what she’d told him about Nell. “She seems formidable enough.”
“She is. She and J.B. argue most of the time, but it’s usually in a good-natured way.”
He put his hat on the floor beside his chair and raked a hand through his neatly trimmed straight dark hair. “When they let you out of here, we’ll go take in a new science-fiction movie. How about that?”
She smiled. “Sounds like fun.” She was curious about him. He didn’t seem the sort of man to be vulnerable to women, but it was apparent that he liked Tellie. “Do you have family here in Jacobsville?” she asked in all innocence.
His face hardened. His dark eyes narrowed. “No.”
She frowned. She’d struck a nerve. “I’m sorry, is there something else I don’t remember—?”
“There’s a lot,” he cut her off, but gently. “You’re bound to wander into a few thickets before you find the right path. Don’t worry about it.”
She drew in a long breath. “I feel like I’m walking around in a fog. Everybody’s hiding things from me.”
“It’s necessary. Just for a week or so,” he promised.
“You know about me, don’t you? Can’t you tell me?”
He held up a hand and laughed. “I’d just as soon not get on the wrong side of Hammock while you’re living under his roof. I’d lose visiting privileges. I may lose them anyway, if Nell spills the beans that I’ve been here while he was out.”
“Doesn’t he like you?”
“He doesn’t like most people,” he agreed. “Especially me, at the moment.”
“What did you do to him?”
“It’s a long story, and it doesn’t concern you right now,” he said quietly.
She flushed. His voice had been very curt.
“Don’t look like that,” he said, feeling guilty “I don’t want to hurt you. J.B. and I have an unfortunate history, that’s all.”
She blinked. “It sounds unpleasant.”
“It was,” he confessed. “But it happened a long time ago. Right now, our only concern is to get you well again.”
Footsteps sounded on the staircase and a minute later, Nell walked in with a tray holding two plates, two glasses of iced tea and a vase full of yellow roses.
“Never thought I’d get up the stairs with everything intact,” she laughed as Grange got up and took the tray from her, setting it down gently on the mahogany side table by the bed.
“The roses,” Tellie exclaimed. “They’re beautiful!”
“Glad you like them,” Grange said easily, and with a smile.
“We do live in Texas, after all.”
“‘The Yellow Rose of Texas,’” she recalled the song. She reached over and plucked one of the stems out of the vase to smell it. There was a delicate, sweet scent. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a bouquet of flowers in my life,” she added, confused.
“You haven’t,” Nell replied for her. She sounded irritated. “Nice of Grange to remember that sick people usually like flowers.”
She smiled at him. “Wasn’t it?” she laughed. “I’ll enjoy them. Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” he replied, and his voice was soft.
Nell stuck a plate in his hands and then put Tellie’s on her lap. “Eat, before the bread molds,” she told them. “That’s homemade chicken salad, and I put up those dill pickles myself last summer.”
“Looks delicious,” Grange said. “You didn’t have to do this, Nell.”
“I enjoy making a few things on my own,” she said. She grimaced. “I had to lock Albert in the closet, of course. His idea of a sandwich involves shrimp and sauce and a lettuce leaf on a single piece of toasted rye bread.” She looked disgusted.
“That’s not my idea of one,” Grange had to admit.
“This is really good,” Tellie exclaimed after she bit into her sandwich.
“Yes, it is,” Grange seconded. “I didn’t have time for breakfast this morning.”
“Enjoy,” Nell said, smiling. “I’ll be back up for the tray later.”
They both nodded, too involved with chewing to answer.
Grange entertained her with stories from his childhood. She loved the one about the cowboy, notorious for his incredible nicotine habit, who drove his employer’s Land Rover out into the desert on a drunken joyride, forgetting to take along a shovel or bottled water or even a flashlight. He ran out of gas halfway back and when they found him the next morning, almost dead of dehydration, the first thing he asked for was a cigarette.
“What happened to him?” she asked, laughing.
“After he got over the experience, the boss put him on permanent barn duty, cleaning out the horse stalls. The cowboy couldn’t get a job anywhere else locally because of that smoking habit, so he was pretty much stuck.”
“He couldn’t quit?”
“He wouldn’t quit,” he elaborated. “Then he met this waitress and fell head over heels for her. He quit smoking, stopped drinking and married her. He owns a ranch of his own now and they’ve got two kids.” His dark eyes twinkled. “Just goes to show that the love of a good woman can save a bad man.”
She pursed her lips. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He laughed. “I’m not a bad man,” he pointed out. “I just have a few rough edges and a problem with authority figures.”
“Is that why you don’t get along with J.B.?”
He shook his head. “That’s because we’re too much alike in temperament,” he said. He checked his watch. “I’ve got to run,” he said, swooping up his hat as he got to his feet. “Can’t afford to tick off my boss!”
“Will you come again?” she asked.
“The minute the coast is clear,” he promised, laughing. “If Nell doesn’t sell us out.”
“She won’t. She’s furious at J.B. I don’t know why, nobody tells me anything, but I overheard her say that she’d quit and had to come back to take care of me. Apparently she and J.B. had a major blowup before I got hurt. I wish I knew why.”
“One of these days, I’m sure you’ll find out. Keep getting better.”
“I’ll do my best. Thanks again. For the roses, and for coming to see me.”
“I enjoyed it. Thanks for lunch.”
She grinned. “I’ll cook next time.”
“Something to look forward to,” he teased, winking at her.
J.B. came in late. Apparently he’d been out with whichever girlfriend he was dating, because he was dressed up and a faint hint of perfume clung to his shirt as he sat down in the chair beside Tellie’s bed. But he looked more worried than weary, and he wasn’t smiling.
She eyed him warily. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
He leaned back in the chair, one long leg crossed over the other. She noted how shiny his hand-tooled black boots were, how well his slacks fit those powerful legs. She shook herself mentally. She didn’t need to notice such things about him.
“Nothing much,” he said. Actually he was worried about Marge. She was in the early stages of treatment for high blood pressure, and she’d had a bad dizzy spell this afternoon. The girls had called him at work, and he’d gone right over. He’d phoned Coltrain, only to be reassured that some dizziness was most likely a side effect of the drug. She was having a hard time coping, and she missed Tellie, as well as being worried about her health. J.B. had assured Marge that Tellie was going to be fine, but his sister wanted to see Tellie. He couldn’t manage that. Not yet.
He drew in a long breath, wondering how to avoid the subject. That was when he looked at her bedside table carelessly and saw the huge bouque
t of yellow roses. His green eyes began to glitter as he stared at her.
“And just where,” he asked with soft fury, “did you get a bouquet of roses?”
Nine
“They were a present,” Tellie said quickly.
“Were they?” he asked curtly. “From whom?”
She didn’t want to say it. There was going to be a terrible explosion when she admitted that she’d had a visitor. It didn’t take mind-reading skills to realize that J.B. didn’t like Grange.
She swallowed. “Grange brought them to me.”
The green eyes were really glittering now. “When?”
“He stopped by on his lunch hour,” she said. She glared up at him. “Listen, there’s nothing wrong with having company when you’re sick!”
“You’re in your damned pajamas!” he shot back.
“So?” she asked belligerently. “You’re looking at me in them, aren’t you?”
“I don’t count.”
“Oh. I see.” She didn’t, but it was best not to argue with a madman, which is how he looked at the moment.
His lips made a thin line. “I’m family.”
She might have believed that before yesterday, she thought, when he’d touched her so intimately.
The memory colored her cheeks. He saw it, and a slow, possessive smile tugged up his firm, chiseled lips. That made the blush worse.
“You don’t think of me as family?” he asked softly.
She wanted to dive under the covers. It wasn’t fair that he could reduce her to this sort of mindless hunger.
He leaned over her, the anger gone, replaced by open curiosity and something else, less definable.
His fingers speared through her dark hair, holding her head inches from the pillow behind her. His chest rose and fell quickly, like her own. His free hand went to her soft mouth and traced lazily around the upper lip, and then the lower one, with a sensuality that made her feel extremely odd.
“I’m…seventeen,” she choked, grasping for a way to save herself.
