Heartbreaker

by Diana Palmer

  J.B. lifted Tellie’s left hand and extended it, with the diamond solitaire winking on her ring finger.

  “Oh, my goodness!” Nell exclaimed, and hugged both of them with tearful enthusiasm. “Have you told Marge and the girls?” she asked.

  “Marge is making all the arrangements for us,” J.B. said with an ear-to-ear grin. “I’m sure she’s told the girls. But it looks as if she was saving it as a surprise for you!”

  “I can’t believe it,” Nell repeated, dabbing at her wet eyes. “I’ve never been so happy for anyone in my life! Have you had lunch?”

  “Not yet,” J.B. replied. “I thought we might have it with you, if that’s all right?” he added with unexpected courtesy.

  Nell’s eyebrows went up. “Well! That’s the first time you’ve ever treated me with any sort of courtesy.”

  “She’s been working on me,” he said, nodding toward Tellie.

  “To good effect, apparently, too,” Nell agreed. “I’m just floored!”

  “Cook while you’re getting adjusted,” J.B. suggested. “I’m going to get Tellie’s bag from her room and put it in the car. Marge packed it for her.”

  “Thanks,” she said shyly, and not without a smile.

  “How did you do it?” Nell asked when he was out of sight.

  Tellie shook her head. “I have no idea. He showed up at the café where I was having coffee, and the next thing I knew, I was engaged. I thought he was involved with Bella.”

  “So did I,” Nell agreed.

  “But he wasn’t,” she replied, with a happy smile. “I went away thinking my life was over. Now look at me.”

  “I couldn’t be happier for you,” Nell said. “For both of you.”

  “So am I,” Tellie told her. “In fact, I’m over the moon!”

  Later, Marge and the girls came home, and all of them spent the evening going over wedding plans, because there wasn’t much time.

  J.B. drove Tellie to his house and installed her in the same guest bedroom he’d given her when she stayed with him during her bout of amnesia. They’d already decided that they’d abstain from any more sensual adventures until after the wedding, however old-fashioned it sounded.

  The next day, J.B. bounced Tellie out of bed early. “Get up, get up,” he teased, lifting her free of the covers to kiss her with pure delight. “We’re going shopping.”

  “You and me?” she asked, breathless.

  He nodded, smiling. “You look pretty first thing in the morning.”

  “But I’m all rumpled and my hair isn’t brushed.”

  He kissed her again, tenderly. “You’re the most beautiful thing in my house, and in my heart,” he whispered against her lips.

  She kissed him back, sighing contentedly. She had the world in her arms, she thought. The whole world!

  Albert fixed them croissants and strong coffee for breakfast, and J.B. privately lamented the lack of bacon and eggs and biscuits that Nell had always provided. Albert considered such a breakfast too heavy for normal people.

  After breakfast, J.B. drove Tellie to a boutique in San Antonio to shop for a wedding gown.

  “But you can’t see it!” she insisted.

  He glowered at her. “That’s an old superstition!”

  “Whether it is or not, you aren’t looking,” she said firmly. “Go get a cup of coffee and come back in an hour. Okay?”

  He sighed irritably. “All right.”

  She reached up and kissed him sweetly. “I love you. Humor me.”

  He stopped glowering and smiled. “Headache,” he accused.

  “I’ll make it all up to you. I promise.”

  He bent and brushed his mouth over her closed eyelids. “You already have. Everything!”

  She hugged him close. “Go away.”

  He laughed, winking as he left her to go down the street toward a nearby Starbucks shop.

  The owner of the boutique gave her a wicked grin. “You manage him very well.”

  “I do, don’t I? But he doesn’t know I’m doing it, and we’re not going to tell him. Deal?”

  “Deal! Now let me show you what I’ve got in your size…”

  Tellie ended up with a gloriously embroidered gown with cape sleeves, a tight waist, a vee neckline and an exquisite long train, also embroidered. The veil was held in place by jeweled combs and fell to the waist in front. It was the most beautiful gown she’d ever seen, and it suited her nice tan.

  “I love it,” Tellie told the owner. “It’s a dream of a wedding gown.”

  “It looks lovely on you,” came the satisfied reply. “Now for the accessories!”

  By the time J.B. came back, the gown and accessories were all neatly boxed and ready to carry out.

  “Did you get something pretty?” he asked.

  “Something beautiful,” Tellie told him, smiling.

  “I wish you’d let me pay for it,” he said as they drove home. “I’d have taken you to Neiman Marcus.”

  “What I got is lovely,” she said, “and one of a kind. The owner of the boutique is a designer in her own right. You’ll see. It’s going to make a stir.”

  He clasped her hand tight in his own. “You’ll make the stir, sweetheart. You’re lovely.”

  She gave him an odd look, and his jaw tautened.

  “I didn’t mean it, Tellie,” he said quietly. “I was ashamed and frustrated and I took it all out on you. I wanted you so much. I thought you’d never be able to feel desire for me. It made me cruel.”

  “Maybe if you’d tried a little harder,” she pointed out, “it wouldn’t have taken me so long.”

  He sighed. “Leave it to you to put your finger on a nerve and push,” he said philosophically. “Yes, I should have. But I was still living in the past, afraid of being devastated again by love. It wasn’t until Grange came along, and cauterized the wound, that I realized I was using the past as an excuse. Maybe I sensed that it was going to be different with you.”

  “I can see why you were reluctant,” she said. Her hand tightened in his. “But I’d never hurt you, J.B. I love you too much.”

  “Thank God for that,” he said, sighing contentedly. He smiled. “You’ll never get away from me, Tellie.”

  “I’ll never want to.” She meant it, too.

  The wedding was a small, private one, but two reporters with cameramen showed up, and so did Grange, resplendent in a blue vested suit. He looked very different from the cowboy Tellie had dated. The Ballengers were there, also, with their wives, and of course Marge and Dawn and Brandi and Nell. Even Albert put on a suit and gave Tellie away.

  Tellie couldn’t see much of J.B. as she walked down the aisle with her veil neatly in place. But when she got to the altar, she was shocked, delighted and amused to see what he was wearing with his suit. It was one of the ties—the gaudy, green-and-gold dragon tie that she’d given him for every single birthday and Christmas for years. She had to force herself not to laugh. But she didn’t miss his wink.

  When the minister pronounced them man and wife, he turned and lifted her veil, and the look on his face was the most profound she’d ever seen. He smiled, tenderly, and bent and kissed her with soft, sweet reverence.

  Nell and Marge cried. The girls sighed. Tellie pressed close into J.B.’s arms and just hugged him, feeling radiant and happier than she’d ever been in her life. He hugged her back, sighing contentedly.

  “I suppose the best man won,” Grange mused at the reception Albert and the caterers had prepared in the ballroom at the ranch.

  “I guess he did,” J.B. replied, with a forced smile.

  “She’s very special,” the other man said quietly. “But it was always you, and I always knew it. I’m a bad marriage risk.”

  “I thought I was, too,” J.B. replied. He looked toward Tellie with his heart in his eyes. “But maybe I’m not.”

  Grange just laughed, and lifted his champagne glass in a toast.

  “How’d you come out at the court-martial?” J.B. asked.


  Grange grinned. “He got five years. I got a commendation and the offer of reinstatement.”

  “Are you going to take them up on it?”

  Grange shrugged. “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to think about it. I’ve had another offer. I’m thinking it over.”

  “One that involves staying here?” J.B. asked shrewdly.

  “Yes.” He met the other man’s gaze. “Is that going to be a problem.”

  J.B. smiled wryly. “Not now that Tellie’s married to me,” he drawled.

  Grange laughed. “Just checking.”

  J.B. sipped champagne. “The past is over,” he said. “We can’t change it. All we can do is live with it. I loved your sister. I’m sorry things worked out the way they did.”

  “She was a sad person,” the other man replied solemnly. “It wasn’t the first time she’d thought about taking her own life. There were two other times, both connected with men she thought didn’t want her.”

  J.B. looked shocked.

  Grange grimaced. “Sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. But in the long run, you’re better off with the truth. She was emotionally shattered, since childhood. She went to a psychiatrist when she was in high school for counseling, because she slashed her wrists.”

  “I didn’t know,” J.B. ground out.

  “Neither did I until my father was dying, and told me everything. He said my mother had always worried that suicide would end my sister’s life. She couldn’t handle stress at all. It’s nothing against her. Some people are born not being able to cope with life.”

  “I suppose they are,” J.B. said, and he was remembering Tellie, and how she would have handled the same opposition from his father.

  Grange clapped J.B. on the shoulder. “Go dance with your wife. Let the past bury itself. Life goes on. I hope both of you will be very happy. And I mean that.”

  J.B. shook his hand. “Thanks. You can come to dinner sometimes. As long as you don’t bring roses,” he added dryly.

  Grange burst out laughing.

  That night, Albert went to see his brother for the weekend, and Tellie and J.B. spent lazy, delicious hours trying out new ways to express their love for each other in his big king-size bed.

  She was shivering and pouring sweat and gasping when they finally stopped long enough to sip cold champagne.

  “I just didn’t read enough books,” she said breathlessly.

  He grinned. “Good thing I did.”

  She laughed, curling close to his hairy chest. “Don’t brag.”

  “I don’t need to. Will you be able to walk tomorrow?”

  “Hobble, maybe,” she murmured sleepily. “I’m so tired…!”

  He bent and kissed her eyelids shut. “You’re magnificent.”

  “So are you,” she said, kissing his chest.

  He took the champagne glass away, put it on the table along with his own and stroked her hair. “Tellie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I hope you want kids right away.”

  “Hmm.”

  He drew in a lazy breath and closed his eyes. “That had better be a yes, because we forgot to think about precautions.”

  She didn’t answer. He didn’t worry. She’d already made her stand on children very clear. He figured he’d get used to fatherhood. It would be as natural as making love to Tellie. And that he seemed to do to perfection, he thought, as he glanced down at her satisfied, dreamy expression.

  “It’s just indecent, that’s what it is,” Marge groaned as she and Tellie went shopping at the mall outside Jacobsville. She glowered at the younger woman. “I mean, honestly, J.B. didn’t have to be so impatient!”

  “It was a mutual impatience,” Tellie pointed out with a grin, “and I’m happier than I ever dreamed I could be.”

  “Yes, but Tellie, you’ve just been married two weeks!”

  “I noticed.”

  Marge shook her head. “J.B.’s strutting already. You shouldn’t let him send you on errands like this. I mean, things do go wrong, sometimes…”

  “They won’t this time,” Tellie said dreamily. “I’m as sure of it as I’ve ever been of anything. Besides,” she added with a grin, “tell me you aren’t excited.”

  Marge grimaced. “Well, I am, but…”

  “No buts,” Tellie said firmly. “We just take one day at a time and enjoy it. Hi, Chief!” she broke off to greet their police chief. “How’s it going?”

  “Life is beautiful,” Cash Grier said with a grin.

  “We heard that Tippy laid a frying pan across the skull of her would-be assassin,” Marge said, digging gently.

  “She did. And have you seen the tabloid story about it, by any chance?” he asked them, and his dark eyes twinkled.

  “The one that says you’re getting married soon?” Tellie teased.

  “That’s the one. In fact, we’re getting married tomorrow.” He chuckled. “I’m not going to let her get away now!”

  “Congratulations,” Tellie told him. “I hope you’ll both be as happy as J.B. and I are.”

  “We’re going to be,” he said with assurance. “I expect to grow old fighting what little crime I can dig up here in Jacobsville. In between, Tippy may make a movie or two before we start our family.”

  Tellie put a hand on her belly. “J.B. and I already have started,” she said, smiling from ear to ear. “The blood test came back positive just yesterday.”

  He whistled. “You two don’t waste time, do you? You’ve only been married two weeks!”

  “We were sort of in a hurry,” Tellie chuckled.

  “A flaming rush,” Marge added. “And now we’re out prematurely buying maternity clothes, do you believe it?”

  “That’s the spirit,” Cash said. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it, I always say.”

  He went on toward his squad car, and Tellie dragged Marge into the maternity shop.

  Three months later, J.B. came in looking like two miles of rough road. He was wet and muddy and his chaps were as caked as his shirt. But when he saw Tellie in her maternity pants and blouse, all the weariness went out of his face.

  He chuckled, catching her by the waist. “I love the way that looks,” he said, and bent to kiss her. “I’m all muddy,” he murmured when she tried to move closer. “We don’t want to mess up that pretty outfit. Tell you what, I’ll clean up and we’ll call Marge and the girls and go out for a nice supper. How about that?”

  She hesitated, looking guilty. “Well…”

  His eyebrows arched. “Is something wrong?” he asked, suddenly worried.

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then, what?”

  “So you’re finally home!” came a stringent voice from the direction of the kitchen. Nell came out, wearing a dirty apron and carrying a big spoon. “I made you chicken and dumplings, homemade rolls and a congealed fruit salad,” she announced with a smile.

  J.B. drew in a sharp breath. “You’re back? For good?” he asked hopefully.

  “For good,” she said. “I have to take care of Tellie and make sure she eats right. Marge is getting some help of her own, so it isn’t as if I’m leaving her in the lurch. And I gave her Albert. Is that okay?” she added worriedly.

  “Thank God!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t have the heart to let him go, but I’m damned tired of French cooking! All I want is meat and potatoes. And apple pie,” he added.

  “I made one,” Nell said. “Albert likes Marge, and the girls love his cooking. They’re of an age to like parties. So, all our problems are solved. Right?”

  He grinned. “Most of them, anyway. I’ll get cleaned up and we’ll have a romantic dinner for…”

  “Six,” Nell informed him.

  “Six?” he exclaimed.

  Tellie moved close to him and reached up to kiss his dirt-smudged cheek. “I invited Marge and the girls over for chicken and dumplings. It will be romantic, though, I promise. We’ll have lots of candles.”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “Okay. An intimate li
ttle romantic dinner for six.” He kissed her back. “I love you,” he said.

  She smiled. “I love you back.”

  He went upstairs and Nell sighed. “I never thought I’d see the boss look like that,” she told Tellie. “What a change!”

  “I inspire him,” Tellie mused. “And while I’m inspiring, I’d really like to remodel that frilly pink bedroom and make a nursery out of it.”

  Nell wriggled her eyebrows. “Count on me as a coconspirator. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  Tellie watched her go. She looked toward the staircase, where J.B. had disappeared. So much pain, she thought, had led to so much pleasure. Perhaps life did balance the two after all. She knew that she’d been so happy. J.B. and a baby, too. Only a few months before, she’d been agonizing over a lonely, cold future. Now she was married, and pregnant, and her husband loved her obsessively. It was a dream come true.

  She turned and followed Nell into the kitchen. Life, she thought dreamily, was sweet.

  Later, she spared a thought for that poor young woman who’d died so tragically years ago, and for Grange, who’d paid a high price for his illegal activities. She hoped Grange would find his own happiness one day. He’d gone to D.C., but was planning to come back and do something a little more adventurous than working for the Ballengers, but he didn’t mention what it was. He’d sent her a post-card telling her that, with his new address. J.B. had seen the card, and murmured that he hoped Tellie wasn’t planning any future contact with Grange. She assured him that she hadn’t any such plans, and kissed him so enthusiastically that very soon he forgot Grange altogether.

  Marge and the girls were happy about the baby, and Marge was finally in the best of health on her new medicines. Tellie was relieved that she continued to improve.

  That night, while J.B. slept, Tellie sat and watched his lean, hard face, wiped clean of expression, and thought how very lucky she was. He wasn’t perfect, but he was certainly Tellie’s dream of perfection. She bent and very softly kissed his chiseled mouth.