Free Heartbreaker by Diana Palmer

Grange. He didn’t look their way all night, and when he passed them on the way out, he didn’t speak.

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    “What the hell is wrong with him?” Grange asked her on the way home.

    “He’s paying me back for dating you,” she said simply.

    “That’s low.”

    “That’s J.B.,” she replied.

    “Do you want me to stop asking you out, Tellie?” he asked quietly.

    “I do not. J.B. isn’t telling me what to do,” she replied. “He can ignore me all he likes. I’ll ignore him back.”

    Grange was quiet. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

    “You just wanted to know what happened,” she defended him. “Nobody could blame you for that. She was your sister.”

    He pulled up in front of Marge’s house and cut off the engine. “Yes, she was. She and Dad were the only family I had, but I was rotten to them. I ran wild when I hit thirteen. I got in with a bad crowd, joined a gang, used drugs—you name it, I did it. I still don’t understand why I didn’t end up in jail.”

    “Her death saved you, didn’t it?” she asked.

    He nodded, his face averted. “I didn’t admit it at the time, though. She was such a sweet woman. She always thought of other people before she thought of herself. She was all heart. It must have been a walk in the park for Hammock’s father to convince her that she was ruining J.B.’s life.”

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    “Can you imagine how the old man felt,” she began slowly, “because he was always afraid that J.B.
    would find out the truth and know what he’d done. He had to know that he’d have lost J.B.’s respect, maybe even his love, and he had to live with that until he died. I don’t imagine he was a very happy person, even if he did what he felt was the right thing.”

    “He didn’t even know my sister, my dad said,” Grange replied. “He wouldn’t talk to her. He was sure she was a gold digger, just after J.B.’s money.”

    “How horrible, to think like that,” she murmured thoughtfully. “I guess I wouldn’t want to be rich. You’d never be sure if people liked you for what you were or what you had.”

    “The old man seemed to have an overworked sense of his own worth.”

    “It sounds like it, from what Marge says.”

    “Did you ever know him?”

    “Only by reputation,” she replied. “He was in the nursing home when I came to live with Marge.”

    “What is she like?”

    She smiled. “The exact opposite of J.B. She’s sweet and kind, and she never knows a stranger. She isn’t suspicious or crafty, and she never hurts people deliberately.”

    “But her brother does?”

    “J.B. never pulls his punches,” she replied. “I suppose you know where you stand with him. But he’s uncomfortable to be around sometimes, when he’s in a bad mood.”

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    He studied her curiously. “How long have you been in love with him?”

    She laughed nervously. “I don’t love J.B.! I hate him!”

    “How long,” he persisted, softening the question with a smile.

    She shrugged. “Since I was fourteen, I suppose. I hero-worshiped him at first, followed him everywhere, baked him cookies, waylaid him when he went riding and tagged along. He was amazingly tolerant, when I was younger. Then I graduated from high school and we became enemies. He likes to rub it in that I’m vulnerable when he’s around. I don’t understand why.”

    “Maybe he doesn’t understand why, either,” he ventured.

    “You think?” She smiled across the seat at him. “I’m surprised that J.B. hasn’t tried to run you out of town.”

    “He has.”

    “What?”

    He smiled faintly. “He went to see Justin Ballenger yesterday.”

    “About you?” she wondered.

    He nodded. “He said that I was a bad influence on you, and he wondered if I wouldn’t be