Free Heartbreaker by Diana Palmer Page B

you give J.B. the upper hand, he’ll walk all over you. The way you used to be, when you were fourteen, I despaired of what would happen if he ever really noticed you. He’d have destroyed your life, Tellie. You’d have become his doormat. He’d have hated that as much as you would.”

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    “Think so? He seems pretty uncomfortable with me when I stand up to him.”

    “But he respects you for it.”

    Tellie propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “Does the beauty queen runner-up stand up to him?” she wondered.

    “Are you kidding? She won’t go to the bathroom without asking J.B. if he thinks it’s a good idea!” came the dry response. “She’s not giving up all those perks. He gave her a diamond dinner ring last week for her birthday.”

    That hurt. “I suppose he picked it out himself?”

    Marge sighed. “I think she did.”

    “I can’t believe I’ve wasted four years of my life mooning over that man,” Tellie said, wondering aloud at her own stupidity. “I turned down dates with really nice men in college because I was hung up on J.B.
    Well, never again.”

    “What sort of nice men?” Marge queried, trying to change the subject.

    Tellie grinned. “One was an anthropology major, working on his Ph.D. He’s going to devote his life to a dig in Montana, looking for PaleoIndian sites.”

    “Just imagine, Tellie, you could work beside him with a toothbrush…”

    “Stop that,” Tellie chuckled. “I don’t think I’m cut out for dust and dirt and bones.”

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    “What other nice men?”

    “There was a friend of one of my professors,” she recalled. “He raises purebred Appaloosa stallions when he isn’t hunting for meteorites all over the world. He was a character!”

    “Why would you hunt meteorites?” Marge wondered.

    “Well, he sold one for over a hundred thousand dollars to a collector,” the younger woman replied, tongue in cheek.

    Marge whistled. “Wow! Maybe I’ll get a metal detector and go out searching for them myself!”

    That was a real joke, because Marge had inherited half of her father’s estate. She lived in a simple house and she never lived high. But she could have, if she’d wanted to. She felt that the girls shouldn’t have too much luxury in their formative years. Maybe she was right. Certainly, Brandi and Dawn had turned out very well. They were responsible and kindhearted, and they never felt apart from fellow students.

    Tellie glanced at the lanes, where Grange was throwing a ball down the aisle with force, and grace. He had a rodeo rider’s physique, lean in the hips and wide in the shoulders. Odd, the way he moved, Tellie mused, like a hunter.

    “He really is a dish,” she murmured, deep in thought.

    Marge nodded. “He is unusual,” she said. “Imagine a boy on a path that deadly turning his life around.”

    “J.B. said he was forced out of the military.”

    Marge gaped at her. “He told you that? How did he know?”

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    Tellie glowered. “I expect he’s had a firm of private detectives on overtime, finding out everything they could about him. J.B. loves to have leverage if he has to go against people.”

    “He won’t bother Grange,” Marge said. “He just wants to make sure that the man isn’t a threat to you.”

    “He wants to decide who I marry, and how many kids I have,” she returned coolly. “But he’s not going to.”

    “That’s the spirit, Tellie,” Marge chuckled.

    “All the same,” Tellie replied, “I wish he wouldn’t snub me. I’m beginning to feel like a ghost.”

    “He’ll get over it.”

    “You think so? I wonder.”

    Saturday came, and Grange had something to do for Justin, so Tellie stayed home and helped Marge clean house.

    A car