Heartbreaker by Diana Palmer Page A

set.”

    He gave her an amused look. “You’re nice to take around,” he said on the way to his big gray truck. “If I weren’t a confirmed bachelor, you’d be at the top of my list of prospects.”

    “Why, what a nice thing to say!” she exclaimed. “Do you mind if I quote you frequently?”

    He gave her a quick look and relaxed a little when she laughed. “Quote me?” he asked quizzically.

    Her shoulders rose and fell. “It’s just that nobody ever said I was marriageable before, you see,” she told him. “I figure with an endorsement like that, the sky’s the limit. I mean, I won’t be in college forever.
    A woman has to think about the future.”

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    Grange stared at her in the light from the parking lot. “I don’t think I’ve ever been around anyone like you. Most women these days are too aggressive for my taste.”

    Her eyebrows arched. “Like doormats, do we?” she teased.

    He shook his head. “It’s not that. I like a woman with spirit. But I don’t like being seen as a party favor.”

    “Now you know how women feel,” she pointed out.

    “I never treated a woman that way,” he returned.

    “A lot of men have.”

    “I suppose so,” he conceded. He gave her a smile. “I enjoyed tonight.”

    “Me, too.”

    “We’ll do it again sometime.”

    She smiled back. “Suits me.”

    Grange dropped her off at Marge’s house, but he didn’t try to kiss her good-night. He was a gentleman in the best sense of the word. Tellie liked him. But her heart still ached for J.B.

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    Tellie assumed that Marge and the girls were in bed, because the lights were all off inside. She locked the door behind her and started toward the staircase when a light snapped on in the living room.

    She whirled, surprised, and looked right into J. B. Hammock’s seething green eyes.

    Four
    “W hat…are you doing here?” she blurted out, flushing at the way he was looking at her. “Has something happened to Marge or the girls?” she added at once, uneasy.

    “No. They’re fine.”

    She moved into the room, putting her purse and coat on a chair, her slender body in jeans with pink embroidered roses and a pink tank top that matched. Her pale eyes searched his dark green ones curiously. She ran a nervous hand through her wavy dark hair and grimaced. He looked like an approaching storm.

    “Then why are you here?” she asked when the silence became oppressive.

    His eyes slid over her body in the tight jeans and tank top and narrowed with reluctant appreciation. He was also in jeans, but his were without decoration. A chambray shirt covered his broad, muscular chest and long arms. It was unfastened at the throat. He usually dressed casually for barbecues, and this one didn’t seem to be an exception.

    “You went to a movie with Grange,” he said.

    “Yes.”

    His face tautened. “I don’t like you going out with him.”

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    Her thin dark eyebrows arched. “I’m almost twenty-two, J.B.”

    “Jacobsville is full of eligible bachelors.”

    “Yes, I know. Grange is one of them.”

    “Damn it, Tellie!”

    She drew in a steadying breath. It was hard not to give in to J.B. She’d spent most of her adolescence doing exactly that. But this was a test of her newfound independence. She couldn’t let him walk all over her. Despite his reasons for not wanting her around Grange, she couldn’t let him dictate her future.
    Particularly since he wasn’t going to be part of it.

    “I’m not marrying him, J.B.,” she said quietly. “He’s just someone to go out with.”

    His lean jaw tautened. “He’s part of a painful episode in my past,” he said flatly. “It’s disloyal of you to take his side against me. I’m not pushing the point, but I gave you a home when