Her Cowboy Avenger. Kerry Connor

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had slashed the tires.

      Part of her immediately tried to reject the idea, not wanting to believe it, not wanting to believe someone she knew could do such a thing.

      But it was the only explanation. Two tires on the same side of a truck didn’t just go flat on their own. No, this was deliberate. Someone had done this, purposely, maliciously, to hurt her. Someone she knew. A neighbor. Someone she might have once considered a friend.

      Tears of frustration suddenly burned the back of her eyes. She did everything she could to hold them at bay, not about to let a single person in this town know they’d driven her to that and grant them the satisfaction. The mere thought of the smug, vengeful expressions that would no doubt greet her tears was enough to make them dry up.

      Unable to bear the sight of her flattened tires, she started to back away, only to immediately collide with something. Big hands closed around her upper arms. A man.

      Anger surged through her, killing the numbness that had fallen over her. She lunged forward and jerked out of his grip. The cold stares and whispers were bad enough, but damned if she was going to put up with being physically accosted. She whirled around to face her attacker, her mouth opening to tell him exactly what she thought—

      The words died, every thought in her head and every trace of anger vanishing as she laid eyes on the man in front of her. She could only stare, unable to fully comprehend what she was seeing.

      A single word rose in her mind, like a distant echo spoken by someone else.

      Matt.

      For an instant, she was twenty again, staring up into the eyes of the man she loved more than anything she’d ever imagined. The man whose presence sent her heart racing and her stomach clenching whenever he was close. The man who inspired feelings and passions so deep and fierce that everything she’d experienced before that seemed like nothing. The man who filled her thoughts every waking moment and in all of her dreams. The man she didn’t believe she would ever be able to live without.

      The man who hadn’t loved her enough. Or maybe she hadn’t loved him enough. She’d spent a great deal of time over the years wondering which it had been. She never had arrived at an answer.

      Then she was back in the present. Because the man in front of her wasn’t the one she’d loved. This man was older, faint lines worn into the skin around his eyes, his face harder, his body bigger and more muscular. This was Matt Alvarez, with eight more years—years he’d lived without her—on him.

      He was still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. That lustrous black hair, those piercing dark eyes, that magnificent face, somehow even more devastating than the last time she’d seen him.

      Of course, the last time she’d seen him she hadn’t been looking at his face. She’d been staring at his back as he’d walked away from her.

      She’d officially lost her mind. That had to be it. That vaguely unreal feeling she’d been experiencing since Bobby’s death, the sense that none of this could be happening, washed over her, stronger than ever. Because there was absolutely no way that Matt Alvarez could be right here, right now.

      “Hello, Elena.”

      And yet he was. Because even eight years later, that voice remained the same.

      “Matt” was all she could bring herself to say, her mind still incapable of reconciling the fact that he was actually here in front of her.

      “We need to talk.”

      “About what?” she answered automatically.

      “I think you know.”

      At the moment she was starting to doubt if she knew even her own name. “What are you doing here?”

      “That’s what we need to talk about.” He looked up and glanced around them. “But not here.”

      Elena repeated his gesture. There were a few people in view on the sidewalk and in nearby vehicles, none of them openly watching her and Matt, though she had no doubt they were. She could only imagine how many others were observing from the windows of the storefronts. Her earlier urge to get out of town and back to the solitude of the ranch as quickly as possible returned with a vengeance. “No,” she agreed. “Definitely not here.”

      “Why don’t I give you a ride home? We can talk there.”

      The offer immediately reminded her of why she couldn’t drive herself home. She glanced back at her tires, wincing at the sight. “Did you see who did this?”

      “No.”

      She eyed him doubtfully. For a second, she almost wondered if he had done this, but then, she couldn’t think of a reason why he would. Of course, she couldn’t think of a reason why he was here now, either. None of this made a bit of sense.

      “You have a car?” she asked numbly.

      “A truck,” he said, nodding toward a black pickup parked a short distance down the street. “Come on.”

      He started to reach for the bags to take them from her. She shook her head, clutching them tighter, needing to hold on to something that was tangible and real.

      He motioned for her to proceed in front of him. She hesitated for a moment, unsure. She needed to call someone and figure out about getting new tires. She had one spare, but she would definitely need help getting another. The thought of facing the police right now, of having to deal with this while all the unseen watchers observed and judged from their windows, was suddenly more than she could take. At the moment, she wanted nothing more than to get out of town and back to the relative safety of the ranch.

      “All right,” she murmured. She had no idea what he was doing here—wasn’t quite convinced he wasn’t some kind of illusion conjured by her desperate mind, for that matter. But right now he was offering to help her, which made him just about the only person in her world who was.

       Chapter Two

      “You’re going to want to head right,” Elena said as Matt started to back out of the parking space.

      He agreed with a nod, turning as she directed without looking at her. He didn’t let himself, even though it seemed like the only thing he wanted to do.

      Fifteen minutes ago he hadn’t seen her in years. Now she was here, sitting in his truck. She’d placed her two grocery bags on the seat between them, yet they were hardly much of a buffer. She might as well be pressed up against him, the way he felt her closeness.

      He’d thought he would be prepared to see her again, thought he wouldn’t feel anything after all these years. It had all been so long ago. She was nothing more than a distant memory to him, and not a particularly good one.

      But good God, from the moment he’d found himself face-to-face with her, it all came back, hitting him like a blow square to the chest, the memories as vivid as though they’d happened yesterday.

      Elena Reyes.

      The prettiest girl he’d thought he’d ever seen. He’d thought he loved her. Whatever he’d felt back then had been the closest thing he’d ever experienced to it. He’d been

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