giving him the best present he’d ever gotten.
She hadn’t been smiling the last time he’d seen her, of course. She’d been crying then. Back when she’d told him she didn’t love him as much as he loved her. At least that had been the gist of it. And he’d realized he’d been a fool to feel all of those things he thought he had.
She wasn’t smiling now, either. There were no tears, but her expression wasn’t much brighter, her lips locked in a grim line, her eyes bleak, her features tense.
Damned if she still wasn’t the prettiest thing he’d ever seen.
It didn’t matter that she wasn’t smiling, or that her face showed every bit of the stress she was under. It didn’t even matter that it was eight years later and she was no longer the fresh-faced young woman he’d once known. If anything, the extra years had only added to her looks, delivering the full beauty that had only been hinted at when she was twenty. He’d thought she was beautiful then. If only he’d known what she would become.
Damn.
He almost wished she did look worse after all these years. It would certainly make things easier for him. He wouldn’t be having this crazy reaction to a woman who really meant nothing to him. The woman who’d taught him just how foolish all those crazy emotions were in the first place.
“Okay, Matt,” she said, thankfully pulling him out of his thoughts. “Now what are you doing here?”
Grateful for the reminder of the task at hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the envelope. “I got this in the mail,” he said, holding it out to her. “Didn’t you send it?”
She began to answer even before she took the envelope from him. “No, why would I?”
He could immediately tell she wasn’t lying, her confusion too genuine to be faked. “I have no idea. I don’t know why anybody else would, either.”
“I didn’t even know where you were these days,” she said, flipping the envelope over and reading the address. “New Mexico?”
“That’s right. Somebody around here obviously knew where I was, and I can’t think of anyone besides you who would care.”
“Neither can I, but it wasn’t me.” She waved the envelope. “What is this?”
“An article from the local paper about your husband’s death.”
She went still, staring at the item in her hand as though it contained something toxic and she wanted nothing more than to drop it before it contaminated her further. “Why would somebody send you that?” she whispered.
“I guess they wanted me to know about it,” he said reasonably.
“But why? What purpose would that serve?”
“Only reason I could figure was that somebody wanted me to come here.” He hesitated, feeling foolish for a slight second before he shoved the feeling away. “Like I said, I figured it was you.”
She frowned at him. “Why would I send you that?”
Matt shrugged a shoulder, feeling foolish again. “I thought maybe you needed help and were desperate enough to reach out to me of all people. From the sound of that article, things aren’t looking too good for you. Maybe somebody else sent it for the same reason.”
“In hopes that you’d help me?” She exhaled sharply, the sound almost like a snort. “Whatever the reason, I doubt it was good.”
“What makes you say that?”
“People around here haven’t exactly been going out of their way to help me out. As you may have noticed, I’m not Ms. Popularity at the moment.”
He couldn’t disagree with her there. He wished he’d seen who’d messed with her truck, but he’d been watching the store so closely for her to come out he hadn’t been paying attention to anything else. “Has anything else happened besides someone cutting your tires?”
“That’s the first outright act against me. Mostly I’ve been getting a cold shoulder from everyone in town. Almost no one has said a word to me since Bobby’s death. Only the police.” She shuddered slightly, the gesture making it clear exactly what that experience had been like for her.
He surveyed her out of the corner of his eye, this woman he hadn’t seen in eight years, this person who was so familiar, yet different at the same time. She definitely wasn’t the girl she’d once been. But could she have really changed enough to become a killer? It was possible. He could believe anyone was capable of killing for any number of reasons, whether out of anger or vengeance or self-defense. Was that what had happened? Had circumstances turned her into a killer? Or had she really become a far different person than the one he’d thought he’d known?
Or was it, as he’d wondered plenty of times after they parted ways, that he’d never really known her at all?
“What happened, Elena?”
She glanced at him, her left eyebrow quirking. “Didn’t you read the article?”
“I’d rather hear it from you.”
She simply continued to stare at him, remaining silent for a long moment. “What are you even doing here, Matt?” she repeated. “Someone sends you an article about…someone you knew a long time ago and you come all this way from New Mexico? For what?”
Someone you knew a long time ago. That was certainly an interesting way of putting it. He hadn’t missed her hesitation before phrasing it that way, and he couldn’t help wondering what her first instinct had been to say instead. “Guess I wanted to know why,” he answered. “And yeah, I wanted to know if it was true.”
“What do you care?”
“Are you saying it is?”
“No, I’m asking what difference it makes to you.”
It was still a very good question. “Call it curiosity, I guess. You never struck me as a killer. Guess I wanted to know if a person could change that much.”
She lowered her head, her shoulders slumping. “Thank you,” she practically whispered.
“For what?”
“For thinking I’m not the killing type. People who’ve known me a lot longer don’t even seem to believe that.”
“So you’re saying you didn’t do it?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” she said firmly.
“So what happened?”
Elena opened her mouth and took a deep breath, as though on the verge of beginning, only to raise her hand and point in front of them. “In a minute. We’re here.”
He saw the turnoff to a ranch up ahead and smoothly guided the truck into the turn. A sign over the end of the driveway declared it the Weston Ranch. From the first glimpse, he could tell it was a big spread, wide-open pastures stretching out into the horizon. It looked like Elena had married well, he noted
