Her Cowboy Avenger (3 page)

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 darkly. Not that he was surprised. He hadn’t worked for them, didn’t think he’d ever met any of them, but he remembered the Weston name had been big around here.

The driveway eventually ended in front of a large two-story ranch house, a barn not far from it. He could see cattle grazing in the distance in one of the pastures, a sight he knew well. She must have a lot of people working for her to be dealing with a place this size. More important, it meant there were people they were going to have to explain his presence to, something he wasn’t sure just how to do.

“How many people do you have working for you right now?”

“At the moment, none.”

He couldn’t help but glance at her in surprise. She met his eyes and shrugged lightly, a hint of resignation in her dark brown gaze. “Nobody wants to work for a murderer.”

“So how are you keeping this place running?”

“The best I can,” she said simply.

As soon as he brought the truck to a stop in front of the house, she pushed her door open and climbed out, reaching back in for the bags and taking them before he could offer to help. He followed, unable to help but notice her strong, confident stride as she walked to the house and climbed the steps. She definitely wasn’t a girl anymore. She was all woman, exuding a strength and grace he now saw she’d only been starting to develop back then.

Crossing the wide front porch, she opened the door. “Come on back to the kitchen,” she said. “I need to get these groceries put away.”

He followed her through the house, getting a quick glimpse of the living room as they passed through it. As he’d seen from the outside, it was a big place, but comfortable. Homey. The home she’d shared with her husband, he registered, the thought bothering him more than it should before he brushed the feeling aside.

In the kitchen, she put the bags on the counter and immediately began unloading them, moving some of the items to the refrigerator. There was a big table with plenty of chairs, but he remained standing, leaning against the doorway and watching her move.

Closing the refrigerator and turning away from it, she suddenly noticed him standing there and started. “I’m sorry. I’m not being a very good hostess. Can I get you something to drink?”

He gave his head a terse shake. “I’m fine. You were going to tell me what happened?”

She sighed, then nodded. “That’s right. I guess I’m just not sure where to begin.”

He wasn’t sure he did, either. A lot of it was going to involve her relationship with her husband, a topic he didn’t know if he wanted to hear all that much about, no matter how much he needed to. At the same time, he couldn’t say why the idea bothered him. Or maybe he was just bothered by the implications of why it would.

“Have to admit I was surprised to find out you were still in Western Bluff,” he said. “Thought you had all those plans of being in the big city. That summer you couldn’t wait to get back to school.”

“I know,” she said softly, without looking at him. “I never intended to stay here, either.”

“So what happened?”

She shrugged helplessly. “Things changed. Bobby and I...started seeing each other, and then...things changed,” she repeated weakly.

She lapsed into silence, her eyes sliding briefly to his, her discomfort with the topic etched across her face. Clearly, her relationship with her husband was just as awkward for her to talk about as it was for him to listen to.

His gut churned at her words. He’d never met Bobby Weston, not that he could remember anyway. He wished he had, wished he could know the kind of man Elena had been willing to change her life plans for when she hadn’t been willing to do the same for him.

But then, he’d just been a ranch hand, offering her an uncertain life on the road. He hadn’t had a spread like this to offer her. Maybe if he had, things would have been different. Maybe she would have picked him.

With a jolt of anger at himself for even thinking about it, he did his best to push the thoughts away. What did it matter? It was a long time ago. Things had happened the way they had, and there was no changing them. He had a perfectly good life, and it looked like she had, too—at least up until the point her husband was killed.

“Must have been some guy,” Matt said, keeping his tone neutral.

“He was,” she said quietly. “At least in the beginning. We started seeing each other...the summer after you left.”

The words sent another jolt through him, and again he was irritated by his response. A year was a long time, so why did it feel like a betrayal, like she’d moved on far too quickly? It wasn’t as if he’d been a monk in the year after he’d left this place—left her—behind. But then, he hadn’t ended up marrying any of the women he’d been involved with, either.

Pulling out one of the chairs from the table, Elena sank into the seat. “We’d known each other, or at least known
of
each other, for years, of course. The town’s too small for us not to have. I can’t remember us saying two words to each other, though. He was a few years ahead of me in school, a member of one of the town’s founding families, and I...wasn’t. Our paths never really crossed. Then that summer I was waiting tables at the diner again, and he struck up a conversation with me. It was probably the first time he ever really noticed me. We got to talking, and we actually had some things in common.

“First and foremost, Bobby didn’t want to stay in Western Bluff, either, and he wasn’t supposed to. I don’t know how much you heard about the Westons, or even remember if you did, but Bobby’s older brother, Jim Junior, was the one who’d been groomed to take over the ranch. Bobby’s father, Big Jim, died about twenty years ago when Bobby was just a boy. Junior was all of eighteen, but he managed to take over and make the ranch his own. He offered to make Bobby a place as he got older, but Bobby wasn’t really interested in the ranch. The summer you were here, he had an internship at a company in Houston, so he wasn’t in town. He wanted to be in the city as much as I did. The only reason he was back that summer was because Junior said he needed his help and asked Bobby to stick around. Bobby had already graduated but didn’t have a job lined up yet, so he agreed.”

Elena grimaced, her eyes far away. “That whole summer we talked about how we were going to get out of here. He was going to come to Austin with me when I went back to school.” Matt nearly flinched at the words, at the significance of them, but managed not to. “He knew people there so he could try to find a job just as well as he could in Houston. It should have worked out perfectly. But when the summer was over, Junior asked him to stay a little longer, and made a big enough deal about it that Bobby agreed. That’s when he asked me to marry him. He wanted to make things permanent, because he said there was no doubt we’d be together. And I said yes.”

“How long had you been going out with him before you got married?”

Her eyes flew to his face. He met her gaze and held it. He could tell she didn’t like the answer, and suspected he wasn’t going to like hearing it, either.

“Three months.”

He had no trouble understanding her reaction and did his best to hide his own.

Three months. The same amount of time Matt had been involved with her before they’d parted ways, before she’d refused to make the same commitment to him she’d made to another man just one year later.

“You must have really loved him,” he said, instantly hearing the trace of bitterness in his own voice and hating himself for it.

She lowered her eyes. “He was crazy about me, and I—” she swallowed “—was crazy about him.”

Matt didn’t miss the way her voice faltered before she finished the statement, or how strained it sounded uttering those words. Were they that hard for her to admit? Or was it admitting them to him?

“I’m sure your father must have been thrilled that you got married so fast,” he said wryly, remembering the man’s reaction to Matt’s involvement with his daughter. Ed Reyes had been so protective of his daughter Matt couldn’t imagine him thinking anyone was good enough for her. Or maybe Bobby Weston’s background had made him a more acceptable prospect than a humble ranch hand.