Atonement

“I just told you. You dropped it. I almost threw it away when I found it. I thought, how egotistical that he carried around a photo of himself. I remembered seeing you with it a few times when you didn’t know I was watching. Clearly it meant something to you, so I thought the sentiment must be about the place.”

“Why didn’t you show me this yesterday?” he asked without looking up.

“As if it would have made a difference.”

He glanced up then and met her blue gaze. He’d been in law enforcement long enough that he had gotten pretty good at telling if a person was lying. This woman had thrown off his instincts from the moment he’d met her because of his grief over his brother’s death. Her story hadn’t held water, and yet... “You said you found me through this photo?”

“I tried Hard Luck Ranch from the logo on the side of the pickup in the background, but there was more than one, so I just looked up the brand on the cattle in the pasture behind you in the photo.” She shrugged. “It led me right to your ranch.”

It surprised him that she’d been that clever, but clearly the woman was smart and very determined.

“Now that you have your photograph back...”

It was obvious she wanted him to leave. Her disgust tore at his insides. He hated to think that what she was saying about his brother’s stealing her money and leaving her might be true. But he feared it was.

Which meant what? That Ethan hadn’t died in that car crash? His heart leaped at the thought, but quickly plummeted. Ethan was dead. Unless somehow there’d been a mistake in identifying the body, since the vehicle had apparently exploded on impact—

“This photo isn’t mine,” he said. “That is me in the picture, though. Ethan took it the last time I saw him, almost two years ago.”

He could see that she didn’t know what to make of that. For once, she looked as confused as he’d felt from the moment she’d appeared at his corral fence. “Tell me about my brother.”

She let out a small laugh. “You have to be kidding.” Her gaze met his, challenging him to tell the truth.

He only wished he knew the truth. “You say you met him last April?” A month after he’d buried his brother. Or at least what was left of the man he’d thought was his brother. “Please, tell me about him.”

Tessa stared at him, her blue eyes firing with anger and pain. Ethan had hurt her badly—and she believed he had been that man masquerading as his brother.

“Tell you about him? You mean other than his being a liar and a thief and a coward?” she asked sarcastically.

“There must have been something you loved about him.”

* * *

TESSA HAD TO swallow the lump in her throat. Since Ethan had left her, the pain in her heart had dulled. Being this close to the man now made her recall something she’d sensed in him the first time she’d met him. A sadness born, she’d thought, of compassion.

He’d told her he’d made mistakes in his life. That he had wanted to change for her. He’d made her believe that her love could bring out the man she’d sensed was in him. She’d wanted to believe that. There’d been something about him....

Tessa sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the man sitting in her motel room. She told herself she wasn’t up to this charade. That was what it was, wasn’t it? This man was trying to confuse her, right?

And yet he looked heartsick, like a man who had lost his brother and thought she could bring him back.

She took a breath and let it out slowly. “He was...charming and funny and a little vulnerable. He made me feel...” She swallowed again and said, “Do we really have to do this? If Ethan was killed a month before I met the man I thought was him—”

“Where did you meet him?”

Tessa sighed and told herself to indulge him; whatever it took to get him to sign away his rights to the baby she was carrying. Even better, get him to write her a check for the money he’d stolen from her. Showing him the photograph had touched him in a way she hadn’t expected.

“At church.”

He actually looked surprised. “I would have thought—”

“A bar?” She could see that he wanted to think the worst of her. “Ethan was on a construction crew fixing part of the church. I had stopped by to bring some cookies I made for an upcoming potluck.... He asked me what kind of cookies I’d made and said they were his favorite.”

“Snicker doodles.”

She met his gaze. “Yes.”

“You gave him one, and that’s when he asked you out.”

Tessa hesitated a moment before she shook her head. “He didn’t ask me until a few days later at a church garage sale.”

“He must have liked you right from the start. Do you mind?” He took one of the plastic-wrapped cups and got up to fill it with water from the bathroom. He looked shaken, making her feel as if she, too, was on unfamiliar, unstable ground. Was it possible Ethan had fooled not just her, but also his brother and the rest of the world? She was no longer so sure this man was the one she’d known.

“So you fell in love with him.” It wasn’t a question.

She nodded. “We’d set a date to get married.”

That surprised him, she saw. “What happened?”

“You know what happened,” she said irritably, realizing she was buying into his act—and not for the first time. He’d played her for a fool once. She was determined he wouldn’t again. “You took my money and skipped town.” She stood up.

“You know it wasn’t me.” He said the words softly, his gaze holding hers.

She stared into his eyes for a long moment, then she lowered herself back onto the edge of the bed. She felt a small chill ripple through her. This wasn’t the man who’d hurt her. Hadn’t part of her known that the moment she’d seen the way he’d handled the horse yesterday?

“I don’t understand.” Her voice broke as her eyes welled with tears.

“There is only one explanation,” the undersheriff said. “If you’re telling the truth, then my brother is alive.”

CHAPTER FIVE

FRANK HAD WANTED to tell Lynette—he’d never called her Nettie—about the crow he’d seen on the telephone line at the ranch. But he already regretted telling Dillon. He knew it was silly, but he feared he’d jinxed it, and when he went home the crow would be gone.

He couldn’t explain it, but the crows gave him a feeling of well-being, as if everything was right with the world. The birds fascinated him, as well. He recalled one morning when he and Lynette had sat in his patrol pickup and watched two young crows playing on the main street of Beartooth.

It had been a game of tag, the young crows dancing around, teasing each other with a twig between them. Before that morning, Lynette hadn’t understood his fascination with the birds.

“They are like us,” she’d said after watching the young crows play.

He’d told her how they made extended families, taking in uncles and aunts, any crow that needed a place to stay. He still wasn’t sure exactly how they communicated among themselves, but they did. There was one thing he did know, though, for certain. Crows were better at making and keeping their families together than humans.

Frank shoved that thought away. He was in too good a mood to think about the past now. He and Lynette were going on a date. He smiled. And he was going back to work, back to a job he loved and had almost given up because of—

Nope, he wasn’t even going to think his ex-wife’s name. He’d put that all behind him. Over the past six months he’d worked hard at the ranch, filling his days so full that at night he couldn’t think. He would walk into the house, often too tired to eat, and would fall into his bed.

All that was in the past, he told himself, and yet he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to quit locking his doors at night or stop keeping his loaded gun within reach beside his bed. So maybe not everything could be put to rest in the past.

Frank had barely reached the sheriff’s department, retrieved his service gun and gold star, when he got his first call. A domestic dispute. Never his favorite. But it was nice to be back in the saddle, so to speak.