The Daughter

‘Then I take it you didn’t stop by to welcome me home on behalf of the Porter family.’ He sensed the tension in her tighten, and he couldn’t help enjoying being able to irritate her so easily.

‘I received a rather disturbing letter today.’

She snapped open her small gray shoulder bag. That was when he noticed her hands were trembling. She was scared. Scared of him. Son of a bitch! She jerked a white envelope from her purse and held it between them as if it were a weapon that would hold him at bay.

‘Bad news?’ he asked flippantly.

‘Bad news for you,’ she replied, shaking the envelope in his face. ‘I’m not going to run to my father with this. Do you hear me, Mr Conway? Writing me vulgar, harassing letters isn’t going to upset my father, because he won’t see this letter or any future letters. You’re wasting you time trying to get to him through me.’

‘So you received a vulgar, harassing letter today and you immediately assumed it was from me?’

‘Are you denying that you sent this?’ She flapped the envelope in his face again.

He grabbed her wrist. She gasped. The fear in her eyes gave him an odd sense of pleasure, but it was a pleasure mixed with pain. ‘Stop waving that damn thing in my face.’ She twisted her wrist, trying to free it from his grip, but he held fast. She glared at him, the fear in her eyes turning to anger. Ah, he liked the anger much more than the fear. ‘I’m not denying anything. Nor am I admitting to anything.’

‘I hardly expected you to admit it,’ she said, glancing from his face to her wrist. ‘Will you please let go of me?’

‘All in good time, Miss Ella.’ Tugging on her wrist, he practically dragged her toward the side door of the garage. ‘But first, I think you and I need to have a little private talk.’

5 (#ulink_dde8bd60-5c44-5821-a772-90314987a0f4)

Reed hauled Ella into the garage. She protested verbally and struggled against his overpowering strength. What had she been thinking, coming here and confronting him this way? The man was a convicted murderer!

‘Let go of me this instant or you’ll be sorry.’

He ignored her, damn him! He pulled her inside a windowless room that possessed only two pieces of furniture: a cheap ‘Kmart special’ swivel chair and an old metal desk piled high with books, magazines and papers. A small air conditioner hummed and rattled in a hole cut out of the concrete wall. With wide eyes and mouth agape, Briley Joe shot out of the chair.

‘We need to use your office for a few minutes,’ Reed said.

Briley Joe shut his mouth and stared at them, grinning at first and then grimacing when he apparently recognized Ella. ‘You do know who she is, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, I know who she is.’

‘Have you lost your mind, manhandling Webb Porter’s daughter?’

‘If he doesn’t let me go, I’ll have him arrested,’ Ella said.

‘Hey, cuz, let her go. You can always find another woman. You don’t want to wind up back in the pen over a piece of ass.’

‘A piece of – how dare you!’ Ella glared at Briley Joe. Did that imbecile think Reed had dragged her into the garage office for a little slap and tickle? Her heart nearly thumped out of her chest. Unbidden thoughts swirled through her mind. She started to protest such Neanderthal treatment once again, but before she could do more than open her mouth, Reed shoved her down in the chair that Briley Joe had recently vacated. She gasped aloud as her bottom hit the seat, which was still warm from Briley Joe’s body heat.

‘Close the door on your way out,’ Reed told his cousin, who left immediately and quietly closed the door behind him.

‘I don’t know what you think this little scene will accomplish, Mr Conway, but I hope it’s worth it to you because I can assure you that it’s going to cost you dearly.’ Ella used her authoritarian judicial voice, the same commanding tone she used in the courtroom.

Reed settled his backside onto the edge of the desk, reached out, and spun around the chair she sat in so that she was forced to face him. Resting his hands on the chair’s armrests on either side of her hips, he leaned forward, getting close enough so that she could feel his breath on her face. Startled by his nearness, she blinked several times.

‘You certainly grew up nice, Miss Ella.’ He raked his gaze over her face and down her throat, stopping at her breasts, then retraced his visual journey until their eyes met. ‘Real nice.’

‘Is this step two in your plan to sexually harass me so that my father will come after you?’ Keeping her gaze locked with his, she refused to let him know how much he intimidated her. He was a big man, powerfully built, and surrounded by an undeniable aura of danger.

‘You’ve got me all wrong,’ he said, grinning. ‘Besides, it seems to me, if anybody’s doing any harassing, it’s you.’

‘Me?’ She wanted to knock that cocky smile off his face. Her hands balled into fists, crushing the white envelope in the process. She prided herself on her even-tempered disposition. But this man had enraged her so easily that she felt shocked at her irrational reaction to him.

‘Yeah, you. I was here at work, minding my own business, being a law-abiding citizen, when you showed up and started tossing out accusations, accusing me of something I didn’t do. I figure that could be called harassment.’

‘Are you denying that you sent this to me?’ She held up the letter she still clutched in her fist and waved it around, all but slapping him in the face with it.

He peered at her over the edge of the envelope, which rested just below the bridge of his nose. ‘The vulgar, harassing letter? Nope. I don’t know anything about it, except what you’ve told me.’

He continued staring at her. Those incredible blue eyes hypnotized her. She couldn’t help wondering how many other women had been caught and held by the mesmerizing coldness in Reed Conway’s eyes. She swallowed. Get hold of yourself, Eleanor Porter. He’s just a man, like any other man. He puts his pants on one leg at a time, right? Yeah, sure. She couldn’t kid herself. Reed might put his pants on in the same way other men did, but he wasn’t like other men. He never had been. Not at eighteen. Not now. He had been a star athlete headed for the University of Alabama on a football scholarship when he’d killed his stepfather. He’d had a bad boy reputation with girls and women alike when he’d been Bryant County’s teenage heartthrob and the bane of concerned parents’ lives. She remembered accidentally overhearing her uncle Jeff Henry make an off-color comment about Reed all those years ago.

‘That boy’s got a man-sized ego because he’s bigger and better on the football field than anybody else. And the ladies seem to think what he’s got between his legs is bigger and better, too.’

She could still hear her uncle’s and her father’s macho chuckles, each in his own way both condemning and envying the boy from the wrong side of the tracks who had been destined for football superstardom.

And now Reed was different because he was a convicted murderer who had served fifteen years in prison. What had those years done to him? Losing everything – his freedom and the promise of a rich and famous future – must have embittered him. He had sworn revenge, hadn’t he? Against her father. But he had also sworn something else.

He had sworn he was innocent.

But that wasn’t possible. He’d been given a fair trial and was found guilty by a jury of his peers. Not only her father, but everyone in town knew he was guilty. He had to be guilty. All the evidence pointed directly to him. He had admitted beating his stepfather until he was unconscious. The knife used to slit Junior Blalock’s throat had belonged to Reed, and only his fingerprints had been found on it.

‘If you didn’t send me this letter, then who did?’ Ella asked. ‘Who else would have a reason to send me something like this? The content is very similar to those two letters you wrote to me …’

‘I shouldn’t have written those letters to you.’

Ella lowered the hand that held the scrunched envelope. She didn’t know if she moved closer or if Reed did, but suddenly they were nose to nose. A wave of dizziness forced her to blink and then refocus her vision so that she looked away, over his shoulder toward the dingy white wall behind him.

‘I was wild with anger when I first got to Donaldson,’ he said, his voice low, even and unbelievably calm. ‘I lashed out at everyone and everything. I hated your father and I wrote those letters to you to get a rise out of him. It was a stupid mistake. One I’ve regretted for a long time.’

He sounded so sincere that she almost believed him. Dear Lord, she wanted to believe him. She wanted to reach out and stroke his beard-stubbled cheek and tell him that she truly believed he regretted his past sins. She clenched her fist tightly at her side so that she didn’t respond physically, didn’t allow her own unchecked emotions to get her into trouble. As a small child, her spontaneous, emotional actions had worried her mother terribly, so she’d learned to curb those tendencies in order to please Carolyn.

‘I’d like to believe you,’ Ella said, proud that her voice didn’t tremble even though she was shaking like a leaf inside. ‘But it seems too much of a coincidence that the day after you’re released from prison, I receive a letter very similar to the two you sent me fifteen years ago.’

‘Maybe it’s not a coincidence,’ Reed suggested. He released the chair arms and rose to his full, imposing height.

Ella tilted her head and stared up at him. ‘What are you implying?’

‘I know that I sure as hell didn’t write that letter to you, but circumstantial evidence points to me. Maybe whoever sent it wants you to think I’m the person who wrote it.’

‘But why?’

‘To get me in trouble.’

Ella rose to her feet but quickly realized her mistake. Reed didn’t move out of her way, so only inches separated her body from his. She felt his heat, smelled his sweat, heard his indrawn breath when his leg accidentally brushed against hers. Or had it been accidental?

‘Why … why would someone want to get you in trouble?’