Her Cowboy Avenger

“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 a dumb kid, feeling things for the first time, letting himself feel those things for the first time. Back then, he’d never been able to get her out of his head. The mere sight of her had always made him happier than he’d ever been. Every time she’d smiled at him it had been like someone 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?”