Her Cowboy Avenger. Kerry Connor
up into the eyes of the man she loved more than anything she’d ever imagined. The man whose presence sent her heart racing and her stomach clenching whenever he was close. The man who inspired feelings and passions so deep and fierce that everything she’d experienced before that seemed like nothing. The man who filled her thoughts every waking moment and in all of her dreams. The man she didn’t believe she would ever be able to live without.
The man who hadn’t loved her enough. Or maybe she hadn’t loved him enough. She’d spent a great deal of time over the years wondering which it had been. She never had arrived at an answer.
Then she was back in the present. Because the man in front of her wasn’t the one she’d loved. This man was older, faint lines worn into the skin around his eyes, his face harder, his body bigger and more muscular. This was Matt Alvarez, with eight more years—years he’d lived without her—on him.
He was still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. That lustrous black hair, those piercing dark eyes, that magnificent face, somehow even more devastating than the last time she’d seen him.
Of course, the last time she’d seen him she hadn’t been looking at his face. She’d been staring at his back as he’d walked away from her.
She’d officially lost her mind. That had to be it. That vaguely unreal feeling she’d been experiencing since Bobby’s death, the sense that none of this could be happening, washed over her, stronger than ever. Because there was absolutely no way that Matt Alvarez could be right here, right now.
“Hello, Elena.”
And yet he was. Because even eight years later, that voice remained the same.
“Matt” was all she could bring herself to say, her mind still incapable of reconciling the fact that he was actually here in front of her.
“We need to talk.”
“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