Atonement. B.J. Daniels

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      CHAPTER THREE

      DILLON WATCHED THE young woman walk down the road to where she’d left her newer-model compact car. Apparently she’d wanted to surprise him. Well, she’d done that, all right.

      He couldn’t make out the plate number from where he stood, but it looked like a California license plate. His brother had been killed in Arizona. Not that far away, possibly.

      What Ethan had been doing down in Arizona, Dillon had no idea. Had this woman even ever met Ethan?

      On the form she’d tried to get him to sign, he’d seen that her name was Tessa Winters. But that might have also been a lie, just like swearing that Ethan was the father of her baby. Hell, he realized with a start, the woman might not even be pregnant.

      He half wished he’d arrested her for trying to scam him.

      As the dust settled behind her car, Dillon felt as if he’d imagined the entire encounter, like a bad dream. And yet it nagged at him. He kept recalling her expression when she’d seen the photographs. There was no way she could have been acting. She’d been shocked, but not half as shocked as she’d been when she’d looked at the newspaper clippings.

      She hadn’t known Ethan was dead.

      Dillon shook his head. It didn’t make any sense. Maybe that was why it had left him so upset. When she’d gotten a good look at him earlier, she’d fainted. Or at least she’d pretended to.

      He tried to brush off the whole incident. The woman had tried to run some kind of con on him. It hadn’t worked. Case closed.

      Going back to the table, he gathered up the photos and clippings. The newspaper clippings were worn from looking at them so many times. It had been a horrendous accident. According to the coroner Dillon had spoken with in Arizona, speed and alcohol had been involved.

      He was hit again with guilt for not saving his brother. The fact that he’d tried when they were younger didn’t count. He should have tried harder, he thought as he put the photos and newspaper clippings back in the drawer where he kept them. Ethan was gone. He had to accept that. Or at least try to live with it.

      But the woman had left him stirred up. He couldn’t work with the filly now. The horse would sense his tension. He’d thought he was handling the one-year anniversary of his brother’s death fairly well—until the woman had shown up.

      Gathering himself up, he decided the best thing he could do was some good, hard, physical labor. He headed for the horse stalls. Nothing like mucking stalls to wear himself out.

      It had been a mild winter. Today the sun felt warm on his back as he walked to the barn, but the breeze had a nip to it, and he’d heard on the radio earlier that there was talk of snow in the mountains in the next day or so.

      Spring in Montana could be a terrible tease. One day would be beautiful and the next as much like winter as a day in January. Dillon had seen thirty-six springs come and go. His father used to say a bad Montana spring after a long winter was what separated the men from the boys.

      Maybe it was true. His mother certainly hadn’t fared well on those snowy spring days. She said an unpredictable spring broke not only its promise, but ultimately your heart. Dillon figured that might also be true of the man she’d married. It probably explained, too, why his mother had left on a snowy spring day.

      He shook his head at the thought. His mother should have left the old man many springs before she did. Dillon had given up hope of her ever escaping, so he’d been as shocked as his father when she’d finally done it. Not by packing up and leaving, like she should have done years before. No, it had taken an aneurysm to free her of Burt Lawson. She’d died in her sleep in the bed next to him.

      Burt Lawson was a heartless bastard. Anyone who’d ever met him would tell you that, including his two sons. That was why no one had expected that Erma’s dying would break the old man the way it had—especially not Dillon. Apparently Burt had had a heart after all. Her passing had killed him, turning him into an even more bitter old man before death took him.

      Dillon pushed away thoughts of the past and, entering the barn, picked up a shovel and went to work.

      He spent the rest of the day doing backbreaking labor, but as hard as he tried, he couldn’t get the incident with the woman off his mind. He told himself she probably wasn’t even pregnant. There were forms a woman could buy to look that way. But his mind kept coming back to why she would come all the way to Montana when it was so easy to prove she was lying.

      He hated things that made no sense. It was one reason why he’d been drawn to law enforcement. He liked to think that crimes could be solved with a cool, calm logic. He was a man who believed in justice.

      Just thinking of the .45 in the woman’s shoulder bag made him sorry again that he hadn’t arrested her. She’d threatened an officer of the law with what he assumed was a loaded weapon, and she’d tried to extort money from him in the most egregious way.

      Well, she’d realized her mistake once she’d seen the photos and Ethan’s obit, he thought. Her attempt to blame Dillon had failed, so she’d packed it up and left before even telling him how much money he’d allegedly stolen from her.

      And that form releasing the biological father of any right to the baby... That, he was sure, had been for pure show.

      After she’d learned that he was undersheriff of this county, she’d backed down quickly enough. Had she done her homework, she’d have known that. Nope, she wouldn’t be back to try to shake him down again.

      So why was he wondering where she’d gone?

      * * *

      TESSA TRIED TO still the pounding of her heart as she drove into Big Timber. It had always been like this. The man evoked feelings and desires in her like no other man ever had. She’d seen something in him, a sweetness that he’d tried hard to hide. Wasn’t that why she’d overlooked her misgivings and let him into her heart?

      She shook her head, furious with herself. After everything the man had done to her, part of her had been drawn to this rancher version of Ethan even more strongly than to the old Ethan. It was when she’d seen him working with the filly. She remembered the way his large, tanned, callused hands had stroked the horse’s neck, the soft words he’d uttered as he’d removed the halter rope.

      Chastising herself under her breath, she couldn’t believe she’d let him sucker her in again, and now she was leaving without her money—or the signed form that would relinquish his rights to their child. She felt like pulling the car over and just sitting and bawling.

      But Tessa swore that she wouldn’t shed any more tears for the man. She couldn’t believe he’d used his dead brother’s name. What kind of man did that?

      If it was true and the real Ethan Lawson had been killed in a car wreck one year ago tomorrow, then no wonder the man she’d known hadn’t mentioned that he had an identical twin. He had stolen Ethan’s identity. Was it any surprise that a man like that would steal her heart and her money?

      Sick to her stomach at the realization, СКАЧАТЬ