Atonement. B.J. Daniels
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room, other than the bed and one straight-backed chair by the desk. She wondered how long this was going to take. “I’ll be just fine, not that I think you honestly care about me or the baby.”
“You said you have a job. Where do you work?”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Why are you—”
“Please, just humor me, all right?”
Tessa sighed. “I work as a supervisor for a landscaping firm.”
He seemed surprised, which only annoyed her. “How much money did you say my brother took from you?”
She ignored the brother part, wondering what he was doing here. Apparently he wanted to continue this pretense. But to what end? Yesterday he’d threatened her with arrest for pulling a gun on him and trying to scam him. Surely he hadn’t come here today to do just that, had he?
“All of my savings. Just under five thousand dollars, as if you don’t know that, too.”
He looked down at his boots for a moment. “I was thinking...” He slowly raised his gaze. “If you really knew my brother, then you should have some way to prove it.”
She put her hands on her stomach. “The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Anyway, why would I have come all the way to Montana looking for Ethan if I hadn’t known him? Or at least someone who’d pretended to be him?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Truthfully, I can’t see you with my brother. You seem to have too much going for you to get involved with him.”
She chuckled at that. “I should have been smarter. Neither of us is denying that.”
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that you and Ethan must have been together for a while before—” His gaze dropped to where her hands still rested on her stomach. “Before you say he left you.”
“Three months. I met him last April, three months before I got pregnant. That would have been a month after you stole his identity.” She couldn’t help being angry. What was he insinuating? That this wasn’t his fault because clearly she was just plain easy? Those were fightin’ words.
“Then you must have photographs of the two of you together.”
Tessa felt her pulse jump. “You know damned well I don’t.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Do we really have to continue this charade? Ethan took everything that tied him to me and the baby when he left, including photographs of the two of us, along with my money. He even killed the ones on my cell phone, not that there were many. Ethan didn’t like having his photo taken.”
“Didn’t you find that strange?”
She laughed. “I did until I met you. Now we both know why you didn’t want me to have any proof, don’t we?”
“So you have no evidence that you ever even knew my brother.”
Tessa glared at him. “Isn’t that the way you planned it?”
“Then I guess we’re finished here.” He settled his hat on his head, tipped the brim and started for the door.
That was it? He was just going to walk out again? What had he really come here for?
And that was when it hit her.
“Aren’t you curious how I found you, since you lied not only about your first name but also your last? You were so careful not to leave anything that would tie me to you. You must wonder how I found you.”
The lawman stopped short of the door and turned to look back at her. She reached into her shoulder bag and saw him tense, but she didn’t pull the .45. “I was wondering why you stopped by here this morning. Did you just realize that you’d dropped something when you left me in the middle of the night? Of course you would want to make sure I don’t use it to embarrass you, to prove what you did.”
He frowned. “I don’t know what—”
“Admit it. You came for this.” She held up the dog-eared, faded photograph and let out a bitter laugh. “I’m so stupid. Of course this was why you asked me about photographs. You realized you must have dropped it in your hurry to get away the night you left.”
His frown deepened.
“I’ll bet you’ve been racking your brain, wondering how I could have found you. You never told me enough to lead me to you in Montana. So what could it have been? Then you remembered the photograph.” She looked at him, her expression filled with disgust. “Here, take it,” she said, thrusting it at him. “I’m not going to bother you again. I’m going back to California and you will never see me or my baby again.”
He seemed to hesitate for a moment before he stepped to her and took the photograph.
* * *
ONE GLANCE AT the photo and Dillon had to pull out the chair and sit down. He bent over the snapshot, tears blurring his eyes. “Where did you get this?”
“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