LOVING ELLIE Read Free Page A

thing - you don’t belong here.”
    She flinched at his words.  Had she ever really belonged anywhere?  She was not going to cry, no matter how raw she felt inside.  “I live here.”
    “Save your lies for the police.”  Turning, he crossed the room to where the cordless phone sat perched in its cradle.
    “What are you doing?”
    “It’s been a long day,” he said matter-of-factly.  “Several days for that matter.  The police can deal with you.”
    “I was your brother’s fiancée,” she blurted out as he lifted the cordless from its base.
    The large hand froze midair.  A second later Lucas Tanner pivoted to look at her, his scowl deepening.  “What did you say?”
    Nothing could have prepared her for this moment.  After the accident, she’d made several attempts to contact Lucas to no avail.  Or so she’d believed.  Apparently, he’d gotten one of the messages she’d left for him on his cell phone or he wouldn’t be there now. 
    She looked up, her gaze locking with his.  His expression wasn’t warm and kind as Jarrett’s had always been.  It was hard and icy, like the land outside.
    “Your brother and I were engaged,” she explained, nervously twisting the diamond engagement ring on her left hand. 
    He returned the phone to its cradle and turned back to face her.  “That’s impossible.  I would have known if my brother had asked some woman to marry him.”
    “Maybe if you’d kept in better contact with him you would have,” she accused angrily.  She couldn’t recall Jarrett ever having received a call from his brother in the months she’d been living there.
    “My brother understood.”
    How did a man understand being abandoned by the only family he had left?  “Did he really?  Is that why he was always saying that he wished you’d come home?”
    He closed his eyes as if trying to compose himself, and then opened them, pinning her with his gaze.  “I had my reasons for staying away.  My brother understood them.”
    While she knew why Lucas had gone to Brazil, she couldn’t understand his staying away for three long years.  Away a brother who loved him and needed him there.  She’d have given anything to have family who wanted her to be a part of their life.
    “Did he really?” she challenged.  She had never pressed Jarrett for details, certain that he would confide in her when he was ready, but she knew Lucas’s staying away hurt him deeply. 
    Lucas didn’t answer, not that she really expected him to.  Instead, he stood studying her.  His scrutinizing gaze shifted from her face, moving slowly downward.
    She clutched the chenille throw to her shivering form as his dark gaze moved down to her feet.
    Then a dark brow lifted.
    She looked down, having forgotten she was wearing Jarrett’s oversized boots.  Feeling oddly self-conscious, she quickly kicked them off to stand in her stocking feet.  “They were your brother’s.  I put them on when I went out to the barn to tend to the animals.  I guess I forgot to take them off.”  She’d been so tired it was all she could do to make it to the sofa when she’d come back inside.
    He looked up, meeting her gaze and his expression softened.  “You really were his fiancée?”
    She nodded and held out her hand. 
    He looked down at her extended fingers.  His expression softened.  “My mother’s ring.” 
    “Yes.”  Clutching the blanket to her, she attempted to twist the gold band with its half carat solitaire off her finger.  “You can have it back,”
    He reached out to still her efforts.  “No.  If my brother gave you our mother’s ring, he wanted you to have it.  You should keep it.  Besides, I don’t have any need for it.”
    Wearing the ring made her feel closer to Jarrett.  Just as being at the ranch did.  And she desperately needed that closeness right now.  But the ring wasn’t hers to keep.  If Lucas didn’t want it, she would give it to her baby’s adoptive parents to keep until