The Me I Used to Be Read online

  Darren glanced over his shoulder and spotted Chris. “Shit. What is he doing here?”

  “I seem to be his favorite target.”

  Darren stood, slipped his hand in his dark denim pocket, pulled out a ten, and dropped it on the table. “We’ll talk about this another time.” Darren wound his way through the tables as Chris advanced. They stopped three feet from each other. Chris said something that made Darren take a step closer and say something back before he headed for the door.

  Evangeline finally took a sip of her beer and cringed at the bitter taste. She should have been more specific in her choice.

  Chris took the chair next to hers, slid it closer to her side, so he was facing the room and the door just like her, and sat. “You two got something going again?”

  “Nope.”

  Chris turned and looked her in the eye. “He’s not your friend.”

  Yeah, she didn’t need Chris’s warning to figure that out. “What did you say to him?”

  “I told him to stay the hell away from you.”

  She cocked one eyebrow. What did he know that prompted him to say that? Why did he care? “What did he say to that?”

  Chris shrugged. “To stop harassing you. So, I need you to get close to him again.”

  “That’s why you told him to stay away from me?” It seemed counterintuitive. Or reverse psychology.

  “If he thinks I don’t want him near you, he’ll want you all the more.”

  There you go.

  “He’s already sniffing around you. Take advantage, let him see that you’re over what happened and ready to move on. He’ll use that to get closer to you.”

  “Not because of my considerable charm.” Sarcasm dripped from every word.

  “He’s an idiot who doesn’t give a shit about you. I’m sorry if that hurts you.”

  “Not in the least. I have no intention of seeing him again.”

  “Then we have a problem, because that’s exactly what needs to happen if you want to get your record cleared.”

  She knew this was coming, but it still surprised her, because she didn’t want to be right about another person she thought she could trust but who’d stabbed her in the back. “He asked me how I got caught.”

  “What did you tell him?” Still probing to see what she’d reveal, he gave nothing away.

  She shifted to better watch his face. “Why did you pull me over? I wasn’t speeding. I didn’t have a busted taillight. I obeyed every law of the road.”

  His mouth tilted into a lopsided frown, but his eyes shined with admiration that she’d questioned the events of that night and found the curious things that added up to a prison sentence. “Someone called in a tip.” Nothing changed in his expression, but the intensity in his eyes deepened.

  “Specifically about me?”

  “About the truck and trailer.” The reluctant response stunned her.

  She picked up Darren’s glass and sipped the wine. She held it up. “Not bad. Too dry for my taste.” She turned to Chris. “He pretended to be hurt that I left him. He acted like he wanted me back. He wants us to get back together, so he can introduce me around, help me get work, and repair my reputation.”

  “Noble of him.” Sarcasm touched with scorn filled those words and blazed in his eyes.

  “He ordered Campi Verde Merlot.” She set the glass on the table. Her gut roiled with rage and her heart raced as her suspicions turned to truth. “He called in the tip. He knew the trailer was full of cases of Campi Verde wine.”

  Chris shifted his gaze away from her. “You had no idea what you were hauling.” If he knew that, then he knew who loaded the trailer.

  She finally spoke the truth. “Darren set up my father, but he ended up getting me arrested.”

  Chris took her beer and downed half of it. “And I arrested and put away an innocent woman.”

  “I was driving the truck.”

  Chris slammed the glass down on the table, sloshing beer and making it foam. “How the hell did that happen?” His anger matched her own when he’d discovered the stolen wine and she realized the position her father had put her in that night.

  An echo of that rage rippled through her and tensed all her muscles. But she had no one to lash out at because her father stole that from her, too, along with four years of her life.

  So she swallowed vile words she’d like to spew at her father, took a breath, and let her mind go back in time.

  “My father wasn’t feeling well. His blood pressure. The stress had to be tremendous. Stolen wine. A deal that night. Knowing, if he got caught, he’d go to jail. He must have really needed the money. The ranch had been slowly going downhill. Family obligations and responsibilities piled on top of all that.” She shook her head and frowned, sympathy warring with anger inside her heart and head. “I can come up with all kinds of justifications for why he did it. They all come down to one thing. He wanted better for his family.”

  “And let his daughter take the fall for what he’d done.” Chris bit out those bitter words.

  “I did that because there was no way I’d let him go to prison. The family needed him. He ran the ranch. He provided for everyone. Aside from all that, my mother had just had a hysterectomy. She had weeks of recovery ahead of her. She needed him.”

  “Charlie and Joey could have stepped up and taken over the ranch. You could have cared for your mom.”

  She shook her head. “She needed him. The boys weren’t ready to run that place. Even now, they can’t agree on how to run the operation.”

  “I heard that fell on you.”

  “I hold the family and ranch in my hands. What I say goes. Sink or swim, it’s on me.” Her stomach went queasy just thinking about it.

  “That’s a lot of pressure. He’s asked a damn lot of you. After what he did, I’m surprised you came home. Your mom is pissed at you, your brothers barely speak to you, and none of them knows what really happened.”

  “When did you figure it out?”

  “I suspected it when you refused to answer any of my questions. I didn’t want to believe that you were in on it. You seemed so surprised when I showed you the cases of wine. You figured out what happened almost immediately. I saw it in your face. But you wouldn’t talk to me. You didn’t trust me to help you.”

  She remembered his anger. “That just pissed you off more.”

  “You’re damn right. I knew something wasn’t right, and you wouldn’t give me any hint or explanation. After you were sentenced and sent away, it nagged at me. I couldn’t wholly eliminate your involvement. I suspected Joey, maybe Charlie, put you up to it. Your father never crossed my mind.”

  “Joey is reckless enough to put together a scheme like that, but no, the boys didn’t know anything about it. My father wasn’t feeling great, but he planned to make the delivery. I could tell something was wrong. So I volunteered to go. I wasn’t doing well in school, had gotten into some trouble because of it, and the family was mad that I’d been shirking my responsibility. I wanted to do something right for a change.”

  “Everyone goes a little wild when they spread their wings and get a taste of freedom for the first time. Darren didn’t exactly take school seriously.”

  “I figured that out when I realized he’d been going there for three years longer than me and was not even close to graduating.”

  “He liked a good time more than learning something useful.”

  “I remember you were at those parties more often than not.”

  “I graduated with honors and he dropped out. I partied only after I got my work done.”

  “Well, I was working on getting back on track when all this happened.”

  “So your dad just let you make the hay delivery. He didn’t say anything to you before you left?”

  “He balked at first, but I told him I needed to pull my weight. It wouldn’t kill me to make a simple delivery. No problem. I took the keys from him and hopped into the truck. He didn’t say anything or stop me.”

&
nbsp; Chris traced the scar down her neck to her shoulder, leaving a blazing trail of tingling she didn’t want to acknowledge. “It nearly did kill you.”

  A shiver raced up her spine. More from his touch than from the disturbing memory of what happened. “Yeah, well, my fault. As mad as I was at my father for putting me in that position, I couldn’t send him to prison. When you told me he died, I knew I’d made the right decision. My mother might hate me, but I gave her four more years with him.”

  Chris sighed. “The morning after he died, his lawyer came to see me. Your father wrote a full confession exonerating you of all wrongdoing in the theft of the wine.”

  Too little, too late.

  Chris took another deep swallow of her beer. “Do you have any idea how I felt when I read that? Four fucking years you sat in a cell for something your father did. Innocent. And punished for nothing but being a good, kindhearted, selfless daughter.”

  All this time, she thought he was angry at her. Instead, he was angry at himself. He believed in the law. Right and wrong. Protecting the innocent from the bad guys. And he’d sent an innocent woman to prison.

  She placed her hand on his forearm. “It’s not your fault, Chris. I knew what I was doing accepting the possession and transporting stolen goods charges and keeping quiet about the rest and I did it anyway.” The minute she took responsibility, she’d ruined her life and sentenced herself. She knew it would be hard. She just didn’t know how hard. “I made it through. Things will be better now. And you can stop trying to make amends. I appreciate you getting me the job for the bowling alley, but you don’t owe me anything.”

  He put his hand over hers and stared directly into her eyes. “I told you, I want to make things better for you.”

  She lost herself in the sincerity in his green eyes. Lost in their depths, she wondered how she’d never noticed the flecks of gold.

  “Can I get you another beer?” Bree stood by the table, pad and pen at the ready.

  Chris didn’t stop looking at Evangeline. “I’ll take a beer. She’ll have the peach sangria. You’ll like it,” he assured her. “It’s sweet and filled with sunshine, just like you used to be.” He squeezed her hand. “Add an order of barbecue pork sliders and fried zucchini.”

  “You got it.” Bree left them alone again.

  “I love fried zucchini.”

  “I know. You also like peach pie, which is why you’ll love the sangria. This beer is too bitter for you.”

  She marveled at how much he knew about her. All those times she was out with Darren, Chris included in the wide group of friends they hung out with, she’d always thought he didn’t like her. Now she couldn’t quite dismiss the notion that maybe he’d been jealous of Darren. Could it be that he actually liked her? Why else would he pay such close attention to what she liked?

  Chris downed the last swallow of beer, then pressed his lips together. “And that wine Darren ordered was just a taunt.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because when I couldn’t make sense of your reaction that night, I went back to what made me pull you over in the first place.”

  It took her a second, but it came to her. “The call.”

  “Darren tried to disguise his voice, but after I listened to it again and again, I knew it was him. Where were you going that night? You never told me.”

  “Dad told me after I got in the truck that I didn’t have to do any heavy lifting, just leave the trailer in an open field off Oak and Fern for the buyer to pick it up and return it the next day.”

  “That’s only a few miles from Darren’s family’s place.”

  “I wasn’t really thinking about it that night. Why not make the delivery to where it needed to go? Why drop it in the middle of nowhere? I figured whoever owned the property planned to fence it in and pasture their horses there. But when you’ve got hours and hours of nothing to do in prison, you start thinking about how you ended up there and how things didn’t add up. Like the times I found Darren out at my place before I got home talking to Dad. He never showed up early for anything.”

  “He wanted to talk to your dad alone.”

  “That’s what I suspected. The letters he sent me were heavy-handed on demanding to know what I knew about the stolen wine.”

  “He wanted to know if you suspected him.”

  “When I didn’t answer, I’m sure he got nervous. But then, no more letters.”

  “Your father told him you didn’t know anything,” Chris guessed.

  “I think so. Dad tried to visit me, but I refused to see him.”

  He draped his arm over the back of her chair and played with the ends of her hair. “You must have been really pissed.”

  I silently raged. The second she saw that stolen wine, knew her father had stolen it, and that she had no choice but to cover for him, her fury boiled. But she had to hold it all inside like a pressure cooker. Part of the reason she stayed silent during Chris’s questioning was that she feared if she opened her mouth, all that anger would spew out and she’d explode.

  Chris continued to play with her hair, lulling her into letting go of the anger and relaxing.

  She didn’t think he even realized he did it, yet he had her full attention. “Pissed. Angry. Furious. Scared. I went through all of it. Disbelief that he’d do that to me. Then I thought about how he must feel. He never meant for that to happen. I didn’t want him to see me in there. I didn’t want him to have to live with that image, knowing he was the one who put me there.”

  “So you made sure he never found out you’d been attacked and hurt.”

  “I wanted him to focus on the ranch and Mom, not on me. There was nothing he could do for me.”

  Bree delivered their drinks and food. “Can I get you anything else?”

  “We’re good.” Chris picked up his glass as Bree left them again. He held it out to her.

  She picked up her pretty and tempting glass of sangria filled with chunks of fresh peaches and raspberries and she fell into the depths of his steady green gaze.

  “You’re the strongest, most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”

  The words touched her, but she hadn’t felt strong or amazing withering away in a cell.

  They clinked glasses, then drank.

  She loved the sangria and took another sip. “This is fantastic.”

  “Told you you’d like it.”

  Chris handed her a slider. “Eat that.” He licked barbecue sauce off his thumb.

  She kind of wished he’d let her do that for him. “So bossy.”

  “You’re still stubborn as hell.” He took a big bite of his slider to hide a grin.

  She laughed, because he’d put a whole lot of teasing in that statement instead of censure. Apparently her kind of stubborn appealed to him.

  The slider was delicious, but the fried zucchini dripping with ranch dressing made her day. “Thank you for this. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed myself. It feels kind of odd.”

  “Well, we’re friends now. You’ve got work. Things are looking up for you.”

  “Except you want me to get close to Darren again.”

  Chris sighed and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “I don’t want you anywhere near him, but it’s the only way I could come up with to get your record expunged that didn’t involve outing your father to your family.”

  She appreciated his help, even if she didn’t want to do what he asked. But again, she had no choice if she wanted to clear her record—and make Darren pay. “Dad’s gone now. They don’t need to know what really happened.”

  “If they knew, they would treat you with the respect and admiration you deserve for what you did.”

  She didn’t want their pity. Not at the expense of tarnishing their opinion of Dad. “What’s done is done. They got to have their time with my father before he died. Let them have their memories. I can live with mine.”

  “Can you live with the fact that he died before you got out and had a chance to look him in the
eye and ask him why?”

  “He didn’t know Darren would double-cross him.”

  Chris held his beer up and stared into it. “Why did he make that call?”

  “Well, I have a theory about that. Darren didn’t want to share the profits anymore. My dad’s arrest would have taken suspicions off Darren and made the cops think they got their man.”

  “Your dad would have named Darren his accomplice.”

  “Darren wouldn’t have set up my dad if he had proof Darren was involved in the theft.”

  Chris pressed his lips together. “It’s the same thing I’ve been dealing with these last few years. Nothing sticks to Darren.”

  She understood Chris’s frustration. “After my arrest, my dad probably told Darren to go to hell. After some threats back and forth, they probably agreed to go their separate ways.”

  “Damn, sweetheart, you got it in one. He never really saw you and your brilliance.”

  She appreciated the pride in his words and that he believed in her. “Darren liked that I went along for the ride. It’s what got me into trouble. Long before you arrested me, I’d been backing away from him. I spent more time at school and with school friends than him. We were a breakup waiting to happen. If I wasn’t in the picture, why keep the business partnership between him and my father?”

  “True, but there was also an extenuating circumstance.”

  “What’s that?”

  “His brother, Tom, moved back to town two weeks before I arrested you.” Chris’s face went flat, his eyes filled with remorse.

  “You hate saying that.”

  He rubbed his big hand across her back. “I hate that I did it.”

  “Not your fault. You did your job. I didn’t make it easy.”

  “Stubborn as always.”

  “Yes, I got that. So Darren tells his brother about their wine scheme and Tom gets Darren to call in the tip and get my father arrested and out of their way. I might be stubborn, but that’s ruthless.”

  “And now you know the Darren I’ve come to know.”

  “He knows you’re after him.”

  “And he gloats that I have absolutely fucking nothing to prove a damn thing.” Chris sat back and took a big swallow of beer. “He’s smart and conniving. Tom has a history of breaking and entering. In the past, I almost had them for a B&E at one of the wineries. Another time they bribed a truck driver to let them help themselves to the cargo. The driver stuck to his story that he’d been hijacked and robbed.”