Free Seeing Red by Susan Crandall Page B

from the trailer park.
    “How long are you staying?” she asked, wondering only briefly if she was telling a lie by not correcting Nate’s misconception that she still came here regularly.
    “I’m really not sure.” He didn’t offer more. In fact, he was retreating again.
    He turned his back on her, bending down to gather up the tools lying on the porch floor.
    She started toward the steps. “Well, I guess I’ll be going. It was good to see you.”
    He lifted his chin in acknowledgment, but to her disappointment, he didn’t engage her in further conversation. It was as if he really was the stranger the change in his physical appearance said he was. That fact made Ellis strangely sad, as if he’d deserted her all over again.
    She walked down the steps, loneliness gnawing at the edges of her soul. The wind gently rustled in the treetops. Why did she suddenly feel so alone?
    “Ellis,” Nate called.
    Her falling spirit fluttered upward. She turned and looked up at him. “Yes?”
    “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone I’m here.”
    He didn’t wait for her agreement. He turned and entered the house, closing the newly hung door behind him.
    She lingered there on the steps for a moment, listening to the sound of his footsteps through the open windows.
    Nate sat on the broad staircase inside the plantation house and fisted his hands in his hair. He pulled until it felt his entire scalp would lift, but his scalp and the thoughts running under it remained vividly intact.
    He hadn’t expected this rush of—he couldn’t quite name what seeing Ellis up close had done to him. She’d always been an amazing person. But now her body had caught up—and surpassed—that beautiful personality. He’d known she’d changed, had seen it two years ago when he’d watched her teach her class in the park. Still, he hadn’t been prepared for the dynamic impact of facing—and touching—the whole package of the grown woman.
    When she’d thrown her arms around him, it had felt as if he’d never left. He’d never measured his words with her as he did with everyone else. Of all the people he’d known, only Ellis had seen Nate’s unguarded side. It had been a risk he’d taken only once. And his friendship had been detrimental to her in the end.
    Ellis had been pure. After Laura had been attacked, there was no way he could remain close to Ellis and not taint her with this town’s perception of him; a perception that lingered long after Hollis Alexander had been arrested for the crime. Nate supposed it had been there all along. But the quiet whispers he’d always been able to shut out became deafening shouts of accusation after Laura had been found, bloody and broken, on the beach.
    It had been better for Ellis that he’d left. She would have stood by him, he knew. And she would have suffered for it.
    He sat on the stairs for a long moment, eyes closed.
    Who was he kidding? He dropped his head back and stared at the ornate plastered ceiling. His leaving Belle Island hadn’t been that simple . . . or that noble.
    He’d been a coward. A fact that was all too easy to forget when he’d seen the unabashed joy in Ellis’s eyes the instant she recognized him. Which she’d done surprisingly quickly. He’d left here a boy and returned a man who’d seen too much, learned never to trust anyone, and knew things that made a peaceful night’s sleep impossible. The changes in him had to be every bit as visible as those he saw in her.
    Although she’d been fourteen when he’d left, she was now several inches taller—having grown into those coltish legs—and had developed curves that had felt unfamiliar when he hugged her against him. The beauty he’d seen masked by youth had emerged; she was a woman who would draw sidelong looks from every man she passed.
    But the most startling change had been her eyes, even in that initial moment of delighted recognition. They were no longer the eyes of an optimistic young girl. The