I wandered to the worktable and set my purse down. Gathering my thoughts wasn’t easy. My body still craved what my mind had forbidden. Even so, I forced myself to speak. “Ah….” I began, my voice annoyingly unsteady. I cleared my throat and tried again. “The first time I saw that…that wretched letter was a week ago. Someone sent it to the parole board right before your first hearing, but no one followed up with me. They assumed it was authentic.”

Trace pushed away from the wall and hopped on a stool. Dust trickled down while he rummaged through the row of tires above his head. He didn’t hide his arousal, as if traipsing around with an erection was commonplace.

I wouldn’t look south again.

My heart raced as I waited for him to speak, yet he said nothing, just continued to fiddle with those stupid tires. One unnerving minute passed, then another, with no acknowledgment from him, so I opened my mouth and decided to go for the jugular.

Thankfully, he cut me off.

“Okay,” he finally said, shouldering his eye as he tugged at two Dunlop tires. “Here’s my problem. Your deposition was pretty damn persuasive.” He tucked a tire under his arm. “You didn’t blink when you said I could’ve done it. Hell, you even had me going for a while.”

This wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind. Jeez. The day I’d made that tape was little more than a blur. All I remembered was the fear. Fear of the camera. Fear of everything.

“I thought we were talking about the letter,” I said. “Now you’re bringing this up? Why?”

“I’d be a fool not to.” He stepped down, set the tires by the Porsche, and went back for two more. When he finished, he grabbed a bandana to mop the grit from his hands. “You know what? I don’t even feel like dealing with this shit.” He balled the bandana up and stalked past me. The heat from his body fanned my face. “Just get out. I got work to do.”

“I never figured you for a coward.”

Trace stopped like an invisible wall had crashed in front of him. “What did you say?”

“If you heard coward somewhere in there, then your ears are working fine.”

He did a slow one-eighty and faced me. “Best be careful.”

“Careful doesn’t work with you, but bluntness does. This resistance isn’t about the letter. You think I ruined your life—you, the man who said you’d never hate me. But if you admit it, you’d also have to admit you lied to that girl twelve years ago.” I pressed a fist to my chest. “That you lied to me.”

He stared back in silence for a long moment with a bemused expression, then he started nodding as a cruel smile shaped his lips. “Oh, you’re good. Almost sucked me right in, but I see what this is. Shine the spotlight on me so I’ll stop blazing it on you. The fact remains that you believed a lie. Swore to it in court. So like I told you at Home Depot, maybe you wrote the letter and blocked it out. Maybe guilt got the best of you, and your brain did an info dump. Hell, if it happened once, it could happen again. That’s all I’m saying.”

He’d left me no choice. It was time to play hardball. “Your father beat you bloody when you were a boy, but you denied it. I read the transcripts. You lied.” He’d already drawn first blood, but I’d drawn a close second. I tucked my hair behind my ear and said with sincerity, “Look, perhaps I was like you. Maybe deep down, I was trying to protect myself.”

He glanced off.

“I’m going to say something,” I continued. “And I don’t want you to take it the wrong way, because it comes from my heart.” I pooled my courage and forged ahead. “Bitterness—no, rage—is eating you alive. You guard it like a treasure and I understand that. It’s the one thing they couldn’t take from you. Now I’m asking you to give it up. That has to be terrifying.”

“Shannon….”

Sympathy filled me as I surveyed him with new understanding. “To keep it alive, you stash people in boxes, stuffing them into categories. That makes you feel safe, doesn’t it? This way your preconceived notions go unchallenged.”

He flung the bandana, went for the worktable again, and started clearing it with ruthless precision. A line of boxes filled with nuts and bolts bordered the wall. He was in a frenzy, sorting screws and whatever else lay before him.

“Now here I am,” I said, “trying to make things right between us and it’s driving you mad. I’m an anomaly. That’s why you’re frustrated. You’re used to trashing what you can’t label. What doesn’t fit, you wish into a cornfield.” He kept sorting, so I opted for bluntness. “I know your mother was deathly ill with cancer when you first came up for parole.”

He gripped the table. “Leave it alone.”

“All right. I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” I whispered, my heart and soul aching for him. “I’m so very sorry.”

I felt like an empath. Pain—his pain—coursed through me with paralyzing speed. Filling my lungs with much-needed air, I scooped the last page of the letter from the floor and stood next to him at the table.

Now I was more physically aware of him than ever.

My hands shook as I removed an inkpad, a rubber signature stamper, a pen, and a stack of index cards from my purse. I flipped the inkpad open and pressed the stamp against it. Once I’d made an imprint on an index card, I grabbed the letter’s signature page.

“What are you doing?” he asked me.

“Just look. Please.”

I lined the signature page up with the index card I’d just stamped and placed them side by side. Next, I got another index card and signed my name, three times. Placing that beside the other two pieces of evidence, I pointed to the signature on the parole letter, then to the scripted signature I’d imprinted with the rubber stamp. “See.” I glanced at him. “They’re identical.”

He stared in silence.

“No two signatures are exactly alike,” I said, tapping the index card with the three autographs. “Even those penned by the same person. But a stamp makes the same impression every time.” I stuffed the pad and stamp inside my purse and left everything else. “As soon as I saw the letter, I recognized the signature for what it was. A stamped copy.”

We looked at each other and something—hope, affirmation maybe—dawned in his eyes. In my heart I knew he desperately wanted to believe me. He tore away to hold the cards up to the light, giving them a thorough inspection.

His face was a stony mask.

“If I had sent that thing,” I said, “I would have signed it myself. And I wouldn’t have used company letterhead.” I slipped my purse over my shoulder, fished a business card out and dropped it on the worktable. “I’m not the girl who put you in prison. Your best bet would be to forgive her and move on because she’s gone. You’re stuck with me now.”

“And who are you?”

“Someone who wants to get to know the man you are today. So if you believe me. If you can own up to the fact that this…fury raging inside of you has nothing to do with the letter—if you can admit that you do harbor some resentment against me, against the girl I was, and that maybe you even blame her, just a little, for ruining your life, then call me.”

His face was expressionless, but his eyes…yes, his eyes, burned with the first flicker of warmth, of feeling.

I crossed the garage and slipped my coat from the peg. “I’ve got clients flying in from New Orleans and several open houses to attend, so I’ll be tied up for the next few days. That should give you time enough to think about everything, to decide. And if you don’t call, I won’t bother you again.”

TRACE

____________________________

“Is it nasty?” Amber asked from across the kitchen table that same night.

I glanced up from my plate. “Huh?”

“Your dinner. You’ve hardly eaten a bite.”

She’d slaved over this meal, and I’d done nothing but pick at it. Guilt made me spear a piece of broccoli smothered with Velveeta. I crammed it into my mouth and gave an enthusiastic nod. “Naw, it’s good. So’s the chicken.”