Chaps and Chance by Evans Jessie

Author:Evans, Jessie [Evans, Jessie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cowboy, western romance, series romance, Texas
Publisher: Self Taught Ninja
Published: 2015-03-16T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Layla

Layla had spent so many years tiptoeing around the ruins of her failed hopes, waiting for another mortar to explode, that she didn’t quite know how to handle a dream coming true. Even three days after her visit to the police station, the fact that Cole knew what she’d done and hadn’t been scared away, still felt unreal.

No one else knew. Not Grayson, not Reece, not even her best friend Gemma in San Antonio, a woman she’d been friends with since she was a child.

Even if it had been safe to tell them, Layla would never have dared. No matter how much her family and friends loved her, she wasn’t sure they would understand. Sometimes she didn’t understand. There were nights when she lay awake plagued by guilt, her conscience insisting she could have found another way out if she’d really tried.

Other times she was plagued by regret that she’d gone so far…but not far enough.

There were ways to do it that would have left Wayne dead and the police with no reason to suspect her. But she had never intended to kill her husband. She’d only wanted to break him down, make him weak, and ensure he wouldn’t have the strength to keep her from leaving the way he had the first time.

And her plan had worked. For a little while.

Still, she’d known she needed to think beyond “a little while.” She had realized that once Wayne stopped getting a daily dose of arsenic in his coffee and sifted atop the white cheddar popcorn he ate late at night he would start to recover. The arsenic in the well water alone wouldn’t be sufficient to keep making him so ill. But she’d hoped by the time his strength returned he would have come to terms with the end of their marriage. She’d hoped that time apart would dull his obsession with her and knowing she had her big brother looking out for her would scare Wayne into keeping his distance.

Grayson was one of the kindest people she’d ever known, but he was also ex-military, a crack shot, and not the sort of man who would let anyone hurt his sister. If Layla had called him Sunday night, he would have come straight home from his trip and stood guard on their front porch with his shotgun. But she didn’t want to expand the circle of people who would feel pressured to lie to the police on her behalf.

Until she decided what to do next, she needed to keep her cards close to her chest and she really didn’t want to interrupt Grayson and Reece’s trip. They’d spent weeks organizing the list of ranch properties they wanted to visit with their real estate agent, and until their own property sold, there wasn’t a lot of extra money floating around to buy more plane tickets to Montana if this trip were cut short.

Besides, Layla knew she would be as safe with Cole as she would be with her brother.

She just wished that Grayson had come back to Lonesome Point before last autumn.

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