The truth was, Reba had done her share of damage during her months in Painted Pony Creek. He wasn’t about to lay that on this frightened, broken, lonely child, but facts were facts.

The rain slackened suddenly, reduced to a rhythmic patter on the rooftop.

The girl sat very still, huddled inside Cord’s jacket, meeting no one’s gaze, saying nothing but exuding hurt and fury and confusion, all at once.

J.P. and Eli were looking down at the tabletop.

Trooper, his head now resting on the girl’s lap, gave a despondent little whimper.

Molly, with her questionable timing, broke the stalemate by bumping the door open with one swing of her hips and bustling in, food-laden tray gripped in both hands.

She set the tray down, right on top of the scattering of poker chips, nearly overturning the coffee carafe in the process, and left again, still in a huff.

The girl came alive at the sight of the burgers and fries nestled in battered plastic baskets, the paper linings spotted with plenty of grease. She extended one hand toward the grub, drew it back again.

“Go ahead,” Eli said quietly. “Eat.”

She practically did a swan dive into the food.

Cord didn’t reach for a basket, and neither did Eli or J.P.

They were all hungry, Molly had guessed right on that score, but Cord, for one, felt as though he was walking a tightrope. A single move, however slight, would send him smashing onto the ground.

Or so it felt.

Watching the child gobble down a hot meal, evidently the first she’d had in a while, Cord let his thoughts wander, and they went straight to Reba. Vibrant, beautiful, dangerous Reba.

A Category 5 hurricane of wind and ice and fire, all wrapped up in one trim and entirely unpredictable package—that was the Reba he’d known and, yes, loved, with all the testosterone-fueled passion of a seventeen-year-old hotshot kid.

It was an old story, a typical rite-of-passage thing. Reba had played him, big-time, along with Eli and J.P., of course. Left them wondering what else she’d lied about.

Oh, she’d been an enigma, all right. And that had been part of her attraction, he supposed.

The whole thing might not have jammed up his gears the way it had if he’d been the only dimwit pawn on her chessboard, but Eli and J.P. had been part of her game, as well.

As young and perennially horny fools will do, they’d fallen for Reba’s elaborate stories, all three of them, each believing himself to be her one-and-only true and forever love.

Cord had long since come to the conclusion that he’d believed the lies because he’d wanted to believe them. He’d suspended his innate common sense, ignored the excuses, the fault lines and inconsistencies in her stories, and his friends had done the same.

It was a dangerous thing, wanting so badly for something to be true that you dismissed all contrary evidence, he reflected now.