He cast her a sideways glance. “More like years away.” He crested a hill and pulled out to pass the car in front of him. “Heather went to Vail every year. After the first couple of seasons, I stayed at the ranch while she drove down and stayed with Anna or Gretchen. It was winter. I told myself anything could happen on the ranch—I couldn’t afford to be gone.”

“You said half the town, including you, thought she’d run away with someone she met in Vail.”

“At the time, I did. She’d threatened to do it before, just take off, disappear and never come back. I figured she’d finally done it.”

“But eventually you called the police and reported her missing.”

He nodded. “Even when they came up with nothing, I stayed in touch with Gretchen and Anna. I thought she might call them, let them know she was okay. At first, they were evasive. They figured she’d left me for someone else, and they didn’t want to betray her. In the end, nothing turned up until two years later when they found her body.”

“And you still feel guilty.”

He kept his gaze firmly on the road. “Yeah, in some ways, I do.”

“You didn’t kill her, Kade. Heather made a series of bad decisions. That’s what got her killed.”

He was beginning to actually believe it. Some of the tension he was feeling started to ease. “I don’t come here often, but this is where I met Grace. My friend Sam convinced me I needed to get out more. Vail’s about the closest place you can go where anything’s happening.”

“Sam was right,” Ellie said. “Getting away was probably good for you.”

“Plus nobody knew me in Vail. Everything I did in Coffee Springs was fodder for the gossip mill.”

“I know how much you hate gossip.”

He flicked her a glance and smiled. “After I met Grace, we got together whenever she was in town and I could get away for a day or two. She owns a condo, so she comes up from Denver fairly often.”

“I didn’t realize your relationship with Grace was serious.”

“It wasn’t. Not for me. But after we’d been seeing each other a while, Grace got the idea we should make things permanent. That’s when I broke it off.”

He didn’t mention the times he’d come up in the months that followed, times he’d been looking for female companionship of the one-night variety. It wasn’t his style even then. Now that he’d been with Ellie, a night with a nameless female held not the slightest appeal.

It was a sobering thought.

“That’s the turn.” Ellie pointed to a street sign that read Sprad-dle Creek Road. It led into the pricey, gated community where the Springers owned a home.