LOVING ELLIE Read Online Free Page B

down the steps.  Reaching up, he grasped the collar of his jacket and raised it, giving him some added protection from the elements as he ventured out into the swirling snow.
    It had been a long time since he’d been back to the home he’d grown up in.  After he and Anna married they turned the ranch over to Jarrett and moved into their own place, one they had built just a few miles away.  Their house had been warm and welcoming with a huge yard for their future children to play in.  And then Anna died.  He couldn’t take the memories the house held for him.  So he’d put it up for sale and left Wyoming, needing to get as far away from the pain as possible. 
    It hadn’t helped.  The pain followed.
    Anna.   Lord, how he missed her.  Missed the life he’d almost had.  Life had been cruel taking her and the baby away from him, but time proved to be even crueler.  It was slowly fading away the image of his wife in his mind’s eye.
    Self-pity threatened to consume him.  This was why he hadn’t come home.  It reminded him too much of what he’d had and lost.  And Jarrett’s dying had only added to his list of heartbreaking grievances.
    He forced his thoughts to his brother and the way he would want to be remembered.  Always grinning as if he was up to no good; which he usually was.  A natural born prankster, his brother lived to make others laugh.  He was also the smartest man Lucas knew, a computer whiz who made his money via the internet.  And he was, without a doubt, the best brother a man could have ever asked for.
    Lucas frowned as he trudged across the snow-covered ground.    The only thing those good thoughts succeeded in doing was stir his anger.  Jarrett had his whole life ahead of him.  One that had included a woman he loved and the child they had created together.  This isn’t how it should have been. 
    Lord how he wanted to lose control right now, to curse fate and all that it had taken from him - from his brother.  Most of all he wanted an answer to the one question that never stopped running through his mind no matter where he was, no matter what he was doing – why ?
    But there would be no answer.  He knew that.  So he quickened his step, rounding the house.  He made his way to the backyard where a woodpile sat near the edge of the woods.
    Long shadows cast by the trees stretched across the deepening snow as evening settled in. He stopped, letting his gaze sweep across the glistening yard.  The old tree swing, whipping to and fro in the wind, caught his attention.  The same one his father used to push Jarrett and him on for hours on end when they were children.  Lucas couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like to share that same bit of childhood joy with his own child?
    “Lucas?” a worried voice called out through the whirling snow.
    He glanced back over his shoulder to find Ellie Sanders standing just a few feet away, watching him.  Strands of long blonde hair whipped wildly about her face beneath the fur-trimmed hood of her coat. 
    How long had she been standing there?  He’d been so caught up in his troubled thoughts that he’d never even heard her approach.
    “You shouldn’t be out here,” he grumbled, looking away so she couldn’t see the emotion still raw in his eyes.  “The storm’s picking up.”
    “I woke up and you were gone.  I thought you’d left.”  The snow crunched under her boots - no, beneath his brother’s wet, too-big boots - as she closed the distance between them.
    He stood motionless, his gaze pinned to the tarp-covered woodpile at the edge of the woods.  “You need firewood, and, despite your earlier protests, you aren’t in any condition to be out here hauling logs around.”
    “I–”
    “Look,” he said with a tired sigh, cutting her off, “you’re exhausted.  I figured I’d see to the task before the storm got any worse and let you rest.”
    He’d also needed some time alone to think.  Coming home to