Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Stephen worked the post-hole digger till his shoulders burned, and the burn settled nothing.
He’d been right. Tell yourself something often enough and it sets up as firm as a corner post. Keeping the land ownership to himself had been the only sane play. People wanted something once they got wind of it. They always had.
He’d made one na?ve mistake, though. The land records were available as public record.
It had been short-sighted to think that nobody would find out.
And all it took was some gossip and a records search for Elise to find out he’d been keeping a big secret from her.
No matter his motive, this had broken her trust in him.
By his own long-held rules he ought to have rested easier. His defenses were up again, and he was protecting himself the way he was comfortable doing. A man couldn’t be made a fool of if he didn’t allow it.
The day she found out, did it turn me into a number to her?
He hated the question. It dishonored her, and it dishonored the woman who’d changed a tire in the rain and never once angled for a thing he had. She’d come at him hot about hiding the truth, not the holdings.
The question stayed anyhow. A suspicion needed no proof, only a man willing to keep searching.
Annie rode out to the fence line near dinnertime, Wes and Maddox trailing her truck on horseback and breaking off toward the south gap. She climbed down and picked her way across the cut grass to where he stood with the coil of wire.
“Don’t let me keep you from your work,” she said, not meaning a word of it.
Stephen set the coil down and gave her the courtesy of his attention. With Annie a man had small choice in it. She had a way of filling the quiet before he could decide if he was participating or not. And she was his boss’s wife, so there was that.
“Midge is putting on a supper Friday, both outfits, the whole spread under the oaks,” she said. “You’re not a man to miss a fine barbecue, so I won’t pester you for a yes. I’ll save you a seat and look for you Friday.”
She started to go, then swung around the way she always did, with the part she’d half meant to lead with. “You ought to talk Elise into riding over with you, by the by. That girl’s been a ghost all week. Came through to drop the catering numbers and hardly smiled at a joke.”
Stephen kept his eyes on the wire. “She’s been busy,” he said. “Robert’s chasing that Abilene buyer.” It came out a guess rather than a fact.
The secret sat heavy in him, out now and going mouth to mouth. No telling how far it had run. Annie hadn’t a notion she’d struck anything tender.
Elise had been a ghost all week. Stephen turned the word over in his mind. She’d gone quiet as soon as she’d found out about his inheritance. But the worst part was she’d found out by accident from someone besides him.
He could label his actions any way he chose. The one that let him off the hook of having wronged her was easiest. He’d rather not face the fact that he’d been the one to spoil a good thing. The thought shamed him, but he didn’t try to change the narrative.
The bitter joke was that her guard and his were basically cut from the same cloth, and they’d both tried to protect themselves against each other instead of the world.
Standing still at the fence line he let his mind wander. A few weeks back he’d taken her to the pond on his property. Held her hand on the bank and let himself picture a string of years he had no right to count on. He started working again to get his mind off that memory.
By the time the light was gone he had the fence restrung and his mind made up, the way a man makes it up when the truth costs more than he can pay.
He’d be cordial at the Friday supper, pass her the rolls with a level voice, and give her not one inch of the soft ground that had already cost him so dearly.
Friday would be the test. Elise down the row with her plate and her dry remarks for everyone but him. He’d sit through it. Even he could get through a barbecue.