Nine
The road from Jackie’s house to Beck’s was little more than a worn dirt lane, curving gently through the pasture grass between their two houses.
Beck’s hand stayed closed around hers as they walked, their fingers intertwined, and Jackie tried not to think too much about how right it felt.
His grip was warm and sure, the kind of quiet strength a woman could depend on.
Protective, she thought. As though nothing bad could happen while he was beside her.
As they neared his cabin, her gaze lifted to the flag mounted in front of the porch.
It stirred lazily in the evening breeze, catching the last of the light, and her heart turned tender at the sight of it.
The American colors belonged here, just as surely as the man next to her did—honorable and rooted to the things that mattered.
They reached the porch steps, and she let go of his hand only when she had to, then sank onto a weathered swing instead of following him inside. She felt drawn to the evening—the hush of the Sandhills, the brush of a breeze, the low creak of the chains above her.
“I’ll be right back,” Beck said.
Sure enough, he was, with a wooden cigar box in one hand.
She made room for him, and he settled in next to her, making the swing sway a little.
On the label, the lady in red and the bold script caught her eye—El Producto.
Another time, she might have teased him about taking up cigars, but the look on his face told her this was no lighthearted keepsake he wanted to show her.
“What’s this?” she asked. “It looks like something you’ve kept for a long time.”
He rested the box on his lap. “Not me, but my grandfather. I’ve only added to what’s in it.”
“I see.” Except she really didn’t. “Now you have me curious.”
He raised the lid and lifted out a black leather-bound wooden case, edged in gold and worn at the corners.
It appeared so richly old-fashioned, Jackie’s breath caught in surprise, and her curiosity stirred about what it could hold.
Beck released the brass button clasp, revealing a sterling silver locket and chain nestled inside.
“Oh,” she whispered in awe. The necklace lay against a cream velvet lining, delicate and gleaming, finer than anything she’d expected Beck to keep. “It’s beautiful.”
“I thought so, too.” He lifted the locket, the chain dangling between his fingers. “Here,” he said quietly.
He leaned closer, reaching around her before she could guess what he meant to do.
He arranged her hair over her shoulder before settling the chain at her nape with the barest brush of his knuckles against her skin.
Easing back, he touched the locket only slightly until it rested against her chest. Above her heart.
The sensation of its cool weight against her shifted to an unexpected warmth, as if she’d worn it for minutes or hours instead of only seconds. As if it had become a part of her. Her thumb caressed the embossed design, learning it. Impressing it upon her memory.
Beck reached into the box again and pulled out a folded letter from within an opening in the lining, its parchment yellowed with time.
“Read this,” he said.
She opened it with care. The handwriting was elegant, old, unmistakably from another age. As she read, her astonishment deepened line by line, so much she could barely comprehend the words, until at last she looked up at him.
“Martha Washington wrote this?” she asked, her voice hushed with incredulity.
“Seems so.”
“But… where did you get it? I mean, how did the locket find its way to Nebraska?”
“My grandmother said it came from an old Army friend of Grandpa’s. She kept it on her dresser for the longest time.” He shrugged. “After she passed, I never saw it again until I found this cigar box in the cupboard, and there it was.”
Jackie glanced down at the signature again, then lifted her hand to the locket. “I can hardly believe I’m wearing something that was once hers.”
“Can’t quite comprehend it myself,” he said. “But there’s more. Notes from people who’ve had the locket, too. Better to read them when you have the time. They’ll hold greater meaning.”
Taking the letter, he refolded it along its original crease lines and slid the parchment back into its place. He closed the velvet lid with finality when she would have liked to have savored the whole thing longer.
But it seemed he had more to show her.
Bypassing his Army dog tag, lying amongst assorted papers that appeared inconsequential to him, he removed another piece of paper. Thin. Brittle-looking. Nothing about it ought to have made her uneasy. And yet the moment it appeared in his hand, her senses sharpened without warning.
He held the paper a moment longer before giving it to her. The shift in him was unmistakable. Whatever was written in this note mattered. Deeply.
“Read it,” he said finally, grim.
She unfolded the paper with great care. Her mind latched onto the words… Memorandum of Understanding… east pasture. The name. The date.
She hesitated, her focus unwavering. “Wade Archer is…”
“My grandfather.”
She nodded mutely. Yes. She remembered now. Tom Caldwell had told her about him, that he’d homesteaded Archer land at the turn of the century.
A muscle moved in Beck’s jaw. “Keep reading.”
Her scrutiny returned to the paper…
After duration of life, said parcel shall pass on to my oldest grandson, Beckett J. Archer. Signed and Dated, Wade Archer, September 29, 1950.
Her heart thumped inside her chest, harder, louder with every beat. Her fingers pressed to her lips. She strained to breathe.
There it was.
The truth she’d hoped wasn’t.
She’d known, of course. Tom Caldwell had told her. Her land belonged to Beck, granted to him by way of a handwritten note stuck inside some archive in the county, so long ago no one even knew of its existence.
“He wrote the memorandum when I was in the Army,” Beck said, his voice low. Solemn. “Handled it the way he knew best. Trusted that it would be honored. Never told me or my dad.” He paused. “He should have.”
“Yes,” she said. “It would have saved us all a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it?”
“Jackie.”
He spoke her name roughly and reached for her, but she evaded him with a quick twist off the swing. His touch would only undo what little composure she had left.
He rose, too. Slowly. Controlled.
“I hated having to tell you,” he said. “If I could have—”
She held up a hand. “I already knew, Beck.”
He went perfectly still. Only his hand fisted, as if he fought her words.
“Tom Caldwell told me.” She swallowed down a rising ball of emotion. “I kept thinking if I waited, maybe it would all amount to nothing.”
His chest moved. “Then, you know what it’s been like carrying it.”
“Yes.” Her chin lifted, her very heart torn in two. “Because there’ll be no putting things back the way they were before, will there?”
With eyes steely blue, he held her gaze. “Maybe not. But this paper isn’t the end of it. It means we’ve got a hard thing to sort through, that’s all.” His jaw tautened. “And we will. I swear it.”
She wanted to believe him. Truly, she did.
She wanted to trust him, but she couldn’t trust what was between them.
Because every tender feeling she had for him now stood tangled up with the very ground beneath their feet, and she couldn’t tell where fair-minded judgment ended and her longing began.
She took a step away from him. “It’s obvious my land was meant for you, Beck. I won’t stand in your way for you to have it.”
She whirled, flaring her dress hems, and descended the steps in a pair of agile leaps.
“Jackie,” Beck called, bootsteps behind her. “Jack. Wait.”
She kept going, faster, until her strides lengthened, and she was fleeing at a full run. Past the flagpole. Across the yard. Into the road and then toward her own front door.
Beck took off after her, pure instinct sending him off the porch before good sense caught hold, forcing him to stop.
The sight of her running—truly running, as if she couldn’t put enough space between them—brought him up short.
Chasing her now would only make it worse.
She would hear pursuit, not comfort. Pressure, not understanding.
He’d only be forcing himself onto a pain she likely hadn’t even had time to name yet.
“Let her go, Son.”
Beck spun toward his father’s voice. Joe stood alongside the cabin, next to the side porch rails.
“You heard,” Beck said. It wasn’t a question. His father was too close not to have.
“Enough of it.” Joe drew closer. “Going after her now might make things worse, you know.”
“Yeah.” Emitting a frustrated curse, Beck lifted his Stetson and raked a hand through his hair before shoving the hat back onto his head. “Best to let her be for a spell, I guess.”
For a long moment, neither of them spoke, allowing the silence to be broken only by the wind in the grass and the creak of the swaying porch swing.
“Your grandpa’s memorandum landed like a kicked hornet’s nest between you two, but the way I figure it, neither of you are to blame for it.”
Beck planted his hands on his hips. “I told myself I was doing right by her to wait before bringing it up. I wanted a plan first.” His jaw cocked. “When I couldn’t figure one, all I did was let the whole thing grow teeth.”
“Reckon you both did by not ‘fessing up to what you both knew. What matters now is what kind of man you aim to be once the dust quits flying.” His father clamped a hand on Beck’s shoulder.
“You can either let this turn into a fight over acres, or you can make sure that young lady knows this family will be fair every minute and hour till it’s all sorted.
” His voice softened just a shade. “And I know you will.”
Beck stared at her house, hearing its silence. “It’s killing me not to go over there.”
“Tonight she wants walls, a locked door, and room to think.” Joe tipped his head slightly. “Tomorrow’s soon enough to start showing her what you’re made of.”
Beck sighed heavily.
His father removed his hand, but not before giving Beck’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. “Got some cold beer up at the house. Might help you relax some if you spend time with your mom and me. Wouldn’t be the first time a man sorted out a hard thing one swallow at a time.”
Beck conceded the truth of his logic with a grim nod. “Thanks, Dad.”
But after his father strode toward home, Beck stood unmoving on his lawn, and the ache in his chest finally took on a name. The knowledge landed clean and certain, as undeniable as the sun in the sky and the moon at night.
He’d fallen in love with Jackie Sinclair. And knowing it only made worse what he stood to lose.
By the time Jackie burst through her front door, letting it slam behind her, she was breathless from running and shaking from the strain of holding herself together.
She doubled over and gripped her knees, dragging in air that couldn’t seem to reach deep enough into her lungs, then turned and stumbled toward her new couch.
She sank onto the forest-green cushion. For one wild, disbelieving moment, all she could do was stare at nothing. Her pulse pounded in her throat. Her thoughts came too fast and jagged to comprehend until they finally gathered around the one thing that mattered most.
Her home. No longer just a house freshened with paint, modern furniture, and much-needed repairs, but a work in progress built around the future she had so carefully and eagerly begun to claim.
Every scraped knuckle, every dollar spent, every dream she had for the hangar, the airstrip, and the life she’d been building here rose up in her mind all at once, only to threaten to crumble beneath the weight of one old memorandum.
It was all on Beck’s land, and she’d been such a fool to put down roots where she didn’t belong.
She’d known. But she hadn’t believed.
And now she’d lose it all.
Where would she go? How would she start over? How could she fail after she’d tried with everything she had to be a success?
The toughest part? Beck was entitled to the land.
Not by greed, not by scheming, but by his grandfather’s clear intent.
Wade Archer’s wishes were not hers to argue away, and Jackie knew Beck would do everything in his power to deal fairly with her, as she would do with him.
But fairness, or even a compromise, might demand that she surrender the very place she had begun to call home.
She dragged in a breath and only then noticed the black leather jewelry box still in her grasp, realizing that she’d brought a piece of Beck home with her. Almost without thinking, she lifted a hand to the locket and found it warm against her heart.
Some aching pull compelled her to open the jewelry box and read Martha Washington’s letter again, as though the old words might tell her what her own heart could not.
… to awaken its wonder one need only place the locket upon her heart, and love shall surely find its way to you, thus fulfilling the locket’s true and intended purpose….
Her eyes moved over the entirety of the elegant script, lingering on the promise folded into its lines—that the locket would help its keeper find love. Another time, the notion might have struck her as fanciful. Whimsical. Foolish, even.
But tonight, with the letter in her hand, the locket against her body, and Beck’s face vivid in her mind, she couldn’t dismiss it so easily.
Love.
The word caught in her chest and stayed there.
The memories, too, of the strength in Beck’s arms when he had gathered her close, the solid warmth of him, of how he made the world feel right while he held her in his embrace.
The power of his kisses, so sure and hungry and tender all at once, powerful enough to make her forget every good reason to guard her heart… .
How was she supposed to read of love and not think of him?
On a weepy sigh, Jackie folded Martha Washington’s letter with precise care and returned it to the black leather jewelry box. When she closed the lid, the small click sounded far too final in the hush of the room.
If this house were no longer hers, then neither was the future she had built here. And if the locket had truly led her to love, it had done so only to place her heart with the one man she could never hope to keep.