Page 81 of Head Room

“You’re not going to reciprocate?”

“No.Because I’m obsessed with all of you.”

That deserved a kiss.

Or two.

Eventually, we headed toward his ranch truck.

“Before we go, I have something I’d like you to read.”I pulled my device out of my bag and handed it to him, opened to the manuscript.“Read this.”

“Now?All of it?”

“Not all of it.The prologue.”

I watched as he slid through the pages.

With the last word, I said, “Spoiler alert — the tall guy in the officer’s uniform and the young guy, Peter, join the Galvanized Yankees and are stationed in Wyoming.”

“Huh.She named the dead nephew Thomas.”

“That’swhat you have to say to me?”

“Yeah.Didn’t need to be the lead guy, but would’ve been nice to survive a while.”

I propped my hands on my hips.“You have never told me you’re descended from a Galvanized Yankee.”

“Nope.Never have.”

“We’re gettingmarried.You’re not supposed to keep secrets.”

“Elizabeth.We both have secrets going into this marriage.Not the kind we’re keeping locked up.More like they’re in an overcrowded closet and we haven’t gotten to them yet.We’re going to spend decades sharing them, while trusting that neither of us has deal-breaker secrets.”

“Fine.Be reasonable.”

With barely a twitch at the corner of his mouth, he added, “On my side, I know if I didn’t have secrets for you to figure out, you’d be bored with me in no time.”

“And vice versa?I need to come up with more secrets?”

“Can’t imagine any time I’d be bored by you.”

I humphed.“You also didn’t tell me you knew about Irene Jardos writing a historical romance that includes Galvanized Yankees, apparently drawn from your ancestor.”

“Didn’t know she was doing that, exactly.Didn’t know you knew about her writing.Didn’t know you were interested.Didn’t know you had a copy.”

My turn to be reasonable.I quickly told him about Hannah giving me the damaged manuscript, a copy being made, and my starting to read it.

“You think it has something to do with what happened at the sergeant’s cabin?”

“I have no idea.I can hope, because that would give us a direction to follow, but I have no idea.And before you say it, yes, that’s often how it works with these inquiries.Tell me about this ancestor.”

“A branch of the family landed in Wyoming as a Galvanized Yankee.Came from North Carolina.Don’t recall the county.We’ve got it written down in the records somewhere.”

“What was he like?”

“No idea.My mom has one of those old-timey portraits of him in his uniform.”His eyes narrowed in recall.“Young, serious, kind of boney.That was my impression.”

“Was his family wealthy?”