when it started to kill his soul, that he realized what was happening to him. That was when he got out.”
“How in the world did he get into law enforcement, with such a background?” she wondered.
He chuckled. “Uncle Sam often doesn’t know when his left hand is doing something different than his right one,” he commented. “Government agencies have closed files.”
“Oh. I get it. But those files aren’t closed to everyone, are they?”
“They’re only accessible to people with top-secret military clearance.” He glanced at her amusedly. “Never knew a civilian, outside the executive branch, who even had one.”
“That makes sense.”
He pulled out her chair for her.
“Thank you,” she said, with surprise in her tone.
“I’m impressing you with my good manners,” he pointed out as he sat down across from her and put a napkin in his lap.
“I’m very impressed.” She tasted the omelet, closed her eyes and sighed. “And not only with your manners. Ted, this is delicious!”
He grinned. “Thanks.”
“What did you put in it?” she asked, trying to decide what combination of spices he’d used to produce such a taste.
“Trade secret.”
“You can tell me,” she coaxed. “After all, we’re almost engaged.”
“The ‘almost’ is why I’m not telling,” he retorted. “If things don’t work out, you’ll be using my secret spices in your own omelets for some other man.”
“I could promise.”
“You could, but I’m not telling.”
She sighed. “Well, it’s delicious, anyway.”
He chuckled. “The bacon’s not bad, either,” he conceded, having forgone the country ham that would need warming. He was hungry.
“Thanks.” She lifted a piece of toast and gave it a cold look. “Shame we can’t say the same for the toast. Sorry. I was busy trying not to burn the bacon, so I burned the toast instead.”
“I don’t eat toast.”
“I do, but I don’t think I will this time.” She pushed the toast aside.
After they ate, he walked her around the property. He only had a few beef steers in the pasture. He’d bought quite a few Angus cattle with his own uncle, and they were at the ranch that Jillian had shared with her uncle John. She was pensive as she strolled beside him, absently stripping a dead branch of leaves, thinking about the fate of Uncle John’s prize beef if she didn’t marry Ted sometime soon.
“Deep thoughts?” he asked, hands in the pockets of his jeans under his shepherd’s coat.
She frowned. She was wearing her buckskin jacket. One of the pieces of fringe caught on a limb and she had to stop to disentangle it. “I was thinking about that resort,” she confessed.
“Here. Let me.” He stopped and removed the branch from the fringe. “Do you know why these jackets always had fringe?”
She looked up at him, aware of his height and strength so close to her. He smelled of tobacco and coffee and fir trees. “Not really.”
He smiled. “When the old-timers needed something to tie up a sack with, they just pulled off a piece of fringe and used that. Also, the fringe collects water and drips it away from the body.”
“My goodness!”
“My grandmother was full of stories like that. Her grandfather was a fur trapper. He lived in the Canadian wilderness. He was French. He married a Blackfoot woman.”
She smiled, surprised. “But you always talk about your Cheyenne heritage.”
“That’s because my other grandmother was Cheyenne. I have interesting bloodlines.”
Her eyes sketched his high-cheekboned face, his black eyes and hair and olive complexion. “They combined to make a very handsome man.”
“Me?” he asked, surprised.
She grinned. “And not a conceited bone in your body, either, Ted.”
He smiled down at her. “Not much to be conceited about.”
“Modest, too.”
He shrugged. He touched her cheek with his fingertips. “You have beautiful skin.”
Her eyebrows arched. “Thank you.”
“You get that from your mother,” he said gently. “I remember her very well. I was only a boy when she died, but she was well-known locally. She was the best cook in two counties. She was always the first to sit with anyone sick, or to take food when there was a funeral.”
“I only know about her through my uncle,” she replied. “My uncle loved her. She was his only sister, much older than he was. She and my father had me unexpectedly, late in life.”
Which, he thought, had been something of a tragedy.
“And then they both died of the flu, when I was barely crawling,” she sighed. “I never knew either of them.” She looked up. “You did at least know your parents, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “My mother died of a stroke in her early thirties,” he said. “My father was overseas, working for an oil corporation as a roughneck, when there was a bombing at the installation and he died. My grandmother took me in, and my uncle moved in to help support us.”
“Neither of us had much of a childhood,” she said. “Not that our relatives didn’t do all they could for us,” she added quickly. “They loved us. Lots of orphaned kids have it a lot worse.”
“Yes, they do,” he agreed solemnly. “That’s why we have organizations that provide for orphaned kids.”
“If I ever get rich,” she commented, “I’m going to donate to those.”
He grinned. “I already do. To a couple, at least.”
She leaned back against a tree and closed her eyes, drinking in the sights and sounds and smells of the woods. “I love winter. I know it isn’t a popular season,” she added. “It’s cold and there’s a lot of snow. But I enjoy it. I can smell the smoke from fireplaces and woodstoves. If I close my eyes, it reminds me of campfires. Uncle John used to take me camping with him when I was little, to hunt deer.”
“Which you never shot.”
She opened her eyes and made a face. “I’m not shooting Bambi.”
“Bull.”
“People shouldn’t shoot animals.”
“That
