his relief, she calmed down enough to lean against the building though she continued to glare. “My stepfather had business in town.”
“How long are you staying?” He forced the words out, not wanting to acknowledge that a small part of him had hoped she’d come back intending to fulfill her promise to marry him. Not that he would have agreed to anything that ludicrous. Trusting her with his heart would be akin to trusting Billy the Kid to look after the Johansen’s cash drawer.
“We’re leaving on the next train.” Her gaze turned searching yet guarded. “Why did you kiss me?”
“I couldn’t let you tell my pa that you weren’t my fiancée anymore. He still thinks... Well, my whole family, except for Sophia, still believes that you and I are planning to get married eventually. I never told them we—you broke off our engagement.”
“Then this is the perfect opportunity to do so.” She tried to dislodge his hand from the wall but he refused to move, allowing the desperation he felt to show in his eyes. She gave a reluctant sigh. “All right, Chris. What is going on? Why don’t they know?”
“It all started out innocently enough. On my eighteenth birthday, which was only a few months after you left, my parents sat me down ‘to talk about my future.’ They told me that when the time came for me to take a wife they wanted me to marry a girl from Norway.”
“What girl from Norway?”
He shrugged. “Any girl, really. Of course, at the time, that didn’t matter because I was engaged to you. I told them as much and showed them your letters. They were pretty shocked to hear I’d kept that from them, but they respected my commitment to you. They also agreed not to announce anything about it until your mother approved. But as much as they liked you, they never gave up the hope I’d change my mind and let them send for a mail-order bride.”
“So even after I ended our engagement, you just let them keep on thinking you were engaged to me because that meant you had a safeguard of sorts against their meddling.”
“Exactly.” He grimaced. “I guess that was a pretty self-serving thing to do.”
She bit her lip. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it sounds like the kind of thing I would do.”
He laughed. “Really?”
“Honestly. The stories I could tell you about my mother and her matchmaking attempts...” She rolled her eyes. “Actually, I’d rather not think about them. My point is, I understand why you did what you did. I just don’t see how you got away with it for this long. It’s been four years.”
“It helped when I moved out of the house. That kept them from knowing your letters had stopped coming. They knew the fact that I didn’t have your mother’s approval was a sore point for me, so they didn’t bring the engagement up often. If they did, I changed the subject.”
“What about other girls? I know we never announced that we were engaged, but your parents and siblings knew. Didn’t they notice you courting women who weren’t me?”
Chris rubbed his jaw, wondering at the edge in her voice that made him feel lower than pond scum, as if he’d been unfaithful to her. She’d been the one who’d broken their engagement. Not him. If she hadn’t wanted to him to court other women, she shouldn’t have given up her claim on him. Still, it was a good question that begged an answer. “My parents didn’t know I courted anyone else. It wasn’t too hard for me to hide. After all, I’ve always had a lot of friends who were girls. We all spent time together in groups, so any courting I wanted to do was done then. Sophia would cover for me if things got sticky. It also helped that I’m one of five children. My parents can’t always keep track of us that well. Besides, it’s only been in the last year that my father really started to pressure me to settle down.”
“Why the last year?”
“That’s when...that’s when his heart started acting up. Or, at least that’s when he couldn’t hide it anymore. That’s part of the reason he’s so anxious for me to get married. He wants to see at least one of his grandchildren before he—”
“Oh, Chris.” Concern filled her voice as she placed a hand on his arm. “Isn’t there something that can be done?”
He swallowed hard. “Doc Williams wants Pa to see a specialist for some more tests. Pa says there hasn’t been time to go. I don’t think that time is the problem. I think he’s...”
“Afraid,” she offered softly.
Chris nodded. “He knows he may not have much time left, but I guess he doesn’t want to know how bad it really is.”
“But what if there’s something a specialist could do to help?”
“I hope there is. That’s why I want him to see one. Until then, we may not know what—if anything—could make him better, but we know that stress can make it worse.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “This whole debacle with my supposed engagement has spiraled out of control. It’s bound to upset him if I tell him I’ve deceived him all this time.”
“I know, but he needs to know the truth.”
Chris knew she was right. He couldn’t keep this going. Especially not now with Adelaide’s return. There was only one thing left to do. “I’ll go back to the store. I’ll take my pa aside and explain everything as gently as possible, like I should have done long ago.”
“Wait.” She caught his arm to keep him from turning away. “You don’t have to go in there alone.”
Chris recognized her offer for what it was—an olive branch bridging past the disaster of their engagement back to the friendship they’d once shared. He’d missed their friendship. He’d missed her. Unfortunately, going back to the way things had been before was impossible. Even now, the hurts from the past that should have been healed flared with old pain.
He took her hand, removed it from his arm and gave it a small squeeze before letting it go. “Actually, Adelaide, I’d prefer it.”
* * *
Stunned by Chris’s gentle but unmistakable dismissal, Adelaide stared at him as he turned on his heel and walked away.
She charted his progress down the alley as he neared the front of the store. His steps were determined but slow. His head was down. She recognized that posture. It meant he was thinking hard about something—no doubt trying to summon the words he’d need to break the news to his father.
Or some other way to twist the truth? Surely he wouldn’t. Perhaps she ought to make sure.
She pushed away from the wall, grabbed her hat from where it had fallen in the dust and followed him inside the mercantile. She found that the number of customers hadn’t dwindled in the least, which meant that folks were sticking around to see what would happen next. They might as well have gone home. All of the excitement was over. There was nothing more to see here.
She caught sight of Everett leaning against the store’s gleaming oak counter with his arms crossed in front of him. He lifted one brow, then pinned her with his brown gaze. She swallowed and found herself easing closer to Chris’s side. “Oh!
