“Yes, I remember his mother saying he’d joined the Army,” Ruthann said.
Nate let himself sink into the measured, warm tone of her voice.All was well here. “I didn’t expect it—the uniform.” He paused, expecting to see confusion in Ruthann’s face. After all, why would a uniform worry a man so much? But she simply nodded, as if she completely understood. She couldn’t, of course, but her openness heartened him, and he went on. “There were good parts about my time in the cavalry. And times I’d rather forget . . . but I can’t. And seeing him in that uniform brought it all back to me.”
“I’m sorry that happened,” she said. “It must have been hard.”
Nate’s heart warmed, and all he wanted to do was take her into his arms and kiss her until he forgot all of it. He settled for pressing a strand of hair away from her face and behind her ear. “I’m fine now, I promise. It was momentary.”
She nodded, and he hoped she believed him. He’d brushed it off as if it weren’t nearly as terrible as it was. But he’d told the truth. Hewasfine right now, and he had been for a while—because of her. There was no need to resurrect the ghosts that had threatened him earlier. He’d put them all right back where they’d belonged and successfully taken the photograph his customer wanted.
“Then I believe a birthday celebration is in order,” Ruthann said, smiling again. “Shall we?”
He stepped back, dropping her hand and gesturing toward the stairs. “I can hardly wait. I don’t suppose you’re hungry too?”
She laughed. “Don’t you dare eatallof the food, Nathaniel Harper!”
“Then I suppose you’d better get upstairs and get some before I have at it.”
She tossed a grin back at him before climbing the stairs. He came up slowly behind her, banishing the bad memories as he went and moving his thoughts toward better ones.
He would be just fine, so long as he could keep the past where it belonged, and his reaction to it in check.
That sad, trembling shell of a man belonged far away in the windswept Dakota Territory, against the shadows of the Black Hills. He wasn’t that person anymore. Here, he was Nate Harper again, perfectly able to live a normal life. Capable of running his own business, protecting what was his, and—if he didn’t lose a friend in the process and all went well—enjoying a family of his own.
The ghosts were just that. Ghosts. They couldn’t hurt him here if he didn’t let them.
Chapter Nineteen
THE HOUSES ON THE EDGEof town grew farther and farther apart until there was nothing but scrubby green growing up in the dirt here and there and, not too far away, the rise of the hills.
“I always thought I’d like to live out here,” Norah said, shading her eyes against the sun as they looked out over the hills.
“On a ranch?” Ruthann couldn’t picture her friend as a rancher’s wife, cooking up big batches of food while fighting back the dust and dirt.
“Certainly not,” Norah replied, and Ruthann laughed. “Just out here on the edge of town, where it’s quiet and when you look out your back window, all you see is grass and trees and hills and birds. It’s . . . peaceful.”
Ruthann nodded. “It is. I don’t know that I’d be comfortable so far from everyone, though.”
