“Does that frighten you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Elias almost smiled.
“I have been kicked by horses.”
Emma stared.
Then laughed so suddenly she had to sit.
“You are terrible.”
“I know.”
He knelt in front of her.
His humor faded.
“I don’t know every insecurity you carry.”
“I don’t know every place Nathaniel hurt you.”
“I will make mistakes.”
“But I am not going to pretend wanting you is charity.”
Emma’s eyes filled.
Elias touched the back of her hand.
“You are beautiful to me.”
“Not despite anything.”
“Not because I am noble.”
“Because when you walk into a room, I look.”
“When you laugh, I want to hear what caused it.”
“When you touched my chest that day at the spring, I thought about it for two nights.”
Emma smiled through tears.
“Only two?”
“Three.”
She leaned down and kissed him.
The lamp burned until much later.
What happened afterward belonged to them.
Morning found Emma in Elias’s bed with his arm across her waist and the strange realization that for the first time in years, being fully seen had not ended in shame.
The foreclosure notice remained on the kitchen table.
Marriage did not erase arithmetic.
Emma returned to it after breakfast.
Elias stared.
“We were married yesterday.”
“And?”
“I thought perhaps married people took a morning.”
“Bell did not.”
“Cruel man.”
They worked.
The breakthrough came from a mark on one freight receipt.
Emma had seen the same initials before.
H.B.
Not Harlan Bell.
Harper Brokerage.
A shell firm receiving payments from Bell Bank before supposed feed purchases.
Emma traced invoices.
Harper Brokerage owned no warehouse.
No office.
No cattle.
Its mailing address was a post-office box in Topeka.
Emma stared at the address.
She knew the street.
Nathaniel Vale’s attorney kept an office there.
For one terrible moment she thought her former husband might be involved.
Elias saw her face.
“What?”
“I know that address.”
“How?”
“Nathaniel’s lawyer.”
Elias’s jaw tightened.
“Your ex-husband?”
“Yes.”
They traveled to Topeka the following morning.
The city made Emma feel thirty-four and twenty-five at once.
Old memories hid behind hotel windows.
Stores.
Street corners.
The courthouse where her divorce had been finalized.
She felt Elias watching her.
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were going to.”
“Yes.”
Harper Brokerage’s box belonged to a law office.
Not Nathaniel’s attorney.
A neighboring office.
The clerk initially refused records.
Then Emma recognized the man leaving the rear room.
Nathaniel Vale.
Her stomach dropped.
Elias followed her gaze.
Nathaniel stopped.
For a moment none of them moved.
Nathaniel remained handsome.
That irritated Emma.
He wore an expensive gray suit, polished boots, and the same expression he once used when waiters brought the wrong wine.
His eyes moved over Emma.
Then Elias.
Then back.
“Emma.”
“Nathaniel.”
He smiled thinly.
“I heard you remarried.”
“News travels.”
“Apparently.”
His gaze moved toward Elias.
“Hart?”
“Yes.”
Nathaniel looked amused.