The document was dated only eleven days earlier.
He had signed away every legal interest he held in the ranch's western pasture, including the one hundred and sixty acres her father had granted him years before his death.
No payment.
No conditions.
No guaranteed place to live.
Everything transferred to Evelyn.
She looked up slowly.
“Caleb…”
His jaw tightened.
“Please don't.”
“You gave me your land?”
He looked toward the open barn doors.
“It was never supposed to divide us.”
She stared at him.
“That's not what I asked.”
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then he turned toward her.
“Yes.”
Evelyn felt her heart break.
She was twenty-nine, with long chestnut-brown hair arranged in a loose Victorian updo, beautiful full cheeks, and a body weighing nearly four hundred kilograms. For most of her life, people had treated her size as though it erased every other part of her.
Men mocked her.
Women pitied her.
And Victor Harrow had once told an entire dinner party that no sensible man would marry a woman who needed custom-built furniture simply to sit comfortably.
Caleb had never spoken to her that way.
He'd looked at her as though she were extraordinary.
Yet he'd secretly given away the one piece of land that could have guaranteed him a home.
She lowered the book.
“Why?”
Caleb swallowed.
“Because your father wanted this ranch to be yours.”
“But that pasture was yours.”
“He gave it to me for saving his life.”
“And you earned it.”
His eyes filled.
“Evelyn, Victor was preparing to use my title as an excuse to challenge your inheritance. I couldn't let him turn us against each other.”
She stared at the document.
Then asked the question he'd been dreading.
“Where will you go?”
Caleb looked down.
He'd spent fifteen years working on the ranch.
He had no family nearby, little money, and nothing beyond the belongings that fit inside his small cabin.
Once Victor learned what he'd done, he would lose his employment immediately.
Caleb forced a faint smile.
“I know how to survive in the mountains.”
Evelyn's expression crumpled.
“You think I'm worried about whether you can survive?”
He looked up.
She placed the book beside her.
Then reached toward his scarred cheek.