Written in 20 minutes. No time for edits or typos.

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Elizabeth took a deep breath and stepped back from Jason. “Thank you for your advice,” she told him. “I can handle it from here—”

“Elizabeth—” Jason stepped forward, tried to grab her elbow but she smoothly evaded him and opened the door. He followed her outside. “Please–

“I have—” She closed her eyes, put up a hand to keep him away. “I have humiliated myself quite enough, Jason. Sheriff,” she corrected. It was important to remember that. He wasn’t the boy of her youth—no matter what he’d said or the letters that had been stolen—

He could have simply returned. He hadn’t.

“I feel satisfied that if Ric attempted to take legal action with custody of my child, that I am protected. My husband’s will was handled in Sacramento. I have my own copies. He can take whatever else he wants—Cameron is what matters.”

“I can help,” Jason promised her as she started across the street to the livery stables. “Let me—”

“Sheriff Scorpio said he would help us when Ric stole Cameron’s home.” Elizabeth lifted her chin. “He couldn’t. Ric has too many friends in powerful places in this county. I need—I need to leave.”

“But—”

Yes, that was the answer. She’d hoped to stay—hoped to continue her family’s legacy, her grandfather’s dream but the ranch was already lost. All she could do was start over somewhere else.

“Thank you again, Sheriff. But I don’t need you.” She met his eyes. “I can manage on my own. I always have.”

Jason flinched. “I’m sorry—”

“You have nothing to apologize for. You made the decisions that felt right to you, and now it is up to me to do the same.”

She turned her back on him to retrieve her horse and cart, and Jason finally returned to the jail.

But he couldn’t get his conversation with Elizabeth out of his mind, and the conviction that there had to be a way to stop Ric from continuing to destroy Elizabeth’s life and the lives the people around him.

When the sun had dipped behind the Sierra Nevadas and the night deputy had arrived, Jason took his hat off the post and headed back to his grandmother’s.

Lila Quartermaine had some questions to answer.

“Dearest.” Lila beamed as he entered the parlor. “I was hoping you would join me for some dinner. You remember Mrs. Barrington—” She gestured to the other elderly woman seated on the chaise.

“Sheriff,” Amanda Barrington murmured with a hint of disdain. He’d never live down his illegitimacy to some of these people, and Jason had stopped caring long ago.

“Grandmother, I can’t stay but I was hoping we could talk in private for a moment.”

“Jason, I have a guest—”

“That’s quite all right, Lila.” Amanda got to her feet. “You should deal with…” She sniffed. “His problem. I’ll see you another evening.”

She swept by Jason as if she were still swanning around the parlors of New York City, as if her family hadn’t lost most of its wealth before the gold strike.

“Jason, I hope you can explain your rude behavior,” Lila said as he strode forward, closing the parlor doors behind him.

“If you can answer a question honestly.” Jason perched on the edge of the sofa, narrowing his eyes at his indomitable grandmother. “Did you do anything to keep Elizabeth’s letters from me? Or mine from her?”

“I hardly see what relevance that has.” Lila rose to her feet and crossed to the mental. She folded her arms and stared into the fire. “It was ancient history—”

“So the answer is yes.” Jason’s stomach sank. He had trusted her—had trusted this beloved member of his family with the person he loved and Lila had let him down.

He’d let Elizabeth down by trusting the wrong people.

“Jason—”

“If you don’t tell me what happened, I will leave this town and never come back,” Jason told her bluntly. “And Dillon will be all that’s left.”

Lila pursed her lips. “That’s a terrible thing to threaten an old woman.” She squared her shoulders. “Jeffrey Webber told me that he found you to be an unsuitable husband for his daughter. I disagreed, of course. You might not have been born in wedlock, but the Quartermaines were certainly better than the Webber or Hardys.”

“Grandmother—”

“And when I refused to help him keep you two apart, he made sure I regretted it. He had been your grandfather’s doctor, you know. He refused to come to see Edward when he had his last—” Lila pressed her fingers to her lips. “He refused to see to Edward. Dr. Lewis did what he could, but the delay—your grandfather never recovered fully. He remained weakened .”

“I—” Jason swallowed. “But—”

“I was going to write you. To demand you come home and take care of this. To—to help.” Lila met his eyes. “But then Richard Lansing came to the house. And he showed me—”

She closed her eyes. “Somehow he had a copy of a mortgage. He said our bank accounts were empty. That he owned my house. And that the only way I could have the money restored in the bank was to…was to tell Elizabeth what I needed to tell her.”

Jason clenched his fists. Ric had tormented his family? What hadn’t anyone told him?

“I—I knew how you felt about her of course, and I thought, well I’ll tell him but I’ll tell you the truth. But then—he told me he owned shared in the railroad you had signed on with—that he could arrange to assign you to the—” Lila’s lips pursed. “To work with the Chinese. Blowing up tunnels, doing the worst of the work—he’d put you on the front. And he could do that before I could reach you.”

Jason remembered the two years he’d worked on the railroads in Northern California, and the Chinese workers with the company had been the most dangerous and lethal jobs—many had died. Ric had threatened to kill him.

“Grandmother—”

“He just—he wanted me to tell Elizabeth that you’d married someone else.” Lila swallowed hard. “And I did. I’m so sorry, darling—”

“When—” Jason stared at her. “When did you tell her? How?”

“Elizabeth had come to me shortly after Alexander and Peter had died. It was a terrible time—she wanted to send a letter to you. She’d written you for the first time in a few months—apparently, she had given up but their deaths had, I supposed, encouraged her to reach out again. She wanted to send a second one with my letters, to make sure it reached you.”

“And you told her—”

“That you had married someone else nearly a year earlier. That you’d…” Lila looked ghastly as she finished her statement. “That you must have forgotten her because you’d never asked about her. Not even once.”

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