Page 46 of A Secret Heart
Rebekah twisted her hands together. “You haven’t been to church lately.”
“No. I haven’t.” He skirted around her, walking back out of the barn, leaving her standing there. Alone.
Her cheeks heated. No heroine in her father’s novels ever had to endure such treatment. Not from the hero. The memory of Ed standing in front of her to block the bullets, wrapping her in his arms, letting her cry on his chest as he held her, intruded on her musings.
Isaac returned, leading his horse. Everything she’d laid bare in those letters…through his silence, it couldn’t be more obvious that he didn’t feel the same way she had.
Hurt throbbed in her chest. And then she thought of Ed, outside.
Isaac shuffled past her and she followed. It had always been like this. Her following him.
“I think we need to talk through things,” she blurted.
“There isn’t anything to talk about.” He cleaned his tack. He didn’t even pause or look at her.
She looked at his face once more. Felt nothing. It made her next words come slightly easier.
“I mean the letters. Especially the last one.” She waited, her heart hammering in her ears.
Ed’s shadow darkened the door. He flicked a glance at her, expression unreadable.
And still her heart responded.
He led the horses inside.
“I put your stuff on the porch,” he said as he brushed past her. He quickly loosed the horses into their stalls, then passed by her again, not looking back as he left the barn.
Her eyes followed Ed as new determination flowed through her. She marched up to Isaac.
He dropped his hand from where he hung the bridle on the barn wall to half turn in her direction. “Those letters.” He kept his head ducked. “They never should have happened.”
She thought of the beautiful, romantic words he’d penned. For one moment, she was torn. She wanted to know whether his feelings had changed when he’d learned of her deception. But it didn’t matter.
This was her answer.
She left the barn. The flare of embarrassment lasted only as long as it took for her to glimpse Ed striding across the field toward a smaller building in the distance.
She hurried after him.
“Ed.”
The breeze blew the words back at her as she hurried after him. Cows lowed from somewhere nearby.
Almost frantic, she cupped her hands around her mouth. “Ed!”
As he reached the small porch of what must be his house—she’d never been invited—she saw him go still. He must have registered she was following him.
He glanced over his shoulder, but he was still yards away, and she couldn’t read his eyes. He went inside, and for a moment, her stomach dipped.
But he left the door ajar.
Stepping onto the porch, the rough scratching of sandpaper filtered through the doorway to meet her. She paused at the threshold to catch her breath. In the center of the main room, she spied Ed, muscles working in his arms as he shoved the sandpaper forward and back. He stood amongst the sawdust.
Awkwardness descended on her as he kept working without acknowledging her presence.
She took a moment to catch her breath. And look around.
Neatly stacked planks of wood lined the back wall of the cabin, with a cot along the wall to her right. The patchwork blanket covering the cot had been pulled up and smoothed over. To the left of the door, an oak cabinet ran along the wall. Not far from the cabinet sat a wood stove with a pan hanging on a peg above it. A basin sat beneath the window, where Ed kept his razor and a bar of soap.
