Page 120 of All We Carry Home

I wasn’t ready for that business to intrude on the few days I had left at Birkstrom. “Tell him I’ll meet him at the Geiser in a few hours,” I said. If I turned the opportunity down, Kenneth would have a fit. I could at least keep Birkstrom free of the press circus.

Junior nodded and ran back to deliver the message. Bennett had the man stopped and was leaning in the open vehicle window.

“Who is that?” Eva walked up beside me. Her hair was tied back, but loose strands draped around her narrow face. She took off her leather gloves and shoved them in her back pocket.

“A reporter,” I said.

She froze, her gaze fixed on the car. She relaxed only slightly as the vehicle left the property and headed back down the highway toward town.

“What did they want?” she asked, her voice unsteady.

I frowned. “What’s wrong?”

She drew in a deep breath and gave a little shake of her head. “Nothing.”

If I’d only just met her, I would have believed her, but I knew better now. “What are you so nervous about?” I asked.

“I just don’t like the idea of a reporter snooping around.”

“You want to show horses in a national-level competition, but you’re scared of a reporter?”

She shot me an annoyed look. “The horse world is very different than the front page of The New York Times.” She spoke as if she knew that firsthand.

“They weren’t asking about you,” I said. “I’ll keep them off the ranch.”

She shifted her weight and looked away. “Thanks.”

I wanted her to trust me with whatever lay beneath her brave front, the secrets of her past she worked so hard to hide. But my time was up. If I won the election, there wouldn’t be a lot of spare time for trips back to the other side of the country. If I lost, I’d reconsider whether to reenlist and return to the only other place I’d felt like I fit in.

She didn’t want me here, not as anything other than a horse owner.

She crossed her arms. “I was thinking about trying to catch the sunrise tomorrow,” she said softly. “Eddie insisted I ask you to join me, for protection.”

My heart lifted, and I sent my silent thanks to the ever-loyal Sergeant Moore. Always watching my back. He’d known since he returned from the hospital that something was different between us. I’d explained, and Violet jumped in to say that we needed to give Eva space and time. That didn’t mean Eddie wasn’t trying to engineer whatever possible scenario he could to get us alone.

“Four a.m.?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Let’s saddle up at 4:30. The season is changing, sunrise and sunset are shifting.”

Things were changing.

I returned to the Geiser to meet with the reporter, Michael Bass. He waited for me at a small table on the second-floor balcony in the center of the rooms.

“Kenneth Roland mentioned you’d be here,” he told me as a preamble. “I’m writing a story about the wave of war veterans who are all running for various House and Senate seats this next term.”

I nodded politely. “Fire away.” While he ran through everything from my background to my interest in horses, I could only think of Eva and our plans the following morning. It couldn’t get here fast enough, and yet I didn’t want another day to elapse.

“I looked into this trainer you’re working with,” Michael said as he flipped to a page of his notebook. “I couldn’t find anything about Eva Bryant before her time in the Army Nurse Corps. There isn’t even a record of her at the Baker County schools.”

“What does this have to do with my campaign?”

Michael lowered his spectacles. “I don’t like unanswered questions.”

I shifted my weight and leaned forward menacingly. “Well, Mr. Bass, I’ll have to insist you keep your questions limited to me and my campaign, or the interview ends here.”

“You don’t find it odd?” he pressed.

“Do you think your readers and the voters care about a horse trainer in Baker, Oregon? I think you’re looking for a juicier story than is there.”