“Let’s see what you’ve got.” Sandy leaned against the edge of her desk, extending a manicured hand to take the old photograph and letter Ted handed her.

“I don’t know if it will help,” he said, glancing to Laura in the chair beside him. She seemed way more withdrawn than usual. The blank expression she wore was somehow worse than the flushed, anxious look that she’d been wearing for the last week. Still, it had been a welcome surprise when she’d turned up at Sandy’s office to stand by him through the meeting. He dragged his attention back to Sandy. “The photo is a little fuzzy, but I swear you can see the bone.”

Sandy hummed and squinted at the photo. “When was this taken?”

“1954,” Ted answered. It was a picture of his grandmother, posing with a baby Roscoe in her arms and his Uncle Wayne as a toddler beside her. His Grandma Ginny was young and beautiful and smiling. She wore a simple dress and had the look of a woman who had worked hard her whole life. The determination in her eyes reminded Ted of Laura so much that he’d stared at the photo for a full five minutes before realizing it had been taken close to the fossil site. A dark blob on the ground behind Grandma Ginny could very likely be the part of the fossil that he’d discovered as a teen.

“And the letter?” Sandy asked, switching to look at the paper in her other hand.

“That’s a little older,” Ted explained. “My Great-Grandmother Kate sent that to my Great-Grandpa Arnold when he was fighting in World War One.”

“Wow,” Sandy whispered, her eyes going wide with reverence. “I’ll be careful with it.”

“Thanks.” Ted smiled, confident Sandy would be as careful as she said she would.

There was a flicker of movement from Laura, and when Ted glanced to her, she had a strange mixture of stress and resignation in her eyes.

“Oh, I see.” Sandy pulled his attention back to the matter at hand as she read the letter.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s mostly boring stuff about the working of the ranch, but she mentions finding a bone sticking out of the ground. It could be a cow bone or some other kind of animal,” he admitted, “but it might be the kind of thing we’re looking for.”

“It might,” Sandy agreed. “Without photographic proof, there’s no way to tell, but the fact that someone mentioned a bone sticking out of the ground in 1917 is encouraging.”

She twisted to set the documents on the desk behind her. Ted snuck another glance at Laura. Now she was staring at Sandy with a look that could only be described as longing. That didn’t sit well either. Laura and Sandy were friends, but Laura’s look was almost envying.

“I’m fairly confident we can bring this whole thing to some sort of positive resolution without the case actually reaching court.” Sandy turned back to him. “The Bonnevilles like to play wildcards in their game of snatching up everything of any value in this town, but they don’t always think things through. I think this is one of those times.”

“You think so?” Some of the tension forming knots in Ted’s back loosened.

“Let’s just say I’m cautiously optimistic,” Sandy answered. “The evidence is there, but it might take some convincing to get the block-headed Bonnevilles to see it. I’m not going to stop fighting for you until we win this, though.”

“That’s great to hear.” Ted breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’ve gone ahead and set up a preliminary meeting with the bank’s key trustees, including Richard Bonneville, for Monday afternoon,” Sandy went on. “Think you can make it?”

“I’ll be there with bells on.” Ted met Sandy’s confident smile with one of his own.

“Laura?” Sandy asked, turning her grin to Laura.

“I’ve got work,” Laura answered, without expression and without any energy.

“Are you sure Howie won’t let you out of it for something like this?” Sandy asked with all the intimacy of a friend instead of the stiffness of a lawyer.

Laura shook her head, eyes lowered. “Scott needs me for the, uh, stuff we’re doing with the rocket right now.”

“I think Scott would understand.” Ted started to reach for her hand.

She pulled her hands away, folding them in her lap. “He was pretty insistent about me working when I talked to him today,” she said.

“All right.” Sandy studied her friend with a worried look. “But you’re as big a part of this as anyone else.”

Laura shrugged.

Warning sirens blared in Ted’s head. He’d had about enough of this whole thing. It was time to get to the bottom of it.

He stood and shook Sandy’s hand. “Thanks for everything, San.”

Sandy pulled him in for a hug. “Hey, anything for you, okay?”

“Thanks.” He blushed a little at her show of affection, mostly just glad he was friends with a lawyer as talented as Sandy.

“Hang in there,” Sandy told Laura, letting Ted go so that she could hug her.

“Okay,” Laura mumbled. If Ted wasn’t mistaken, Laura and Sandy’s hug was a little stiff.

“We’ll be in touch,” Ted said as soon as Laura stepped back. He took her hand before she could step too far away, and held tight when she tried to tug free.

They made it out of Sandy’s office, through the building, and out to the overcast Haskell street before Laura tried to pull away again.

“Enough,” Ted said, letting her go, but moving to face her down, keeping her from getting away.

“You’re right,” Laura replied with a sudden burst of energy. “It is enough.”

A wave of relief washed over Ted that was so strong his knees nearly buckled. “Thank God.” He reached out to brush her cheek, thrilled that they could finally get to the bottom of things.

His hopes crashed when Laura took a big step away. “We’re done, Ted.”

As fast as everything seemed to fall into place, it crumbled apart. “What are you talking about?” Panic welled up in his gut like a geyser.

“We never should have started dating in the first place,” Laura said. “Everyone seems to know it.”

“Bullshit.” He didn’t mean for the curse to come out with quite the amount of acid that it did, but desperation was quickly getting the better of him. “The only person who doesn’t think the two of us should be together is you, and you’re wrong.”

She shook her head and crossed her arms. Her level of calm was far more alarming than the hand-wringing she’d done up until that point. “I made a mistake thinking that I was ready for a relationship. Seeing the way you and Sandy interacted in there only drives home to me what kind of relationship you could have if you were with someone ready to face all this. I feel like I’m holding you back from being happy. You should be dating her, not me.”

Ted gaped at her. “This? Still?”

“It’s obvious,” she said with a shrug.

“What’s obvious is that Sandy has had her eye on that Indian guy, Jogi, since the orienteering event in April,” Ted said, again, too forceful. Laura blushed like she only just remembered that connection. “What’s also obvious is that you’re grasping at straws to find ways to wiggle away from a really good thing. And don’t tell me you don’t think this is a good thing,” he cut her off as she opened her mouth to protest. He couldn’t take her hands with her arms crossed, but he could cup her elbows. “We are good together, Laura. Look at everything we’ve accomplished as a team.”

“Anyone with half a sense of what fossils look like could have determined what that bone was,” she argued.

“But nobody did until you came along,” he argued right back. “And I’m not even talking about the fossil. I’m talking about the way you’ve stepped up and made yourself an indispensable part of this town.”

“I haven’t.” She frowned.

“I think Carlos and the guys on the Piedmont Panthers would disagree.” He tried to add a teasing smile to his comment, but it was hard to maintain when she wasn’t buying it at all. “My dad certainly thinks you’re special,” he went on, bringing out the big guns.

Laura’s posture relaxed and she let her arms drop to her sides, but when Ted tried to take her hands, she still wasn’t having any of it. “Your dad is a sweet guy who likes everyone.”

“Actually, he’s not,” Ted said with a smirk. “He’s a grumpy old bulldog who rarely speaks. But he likes you.”

He almost had her. He watched as she wavered, skating so close to giving in. But at the last minute, she took a breath and said, “That’s me. That has nothing to do with the two of us. There shouldn’t be a two of us.”

Frustration boiled through Ted all over again. “What is it going to take for me to convince you that we are perfect for each other?” Because as maddening as she was, he had no interest whatsoever in walking away from her.

“You can’t convince me,” she shot back. “I know who I am, and I know who you are, and it’s like that whole thing about fish and birds falling in love.”

“Do you love me?” he asked, point blank.

She opened her mouth. It would have killed him if she said no, but no words came out at all. She just stood there gaping, cheeks growing pinker by the second. It was time to go all in.

“Because I love you,” he said. A ripple of fear spilled through him. Confessing his love shouldn’t have carried such a huge risk with it. “I love you, Laura Kincade.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “But, you can’t.”

“Whether I can or not, I do. You can’t change that.”

“Ted, this so awkward.” She took a half step back.

He took a full step toward her, but stopped himself from reaching for her. He did not want her to pull away even more. “I’ve loved you almost from the first moment I saw you,” he went on. “You’re different from every other woman I’ve known.”

“That’s exactly my point,” she pleaded with him. “I’m too different.”

“As far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing.”

“But there is,” she argued. “I’m just a dorky girl with dorky interests who…well, you know the rest.”

“I fail to see why that disqualifies you from falling in love and living happily ever after,” he growled.

“It doesn’t.” She let out a frustrated breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know how to explain it. Relationships are….”

He blinked, waiting for her to go on. “Relationships are?”

“Not for me,” she admitted in a small voice.

“I don’t believe that for a second. Especially since I want you more with every breath I take, math, rockets, dinosaurs, and all.”

She glanced up at him with a doubtful look. “If we were back in high school and you tried to date me, all of your cool friends would make fun of you.”

“Laura, we’re not in high school,” he said, close to scolding her. “We’re grown-ups who have a lot better understanding of the world and a heck of a lot more emotional maturity than that. So don’t use it as an excuse.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Would all your nerdy friends make fun of me because I’m not as smart as the rest of you?” He cut off her complaint, narrowing his eyes slightly. “Do you or your paleontologist friends think less of me because I’ve barely traveled beyond Wyoming?”

“No.”

“Because I’ll be honest,” he pushed on. “The fact that you’ve been all over the world while I’ve never gone anywhere really made me worry at first.”

“It did?” The faintest sign of hope flickered in her eyes.

“Yes, it did.” He planted his hands on his hips, the level of honesty he’d found giving him confidence. “I didn’t think you’d find me all that interesting. I’m just some cowboy hick from the middle of nowhere who doesn’t know anything beyond cows and horses. I didn’t think I’d be enough for you.”

“You didn’t?” She blinked into a look of shock.

“No. But I got over it. Because we have a ton of other things in common. You taught me things that made me feel like my horizons were expanding. I thought we were growing together as people. Because that’s what people do.”

He stopped there, watching her. A thousand emotions were flickering across her expression, but he couldn’t keep up with any of them. One moment he thought he’d convinced her, only to have her face pinch with doubt the next.

“You’ve made me think about things in a way I never have before,” he went on when she stayed silent, pulling out the big guns. “You’ve made me think about the future, about the life we could have. Together.”

A faint, heart-rending whimper rose up from her throat. She rested her weight on one hip, glanced up to the sky, and blinked as if she was holding back tears. “I’m not ready for that, Ted,” she whispered.

“Why?” Every part of him wanted to pull her into his arms and never let go.

She shook her head and met his eyes with a startling amount of frankness. “I’m not experienced enough.”

The comment seemed so wildly out of place that he quirked an eyebrow. “Experienced? Laura, you’ve traveled the world, both in the Army and on your own.”

“No.” She shook her head harder, squeezing her eyes shut. “Experienced. In bed.”

He flinched in confusion. “Princess, I have zero complaints in that department.” His lips itched to grin, but the timing wasn’t right.

A look of extreme guilt came over her, and she looked dolefully up at him. “Half the time…more than half the time…I don’t have a clue what I’m doing in bed.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“I did fool you,” she went on, her cheeks getting so red it was alarming. “I fooled you into thinking that I was the kind of sophisticated woman that guys like.”

Between feeling like she was about to confess something important and the frustration of having to drag it out of her, Ted was sure his brain was going to implode. “For the last time, not all guys want the same thing. I don’t want a sophisticated woman, like Sandy,” he emphasized what he knew her hang-up was. “I. Want. You.”

She didn’t answer. She just looked at him. Her mouth twisted into a strange shape, like she was both trying to spit something out and keep it to herself. At last, she said, “Our first time together.”

He waited. When she added nothing, he prompted, “Yeah?”

She swallowed, her eyes going wide. “That was my first time.”

He heard the words, then reacted as though they’d been on a time delay. Halfway through taking a breath, he froze. For a second, he felt nothing at all. Then a hot, stabbing sense of betrayal hit him.

“You went to bed with me that night and you didn’t tell me that you were a virgin?” The question came out in a dangerously quiet, strangled hush.

Laura nodded.

“You let something that important happen between us, and you didn’t tell me how important it was?” His heart thudded against his chest with emotion that was as strong as it was paradoxical. He wanted to feel honored, special, because she had given something so precious to him, but all he felt was furious.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I probably should have told you.”

“You think?” he asked, suddenly loud.

She winced. “Sorry.”

“Laura, that’s not the kind of thing you hide from someone.” He rocked from foot to foot, pushing a hand through his hair. “That moment should have been special for the both of us.” He scrambled to remember exactly how they’d made love that first time. Had he been too forceful? Too focused on his own needs? Had he made it good for her? Is that what she meant when she said she wasn’t ready? The idea that he’d pushed himself on her made him feel vaguely sick.

“If I had told you, you wouldn’t have done it,” she argued, regaining some of her energy.

“That’s not—” He stopped, wondering. Would he have held back? If he’d known that she was a virgin, would he have not had sex with her? Would he have treated her differently?

Yeah, he would have. He’d have stopped things from going too far that night. He’d have planned something special, made a big deal out of it. He would have waited until she was ready. And she might not have gone out with him again, might not have given him the chance to be with her at all. It was her choice whether to sleep with him or not, and by not telling him, she’d held onto the power to make that decision that he would have unwittingly taken from her. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t deeply hurt by her silence.

“See,” she said before he could think of something else to say. “It’s just not going to work. You deserve someone who won’t lie to you.”

“You didn’t lie to me,” he said, sounding exhausted. He rubbed a hand over his face.

“I didn’t tell you the truth, and that’s kind of the same thing,” she insisted.

“It’s not.”

“It is.”

Ted clenched his jaw. He loved her, but God, she was stubborn. “You should have told me,” he said, forcing himself to calm down. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. “But I can respect your decision not to. The point is that we’re together now, and we can work through this.”

“No, Ted.” She sighed. “The point is that we’re not together, because I’m breaking us up.”

His eyes went wide. “We are not breaking up.”

“We are,” she insisted. “We never should have started dating in the first place.”

He felt as though he were stuck on an infernal hamster wheel. “Laura. I love you. I don’t know how else to prove that to you.”

“I know you love me,” she admitted, face crumpling until she looked downright miserable. “And…and I love you too.”

His brow flew up. Never had a confession of love made him so angry. Especially not one he’d been waiting to hear for weeks. “You love me?”

“I do,” she wailed, throwing up her hands. “Of course, I do. You’re funny and gorgeous and amazing in bed. You’re warm and down-to-earth and so, so cool.”

“Then I don’t understand.” He held his arms to the side, bristling with frustration. “If you love me and I love you and we’re standing here in the middle of the street saying it, why are we breaking up?”

“Because love is scary,” she confessed with a sigh of such deep gravity that he felt like they’d finally hit the bedrock of everything their problems were based on. “It’s really scary. I can’t walk around every day terrified that you’ll finally come to your senses and ditch me for someone else, someone better.”

“I won’t.” There was nothing more than that for him to say.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

She let out an exasperated breath. “Losing someone you love hurts too much. I know. I’ve lost people, and I can’t do that again.”

“You won’t lose me,” he argued.

“You don’t know that,” she repeated with more emotion.

“I—”

He stopped. Blake. His throat closed up. The last boy she’d loved with her whole heart had died. And even though Blake was her brother, love that deep came from the same place. She’d lost it before, and even though she’d seemed cool about it, he suddenly saw that she wasn’t. Not even a little bit. This wasn’t about her self-esteem at all. She was still in horrible pain from losing her brother. She’d been saying it all along. She wasn’t ready to give her heart away and take the risk of having it broken again.

It all made sudden, terrible sense.

“Laura,” he spoke her name with a whole new tenderness as the pieces fell into place.

“No.” She took a step back as if his tone had been an attempt to hug her. “It’s over. I’ve decided. You deserve someone better. That’s all there is to it.” She took another step back. “I’m going home now.”

His back ached, his muscles so taut with frustration that he wasn’t sure he could move if he tried. Beyond that, it was clear that even if he wrestled her to the ground and kissed her within an inch of her life, it wouldn’t make a dent. He finally saw how big the problem in front of him was. Like digging up one lousy bone and unearthing a massive fossil instead.

“Okay,” he whispered, scrambling to figure out a new way to connect with her. “You do what you need to do.” He couldn't even tell her that things weren’t over between them, that he wouldn’t let them be.

But as she sent him one last, quizzical look and turned to go, he knew as sure as sunshine that things definitely weren’t over.