Accidental Sweetheart. Lisa Bingham

to chase the ghosts away. But today...

      Today, he didn’t know what he wanted. He only knew that he needed something...different.

      He heard Smalls moving behind him and turned to help the man bring a gentle mare from a neighboring stall. After leading the animal to where the small buggy awaited behind the livery, Gideon helped to harness the horse. Then he settled inside and gathered the reins.

      Once again, Smalls’s brows rose questioningly. Gideon didn’t need words to know that the gentle giant was asking where Gideon planned to go.

      “I’m not sure yet,” Gideon murmured as if the question had been asked aloud. “I need to check the state of the river, take another look at the pass, maybe see how the Dovecote is faring after all this flooding.”

      Smalls took a stub of a pencil and a stack of small cards from his pocket. After licking the tip of the pencil, he quickly wrote.

       You feeling all right?

      There were few people in the camp that knew the way Gideon sometimes struggled with the after-effects of the war. Willoughby had seen Gideon coming into the livery enough to know that sometimes, battle seemed only a heartbeat away and Gideon found himself needing to escape. “Soldier’s Heart” was the name some people used. Gideon would have thought “tormented” was a better term.

      In either event, over the years, Smalls had seemed to instinctively know when Gideon needed to ride alone and when he’d needed a companion. On more than one occasion, Gideon had caught the man watching him from a distance, making sure that he didn’t become so immersed in his memories that he became a danger to himself.

      “I’m fine, Willoughby. The weather’s getting to me, I think—same as it is everyone else. We’ve got the women we need to get out of the valley, then the ore.”

      Smalls nodded, then bent to write again.

       You take care of yourself.

      Gideon nodded. “I intend to do that. We can’t afford for anyone else to catch this measles epidemic that’s sweeping through town.”

      A grating chuckle caused Smalls’s shoulders to shake, even though Gideon didn’t quite catch the humor in anything he’d said.

      The man stood back, offering a small salute.

      Offering one last nod to his friend, Gideon slapped the reins on the horse’s rump and headed out into the mud and sunshine.

      * * *

      Lydia had barely reached the outskirts of town before she realized that she’d loaded her basket with far too many items. She still had quite a distance left to the Dovecote and her arms were already trembling. It wasn’t so much the foodstuffs that were making her muscles ache. It was the sugar sack that she’d packed with bullets. She should have known better than to bring them along.

      Hearing the clop of hooves behind her, she moved to the grassy verge of the road. When the rider didn’t pass, she glanced over her shoulder, only to find a buggy pulling up alongside her. And who should be driving, but Gideon Gault.

      “Can I give you a lift to the Dovecote?”

      She debated the question for only a moment—and only because the bullets seemed to be burning a hole in her conscience. But the thought of carrying them all the way to the Dovecote when she’d been offered a ride...

      “Thank you. I’d be beholden to you.”