"The stores."
"You did."
"The books."
"You did."
His gaze held hers. "Langley."
Rachel shook her head. "We did that."
"Yes."
Matthew's voice lowered. "We did."
The words settled between them. He looked toward the canvas bag again.
"And somewhere in the middle of all that, I stopped counting what you were doing for the ranch."
Rachel's throat tightened. Matthew took another step. Not enough to crowd her.
Only enough that she could see the small cut near his jaw from the night's work.
"I started noticing other things."
Rachel did not move.
"The way you leave the corner pieces of cornbread because you know I like them."
Her eyes dropped.
"The way you check Charlie's gloves when the temperature falls because he won't admit his hands crack."
Matthew's mouth shifted. "The way you pretend not to hear Eli complain about coffee and then make extra anyway."
From somewhere beneath the canvas came Eli's sleepy voice. "I knew that."
Neither of them turned. Matthew continued.
"The way you listen."
His expression became more serious. "You don't fill a quiet room because you're afraid of it."
Rachel's eyes lifted to his. "You just sit there."
A pause. "With me."
Something pressed behind Rachel's ribs. Matthew looked toward the cookhouse.
"Before you came, I thought Holloway Basin was doing fine because nothing had fallen down yet."
Rachel remembered the invoices. The half-empty bunkhouse. The men with bedrolls tied behind their saddles. Matthew nodded toward the yard.
"This place was alive enough to work."
His voice roughened slightly. "Not alive enough to come home to."
Rachel stopped breathing for a second.
"You changed that."
"Matthew—"
"No."
He shook his head. "You told me not to reduce what you did. I'm not going to let you do it now."
That was her own lesson returned to her. Rachel looked away. He waited until she looked back.
"I don't want you here because you can keep accounts."
His voice was steady now. "Or because you can feed 50 men with half the supplies anyone else would use."