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“Everything.”
He laughed. “That narrows it down.”
“Again, I have no frame of reference. So start at the beginning.”
“All right. Her name was Anna. Anna Shane. Her family owned a small ranch adjacent to ours.”
“How did you meet?”
“Ranch business. She acted as bookkeeper for her family’s business, and when they were slow, we hired their ranch hands so they could have full-time work.”
“So her ranch wasn’t as big as yours?”
“No ranch is as big as ours, baby.”
I couldn’t help a smile. “Sounds like a personal problem to me.”
“Ha! I actually meant it literally. We own the biggest ranch in Colorado.”
“I know that. What I wanted to know was how big hers was in comparison.”
“Not big at all. The Shanes had a small-time operation.”
“So you met her…and…?”
“We hit it off, went out a few times. Had a good time. It blossomed from there.”
“How long were you together?”
“About two years.”
“And when did it end?”
“A couple years ago.”
“What happened?”
“She brought it up, actually. Said she loved me but didn’t feel like it was forever love.”
“Were you upset?”
“No one likes to hear those words, but I actually agreed with her. I loved her too. She was a great woman. Very pretty, very smart. But I didn’t hear bells, if that makes any sense.”
Made perfect sense. And what scared me most of all is that I heard the fucking Bells of St. Mary’s when I was in Ryan’s presence. Could he possibly hear them too?
“Now that I look back,” Ryan continued, “it came on pretty suddenly. We were happy. We never discussed marriage—I guess because neither of us heard bells, as she put it—but I definitely didn’t see a breakup coming.”
“Were you hurt?”
“Yeah. Of course. I cared about her. I loved her. But when push came to shove, I had to agree that I didn’t see it as anything permanent.”
“I wonder what made her bring it up.”
“She didn’t mention it at the time, but about a week later, her family sold the ranch and they all moved to Hawaii.”
“Hawaii? That’s a strange place to move. They must have gotten a great price for the ranch.”
“I have no idea what kind of price they got, but they must have had a lot of money set aside.”
