She bit her lower lip and looked away. “If I leave, what will happen to the Rocking M?”

“My uncle found someone interested in purchasin’ half the land. It’ll be enough to pay back the money my father borrowed from Royce’s mother. I’ll still have the ranch. It’ll just be half the size it is now.”

The thought brought a new pain to his heart. Splitting the ranch was the last thing he’d ever hoped to do. But nothing, nothing, was as painful as having to let Emily go.

“You can’t do that,” she said. “This land is your family legacy.”

A muscle throbbed at his jaw. “It will still be McKnight land. There just won’t be as much of it.”

“And Royce agrees to this?” Emily looked surprised, and he couldn’t blame her.

Chase nodded. “He does.”

He wasn’t sure why Royce had agreed to settle for so much less than he’d originally demanded. Perhaps the stampede in town had made his stepbrother realize what Chase had known all along—Royce wasn’t cut out for life as a rancher. Or maybe it was simply Emily’s refusal to leave.

“If I stayed,” Emily began slowly, “the ranch would be yours, and you’d owe Royce nothing.”

“Legally, no. But”—Chase rubbed his forehead—“his mother paid off my father’s loan and helped him save the ranch. It’s only right I pay Royce back.”

The burden he’d taken upon his shoulders wasn’t his to bear. But neither was Emily responsible for her uncle’s actions, no matter how much she blamed herself.

“I’m sorry it didn’t turn out the way you’d hoped,” she said.

“Me too.” He took a deep breath. “I just want you to know the annulment papers are ready. All you have to do is stop by the courthouse and sign them.”

He searched her face for something—anything—that told him she didn’t want to go. But she gave him no clue as to what she was thinking. He’d hoped—hoped in vain as it turned out—that forcing her hand would make her admit that she loved him.

She’d called him her husband, had called this her home, and he waited now to hear those same words again.

For several long moments, they stared at each other, the silence seeming to take up all the air in the room.

When the words he longed to hear didn’t come, he cleared his throat. “I’ll have Big-Foot Harry drive you to town tomorrow. The judge already questioned me, but he’ll want to talk to you.”

She moistened her lips and looked away. “Thank you.”

Chase waited again. Say something, his heart cried. Tell me you don’t want to leave. Tell me that our love is real. Tell me that you long to hold me as I long—ache—to hold you.

“Take care of yourself, Emily,” he said at last.

He turned to leave, the heaviness in his heart slowing his steps.

“What are the grounds?” she asked.

He stopped, hand on the doorknob, and turned to look at her over his shoulder.